Bob Dylan in London by Miles K G; Lees Jackie;

Author:Miles, K G; Lees, Jackie;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McNidder and Grace Limited
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

SAVOY STEPS

Savoy Steps is a cobbled alley behind the Strand, a major road in the heart of London’s West End. Actual steps had linked the alley to the Strand for centuries, but despite the name you’ll not find any today; they were demolished to make way for a new building in 1923. You can see what they looked like thanks to the drawings of artist Alan Stapleton, who drew many of London’s alleys and byways, publishing a collection in the same year the steps were destroyed.

Along one side of Savoy Steps is the Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy, an extraordinarily beautiful church dating back to the 16th century. In his later years, Henry VII worried that he had not done enough good deeds to earn a place in heaven, and ordered that a hospital for the poor be built on the site of the then derelict Savoy Palace. The chapel is all that remains of the hospital’s extensive buildings.

By way of coincidence, the English folk singer Martin Carthy, Dylan’s friend from his first visit to London in 1962, had been a chorister at that very chapel as a child. To this day, the Chapel’s choir, formed of six professional male singers and up to 21 boys from St Olave’s school in Kent, sing much of the service during term time. The Queen’s Chapel is a Royal Peculiar: it is subject to the direct jurisdiction of the monarch, and its Sunday services begin with the national anthem.

On the other side of Savoy Steps is the four-storey rear extension to Norman House, which fronts onto the Strand. Norman House is architecturally a bit of a mess – or, as the planners say, it has an ‘unresolved’ skyline. The building was originally well-balanced, but later redevelopment of the Strand led to it lose a wing and thus its symmetry. Its construction led to the removal of the steps leading to the Strand. Today the part of Norman House bordering Savoy Steps houses the laundry rooms and technical services department for the hotel. It is called the School Block because it stands on the site of a school which formerly provided choristers for the Chapel.

On 8 May 1965, Bob Dylan stood on the corner of Savoy Steps where the Queen’s Chapel meets Savoy Hill, to be filmed by D A Pennebaker. On that day the School Block was covered in scaffolding, and builders’ materials were piled on the pavement, but apart from that the alley is the same today. A planning application to Westminster Council from the owner of the land, the Duchy of Lancaster, to demolish and rebuild Norman House was approved in 2018 and, at the time of writing, scaffolding once again covered the buildings.

Dylan had suggested to Pennebaker that he wanted to make a film to accompany his song ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’. He’d recorded the track in New York earlier that year and it opened the first, electric, side of his new album, Bringing It All Back Home. By the end of May 1965, that album would reach Number 1 in the UK album charts.

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