AS Jarvis Cocker and Pulp once sang, Do You Remember The First Time?
Well, the great and the good of British pop are recalling their rocky first gigs, early feuds and years of slumming it in dingy squats in a new documentary series.
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The Disney+ show, called Camden, charts a course through the heyday of Britpop and explores how North London district Camden became a musical Mecca for those looking to make their name.
It is executive-produced by local girl turned superstar Dua Lipa, 28.
The singer, who was ten when she moved to Camden from Kosovo, reveals in the show how nearby club Koko — the first UK venue to host a Madonna gig in 1983 — was “like my home base”.
There are also contributions from Boy George, Will.i.am and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, who says that in the Nineties, the scene felt like “an indie X Factor”.
He adds: “One night, at one of our gigs, it became clear at about 7pm that all the record companies were going to come because a load of young to middle-aged white men, all on cocaine and drinking beer, showed up.
“They looked like a tribe, which they were, because they were all friends with each other and all competed for the same artists.”
Here, we share recollections from some of the biggest bands from over the decades about making their name in what has been dubbed the “most rock’n’roll neighbourhood on Earth”.
- Camden is available to stream on Disney+ from tomorrow.
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LIBERTINES’ GUERILLA GIGS
DUAL frontmen Pete Doherty and Carl Barat formed the Libertines while living together in Camden Road, topping and tailing in a single bed with no covers.
And the pair would often put on impromptu “guerilla gigs” at their flat, sometimes with less than an hour’s notice.
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Carl, 45, says: “Peter’s parents were in an Army base so they’d always come home and bring supplies, like crates of beer and cigarillos, cigars and frankfurter sausages.
“So we made a bar and invited everyone in Camden.”
Pete, 45, adds: “I’d say to Carl, ‘Look, don’t get the hump, but I’ve put online we’re doing a gig in the front room in an hour’.
“He’d be fuming, like, ‘What are you talking about? I’ve got my washing drying!’.
“Like basic things, perfectly reasonable, but he’d still do it.”
As the Libertines got more popular, fans would cram into the living room and the police would turn up.
Carl says: “The front door ended up broken and we had to climb through a window.
“We finally got booted out when we nicked all the money out of the electricity meter. I do look back and think, ‘Jesus, that was disgusting, I wouldn’t do that again’.
“But then also think, if you’re an artist, you need to live your life before you can write about it.
“And those formative times you have are everything.”
BLUR MIX WITH THE ENEMY
THE Good Mixer was the place to be for anyone in the Britpop crowd during the Nineties.
The toilets in the small, two-roomed Irish bar are even said to be where Oasis and Blur’s feud first began — with Oasis singer Liam Gallagher saying to Blur guitarist Graham Coxon: “Nice music, s**t clothes.”
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Liam’s brother Noel, 56, says: “As I remember it, we were just good-naturedly ribbing Graham Coxon.
“But it turns out it probably wasn’t that good-natured.”
And Blur were not the only band Liam, 51, clashed with there.
The Libertines’ Pete Doherty and Carl Barat recall seeing Oasis propping up the bar there during their heyday.
But when they went over to try to talk to Liam, Carl says: “He kept knocking me out the way, like it was his defence mechanism.”
Pete adds: “I was like, ‘Liam, we’ve got a basement round the corner, you should come and play some stuff’.
“He goes, ‘Mate, I don’t do that sort of thing because I’m the devil’s d**k’.
“That was the best thing I’d ever heard. But a bit disappointing, as well.”
DANGEROUS PLACE FOR AMY
THE singer, who died in 2011 at the age of 27, lived in the borough and was a regular drinker at The Hawley Arms, where she would hop behind the bar to pull pints.
Amy’s former manager, Nick Shymansky, says in the documentary: “Genuinely, from the moment I heard her voice, and met her, I was completely convinced.
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“I had no doubt she was the best of the best.”
He adds: “The big record at the time was the Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill and not long after I heard Amy’s demo, I remember instantly going this is as good as Lauryn Hill, if not better.
“So whatever I do, I have to work with this artist.
“The first deal we did was a publishing deal and she got her cheque and was like, ‘Right, I’m going to buy a flat in Camden’, and then a whole new thing opened up.
“Her idea of a good night would be to see someone live, play some pool, have a cocktail, go back, roll a spliff, play music until 2 or 3 in the morning, and not get up until lunchtime the next day.”
Nick adds that when success came for Amy, however, it wasn’t enough.
He explains: “The first record wasn’t full of hit songs and maybe it hadn’t fulfilled her in the way she was hoping it would.
“That was the moment where this void opened up and as an artist I think she wanted to be seen as someone a little bit more exciting and edgy.
“Camden at that point was probably quite a dangerous place for someone like her to live.
“She started to go out to the pubs, the drink maybe turned into a line. It was her nature of drinking people under the table, the ‘I can do more drugs, I can be more wild, I can be more dangerous’ attitude.
“She got lost in it.”
MADNESS EVERY WEEK
IRISH pub The Dublin Castle is famous for having hosted everyone from Blur to The Killers and Arctic Monkeys.
Its legendary status dates back to 1979 when the late Alo Conlon, landlord at the time, decided to indulge seven teenagers claiming to be a jazz band.
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That band was a local rabble known as Madness.
Frontman Suggs, 63, recalls: “We’d been into a lot of pubs, so this was like our last chance. We walked in and it was like being in Cork.
“They asked what sort of music we played and we said country and western, thinking it’s going to go down better with an Irish crowd.
“Then Woody, at the back, helpfully chipped in with, ‘And a bit of jazz’.”
They were given a trial slot for that Wednesday — and “they packed us out,” says current landlord Henry Conlon.
He adds: “I remember being in the back bar peeping over at these young skinheads.”
Madness then got a residency at the pub, with queues out the door every Wednesday.
Suggs says: “It was 75p to get in, so we’d get a fiver each.
“One night I put my foot through the monitor and that was 40 quid so we all went home skint.”
The band later filmed the video for hit 1979 single My Girl at the pub.
In it, Alo can be seen at the start, referring to himself as “the governor”.
SUPERNOVA STARS
ALONG with their Oasis bandmates, Noel and Liam Gallagher moved to London just as they were becoming famous in the early Nineties.
“We were all pretty broke,” Noel says.
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“I loved it in Camden, in pubs drinking Guinness, f***ing talking s**t.
“There’s a bit where we were in the same circumstances as the crowd coming to watch our gigs, and roughly the same age.
“You all wear the same clothes, you’re in your 20s, no baggage, no kids. No one’s coming in because they’ve heard Wonderwall on the radio.”
He adds: “We were into making money and having a good time and all of the girls and drugs and all of that”.
But they soon hit the big time. Liam and his then-wife Patsy Kensit, 56, moved to posh Primrose Hill, while Noel and his then-wife Meg Mathews, 58, were in nearby Steele’s Road.
Their seven-bedroom mansion, affectionately named Supernova Heights, was where the Primrose Hill set — which included actor Jude Law and model Kate Moss — would throw outrageous parties, packed to the brim with A-list stars.
But Noel recalls that one time fans managed to gatecrash.
He says: “Someone thought they were my mates, and I thought they were someone else’s.
“Turns out they were a random group of indie kids who’d followed us back from the bar, wearing Doc Martens and jackets.
“They’d just wandered in and sat there for hours. I was like, ‘Can you f*** off then?’.”