Denmark Street....

London's "Tin Pan Alley" is quite simply Europe’s best music street, filled with specialist music shops and thronging with people passionate about music. There’s hardly a rock and roll legend that hasn’t visited at some time. Music history has been made here; The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix recorded in the basements... Elton John wrote the classic Your Song on the rooftops...

In short, Denmark Street is forever associated with music. Earning the nickname of London’s Tin Pan Alley in the 1920s, musicians have flocked to this renowned corner of Soho since its origins as a sheet music supplier in Victorian times. Most of the buildings date from the 1800s when it was considered a fairly inferior area with its proximity to the theatres and pubs of Soho. Rents were cheap, attracting struggling artists, composers, and musicians. Music publishers set up their businesses here around the 1890s, supplying the musicians of the orchestras at nearby theatres and music halls. In the 1930s, shop windows displayed pianos and guitars and the street was becoming renowned for music publishing.

Recording studios started setting up in the 1960s, and it was then that Denmark Street’s name was etched into the archives. Denmark Street’s impact on the contemporary music scene is widely regarded as far greater than the more populist location of Abbey Road. In 1963 Regent Sounds Studio was set up at 4 Denmark Street. With the Rolling Stones recording their first album here, the studio took off as the place to be seen to be making music. Now home to the specialist music bookshop Helter Skelter, anecdotes abound of the Kinks, ELP and Hendrix recording here in the basements. The studio was supplied with the latest in 1970s music technology, with a reverb room at the back of the present day bookshop, and a cutting-edge 16-track machine housed in the basement that drew the likes of Stevie Wonder in 1974.The studio closed in the late 70s, becoming a comic bookstore The Forbidden Planet, before opening as Helter Skelter in 1995. As well as publishing their own titles and moving heaven and earth to get you that rare tome in record time, the specialist store also houses an impressive range showcasing the genre - biographies, anthologies, tributes, and retrospectives - making it an essential destination for music lovers.

The street still houses recording studios, publishers and even manufacturers. Orange Music Electronics Company has a long history of supplying amps and electrical goods throughout the world - all from a basement in Denmark Street. Many of the present day music shops have a long musical history. Rose Morris at number 11 was set up in 1919 by Charles and Leslie Rose and Victor Morris, expanding to six floors of musical instruments and printed music. In the late 1960s, Rhodes opened at number 22, making it one of the oldest guitar shops in the country. The London PA Centre at number 23 is home to a vast range of musical electrical supplies, as well as a black-caped and evidently musical resident Victorian ghost!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark_Street