60 years at Ronnie's ... and all that jazz! VENUE WHERE ALL THE GREATS HAVE PLAYED
IT’S the venue where Lady Gaga performed a secret set sprawled over an £80,000 piano in fishnet tights, Johnny Depp sang with Ronnie Wood and Jeff Beck – and Nina Simone recorded a stunning live concert.
And London’s iconic Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club hit another milestone this week when it celebrated its 60th birthday.
First opened in Soho’s Gerrard Street on October 30, 1959, by Brit saxophonist Ronnie, and moving to its current home on nearby Frith Street in 1965, it has become one of the most famous nightclubs in the world.
The 220-person capacity venue was originally launched as a platform for up-and-coming UK musicians, and has played host to everybody from global pop superstars to royals.
Simon Cooke has been managing director of Ronnie Scott’s since 2008, and since that time he has hosted Stevie Wonder, Prince and Lady Gaga.
“Lady Gaga was fantastic,” he recalls. “She played here in 2015 when her concert with Tony Bennett got cancelled at the last minute because he was ill.
Laughing
“She was all dressed up with nowhere to go and her musicians called us to see if she could perform here.
“She actually has a totally rehearsed jazz quintet she sometimes takes on tour with her.
“It was all thrown together at 9pm and she was on stage at midnight, lounging on the piano in a leotard and fishnet tights after sitting in the corner drinking a bottle of whisky. We didn’t try to keep it a secret but we didn’t really have time to publicise it!”
Prince also played the venue as part of his 2014 series of “guerrilla gigs” in London.
“We had a line from 8am all round the block, of these Prince heads who had their own queuing system,” recalls Simon.
“Prince’s management wanted the show to be a gig for the fans but the owners of the club thought they should be allowed to have a few friends there so we snuck people like Kate Moss, Johnny Depp and Matthew McConaughey in through the back and held an impromptu party for them in the office upstairs with champagne on ice before taking them downstairs one by one.
“People walking past the club would see the celebs hanging out of the window smoking fags and it was surreal seeing a Gallagher or Stephen Fry just casually sat at my colleague’s desk.”
Famous people often drop by Ronnie Scott’s while they’re on tour. “We had Stevie Wonder in one night, who came in with his whole crew as they were heading from the Isle of Wight Festival back to the US,” says Simon.
“He sat in on a late set, then asked for a microphone to be brought to his table. He played the harmonica into it, then got up and did a couple of numbers. Those are magic moments.”
One person who has been a part of the club since the very
beginning is Ronnie’s widow Mary Scott, who now works in the music industry in New York.
She first met Ronnie, who died in 1996 at the age of 69 from a barbiturate overdose, when she visited the club as a student in 1959.
friend, of the “I her club,” was who university friends at recalls Mary of there with my bummped into one her was first clearly night obvious to there. “It everyone that I was the third wheel sitting all alone, and Ronnie came past an offered of whisky. me a drink
“At the end of the night, he offered me a lift home as he said he wanted to talk to me.
There was an instant communication between us and it was very comfortable – I felt completely safe.” From that moment on, Mary says she and Ronnie became a couple. “It was instant,” adds Mary. “The thing that I absolutely loved about Ronnie was he would give a time he would call and you could set your clock by it. It was so refreshing. It made you feel very special.” Soon after they first met, Ronnie offered Mary, who had originally come to London to study nursing, a job hosting at the club – changing the course of her life.
It meant that she rubbed shoulders with stars including Ella Fitzgerald, Peter O’Toole and Princess Margaret with the actor Peter Sellers.
“Princess Margaret was funny – she’d smoke and drink,” says Mary. “She’d say of her thenhusband Antony ArmstrongJones, ‘My husband is not going to come and join us because he is so drunk he’s in the gents downstairs,’ and Peter Sellers would crack up.
“I always believed her, and was always expecting Antony to come stumbling up the stairs – of course he never did!”
Ronnie Scott’s has remained a constant in a city where live music venues are at constant threat of closure. A recent report found 35% of them had shut down since 2007, and Mayor Sadiq Khan employed comedian Amy Lamé as a “night tsar” to try to save the dwindling industry.
Simon puts Ronnie’s longevity down to the fact the club was started “for love not money”.
Famous
“Ronnie and his partner Pete King were musicians, they weren’t some corporation trying to make money from it,” he says.
“It became world famous thanks to word of mouth, and I still tell my staff that’s the most important thing for us.”
“When it opened, word spread like wildfire,” adds Mary. “It was the most privileged time to be alive, and the best thing was we all knew that. It was the golden era, it really was.”
● For info on Ronnie Scott’s see ronniescotts.co.uk.