My name is Lee and ever since I heard Alan Price’s Simon Smith And His Amazing Dancing Bear, aged 5 in 1967, music has been central to my life; and the ten years that I had my own record shop – Wood Music in Islington – really was my dream come true.

After my shop closed in 2004, I tried my hand at music journalism, but after a couple of years spent staring out of the window, and the occasional published piece, the money ran out and I had to get a proper job.
A couple of years ago, though, a friend called me to say that a friend of his was bringing her 14 year old, Beatles/Stones-obsessed, son over from Los Angeles, and that she wanted to impress him by taking a walk around London’s famous music locations. Did I fancy showing them around?

That’s how all this started.

Join me, and take a passport back to a time when Elton John served customers in a record shop, even as his single Your Song was high in the charts; when Bob Dylan accidentally invented the music video, and when David Bowie lived in a converted ambulance parked on Denmark Street.
I’ll show you the exact* bit of pavement where Andrew Loog Oldham convinced John Lennon and Paul McCartney to hand over I Wanna Be Your Man to his Rolling Stones; where Jimi Hendrix bought his Hussar military jackets, and where Mick Jagger bought his white Hyde Park dress.

*It might not be the exact bit of pavement, but, like, really close.