T REX ‘Dandy in the underworld’ launch invite 1977
Not for sale
T REX ‘Dandy in the underworld’ launch invite 1977 and reverse of flyer
Excerpt from The ROXY our story
Wednesday, March 9th
T Rex, Dandy In The Underworld press launch 7pm.
Andrew: Alan Edwards was working on the campaign for the latest T. Rex album, Dandy In The Underworld, and came up with the idea. Marc Bolan had taken on the mantle of the ‘Godfather of Punk’ and was touring with The Damned, so why not launch the album at The Roxy? They installed a state-of-the-art stereo system for the reel-to-reel playback. EMI got in caterers; a real rock ‘n’ roll spread with loads of vodka, Jack Daniel’s, quiche Lorraine tart, sushi, which we’d never seen before. Yeah, quite a do. Brian James: I was chatting to Marc when he said, ‘Come with me, I want to introduce you to Trampas’. I’ve always been a big fan of westerns and Trampas was a character in The Virginian, which was shown every week on English TV. And there he was; Trampas in The Roxy, or rather the actor Doug McClure who played him. Susan’s diary: Spent all day cleaning up the club. This was a big deal to have a big press launch, weird people like Lionel Bart and Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull, Mike Mansfield, Donovan and Harry Nilsson came down. Some Damned there as well. Captain Sensible was as stupid as ever throwing pies. Sid Vicious shoved a quiche Lorraine tart in Billy Idol’s face. A small fracas broke out, heh heh! Got drunk and talked to Steph Raynor. I can only speak to him drunk. The whole thing was very pleasant, went down well. Andrew: Sid Vicious, Keith Levine, The Boys and a few others turned up but weren’t on the guest list. I let them in any way. Sid had quite a few beers before he turned up. After a few more free cans of Red Stripe he got way out of control and shoved a flan into Billy Idol’s face because Sid thought Billy was too pretty and couldn’t sing. I had to break it up and told him to leave. He said, ‘OK Andy, don’t wanna cause you no trouble,’ then grabbed a handful of sausages and threw them at Billy. He went after making me promise not to tell Malcolm, as if I cared. On the way out I
gave him a beer, I thought he needed it.
in private collection of Andrew Czezowski and Susan Carrington partners and creators of The ROXY Covent Garden London UK Worlds first PUNK club