Is there a rock place more legendary than the UFO Club?
Once upon a time, on the ground level of 31 Tottenham Court Road it was a cinema, opened in 1913 as the Carlton and closed down in 1976 as the Berkeley. Below the cinema there was a space for dance music. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band played here in 1919.
This became London’s first psychedelic club when the Blarney Club was hired on Friday nights by John Hopkins and Joe Boyd. Soft Machine and Pink Floyd were booked for the first two Fridays, and then re-engaged as the club carried on into 1967 after its initial success. Amongst the bands who played here between the 23rd December 1966 and the 28th July 1967 were Arthur Brown, Tomorrow, Fairport Convention, and Procol Harum (when A Whiter Shade of Pale was No. 1 in the charts). After a squalid article published in the News of the World on the 30th of July, the lease was revoked, and the club moved to the Roundhouse, in Camden Town, from the 4th of August 1967 to the 29th of September of the same year.
This part of Tottenham Court Road was demolished to make way for the Central Cross development of shops and offices. The new development includes a new three-screen cinema complex which opened as the Classic Cinema in July 1981, later became the ABC, and today operates as the Odeon Tottenham Court Road. This is located on the site of the former Berkeley Cinema & La Continentale Cinema, thus on the site of the legendary UFO Club, too.
Address: 31 Tottenham Court Rd, London, W1T 1BX
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