Bob Dylan

WHENEVER there is a debate about culture in London, councillors like to puff out their chests and insist their ward is the most historically important.

But Liam Martin-Lane didn’t realise he was stumbling into a long thread among Bob Dylan fans when he declared at a full council meeting in Camden that the folk maestro’s first performance in the United Kingdom was in his King’s Cross patch.

The Water Rats in Gray’s Inn Road has long laid claim to hosting his first gig in this country and even had a plaque celebrating the show back in December 1962.

But Dylan aficionados are split over where Londoners really heard his gravelly tones first.

Many fans say that Dylan’s friend, Martin Carthy, got him up on the stage to play at the King & Queen pub in Foley Street, Fitzrovia – on the Westminster side of the border – earlier that same month.

Who staged him first? The King & Queen in Foley Street and The Water Rats can both lay claim to Bob Dylan’s first UK performance

The debate has never really been settled – do write in if you can help solve it – but Cllr Martin-Lane said he was standing by The Water Rats because he had seen it said on the venue’s website.

Harrington is under no doubt its stage has an important part in the capital’s musical history, and Cllr Martin-Lane was definitely right when he told colleagues on Monday that the venue had played host to the first London gig by Oasis, who this weekend will be playing somewhere a little less intimate when they appear at Wembley Stadium.

Expect the city to start filling with bucket hats and performative Gallagher swaggers at some stage later today, (Friday).

Cllr Martin-Lane said: “If you go to The Water Rats, I’d highly recommend it, it was the scene of Bob Dylan’s first UK gig.”

He was right too when he talked about the need to protect venues which give a chance to the next generation of talent.

But let’s not write The King & Queen out of the story, it’s a classic London pub which still hosts musical performances upstairs.

Liam Martin-Lane insists it was the bar in Gray’s Inn Road

In late 1962 Dylan had come over to act in Madhouse On Castle Street, a drama which nobody can watch now because the BBC junked the tape. He certainly had many good nights with Carthy and maybe it was because Dylan was pulled up from the audience at the pub, rather than scheduling a gig, that a confusion about his first performance in the UK still reigns.

The folk stories from that time have it that the two were staying at one time in a cold “squat” in Belsize Park and found themselves freezing that December. Carthy, now 84, suggested smashing up a piano for firewood, to which Dylan said he could not sanction the destruction of a fine musical instrument.

They say shivering and by the end of the night, the temperature got the better of Dylan and he happily joined its destruction.

It’s a tale told better on the Untold London series, which you can find on YouTube.