Bag O'Nails (site) — where Hendrix played for the Beatles

The Bag O'Nails was a basement club at 9 Kingly Street in Soho that operated through the late 1960s as one of London's primary music industry gathering points — the kind of room where bands played short showcase sets for audiences made up entirely of other musicians and record company figures. On the night of January 11, 1967, Jimi Hendrix played there, and the audience assembled to watch him included Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Pete Townshend, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and more or less every other significant figure in London rock music at that moment.

It was the night the London rock establishment formally adopted him. McCartney has written and spoken about the experience repeatedly in the decades since: he describes it as one of the most astonishing performances he ever saw, and he made a point of never missing a Hendrix show when he was in London. Clapton, already considered the finest guitarist in England, was so unsettled by what he saw that he reportedly considered quitting. The session produced a specific social outcome: within days, Hendrix was part of the inner circle, invited to sit in on sessions, showing up at parties, embedded in the network that ran British popular music.

The Bag O'Nails closed many years ago. The address at 9 Kingly Street — a narrow pedestrian lane between Carnaby Street and Regent Street — has been through various uses since. The building still stands. There is no marker for the night of January 11, 1967, when the entire future of British rock assembled in a basement and watched a 24-year-old from Seattle explain what a guitar could do.