Layne Patterson - Smashed Guitars and Burnt Down Bars

[dem bones]

Layne Patterson - Smashed Guitars and Burnt Down Bars: The Railway Hotel, Wealdstone: The Story of an Iconic Pub & Music Venue ([Privately published], Nov, 2020)

Introduction and Identity Crisis
Foreword by 'Irish Jack'
Wealdstone - A Potted History
The Rise and Demise of The Railway
The Musical Legacy of The Railway
The Who/ High Numbers
Remembering The Railway

Blurb:
On a Sunday in February 2000, plumes of smoke engulfed the late winter sky of Wealdstone in Middlesex. Little did many people realise at the time but it was the final death knell of the areas recently closed and most famous pub/ music venue.

In the sixties The Railway Hotel was THE place to see the big bands of the day! THE WHO, ELTON JOHN and ROD STEWART were just some of the many (soon to be) household names to have graced it's stage way back when!

The Railway Hotel was a much loved Pub, and some twenty years after its demise it is still remembered fondly by its many disciples!

Layne Patterson in his third book looks back at Wealdstone's much-missed and most famous hostelry!

Foreword by 'Irish Jack' Lyons

Currently reading this loving tribute to an iconic pub and music venue which burnt down in mysterious/ controversial circumstances in February 2000. Scrapbook approach with judicious selection of photographs, ads and local press cuttings of a Hatchet Attack at Disco/ Police Eject Pregnant Woman from Pub/ Three Coshed at Pub; Man Goes Berserk/ PC Injured in Bottle Attack/ Violence flares in Summer Heat, nature. For such a relatively small out of the way venue, The Railway booked some exceptional pop/rock/soul/reggae talent. Pre-fame The Who were crowd favourites, as was local rocker Screaming Lord Sutch who played there throughout his career; other bands and performers to play the Railway were Jethro Tull, Chicken Shack, Jimmy James & the Vagabonds, Geno Washington & the Ram Jam Band (including the 1968 gig referenced by Kevin Rowland in Dexy's Midnight Runner's 'Geno' ), Ben E. King, the Yarbirds, Fleetwood Mac, Shakin' Stevens - all the greats. It was also the pub where Malcolm McClaren met Vivienne Westwood.

The book proper begins with a meandering, lost pub-orientated micro-history of the town (more specifically, the High Street), including a sobering entry on the October 1952 train crash which claimed 122 lives, still the worst peacetime railway disaster in the UK. As with The Queens Arms over the bridge, The Railway served as a makeshift mortuary on that terrible day, which possibly gave rise to later claims that the bars were haunted.

If you can excuse a geriatric glampunk his nostalgia, I once saw the most extraordinary puddle of vomit on the pavement outside The Railway - fluorescent pink, strangely pretty as puke goes, not sure anything I've since seen in that line can compete. Don't know why I felt the need to share this info, but perhaps it might come in useful for somebody one day.

You can look inside at :am*z*n.uk