Broadhurst Gardens

Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr Epstein

I am away for the whole of July. I have prepared some shorter articles which will self-publish while I’m away. Here’s one…

Broadhurst Gardens in West Hampstead may not be a household name, but back in the day it was the home of Decca Recording Studios which rivalled EMI’s Abbey Road Studios as the country’s leading recording facility.

Many popular songs and albums were recorded at Decca Studios. David Bowie recorded his first single, Liza Jane, at the studio in 1964. The studios also saw the formation of the original Fleetwood Mac, under the aegis of then-Bluesbreakers guitarist Peter Green, after John Mayall bought him studio time as a birthday present.

Neil Aspinall drove the Beatles down from Liverpool to London on New Year’s Eve 1961; he lost his way, and the trip took ten hours.

They arrived in London at 10pm “just in time to see the drunks jumping in the Trafalgar Square fountain”, as John Lennon described it.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Pete Best arrived at the audition in Broadhurst Gardens, formally known as a ‘commercial test’, to be headed by Mike Smith with Decca staff, on 1 January 1962 at 10am. Smith was late, suffering from a New Year’s party hangover as well as cuts and bruises from a car crash three days before Christmas, slightly delaying the start of the audition.

At the audition, the Beatles performed 15 songs chosen by Brian Epstein. Apparently they were rubbish and Decca turned them down as artistes.

Decca was founded on the original site of West Hampstead Town Hall at 165 Broadhurst Gardens, near the junction with West End Lane – built in 1886.

By the early 2000s, the building was home to the English National Opera.

Just down the road, on the corner with West End Lane, the Railway pub was the venue for Jimi Hendrix’s first London gig.

One of the (hidden) features of the road is the Broadhurst Gardens Community Meadow – a private area open only to the residents of the houses which surround it.

And underneath one end of the road, lies the original course of the Kilbourne Stream, a tributary of the River Westbourne.