What's wrong at Ronnie's?

Far from planning anniversary celebrations, its new management team, headed by Old Vic theatre owner and impresario Sally Greene, is on the defensive in the face of rumoured business difficulties, takeover speculation and a persistent chorus of gripes from people unhappy with the way the world's best-known jazz club is being run.

According to its website last Friday, the bandstand was scheduled to be dark tonight, though a band has since been hastily pencilled in. Listings and booking information are vague for dates more than two weeks ahead, whereas earlier in the club's 45-year existence its calendar was always set for two months in advance. Jobs are being cancelled at short notice and contracted musicians feel unsettled.

Considering the exorbitant central-London commercial rates that the club pays, these are disturbing signs. Like any business, Ronnie Scott's needs to run at a profit - and if it doesn't it's in trouble. The owners might be more concerned than most to hear last night's news that Pizza on the Park, a cabaret and jazz venue which has been losing money, is to close at the end of July.

When Greene took Ronnie's on, she said it wouldn't change anything and gave assurances that her team would maintain the club's traditions. The soon-announced refurbishment plan was simply to smarten the place up. Yet the character of Ronnie's has changed under the new management - and not necessarily for the better.

The biggest issue is its programming, but a list of complaints also includes hiked prices, its sanitised atmosphere and disillusioned musicians.
Despite all this, Ronnie's is still a tempting takeover target. More than a jazz club, it's an international brand, a worldfamous London landmark known to millions who might never visit another jazz club in their lives.

It ranks not far behind Buckingham Palace and the London Eye in the don't-miss section of tourist guidebooks. Poachers said to be lurking include Clear Channel, the US radio and TV conglomerate, which recently swooped for one of Ronnie's main London rivals, the Jazz Café.

Michael Watt is the jazz-loving sometime record producer, hard-talking Australian businessman, sports entrepreneur and former docker who partnered Sally Greene in the purchase of Ronnie Scott's in 2005 for an undisclosed sum. He does not deny the rumours but doesn't seem worried by them.

"People are continuously sniffing around high-profile businesses and looking to take them over," he says. "It's quite normal, but we've looked at the books and I can tell you that there are substantial funds and no crisis. Apart from what we paid for the club, it will obviously take time to recover the money we spent renovating it. But we're confident we can weather any storms and listen to any criticisms."

The building, he points out, was tired, scruffy and in urgent need of a makeover and renovations revealed further liabilities. "The building was on the verge of closure on health and safety grounds. There were major drainage problems and it was full of asbestos that was exposed even more as work proceeded."

The new owners have given the club a much-needed facelift, but in the process, some would argue, they've lost the soul of the place. Every jazz fan knows the story of how Ronnie Scott and Pete King moved into the dingy Chinatown basement in Gerrard Street in 1959 and converted it from a fan-tan gambling den into an international jazz shrine, moving into the current premises in 1965.

But the club's problems really began two days before Christmas in 1996, when Scott, unable to play and in pain after unsuccessful dental implant surgery, took a fatal overdose of pills.

His death was a shocking-blow from which the capital's premiere jazz venue has never fully recovered. His charisma, his saxophone playing and his laconic stand-up comedy routines were part of what gave the place its character.

That's why Ronnie Scott's name lives on today, but the man himself is long gone and so are nearly all the superstars he engaged. It was perhaps inevitable that the new Ronnie's would have to change its approach to programming, but critics argue that it has become too pop-orientated. "What have Joan Armatrading, Marti Pellow or Tony Christie got to do with jazz?" ask readers of Mary Greig's essential monthly Jazz in London.

"We only book acts like these once in a while," insists Leo Green, the club's new artistic director, whose late father Benny Green, music journalist and author, once played baritone sax in Ronnie Scott's band. "We're offered many acts that perhaps aren't quite jazz and it's hard to turn them all down. But when they do come here they play a jazzy set, which they might not do elsewhere, and it helps bring a new audience into the club who might come back for other shows."

It's true that jazz has become a more marginalised business and, therefore, more expensive at the box office. Even so, prices under the new management have increased sharply. Annual membership, which brings booking privileges and discounts, was £60 when the club closed last year, rising to £165 on reopening. Admission was £10 for members and now starts at £26, going up to £46 (£75 in "privileged seating") this week for three nights by the US jazz-rock band Tower of Power.

For Tony Bennett's recent visit, top seats cost £150. And now there are often two houses a night, a New York ploy that puts first-house customers back on the street after the first set.
Ronnie's is "probably the most expensive jazz club in the world", states Oliver Weindling, owner of Babel Records, an independent UK jazz label.

"The Blue Note in New York charges $50, about £25, for people like Joe Lovano and Bill Frisell. Older jazz fans at Ronnie's don't like it, but some would say there's a bloody good reason not to bother with older jazz fans any more. I personally feel that Ronnie's is a very important venue and they must do anything they have to do to stay open."

Most club-goers are suitably impressed by the still intimate venue - which though enlarged, still has capacity for only 220 - with its cosy low-voltage perspex table-lamps and its red velvet and polished-teak banquettes. Others are less sanguine.

"Too shiny. It reminds me of a sanitised cruise ship," says one. "They've spent millions on the place and it looks fantastic. It used to be a real jazz club, but the atmosphere has changed - it's lost its heart," says another, a music publicist.

Atmosphere is a hard element to define, but there is less of a friendly feel to the place. The first floor is out of bounds, these days, now home to Sally Greene's private club, open to invited members only, where celebrity guests can watch the stage by video link.

The original jazzloving staff are mostly gone and the front lobby is now guarded by agency-supplied bouncers whose faces change every night and, therefore, do not recognise members or regulars.

The front lobby was once an unofficial forum for gossip among jazz musicians and fans, but that ambience has gone. "I would always drop by in my break if I was working somewhere else in the West End," said John Critchenson, the pianist in Ronnie's group for more than 20 years, "but I don't go there any more. The staff don't know me, I don't know them, and I never see other musicians there."

Many other musicians are upset because they no longer play at the club. A British group used to support the star turn every week of the year, providing a profile-raising window for dozens of deserving bands. Now James Pearson's excellent trio is resident full-time, with guest singers and solo players.

"I think it's a great shame they dropped the second band," said Weindling. "The experience young musicians got from playing opposite the superstars, and the advice they got from Pete King, was invaluable."

Musicians who do work there speak of a new dress code introduced by stealth. Onstage they all wear business suits, and recently a drummer was reportedly sacked for wearing a beard, a decision that seems to put image before music. And at the microphone, the understated cool that Ronnie always transmitted has been replaced by an abrasive brashness. Artists once so suavely ushered onstage by Scott are now brought on and off with a circus ringmaster's bellow.

So what's the solution? "The best way to experience this great art form is in its proper intimate setting, not in massive concert halls," says Paul Pace, of Ray's Jazz counter at Foyles bookshop in Charing Cross Road. "Ronnie's is therefore a very important venue, but it needs to re-establish itself as a bona fide jazz club and regain its relaxed atmosphere."

He is not the first to point to the Jazz Café, which has the nerve to retain its name today despite presenting only two or three jazz attractions a month. Could Ronnie Scott's go the same way?

The club always used to set its own agenda and rely on its own taste, not accountancy, to create demand and maintain its reputation as a place where good jazz can be heard any night of the year. How ironic it would be if Ronnie's Scott's was lost by over-investment in decor and trendy big names when, if they did but know it, uncompromised jazz could have been its salvation.

Ronnies all-time top ten gigs...
Among a half-century of great nights, these artists illuminated Ronnie's in the following years:

Sonny Rollins (1965) The US tenor-sax titan was in magisterial form during his Mohican-haircut period, playing hours and hours of overtime.

Ben Webster (1970) Gruff yet tender Ellingtonian tenorist whose sensual balladry could melt the hardest Soho hustler's heart.

Dizzy Gillespie (1977) Bebop trumpet maestro and scat-singer who knew how to entertain and impress an audience at the same time.

Bill Evans (1980) Without peer as the subtle, meticulous poet of jazz piano.

Betty Carter (1984) A scat-singer of wonderful creativity and dynamism, Betty always hired the best young musicians available.

Chet Baker (1982) Unreliable, drugdamaged trumpeter and singer whose inspired nights of West Coast cool were superb.

Dexter Gordon (1978) Tall, charismatic and well-travelled tenorist whose tough tone and hip ideas charmed a generation.

Wes Montgomery (1965) The brilliant selftaught guitar genius was one of the first US superstars to play at Ronnie's original club in Gerrard Street.

Stan Getz (1976) The smoothest tenorist of all, temperamental Stan could play like an angel but gave Ronnie devilish bother offstage.

Ella Fitzgerald (1973) FIrst Lady of modern-jazz vocals, the ultra-versatile Ella delighted Ronnie's many times in her long and distinguished career.