Three vanished places...
...that I would live to revisit but can't.
The Rainbow Theatre.
The Rainbow in Finsbury Park was a five-minute walk from Highbury Stadium, but when I was a teenager, I didn’t know that. I was a suburban boy whose knowledge of London was pretty much shaped by the tube map. Arsenal was on the Piccadilly Line, Finsbury Park on the Victoria Line, and I had no idea that a short stretch of road linked them both. Music and football were linked in my head, but I couldn’t link them geographically.
It was one of the largest cinemas in the world when it opened in 1930. The Beatles played there when it was the Finbury Park Astoria, as did Hendrix; the Astoria was where Hendrix first set a guitar on fire. (Don’t try that at home. He was hospitalised afterwards.) Once it had been converted into a permanent three-thousand seater music venue it hosted just about every band you might have wanted to see between 1971 and 1982. The Who, the Clash, Bowie as Ziggy, Tom Petty, Santana, James Brown, the Faces, Pink Floyd, Stevie Wonder, Queen…There’s no point in listing them all. You already know the names. Parts of Van Morrison’s fantastic It’s Too Late To Stop Now, the album that features a huge band including a string section, were recorded there. Bob Marley’s incendiary show in 1977, the last night of the Exodus tour, is underneath, in its entirety.
Someone pushed Frank Zappa off the stage there, and he broke his leg. Deep Purple’s performance in 1972 earned them a place in the Guiness Book Of Records as the world’s loudest band. I saw Jeff Beck, Rory Gallagher, 10cc, Dr Feelgood. I saw Graham Parker and the Rumour supported by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, and then returned a couple of weeks later to see Southside, whose tumultuous performances on that tour had earned him a headlining slot. I loved it there, not least because it was beautiful. I mean, look at it. That’s the stage. WHAT THE FUCK?
It was as close as I have ever come to a magical kingdom. Most of the time you couldn’t see the Moorish castle because the lights were down, but every now and again you got a glimpse, and there were, as you can see, stars in the sky. I used to look up during a show I was loving and look at those stars and hope that life would stay this good. (It didn’t.)