Jeff Horton

Name
Jeff Horton

What do you do?
Owner of the 100 Club.

This business has been in my family since 1958; my grandmother was a shareholder. I decided music was what I wanted to do, I realised that from a very early age. 

Where are you from?
I was born in North London, at the Whittington Hospital. My kids are the fourth generation in my family to be born there. My mum and dad moved me down to Dorset in 1972, which at the time felt like it was at the end of the world. It took forever to get there and I remember thinking, I’m in the back of beyond here. It was a tiny village. 

Once I left school at 16, I had one or two shitty jobs and ended up working for British Aerospace. The factory shut down in 1984 and everyone was made redundant, my dad asked me to come and work for him at the club, which I was a bit reticent about as although we'd always had a good relationship, I knew it could be quite hard work – I'd seen it first hand.

Describe your style in three words:
Definitely Not Hipster.

What was the first song you played on repeat?
'Victoria' by The Kinks - it was the first record I ever bought and I played it and played it. I saved up my pocket money and bought it from a record shop in Muswell Hill, ironically where Ray Davies is from.

How did the 100 Club become the respected club it is today?
My dad owned a jazz record shop in Soho and he sold that to buy his shareholding. He was here for a long time, and he did some amazing things. Naming it the 100 Club after its location, 100 Oxford Street and changing the music policy despite jazz being his first love.

I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that, at the time, there were 50 jazz clubs in the West End such as Ronnie Scotts and the Ken Colyer Club.

Around '64 was the time of the Trad boom which was massive. All these guys dressed in pith helmets and jungle army uniforms. Morecambe & Wise were household names, Alex Welsh… all these massive superstars. They were on Sunday night at the Palladium, they were in everyone's living room and they were playing here. Around that time, around that boom, it had started to fizzle a bit. So that's why my dad thought we needed to diversify. 

I remember watching TOTP and 'You Really Got Me' had just got to number one, maybe in ’64 (I was three) and my dad said, 'they're playing at the club tomorrow night'. He had a residency with the Kinks where they played every Thursday for four months. The first month they played here they had about 120 people in, then after they were on the TV, there were about 4000 people trying to get in.

That was a point in history that was the beginning of the club becoming what it is today.

What was the first gig you ever saw at the 100 Club?
It was Ken Colyer's Jazz Band, in September 1984. I instantly got an understanding of what the club was about because the following night was a band called Eraserhead and the difference in 24 hours was just staggering.

What have been your personal highlights at the club?
I remember meeting Paul Weller for the first time and he told me he'd really like to do a gig here. We ended up arranging it but his manager calling me wondering what the hell was going on, that I needed to go through him first. But I said, well Paul said it was alright! Eventually, we managed to smooth the path and we did that first show with him on his Stanley Road tour and it was just brilliant. It was the first time he's played here since The Jam, but since then, Paul's played here every two or three years and I've got to know him really well.

The Queens of the Stone Age in 2007 was amazing. Josh Homme gave me a pass to see them at Wireless in Hyde Park. The tickets were backstage passes so we were stood so close to the drummer, and for the first time, I got to see what it must be like for musicians to play live to a huge crowd.

The Oasis show in '94 was just unbelievable. The club was going through one if its many difficult periods. We'd done Echobelly the year previously, and Suede too but the club was still hosting a lot of reggae, blues, northern soul – we hadn't really broken into the Brit Pop era. When Oasis played, it was really one of those 'were you there?' moments. It was a staggering night. Anyone who was anyone wanted to come in. People had flown in from Japan, these were all people who had to come in. At one point, trying to get across the packed dance floor, towards the back entrance and all these lads dressed in Kappa jackets came in with Liam and Noel sticking backstage passes on them. About two coach loads of these lads! Pandemonium. Legendary.

The Specials played in 2009, with Fred. That was the first show they did after they got back together. It was just the most amazing night, the atmosphere was palpable. No one could believe they were playing such an intimate show – they were in touching distance after all those years of being gone. We were hoping this would be a big news story, to spotlight the club in the press and then two minutes past midnight news broke that Michael Jackson died and knocked us off the back pages! But for anyone who was here, it was sensational.

Personally, the three shows the Sleaford Mods have done here, especially the last one after they did the Roundhouse... it's nights like those when I realise, this is why I do what I do. We can produce moments like that which are pure magic. 

I've always felt that music can touch parts of your heart that nothing else can - not even love or football. That's why I've done what I've done for 32 years because those moments, despite the world changing and despite the problems I face running a grass roots music venue, those moments still keep on coming.

I can come to work every day and hear stuff I've never heard before, that's really amazing. I love what I do, and the fact that it's been in my family all these years make it even more special.

It's one of the only independent places left in the West end; there's us, the little button shop on Marylebone Lane – how is that guy still selling buttons in central London? But he is, and all power to him. The Algerian Coffee Shop in Soho – but apart from us three, everything else that was here has gone.

Not everyone is in the position the 100 club is, not everyone is going to attract such support. There are many brilliant venues, some who have only been going five or ten years and they're struggling. You don't have to be 75 years old to be brilliant.

Why is it such an honour for musicians to play the 100 Club?
When you ask most say it's the heritage and the history. A young band, HMLTD played here recently and I told them when they walk on stage, they'll be playing where the Sex Pistols stood, Muddy Waters, Amy Winehouse, The Specials, Sleaford Mods…

A band called the Burn, from Blackburn played here and they told me that they formed their band because they always hoped to play at the 100 club. If we make it great, if not, it doesn't matter because we've played here. 

To be honest I hadn't realised the importance of the club until 2010 when Sir Paul McCartney finished his tour in South America and came straight to London to play to show his support when we were faced with closing. If someone like that is prepared to put themselves out, we must be doing something right.

What music defines the teenage you?
Punk. Spending my adolescent years in Bournemouth, I went to an under 18 disco in Dorset. I was a bored 15-year-old kid. It was a terrible night, the DJ was utterly shit, playing things like the theme from Van der Valk, Come On Dance, Dance by the Saturday Night Band and suddenly he put on Anarchy in the UK and that was the moment. Those three minutes changed my life.

 

Six months later I moved to Aberdeen to work for a bloke called Bill Nile, who was my dads best mate and had a residency at the club with his band (and also built the stage that still remains today). With my first pay packet, I bought the first Clash album and there's a track on there called Deny, and there's a reference on there to the 100 Club. 'You said you were going out to the 100 club.' So, after my epiphany with the Sex Pistols, this was another sign.

When you start to look at the world through the eyes of the youth, you realise how many signs there are saying no: no ballgames, no skateboarding, no football, no cycling. So here, and I sound like my dad now; I try to give people, whether they’re coming to a hip-hop gig or a jazz gig, a metal gig or a punk gig, or they’re coming to a grime show, I try to give people the same music experience that I had when I was a kid.

What has been the best gig you've ever seen?
I saw the Clash at the Bournemouth Winter Gardens, the place got completely trashed. It was just people who were so excited. I've still got the following day's headline from the Evening Echo hanging up in my house which says; 'Never Again!' 

It wasn't just the music, or the rebellion that was so exciting. It was the ethics, even in my little punk group in Bournemouth. We all looked after each other. There's not been anything like punk that has shaken up the establishment like it. Looking back, it was all so innocent. It felt like you were part of a movement.

People like Joe Strummer were heroes. We had all the race riots, yet inside these clubs, instead of having support bands, Joe had Don Letts DJ at all the gigs. Black and white kids were mixing together, these musicians did far more than politicians ever could have done. It's not about a three-chord riff and a haircut, it's about an attitude.

What's the best song to bring people together? 
White Man in Hammersmith Palais by the Clash. Paul Weller  – Eton Rifles. 

When people talk about equality for women, the punks were doing it before anyone else; Debbie Harry, Ari Up, Gay Advert, Siouxsie. It was the first time that women really stood up for what they wanted in this way. There had been iconic females in jazz, but there was always a male influence. The establishment, these faceless people, they still hate punk.

Do you think music has a chance to unite people today?
Music is more important than ever. There are some really important people today who have that same punk ethos; grime artists for instance – Stormzy, Skepta, Bugsy Malone. Kate Tempest is brilliant - put on Europe is Lost, and it just sums up everything that this stupid country is doing. Sleaford Mods are also massively talking in modern language about what it's like living in Nottinghamshire. We all need to know about it, beyond social media and emojis.