It's 50 years ago since the Sex Pistols played their first gig, at Central St Martins art college (on 6 November 1975). But in the weeks leading up to this they rehearsed at various locations including at a venue known as the Crunchy Frog, 99 Rotherhithe Street, London SE16. The full story of that is told below, but there's much more of interest about this space, a former dockside building that became an important alternative culture venue in the 1970s and 1980s.
99 Rotherhithe Street is located at the historic core of the old Rotherhithe riverside settlement with old St Mary's Church nearby dating back to the 13th century (and where incidentally my 4 x great grandparents Thomas Say and Frances Blackwin were married in 1790). The nearby Mayflower pub (originally the Spreadeagle and Crown) is named after the ship that sailed from Rotherhithe in 1620 carrying the 'Pilgrim Fathers' to New England, with the Captain Christopher Jones buried in the churchyard. The pub, though, was only renamed as The Mayflower in 1957 having been substantially rebuilt after wartime bomb damage.
As the British Empire and global trade expanded so did the docks on this part of the Thames. The stretch of the river from Rotherhithe down to London Bridge became known as the Pool of London, the part of the river that was navigable by ships with masts.
99 Rotherhithe Street was built in the 1840s as part of East India Wharf where there were two granaries and a barge building yard in the 19th century. No. 99 was a five floor granary run by W W Landell and later by John Dudin (1890s) and British Bluefries Wharfage & Transport (1930s). The building was also known at one time as Archers Wharf. The granaries were used to store grain at a time when Britain was importing most of its wheat and barley from abroad- mainly from Russia in 19th century and Canada in 20th century. This was unloaded from ships into riverside warehouses like these.
Like at most of the docks on both sides of the river, workers at East India Wharf took part in the famous dock strike of 1889. There is a statement from the 'South Side Central Strike Committee' confirming that workers at East India Wharf had agreed to return to work having achieved a pay rise. It is signed by Tom Mann, who was a key organiser of the strike.
The docks went into decline after the second world war, partly due to wartime damage and the loss of empire but mainly because of containerisation from the 1960s. The larger ships transporting containers were too big for this part of the river and unloaded their cargo further out at places like Tilbury. Surrey Commercial Docks closed down in 1969.
After the London docks closed down in the 1960s, the The Greater London Council took on responsibility for much of the semi derelict dockside landscape. The original plan was to demolish these buildings on Rotherhithe Street but in 1970 it was designated as the St Mary's Rotherhithe conservation area. No.99 is now an English Heritage Grade II listed building.
By this time the area had a bit of a reputation - for instance in 1967 Jack 'The Hat' McVitie was killed by Reggie Kray and his body left in a car by St Mary's Church. On the other hand there was a bougie bohemian edge - 59 Rotherhithe St, demolished in the 60s, was known as the 'Little White Room' where Princess Margaret secretly shacked up with Tony Armstrong-Jones before they got married and where various poshos partied including John Betjeman, who stayed there for a bit.
With Rotherhithe Street saved from demolition but no longer needed for the docks others moved in, sometimes squatting for a while or negotiating short term leases and paying rent.
In 1974 Crunchy Frog, a film animation company presumably named after the Monty Python sketch, was granted a a temporary lease for no. 99. This film company doesn't seem to have last long but various artists, craftspeople and musicians set up workshops there and it was renamed Waterside Studios (though people still referred to the place as the Crunchy Frog for a few years after).
The building was pretty derelict to start with, people had to build their own rooms and put in windows to fill the gaping holes in the walls where old windows had been removed. Daniel Larson, an instrument maker, moved in during 1974 and has described how it was at the time: 'This building was a four-story structure built on the water's edge. An electric crane lifted grain to the fourth floor, and gravity pulled the flour through the grinding process down to bags on the ground floor. The milling machines were eventually sold for scrap… The artist group turned the ground floor into a theater on the Fringe Circuit that hosted many experimental programs. A carpenter with heavy machines occupied the first floor. The second and third floors were divided into small spaces and used by light-duty craftspeople such as silk screen artists, knitters, and instrument makers'.
It wasn't a place where people lived with the exception of a couple of barges that were moored in the Thames next to it on one of which lived Mike Canty who was a potter and seems to have been a key figure in running the place. Linsey Pollak, an Australian musician who had a workshop there for a couple of years told me that in 1978 for a 'a while (1978) I squatted on the barge tied up to his [Mike Canty's] before ours sank'.
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| 'Rotherhithe Warehouse' print by John McGowan shows the building from river side c.1981 - 'From the late 1970s through to the early 1980s Maureen, my sister-in-law, lived on Barge ‘Olga’, which was moored in the Thames next to “Waterside”, a craft collective at 99 Rotherhithe Street'. See his Rotherhithe Suite of prints. |
The space was run as a co-operative originally - they set up a company called Waterside (Archers Wharf Ltd), everybody involved became a member of the company and was expected to contribute four hours a week to maintaining the building or doing admin.
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| Waterside (Archers Wharf) Ltd co-operative rules - this and the Waterside drawing above are from a contemporary leaflet sent to me by Linsey Pollak. |
The Theatre
The Theatre at Waterside Studios started out in 1975 - confusingly at different times it was known as the Warehouse Theatre and The Waterside Theatre. In June 1975 the Greater London Arts Association awarded £5000 from its Theatre Conversion Scheme Fund 'to Crunchy Frog, a group working from a disused warehouse... to cover the conversion of the ground floor of the building into a theatre and to set up a rehearsal room and kitchen area'. In the following year structural alterations included turning the first floor level into a cafe/bar and part of the groundfloor bar into dressing rooms.
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| The Stage (1975) reports that the 'little theatre which us up to now has been known by the delightful name of The Crunchy Frog... is alas more prosaically retitled as The Warehouse. |
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| 1976 events at the 'Warehouse Theatre' |
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| 1977 events at the 'Waterside Theatre' |
The Theatre hosted lots of alternative, experimental and radical theatre performances Among those who performed there were:
- Belt and Braces socialist theatre company - Gavin Richards later went on to play Tiffany's dad in Eastenders!
- Forkbeard Fantasy who presented 'The Cranium Show' in 1976 featuring Lol Coxhill - he played sax with The Damned for a while and was a big figure in the London improv music scene.
- Eastend Abbreviated Soapbox Theatre - who included later punk singer Patrik Fitzgerald
- the People Show, whose 1976 show no.68 included Mike Figgis, later film director (Leaving Las Vegas etc)
- Robert Llewellyn, who started out as a shoemaker at no. 99 then started hosting cabaret nights there and formed the alternative comedy troupe The Joeys. He later played Kryten, the android character in 1980s/90s sci fi TV series Red Dwarf.
- The Women's Theatre Group, which performed 'Pretty ugly' in December 1977, a musical show for 12 to 15 year olds.
- Incubus, whose 'Soon maybe boogie' (November 1977) was a punk influenced play featuring fictional band The Iron Jelloids who 'endlessly rehearse their unlovely, subversive and eventually super destructive rhythms'. Clearly modelled on the Sex Pistols, and possibly referencing their time using the space.
- Mutable Theatre, whose 'Stairway to Paradise' (1975) was advertised as also including 'licensed bar and disco'.
- Les Oeufs Malades (Gerard Bell, Bryony Lavery and Jessica Higgs) performing 'I Was Too Young At The Time To Understand Why My Mother Was Crying' (1976) with music by Jam Sandwich.
- Dockwalloper Company stage 'Smile Please. You're on holiday' (1975), Fine Artistes (1976), Nomads and Fools 'Befooled' (1976) and no doubt many others.
Early Music
There was a strong musical connection from the start, interestingly including a quite niche link with the overlapping early music revival and emerging 'world music' scenes. At this time both were seen as somewhat counter-cultural movements, exploring alternative sounds and instruments from history and around the world
Linsey Pollak had a flute and bagpipe making workshop there from 1976-78. Originally from Australia, he came to England to study instrument making at the London College of Furniture in Whitechapel. Returning to Australia he has continued ever since playing and making woodwind and reed instruments and performing at numerous multi-cultural/'world music' festivals and events.
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| Outside Waterside in 1977 - Linsey Pollak with flute, Mike Canty holding poster. |
Dan Larson, another London College of Furniture student, made early musical instruments including lutes at his Waterside studio and has continued to do this since in the USA. Other instrument makers who used the space included Janet Bird (who made reeds and lived on barge with Linsey Pollak), Jeremy Lowe (woodwind repairs, 1970s) and in the 1990s Brian Stapleton (ukelele maker including for the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain) and Anna Dolling (lute maker)
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| A list of people based in the workshops c.1977 |
The Sex Pistols connection
The Sex Pistols connection with the Crunchy Frog came at a pivotal moment in the formation of the band. In summer 1975 they were still trying out for a lead singer to join with Glenn Matlock, Paul Cook and Steve Jones and they rehearsed a number of times at 99 Rotherhithe Street.
Robert Neely, who describes himself as 'the original Cruchy Frog person' who found the warehouse around 1974 and leased it off the GLC' has recalled: 'yes the Sex Pistols started to practice there I jammed with them a few times. McLaren used to some along in a green leather suit'.
The venue had been suggested to Malcolm McLaren by Peter Christopherson who around this time was starting to rehearse with Throbbing Gristle. McLaren biographer Paul Gorman suggests that Christopherson knew the place through his work with album cover designers Hipgnosis who may have used it in some capacity. Gorman has also suggested that Cosey Fanni Tutti of Throbbing Gristle may also have worked at Crunchy Frog/Waterside at some point (though this is not confirmed).
The Pistols had a number of rehearsals with David Harrison as a possible singer, but seemingly they didn't feel he was the right fit. Harrison told Gorman that one of the things that didn't go down too well was that he would comment on the Thames wildlife, saying things like 'look there's a cormorant' (Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, 2020).
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| David Harrison - a nearly Sex Pistol |
In August 1975 John Lydon was famously auditioned miming to the jukebox in McLaren and Westwood's Sex shop on the Kings Road. He was invited to a rehearsal scheduled for the next week at the Crunchy Frog and turned up there with his friend John Grey. But nobody else turned up. Lydon told Jon Savage 'I felt a fool walking round Bermondsey Wharf, it's dangerous down there, particularly the way I looked at the time' (England's Dreaming: The Sex Pistols and Punk Rock, 1991). Glenn Matlock - who described The Crunchy Frog as 'a hippy commune/warehouse/community centre by the Thames' - said that the rest of the band 'couldn't be bothered to go' and that he had been put off by the difficulties of bunking the fare across London. It is clear that Jones, Matlock and Cook were not keen on Lydon joining the band at this point.
So while the Sex Pistols may have rehearsed there, Lydon never did (as he confirmed in 2024 - see video below). Shortly afterwards, on 31 August 1975, Lydon rehearsed with the band for the first time at the Rose and Crown in Wandsworth.
In a 2022 interview with John Robb, film director Julien Temple claimed to have stumbled across the band rehearsing at the Crunchy Frog while wandering as a film student round the area, hearing them playing The Small Faces 'I want you to know that I love you' before they had played a gig. It is possible but if he did, Lydon wasn't with them.
Later music
The Pistols association with 99 Rotherhithe Street was quite fleeting, but there was lots of music there in this period and after. This flyer from 1980 (I think) includes Red Rinse (a band who played for Rock Against Racism), Diz and the Doormen (with South African-born blues pianist Diz Watson) and the Red Lights (who I think were a Deptford punk band).
The folk band Blowzabella, still going today (as of 2025) also feature on this programme and played there a number of times. Cliff Stapleton joined the band as hurdy gurdy player having previously been involved in putting on 'drolls' - 16th and 17th century street theatre - at the Waterside Theatre. He later toured with Coil (2002).
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| Blowzabella poster for a 1979 gig, designed by Juan Wingaard |
There were disco nights there in the 1970s and in the mid-1980s Meltdown all nighters playing soul, reggae and African music. I believe Coldcut/Ninja Tune cofounder Jonathan More was involved with this night - he presented a Meltdown show on Kiss FM.
In the 1980s there were regular jazz nights promoted by John Edge. Musicians including Steve Berry, Django Bates, Dave Patman, Christ Batchelor and Steve Buckley played together regularly at Waterside, then joined the influential Loose Tubes.
In September 1985 the venue hosted a late night Jazz/Salsa Fish Fry with Baz Fe Jazz & Andy McConnell plus the Tommy Chase Quartet. As Giles Peterson recalls, Chase was a key figure in 1980s London jazz scene. In this period Peterson himself was DJing at the Royal Oak in Tooley Street along with Nicky Holloway, and the latter was involved in putting on a warehouse party at 99 Rotherhithe Street.
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| source: https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2017/06/london-warehouse-parties-oral-history |
I haven't found any trace of any live music events after the 1980s (but happy to be corrected), but the space continued to be used for workshop space until 2003 when it closed down and the site was redeveloped as flats. The history of the building reflects the dockside story on both sides of the river. Dockside industrial buildings falling into decline; empty buildings being used for a period as cheap space for arts, music, living; then being redeveloped for high end housing.
Thanks to Linsey Pollak, Cliff Stapleton and Chris Gunstone for posters/flyers and memories. Would love to hear any other stories/memories people may have.
Last year me and Neil Controlled Weirdness did an episode of 'Drifting through the streets' all about this:
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