London Place 6: O2 Academy Islington

Not entirely sure why, of all the music venues I could choose, I'm writing about one I never actually went into, but there we are. I have a memory.

Standing outside.

My memory is that it was a summer's night, 10ish but still a bit light. I used to hang out around Upper Street quite a bit. Most likely I'd eaten at a Nando's, been to a pub, gone to the next door cinema within the pleasant enough N1 Centre; if it was the mid-2000s probably watched a film starring, say, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, say, or Ethan Hawke, say, or both.

On my way home via Angel Station, the door of the O2 Academy Islington, a slightly unpromising door that never really attracted me in, that suggested more a strip club or a Quaser centre than a place for rock'n'roll, was open. It was a warm summer night. Live music was wafting out. I checked the board to see who was playing the O2 Academy that night. It was Arthur Lee playing 'Forever Changes'.

So I stood outside for as long as I could without feeling self-conscious, listening to the faint but recognisable sound of Arthur Lee and his band playing a couple of songs from 'Forever Changes' (I can't quite remember which), and I thought about how incongruous this all was, that one of the legendary lost enigmas of rock'n'roll, someone who's Captain Beefheart or Frank Zappa or Sly Stone or Syd Barrett, was entertaining the troops in a little corporate spot on a weeknight in a little shopping centre in North London.

I never paid to see Arthur Lee. I was tempted but perhaps thought it would be disspiriting and shoddy. But, a year or two ago, I caught, on TV, his slot at Glastonbury, probably that same summer, and it was excellent. His style, his voice, his playing, all stil there.

I guess the story of Arthur Lee is condensed to "shone bright for a short while, had serious drug and legal issues, went to prison a fair bit, disappeared a fair bit, died youngish, in 2006."

Yet, another part of the story is that, in the 2000s he was a revived working musician, touring his wonderful music to solid (though not vast) crowds.

'Forever Changes' is such a singular, cosmic piece of work (though 'Da Capo''s great too), so different from what else was around at the time, so influential on so much music I've loved, that certainly heightened the eeriness I felt that here I was, standing in the free air, on my own, wandering home, and that was the actual music I was hearing.

Those 2000s were something of a (last) golden age for live music, for the kind of stuff that was freely, cheaply, available. The great generation were still at it - you could catch Martha Reeves at some club, Sly Stone at Lovebox, and you could go see any small, medium-sized or massive act you wanted. I think literally the only time I ever failed to get tickets for something I really, really wanted to see was Springsteen at the Emirates.

And here's a thing I've thought about gentrification, for want of a better word. For a while, it all seems like a fair cop, a good deal. Yes, all these snazzy, soulless 02 venues of different sizes springing up, but all the old pubs, clubs, theatres are still open too. There's music everywhere. Borderline, Forum, Water Rats, Koko, ULU, Barfly, Garage, Bull and Gate, Scala, countless more, not to mention the perennials for someone like me, a fan of pretty successful indie bands, Shepherds Bush Empire and Brixton Academy. Be ready for the day tickets come out, pay face value, bit of a booking fee, all good, night after night.

Then gradually the booking fees get bigger, the tickets get more expensive, it's harder to get them face value, the small venues shut, and there's only the O2 someething or other and everything's more than £50, and there are only a couple of gigs a year you really, really fancy anyway.

Look, I got older, I moved out, but there is truth in what I've described. 

There's a song by Jamie T (who I wasn't a fan of at the time) called 'Sign of the Times' where he sings "Where did all the venues go? Lost them all to businessmen" and that's about right.

I don't know if this has got anything to do with faintly hearing Arthur Lee playing his songs in Islington one summer night. Perhaps I had all these thoughts in that couple of minutes. Then again, perhaps it didn't happen like that at all.