Street features
Every Covent Garden Street has its own history, some more desirable than others.
Please select street below and meet some of Covent Garden’s characters over the years.
- Please choose a street from the below -
Denmark Street
London's "Tin Pan Alley" is quite simply Europe’s best music street, filled with specialist music shops and thronging with people passionate about music. There’s hardly a rock and roll legend that hasn’t visited at some time. Music history has been made here; The Beatles and Jimmi Hendrix recorded in the basements... Elton John wrote the classic Your Song on the rooftops...
In short, Denmark Street is forever associated with music. Earning the nickname of London’s Tin Pan Alley in the 1920s, musicians have flocked to this renowned corner of Soho since its origins as a sheet music supplier in Victorian times. Most of the buildings date from the 1800s when it was considered a fairly inferior area with its proximity to the theatres and pubs of Soho. Rents were cheap, attracting struggling artists, composers, and musicians. Music publishers set up their businesses here around the 1890s, supplying the musicians of the orchestras at nearby theatres and music halls. In the 1930s, shop windows displayed pianos and guitars and the street was becoming renowned for music publishing.
Recording studios started setting up in the 1960s, and it was then that Denmark Street’s name was etched into the archives. Denmark Street’s impact on the contemporary music scene is widely regarded as far greater than the more populist location of Abbey Road. In 1963 Regent Sounds Studio was set up at 4 Denmark Street. With the Rolling Stones recording their first album here, the studio took off as the place to be seen to be making music. Now home to the specialist music bookshop Helter Skelter, anecdotes abound of the Kinks, ELP and Hendrix recording here in the basements. The studio was supplied with the latest in 1970s music technology, with a reverb room at the back of the present day bookshop, and a cutting-edge 16-track machine housed in the basement that drew the likes of Stevie Wonder in 1974.The studio closed in the late 70s, becoming a comic bookstore The Forbidden Planet, before opening as Helter Skelter in 1995. As well as publishing their own titles and moving heaven and earth to get you that rare tome in record time, the specialist store also houses an impressive range showcasing the genre - biographies, anthologies, tributes, and retrospectives - making it an essential destination for music lovers.
The street still houses recording studios, publishers and even manufacturers. Orange Music Electronics Company has a long history of supplying amps and electrical goods throughout the world - all from a basement in Denmark Street. Many of the present day music shops have a long musical history. Rose Morris at number 11 was set up in 1919 by Charles and Leslie Rose and Victor Morris, expanding to six floors of musical instruments and printed music. In the late 1960s, Rhodes opened at number 22, making it one of the oldest guitar shops in the country. The London PA Centre at number 23 is home to a vast range of musical electrical supplies, as well as a black-caped and evidently musical resident Victorian ghost!
Ever since David Bowie notoriously set up residence in a camper van on the street near his studios, celebrity musicians have flocked here. Bob Marley famously bought his very first guitar here and Lou Reed whiled away many a "perfect day". Noel Gallagher, Paul Weller, Andy Kershaw, Eric Clapton and Beatles producer George Martin are frequent visitors.
The now defunct Giaconda Café became the place to relax, drink and mingle with like-minded musicians and workers in the industry. The Sex Pistols even took up residence here in the mid-1970s. It functioned as almost a recruitment centre for jobbing musicians seeking work the easy way. Producers were renowned for coming to the café to find musicians to join their bands. A niche community developed which still remains today, in the friendly atmosphere of a street with a shared enthusiasm - or more accurately, obsession! And there’s always music wafting from basements, shop windows and balconies.
