100 Nights At The Roxy

Paul Drummond writes100 Nights at the Roxy was first published in 1978 by Big O Publishing Ltd – reprinted 2016 Carrczez Publishing Ltd. 96 pages: B&W photography throughout with 8 page colour section.

The Roxy, situated at 41-43 Neal Street Covent Garden was London’s most famous Punk club and ran from December 1976 to April 1977 [under Andrew Czezowski and partners Barry Jones & Ralf Jedraszczyk]. It was situated in a converted warehouse off Covent Garden market, that had been used by the vegetable market. It had a bar upstairs and stage in the basement. Every punk band of any worth (and many that weren’t) performed here. A memorial plaque was unveiled on 25th April 2017 to mark forty years since closing.

Although the book documents several shows performed at the venue, in chronological order, it doesn’t solely concentrate on band shots and the book’s strength is the audience documentation. Often many of the key punk performers also appear both on stage & off.  Although The Sex Pistols’ rehearsal room was only across the street on Denmark Street, they didn’t perform at the club but members feature in the book hanging out.

While essentially a Derek Ridgers’ photo book, the other main contributor is Humphrey Murray, with additional material from Richard Braine, Crystal Clear, Steven Davis, Peter  Kodak and Ralf Jedraszczyk.

The book was originally published in 1978 by Big. O, a company better remembered for printing posters in the late sixties [and run by Michael Dempsey who himself had caught The Adverts playing at the Roxy Club, and enthused to help them out, became their manager for a short while]. The glued (“perfect binding”) hasn’t helped preserve this title for posterity. To see many of the double-page spreads the book had to be fully opened, causing the pages to come loose. Add another 40+ years and the glue has dried and cracked, making complete copies, without loose or re-glued pages  rare and expensive collector’s items.

For the reprint the original club owner Andrew Czezowski and Susan Carrington sensibly produced a (slightly larger) near facsimile of the original,

However, there’s a good reason why this book, along with Salvador Costa’s ‘Punk‘ and Not Another Punk Book! are considered the best documents of the era:  it marries candid shoots of all the main bands protagonists with reportage/ street fashion photography/ of all the poseurs in the audience. London’s streets are so boring now.


Punk77 says: Fantastic book dripping with atmosphere and where the club virtually comes alive on the pages. From the colour flyers by co-owner Barry Jones to the murky photos of bands barely more than 2 inches away from the punk audience squashed together in their homemade ripped and torn bricolage garments. The audience, more often than not, were either in bands or in the process of forming one and would soon be on the same stage.

Andrew Czezowski sure knew how to maximise profit from a club open barely three months under his and his partners tenure. The club would run on for another year featuring many many more punk acts before finally closing. The publication of this would complete the triple: Record – Live at The Roxy Club WC2. Film – Don Lett’s Punk Rock Movie and this the Book!

Derek Ridgers I rung up Andy Czezowski after I read in the NME that he was doing an album or a book and said I have got a load of pictures that I took of your club and do you want to see them and he said we have got all the pictures that we need but bring them down anyway. That was a complete lie for a start as I ended up helping them put the book together and they did not have many pictures at all. If I had never rung him up and blagged my way into the project they would not have had any pictures I think.

I thought it was great when I saw it, but then all the pages fell out. I don’t suppose there is a copy of it in existence where the pages haven’t fallen out. They were falling out at the time it was published; that was the sick thing. It was cheap glue or the wrong glue that was used to bind the pages in. That sort of bindings called perfect binding – well that was very imperfect! Michael Dempsey was a sweet guy but like all publishers at that time didn’t want to pay but unlike them he did pay!

I still think it’s the best book on punk rock
It gets across the grubbiness of the place. Punk77 Interview January 2006

Note about the reprint. The photos weren’t taken from the originals but scanned from the original book so they are even more grainy.

The Big O certainly waded full on into punk publishing 3 books at the same time in April 1978 Sniffin’ Glue, PUNK! Not Another Punk Book and 100 Nights At The Roxy

The book was reviewed by Kim Davis in the NME. While often punk books were given short shrift, especially if by other music journalists it appears, this was fairly positive not least because they appear on page 19. It’s not his/her fault that as a document of the time it would be more important in later years than when it was published.


Paul Drummond is the author of the fantastic Eye Mind which is the story of the 13th Floor Elevators and has many items such as the above for sale at his excellent site Pleasure Of Past Times



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