Concert Details

Show Notes:

The night before (25 February), EC attended Buddy Guy’s show at London’s Marquee Club.

Forty years later, in March 2005, Eric and B.B. King welcomed Buddy Guy into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In his remarks, Eric recalled the night he first saw Buddy perform live at London’s Marquee Club. “In the flesh, he was earth-shattering. His style, on every level, was fantastic—doing all the things we would later come to associate with Jimi Hendrix: playing with his teeth, his feet, behind his head. He brought the house crashing down. But beyond all that, it was his actual playing that got through to me. With only a drummer and a bass player behind him, he gave a thundering performance, delivering the blues with finesse and passion in a way I had never heard before. And incidentally, it started me thinking that a trio is a pretty good idea for a band.”

The quip drew laughter from the audience, given Eric’s history with Cream and the group’s then-upcoming reunion shows at the Royal Albert Hall.

The Marquee Club opened in 1958, initially presenting a mix of trad and modern jazz alongside skiffle acts. Two bands typically played each night, with aspiring groups filling the interval slots—performances that soon drew increasing attention as tastes shifted toward rock ’n’ roll and mod. By 1963, the Marquee had become synonymous with the emerging R&B scene, and over the next 25 years it played a central role in the development of blues rock, psychedelia, progressive rock, pub rock, punk, new wave, and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. The artists who took their first steps on its famously cramped stage—among them bands associated with Eric, including The Roosters, The Yardbirds, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Cream, and Derek & The Dominos—collectively trace the story of modern British popular music. Melody Maker once described it as “the most important venue in the history of pop music.”

The Marquee Club first operated in the basement of the Academy Cinema at 165 Oxford Street, in the circus-themed Marquee Ballroom, which had previously hosted dance orchestras and swing bands. When the lease expired, the club relocated in 1964 to 90 Wardour Street in Soho—its most famous home—with a capacity of around 700. That site closed in 1988 ahead of redevelopment, after which the club moved to 105–107 Charing Cross Road, where it remained until closing in 1995.

Several revival attempts followed: a short-lived reopening at Islington Academy in 2002, and another at 1 Leicester Square in 2004, both of which closed within a year.

Interesting fact: The Yardbirds played the closing night at the Oxford Street location on 5 March 1964 and returned to headline the opening night at the Wardour Street site on 13 March, appearing with Sonny Boy Williamson II.