Raving Upon Thames: An Untold Story of Sixties London
By Andrew Humphreys
To Swinging London hotspots Carnaby Street and the King’s Road, add Richmond upon Thames
Richmond’s Crawdaddy Club launched the careers of both the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds, with their guitarists Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. At the same time, UK festival culture was born on Richmond’s rugby fields, while upriver Eel Pie Island was a magical ravers’ hideaway where Rod Stewart, David Bowie and Jimmy Page hung out before taking to the stage themselves.
From 1956 to 1971, the riverside suburbs to the southwest of London, from Richmond, through Twickenham to Kingston, nurtured a music and youth culture scene that shaped the Sixties. While Liverpool produced the Beatles and the Merseybeat sound, Richmond upon Thames launched the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds and countless rhythmic and bluesy imitators. Richmond’s annual outdoor jazz weekend evolved into a rock festival that continues until today at its substitute home of Reading. Secluded on a private island in the Thames, the Eelpiland club, as well as being one of the best places in Britain to experience live music, doubled as a laboratory for maverick experimental social-working.
Underpinning the scene were three visionary characters: ‘Prince of Pan’ Arthur Chisnall, book-keeping jazz fanatic Harold Pendleton and Rasputin-like impresario Giorgio Gomelsky. What they got up to around Richmond and the impact they had on popular music in the UK has until now never been given the recognition it deserves – this book places them at the heart of a great lost chapter in the story of Sixties London.
Hardback, 320 pages, with 70 black & white illustrations and endpaper maps
The author
Andrew Humphreys
Andrew Humphreys was born too late and in the wrong place to experience the Sixties in southwest London. However, his career has been inspired by the spirit of those times. He spent most of the 1990s writing guidebooks (to Siberia, Central Asia, Syria, Egypt and the Middle East) for Lonely Planet, a publishing company born out of the Overland hippie trail. In the 2000s, Andrew wrote and edited for Time Out, founded by Tony Elliott in London in 1968 as part of the booming alternative press scene that also included Oz and International Times.
