SOHO: PIGALLE LONDON EXTRAVAGANZA

We’re back in London’s swinging SOHO again, this time courtesy of Cabaret Queens Quarterly Vol 816 from Summer 1968, which gives us a glimpse into the club Pigalle. Named for the red light district in Paris, this was possibly the same Pigalle that was more of a supper club earlier in the decade and which hosted more mainstream fair, such as Shirley Bassey who recorded a live album there in 1965, and for one evening in the spring of 1963 a little group from Liverpool. According to TimeOut, “On April 21 1963, The Beatles went straight from playing to 10,000 people at Wembley Arena show to a second gig at the Pigalle Club in the West End. Because it was a Jewish charity event and the only advert for the gig had appeared in the Jewish Chronicle, the audience was almost entirely Jewish.” I wonder if any of the Fab Four ever made it back to the Pigalle later in the decade to see the revised floor show…