Last white man in Hammersmith Palais

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Joe Strummer of The Clash immortalised the venue with his song (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais

Dancehall days: doing the Zizzle in 1964

Time's up: the legendary venue is being torn down and turned into an office block

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Almost 30 years ago, on 5 June 1977, Joe Strummer, singer with the Clash, went to Hammersmith Palais to see an all-night reggae show.

The experience led him to write what he considered his best work, (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais.

The song immortalised the venue which is now set for demolition. Developer Parkway Properties is to tear down the building, bringing to an end nine decades of musical history, and turn the site into an office block.

The last act to appear, on Sunday, will be The Fall, but tomorrow's show by The Good, The Bad and The Queen featuring Strummer's ex-bandmate Paul Simonon is the one that grabs the attention.

Simonon said he thought the band were given the gig because of Strummer's song. Played at the singer's funeral four years ago, White Man is a wonderfully evocative reggae ballad - you can almost hear crushed plastic beer glasses cracking on the sticky carpet - and a meditation on his belief that black and white youth must unite against a world in which "If Adolf Hitler flew in today/They'd send a limousine anyway".

Strummer's tune kickstarted the Palais. Stuck up a shabby thoroughfare and best known for ballroom dancing, it became a premier rock haunt in the late Seventies and Eighties.

Everyone played the Shepherd's Bush Road venue: the Rolling Stones, Elton John, U2, Massive Attack, PiL, The Pogues, The Specials. Nigeria's King Sunny Ade performed a legendary four-hour set here, while Jamaica's Toots and The Maytals recorded and released a live album in under 24 hours. The reggae bills that inspired Strummer continued into this decade.

Part of the Palais's appeal was its size, midway between nightclubs and larger halls such as Hammersmith Odeon. "Unlike the Odeon, the Palais was purpose-built for music," said Simonon. "The broad shape of the venue is important. Looking at the stage is like staring at the width of Cinerama, with all its fairground brightness. At the same time it has a cosy intimacy."

The Clash played two shows at the Palais, in 1980, promoting their London Calling album. At the NME Awards there last month, Primal Scream included a version of White Man, with The Clash's Mick Jones on guitar.

Opened in 1919 as the Hammersmith Palais de Dance, it was the first venue in London to host jazz with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band from New Orleans.

"My grandfather went to those shows and told me how fantastic they were," said music writer Jon Savage.

"When I went there to see people like The Kinks and Soft Cell, I felt I got the same experience. Hammersmith Palais was a dream-palace."

In the Twenties, dancehalls like the Palais were social levellers - upper-class young men never knew in what accent they would be received when asking girls to dance.

Ballroom Dancing Times noted: "The quality of dancing goes down as you go up the social scale. You will find much better dancing at Hammersmith Palais than the Savoy."

In the Thirties, Dixieland violinist Maurice Winnick led a five-piece dance group here, but the longest residency was by Lou Preager. Invalided out of the Army in 1941, Preager returned to his former occupation as bandleader and stayed there for 19 years, a feature of weekly BBC broadcasts.

Due to Hammersmith's threatening Teddy Boy presence, in the Fifties rock'n'roll was banned. When finally admitted in 1974, Bill Haley refused to play an encore, leading to an orgy of destruction.

(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais was released in 1978. The next year Ian Dury namechecked the venue as one of his Reasons To Be Cheerful - and the venue's rock'n'roll golden age began.

It had a cultural sidestep from 1986 as centre of the Brit-Asian club scene, while recently it has hosted School Disco nights.

So will Simonon and his bandmates give in to nostalgia tomorrow night? "I think it's very unlikely we'll be playing White Man," he said.

• Chris Salewicz is author of Redemption Song: The Definitive Biography Of Joe Strummer (HarperCollins).

 

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