Site of the Marquee Club – 90 Wardour Street, Soho, London, England

The site was once home to London’s rock’n roll mecca, the Marquee Club. The Marquee Club was a music venue first located at 165 Oxford Street, London, England when it opened in 1958 with a range of jazz and skiffle acts. In March 1964 the club moved a short distance to what became its most famous venue at 90 Wardour Street.

Here, almost every major rock band of note played over the next 25 years on the tiny stage. Residencies during the late 1960s alone included Alexis Korner, Cyril Davies, Chris Barber, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, The Who, King Crimson, The Syn, Yes, Jethro Tull, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Pink Floyd (who played on Sunday afternoons as part of the Spontaneous Underground club). Another band that made regular appearances was The Manish Boys featuring David Bowie, who first played there in November 1964; and Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac gave their first performance there in 1967.

To find out who was playing on any given night, you could just call in at the 'Ship' pub a few doors away. In 1964 Moody Blues manager/producer Alex Murray used a homemade studio in the garage at the back of the club to produce the classic "Go Now" single, which shot to No. 1 at Christmas 1964, and filmed for it the first ever UK pop promo video. The development of Marquee Studios was largely financed by profits from this record. The studio was later used by Elton John, The Groundhogs, The Clash and others.

The Rolling Stones, who first appeared at the club in January 1963, returned there on 26 March 1971 after an eight-year hiatus to film a television special. Another TV special also filmed at the club, two years later in September 1973, was David Bowie's The 1980 Floor Show, screened as part of NBC's The Midnight Special. The Faces performed there on 7 December 1970.