The Bull and Bush: From Music Hall to Rock and Roll
The Bull and Bush stands on North End Way at the northern edge of Hampstead Heath, a pub whose history stretches back to at least the seventeenth century and whose cultural significance extends far beyond the usual narrative of a London hostelry. Before the Rolling Stones, before rock and roll, before even the gramophone, the Bull and Bush was famous. The music hall song "Down at the Old Bull and Bush," composed in 1903 and popularised by the great Florrie Forde, made the pub a national institution, its chorus — "Come, come, come and make eyes at me, down at the old Bull and Bush" — becoming one of the most recognised refrains in the English language. The song drew on a genuine tradition of musical entertainment at the pub, which had been a destination for day-trippers from central London since the eighteenth century, offering refreshment, entertainment, and the pleasures of the Heath to generations of Londoners seeking escape from the city.
The music hall tradition at the Bull and Bush established a pattern of musical performance that would endure, in evolving forms, throughout the twentieth century. By the time the 1950s arrived, bringing with them the first stirrings of rock and roll in Britain, the pubs and clubs of north London had a long-established culture of live music that was ready to absorb and amplify the new sounds arriving from America. The Bull and Bush itself, though primarily a traditional pub rather than a dedicated music venue, hosted informal musical gatherings that reflected the changing tastes of its clientele, and the broader Hampstead pub scene — the Flask, the Holly Bush, the Spaniards Inn — provided a network of venues where musicians could perform, connect, and develop their craft.
The transition from music hall to rock and roll in the pubs of Hampstead was not abrupt but gradual, mediated by the folk and skiffle movements that bridged the gap between the two traditions. Skiffle, the homegrown British music that fused American folk and blues with a do-it-yourself ethos, was enormously popular in north London during the late 1950s, and its influence on the generation of musicians who would form the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and their contemporaries cannot be overstated. The pubs of Hampstead and its surrounding neighbourhoods hosted skiffle groups, folk clubs, and jazz sessions that were the breeding grounds of British rock and roll, and the Bull and Bush, with its deep musical heritage, was part of this ecosystem even if it was not its epicentre.
Keith Richards, Brian Jones, and the NW London Bedsit Circuit
The early history of the Rolling Stones is inseparable from the geography of north-west London. Before the band achieved fame, its founding members — particularly Keith Richards and Brian Jones — inhabited a world of bedsits, shared flats, and rented rooms in the neighbourhoods that fringed Hampstead Heath to the west and south. The streets of Kilburn, Brondesbury, and West Hampstead, less fashionable and considerably cheaper than Hampstead itself, provided affordable accommodation for the young musicians who were converging on London in the early 1960s, drawn by the promise of the nascent British blues and rock scene.
Brian Jones, the band's original leader and most musically accomplished member, arrived in London from Cheltenham in 1961, carrying a guitar and a burning ambition to play the blues. He settled initially in the western fringes of NW London, moving between a succession of cheap flats and bedsits in the Kilburn and Notting Hill areas. Jones was a restless, charismatic figure whose obsessive devotion to the blues — the authentic, Delta-born blues of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and Elmore James — would provide the Rolling Stones with their founding musical identity. His exploration of the north-west London music scene during this period, visiting clubs, sitting in with bands, and seeking out fellow blues enthusiasts, was the process by which the Stones' distinctive sound was conceived.
Keith Richards, who had reconnected with his childhood friend Mick Jagger on a train from Dartford to London in 1961, soon joined Jones in the NW London circuit. Richards and Jagger had bonded over a shared passion for American blues and rhythm and blues — Jagger was carrying albums by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry when they met on the train — and their partnership with Jones created the nucleus of what would become the Rolling Stones. The flat that Richards, Jones, and Jagger shared at 102 Edith Grove in Chelsea is the most famous of their early London addresses, but the musicians' connections to north-west London extended well beyond a single flat. The clubs, pubs, and rehearsal spaces of Kilburn, Cricklewood, and West Hampstead were all part of the territory they covered in the months before fame arrived.
The geography of this early period matters because it shaped the music. The blues that Richards and Jones heard in the clubs of north-west London — performed by West Indian immigrants, visiting American musicians, and their own British contemporaries — was not the polished, commercialised blues of the mainstream music industry but something rawer, more urgent, and more emotionally direct. The pubs and clubs where these performances took place were not glamorous venues but basement rooms, back parlours, and converted function halls, their atmospheres thick with cigarette smoke and the tang of spilled beer. The Rolling Stones' sound, with its emphasis on rawness, authenticity, and unvarnished emotional power, was forged in these spaces, and the influence of the NW London club scene on their early recordings is unmistakable.
The Klooks Kleek and the Blues Boom in NW London
Of all the venues that shaped the north-west London music scene in the early 1960s, few were more significant than the Klooks Kleek, a club that operated in the upstairs room of the Railway Hotel on West End Lane in West Hampstead. Founded in 1961 by Dick Jordan, the Klooks Kleek became one of London's most important blues and rhythm and blues venues, attracting both the leading British bands of the era and the American blues musicians whose records had inspired them. The club's name — a punning reference to the Max Roach album Klook's Kleek — signalled its jazz origins, but by the mid-1960s it had become primarily a rhythm and blues and rock venue, hosting acts that included the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, the Animals, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, and Fleetwood Mac.
The Rolling Stones played the Klooks Kleek in 1963, during the period when they were building their reputation through a relentless schedule of live performances at clubs across London and the Home Counties. The band was still relatively unknown — their first single, a cover of Chuck Berry's "Come On," was released in June of that year — and the intimate setting of the Klooks Kleek, with its low ceiling, its cramped stage, and its audience of dedicated blues enthusiasts, was typical of the venues where they honed their stagecraft. The energy of these early performances, captured in contemporary accounts and in the memories of those who attended them, was quite different from the stadium spectacles that the Stones would later become known for. In the small rooms of clubs like the Klooks Kleek, the band played with a ferocity and an intimacy that could never be replicated in larger venues, and the connection between performers and audience was immediate and visceral.
The Klooks Kleek was part of a broader ecosystem of blues and rhythm and blues venues that flourished in north-west London during the early 1960s. The Marquee Club, though based in central London, drew heavily on the same pool of musicians and audiences that frequented the NW London scene. The Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, where the Rolling Stones held a legendary residency in 1963, was connected to the north London circuit by the musicians who played both venues. And the Ealing Club, where Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated provided the launching pad for an entire generation of British blues musicians — including Jagger, Richards, Charlie Watts, and Jack Bruce — was part of the same metropolitan network. The Rolling Stones were products of this network, shaped by its sounds, its venues, and its ethos, and their connections to the pubs and clubs of NW London were an essential part of their formation.
The Broader NW London Music Scene
The Rolling Stones' connections to north-west London were part of a much larger story — the extraordinary flowering of popular music that occurred in this part of the capital during the 1960s and 1970s. The neighbourhoods stretching from Kilburn in the west to Holloway in the east, and from Camden Town in the south to Muswell Hill in the north, produced and nurtured an astonishing concentration of musical talent. The Kinks came from Muswell Hill, the Small Faces from Manor Park (east rather than north London, but deeply connected to the north London scene), and the Animals, though originally from Newcastle, made their London base in the northern suburbs. The connections between these acts — personal, professional, and geographical — created a musical community that was greater than the sum of its parts.
The pubs of Hampstead played a specific role in this broader scene, serving as gathering places for musicians, managers, and music industry figures who lived in or frequented the area. The Flask on Flask Walk, the Holly Bush on Holly Mount, and the Spaniards Inn on Spaniards Road all had their musical connections, hosting informal sessions, after-show gatherings, and the casual encounters that are the social fabric of any creative community. The pub, with its open-door policy, its tolerance of eccentricity, and its provision of the two essential fuels of the British music scene — beer and conversation — was the institution that held the NW London music community together.
The musical infrastructure of north-west London extended beyond the pubs and clubs to include the recording studios, rehearsal rooms, and instrument shops that served the needs of working musicians. Denmark Street — Tin Pan Alley — was the traditional centre of the British music industry, but by the 1960s, studios and music businesses were spreading north and west, following the musicians who were settling in the cheaper neighbourhoods on the fringes of Hampstead and Camden. The concentration of musical talent, musical infrastructure, and musical audiences in NW London during this period was unrivalled in Britain and arguably unmatched anywhere in the world outside of Nashville and Detroit.
North End Way and the Hampstead Musical Heritage
The Bull and Bush, on North End Way, occupies a specific location within the musical geography of Hampstead that connects the Victorian and Edwardian entertainment traditions of the Heath's edges with the rock and roll revolution of the 1960s. North End Way itself, running from the top of Heath Street to the Bull and Bush and beyond, was historically a route of leisure and entertainment — the path by which Londoners travelling north from the centre of the village reached the open spaces of the Heath's wilder northern sections. The pubs, tea rooms, and pleasure gardens that lined this route in the nineteenth century were destinations in themselves, places where visitors could eat, drink, and enjoy musical entertainment before or after their walk on the Heath.
The musical tradition of North End Way was not confined to the Bull and Bush. Jack Straw's Castle, the pub at the junction of North End Way and Spaniards Road, had its own history of musical entertainment, and the Spaniards Inn, a little further along the road towards Highgate, was renowned for its connections to literary and artistic circles that frequently overlapped with the musical world. The Old Bull and Bush Garden, the open-air drinking area attached to the pub, hosted performances that ranged from brass bands and music hall acts in the Victorian and Edwardian periods to jazz, skiffle, and folk in the post-war years. The continuity of musical performance at these venues, across more than a century and through multiple revolutions in musical style, reflects the deep-rooted association between the Hampstead Heath area and the culture of leisure, entertainment, and artistic expression.
The Rolling Stones, when they played in and around Hampstead in the early 1960s, were inheriting this tradition whether they knew it or not. The blues they played was as far from music hall as it is possible to imagine — raw, aggressive, sexually charged, and rooted in the African American experience rather than the English variety tradition — but the venues in which they played it, and the social customs that surrounded its performance, were continuous with the musical culture that had flourished on the edges of the Heath for generations. The pub gig, the informal session, the audience of regulars and curious passers-by — these were the forms through which the Rolling Stones' music first reached the public, and they were forms that the Bull and Bush and its neighbouring establishments had been providing for as long as anyone could remember.
The 1960s Rock Scene in NW3
By the mid-1960s, the rock scene in NW3 had evolved from a scattered collection of pub sessions and club nights into a significant cultural phenomenon. The commercial success of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and their contemporaries had transformed British popular music from a marginal entertainment into a major industry, and the neighbourhoods of north-west London — home to many of the key figures in that industry — became centres of a cultural life that mixed music, art, fashion, and social experimentation in ways that had no precedent in British history.
The social scene of NW3 in the mid-1960s was characterised by a fluidity and an informality that reflected the spirit of the era. Musicians, artists, writers, and film-makers mixed freely in the pubs, restaurants, and private homes of Hampstead, and the boundaries between different creative disciplines were porous. The Rolling Stones' circle overlapped with the art world, the fashion industry, and the underground press, creating a network of connections that accelerated the cultural changes of the decade. Mick Jagger's friendship with the art dealer Robert Fraser, who had a gallery on Duke Street in Mayfair but lived in the general orbit of the north London creative community, was one of many relationships that linked the rock scene to the broader cultural establishment.
The fashion of the period — the paisley shirts, the velvet jackets, the military tunics and Afghan coats — was visible on the streets of Hampstead in a way that it was not in more conventional suburbs. The boutiques of the King's Road and Carnaby Street were the most famous retail destinations of Swinging London, but the shops of Hampstead High Street and Heath Street had their own contribution to make, offering the antique clothing, the ethnic jewellery, and the exotic artefacts that defined the style of the later 1960s. The Rolling Stones, photographed in Hampstead and its environs during this period, are dressed in clothes that are as much a product of the NW3 aesthetic as of the more celebrated fashion centres of the West End.
The drug culture that accompanied the rock scene was also present in NW3, though it was more discreet than its counterparts in other parts of London. Cannabis was widely used among the musical and artistic community, and the psychedelic drugs that transformed popular music from 1966 onwards — LSD in particular — circulated through the social networks of Hampstead with a freedom that reflected both the area's tolerance of unconventional behaviour and its confidence in its own social respectability. The famous drug raid on Keith Richards' Sussex home in February 1967, which led to the prosecution and brief imprisonment of Richards and Jagger, sent ripples of anxiety through the NW3 creative community, many of whose members were equally vulnerable to police attention. The editorial in The Times — "Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?" — that helped turn public opinion in favour of the Stones reflected a view of the drug laws that was widely held in Hampstead's liberal circles.
Legacy: The Music Lives On
The Rolling Stones moved on from the bedsits and club stages of north-west London long ago. Their trajectory — from the Klooks Kleek to Madison Square Garden, from the pubs of Kilburn to the stadiums of the world — is one of the great narratives of popular culture, and the Hampstead chapter of that narrative is a brief one. But brevity should not be confused with insignificance. The months and years that the Stones spent in the orbit of Hampstead Heath, playing the clubs, walking the streets, absorbing the sounds and energies of the NW London music scene, were the formative period of their career. The music they made in the decades that followed — from "Satisfaction" to "Gimme Shelter," from "Sympathy for the Devil" to "Start Me Up" — was built on foundations laid in the small rooms and smoky pubs of north-west London.
The Bull and Bush itself has continued to evolve, as pubs must if they are to survive. The music hall tradition that made the pub famous has given way to a more modern hospitality offer, but the building retains its Victorian character and its commanding position on North End Way, overlooking the Heath. The pub's musical heritage is acknowledged in its decor and its history, and the spirit of musical entertainment — the conviction that a pub should be more than a place to drink, that it should offer joy, community, and the shared experience of performance — remains part of its identity. In this sense, the Bull and Bush is not merely a relic of a vanished musical culture but a living link to a tradition that stretches from the music halls of the 1890s through the blues clubs of the 1960s to the present day.
The broader NW London music scene that nurtured the Rolling Stones has also endured, though in changed forms. The Klooks Kleek closed in 1970, and many of the other clubs and venues of the 1960s have similarly disappeared, victims of changing tastes, rising rents, and the relentless development pressures that threaten the cultural infrastructure of London. But new venues have appeared to replace them, and the tradition of live music in north-west London — sustained by new generations of musicians, new genres, and new audiences — remains vital. The music has changed, but the impulse that drives it — the desire to perform, to connect, to create something that transcends the mundane routines of daily life — is the same impulse that drove Brian Jones to pick up a guitar in a Kilburn bedsit and play the blues until his fingers bled.
For those who renovate and restore the historic buildings of Hampstead and its surrounding neighbourhoods, the musical heritage of the area adds a dimension of cultural significance that enriches the work of preservation. A Victorian pub that hosted blues sessions in the 1960s carries a history that is no less worthy of respect than its architectural merits. A terraced house in Kilburn where a future rock star once rented a room holds stories that connect the domestic architecture of north-west London to the global history of popular music. The Rolling Stones may have left these streets decades ago, but the buildings remain, their walls still resonating — if only in memory — with the sounds that changed the world.
*Published in the Hampstead Renovations Heritage Collection — exploring the architecture, history, and stories of London's most remarkable neighbourhoods.*