£10.00 BRIDGE HOUSE CANNING TOWN BOOK, free pp

[TerryMurphy]

yes its true the HARDBACK  book i wrote about the times we had at the Bridge House from 1975 until 1982
can now be purchased for £10.00 free PP,When the stock i have just purchased are sold that will be it ,no more will be printed
this way it will be classed as a classic, collectible piece of history. so please do not wait to long ,when these books are gone.
it will be  god rest the bridge house
regards Terry M. PS,i will sign them to whoever you buy them for ,if needed

[TerryMurphy]

Well the first thousand have gone,so i will have to in cress the price after Xmas,
it was then in the dream when i woke up,.
As this is the last pressing,i may have to change the price after  Xmas ,truly
Regards Terry M .GO TO www.thebridgehousee16.com  got to the shop

[TerryMurphy]

 Preface
What a day, every single phone call seems like bad news. Two bands pulled out of next weeks gigs with the advert already in the melody maker; if I can get a decent band I may be able to get it in the New Musical Express, or the Face magazine. Were is my list of local bands there is this band that have been asking me for a gig, where that number, they live just down the road in Poplar, Steve something.

I called the number; they would be delighted to do it. What’s the name of the band? Oh yes, Iron Maiden. Alright you got Thursday. Two forty-five minute sets with a 15 minute break, no you cant do one set. When the punters are watching the band they’re not buying any beer. Start at 8.45. Yes we close at 10.30 In the week, soppy licensing laws, I know in Poplar they stay open until 11pm.I see them run from the Bridge House over the bridge to the Iron Bridge Tavern for the extra half an hours drinking. You should have named your band Iron Bridge. Ha ha. See you Thursday; yes you can have your own PA. We open at 7pm. Sound check over by 8.15. You get £20 but if you bring a crowd with you I will give you more, another £5 0r £10. How much is our beer, 20p a pint of bitter, 26p lager. Yes the band can have a pint when they arrive and one when they finish. I’ll get that. See yer.

Now what about this other night,
Whoever rings next gets the gig, its 6 pm and Rita has got my dinner ready.

Glen answers the phone and calls me, ‘Dad there’s the IRA on the phone and if they do not get a gig they will blow you up, he was smiling so I know he is joking.
There was major concern around this time, so that was not a joke. I pick the phone up;
‘is  that Terence Murphy?’
Yes it is,
‘Err, what a great name, you don’t sound Irish.’
No I was born and bred in London.
‘My name is McGuinness, I’m managing this band and we are planning to get a tour together and try for abetter  record deal.’
I wish you luck,
‘Can you give us a gig?’
Are you in London at the moment?
‘We are, yes.’
You can play next Wednesday then (11.12.79.), what’s the name of the band. What, you too? Oh, U2. Ok, we open at 7pm don’t be late. Silly name though, who thought of that?
‘Oh you know what these boys are like.’
Good job I asked him how to spell it.




The printers phone to say there has been a big mistake on the new album cover, it’s on the art work, and they have started printing it, but stopped when they noticed it.
I ask who proof read it. They reply, ‘we never did the art work’, ok who did? I’ll have to find out. I tell them to scrap what they have printed and let me know how much for new plates, I will get back to them later.

Wasted youth have broken down on the way to Coventry, in a hired van, the hire place is closed for the night, I will phone the promoter, the band will ring back in 10 minutes.

The promoter said they can use the support band’s drums, the pa is laid on. When they called back I told them to jump in a cab, take the guitars with you, and leave a roadie with the van, I’ve rang the R.A.C and said it’s got to be towed to a garage.
None of the roadies can drive, nor can the band, John will have to stay with the van, they need two cabs and that will come to £30 each, they haven’t got any money, they spent last nights money. Where are they? Near  Birmingham. I get them to stay there and I’ll be there in about one hour and 30 minutes. This is lovely it’s the middle of winter snow and ice everywhere.

It’s a Friday and Slowbone are playing so we will be very busy.
The intercom rings, two bar staff have phoned in, their mothers are sick and they cannot leave them. They’re mates as well, what a coincidence. Glen rings round to get
Replacements, no luck, Ring Lindsey, and her mate Lyn, they will help us out.
Stop Lloyd going to the table tennis tournament. Terry will be home from his menswear shop by 8 o’clock. I have got to go, I will ring when I am on my way home. ‘We will not be able to hear you, we will all be in the bar’, alright  alright..

I was back by 11pm to get the crowd off the premises by 11.10 pm as the law at the time stated, Wasted had a great gig, the van will be repaired the next morning, and they will carry on with the tour. I sacked the two bar staff, got the art work for the sleeve done free of charge, only a back plate needed for the album. Perhaps tomorrow will be a better day.

I’ve done something I never did  before, I have booked two unknown bands. I hope they can play or my reputation will be down the drain. I should have auditioned the bands first or got a demo tape from Iron Maiden, a heavy rock band I thought, well you have got to take chances sometimes, won’t help if there’s no crowd. Might help the bands if they get some record companies interested, if they’re lucky an A/R man might see them.
What a good band Iron Maiden is, a really good well behaved crowd too, very heavy metal. I will book them again.
U2, a nice band worked really hard, no chance of making it, not different enough. I might be wrong, have to wait and see, yes I would give them another gig.
The bell rings its 7am, the brewery are here with our delivery.
‘Glen, make sure to count the empties, you know what them drayman are like’.



[TERENCE]

Pub rock.

After the war ended in 1945, most pubs had a piano in the bar and anyone who could play would have a go, then someone would sing a number. Some were really terrible so they started to get proper players and singers for the weekends, hoping to take extra money over the bar to pay the entertainers who usually passed the hat around as well.
This seemed to work but it was generally only for Saturdays and Sundays, so what could they do for the rest of the week? The small pubs were okay; a few customers made it look busy and gave off some atmosphere. And in the winter it was warm. The much larger pubs had to have a lot of people in to get this good feeling, no one had much money, so they could not go out in the week, only at week ends.

Come the late 50s pubs began to have piped music and juke boxes. With the sixties in came the Disco dancers and strippers which were okay for the smaller pub, which my first pub, the Rose of Denmark, was. At this time the band scene was Blooming. My son Glen decided to form a band and asked me if he could rehearse in the bar of the pub between closing hours in the afternoon. As always I said of course. We used to close between 3 pm and 5.30 pm. After about a month the band came to me to see if I could get them any gigs. Glen was 14, the others 15 / 16, not even old enough to go into pubs. They played a couple of times for me, and were good, I phoned a few publican pals and got them some Sunday mornings for £5.00 a session. This went well until they wanted more money. We asked for £10.00 and lost the gigs. Their big moment came when they appeared at the Barking Assembly Hall supporting a fully fledged orchestra. They won over the audience and this adult band got the hump with them and gave them a hard time. I was to find this out later. At this time Glen was really busy, football, boxing, D.J at the pub, so the band folded. A few of the other guys later formed a new band and played for us at the Bridge House. There name was Toad. So when I got the Bridge House pub, I remembered these rehearsal days at the Rose of Denmark. There was so much space to fill at the Bridge House and the costs were so much more, rent, electric, gas etc.

From the 60s& 70s the band scene started, the youngsters started copying their idols and there were hardly any rehearsal rooms and what there was were expensive. So this is how the pub rock started. During the week we would let bands rehearse in the pub and some of their friends would turn up with the band and have a few pints each, so then we took a few bob over the counter. As the bands got better, they would ask me for a chance to play their set. All the family, mates and a few onlookers would enjoy the night, tell their mates and the next week there were a lot more punters. This became a regular thing. Other bands asked for other nights and we took a few quid over the bar. It was a good start for me, I was learning about the bands and the music.
After a year or so the rehearsals got out of hand. It wasn’t the new bands anymore, we had moved on to gigs every night, two bands a night. One afternoon we had Manfred Mann’s earth band on the stage; Paul Young’s Q-tips on the first floor and Remus down boulevard in the cellar. None of the bands were using PAs, so it wasn’t that loud, but when the evening band turned up, they could not get in. Milton from the Warm Jets walked in and was speechless. One of his idols, Manfred, passed the time of day with him.Milton said to me later, Manfred was asking me questions, how I arrange songs and we chatted about Keyboard. That really made Milton’s day, being a Piano player himself.

[TERENCE]

SORRY THE BOOK WILL COST £10.00 WITH NO POSTAGE AND PACKAGING I ONLY HAVE A FEW LEFT,Signed copies if required

[TerryMurphy]

U2.at the Bridge house e16

I suppose the band that has made it to the very top, U2.
Were the most famous of the new bands to have started at the Bridge? I know they played their first gigs in their home town in Ireland. The band was formed by their drummer, Larry Mullins, while still at school in Dublin, Mount Temple comprehensive, where they all were pupils. Irish bands always got a little more encouragement from me. The old Irish blood in this Cockney born Londoner. No it wasn’t that, they had to come to a strange country to have a chance of making it in the music business, which was almost impossible anyway, but they managed to do it. Well done U2

I remember very well the night they played Bono was only 18 at the time. It has been said in the press that their first gig in England was at the Hope and Anchor in Islington in December 1979. I absolutely challenge this statement because they were billed as ‘the U2s’, their first gig in England as U2 was at the Bridge House, Canning Town. I remember talking to Bono and the Edge, they weren’t even known by those names at this time. I remember talking about another Irish band I had given a start to, Bernie Torme, a really good guitarist. He gave it a go, but never made it with his own band; he ended up joining the Ian Gillian band. Of course Rory Gallagher’s name came up; he was a god in Ireland. In 1968 he had been voted the best guitarist in the world. Then his bass player Gerry McAvoy walks into the pub, I introduced them. It was at this time Bono told me it was their first gig and that they had another gig booked for the next week. Although it was a nice tight band, they seemed nothing special. His vocal range did not reach the highs and lows that most of the bands coming through were achieving. In fact, I have just heard his latest single and he has got a great voice but still cannot hit those high notes. But we had done our bit for the band, got their name in the music papers, playing a known gig. This helped them get more. They never did any business for us, only eighteen people paid to see them that night and the pub had a  Few guests. I paid for their P.A. System, Rita fed them, we had a few drinks and they were gone.

Around six months later, promoter John Curd, who was booking the Lyceum, wanted Wasted Youth to support them, which at the time was an insult. We said we would headline for the same money he was offering, they would have to support us. We were already playing a joint headliner with Killing Joke, so to support would be a downward move for Wasted. We had previously supported Jim Kerr’s Simple Minds at the Lyceum and what they do to the support band is turn the P.A. Down to half it’s power, turn off some of the monitors and pull plugs on the mixing desk so the support band sound unto gather and less powerful and you get about ten minutes sound check. I am not saying u2 or Jim Kerr would have done this but once bitten... Now they are the biggest band in the world. We wished we had done the support.  At the time we made the right decision. We were on the same bill as U2 later on in Leeds,The Futurama Festival. This night was filmed for TV,  Suzie and the Banshees and Echo and the Bunny men shared our dressing room. Human league’s Phil Oakley was ligging and many more bands were there.  This was an all Dayer. The best bands go on last. Everyone in the crowd, and it was packed, were sitting on the floor, Wasted struck up, everybody got up on their feet cheering and they never sat down again till we were finished. No other band got the reception Wasted did that night, including the best band in the word today, U2. But once again, well doneU2.

‘It’s a Beautiful Day There latest recording  ,their first recording was an EP Called U2.3. There was talk that this was going to be a name change. Then U three is what the imitators of the band were called. There’s probably U three hundred now. I was involved with an interview with Bono in Newcastle on the 1. 3.1983. He signed a picture to go on a picture disc thanking me. You can hear him on the interview asking for the pen. A friend of mine asked him to sign. I was not there, so that was a nice idea. I have still got the recording somewhere.

He talks in the interview about another band called Virgin Prunes. This was a punk band that they were mates with; in fact the Edges’ brother was in the band. The boy on the picture of the L.P. Is related to one of the guys in the band, I believe a brother. This was a real loud punk band and they were the best of friends. I wonder if U2 started off with the punk scene. They did start to play in 1978 while at school. When they played the Bridge House A years later, the punk scene was coming to an end and U2 certainly were not a punk band then.

[TerryMurphy]

THE U.2 7"picture disc from the band sighned to me

[TerryMurphy]

Forward By Garry Bushell (Cockney Reject) FROM BRIDGEHOUSE CANNING TOWN BOOK
The Bridge House in Canning Town was always my favourite venue. It was never glamorous, but it had a heart as big as the neighbouring fly-over and it was as important in Britain’s musical history as the Roxy was.

I knew it first as a pub Rock venue. Bands like Remus Down Boulevard, Zaine Griff’s Screemer, Filthy McNasty and Jackie Lynton’s Happy Days were regulars. But Guv’nor, Terry Murphy, was shrewd enough to run an open booking policy, which meant many major acts played early gigs at the Bridge, from Alison Moyet to Iron Maiden via Bad Manners.

The small, atmospheric corner of London’s East End was also to play midwife to some vitally exciting youth cults. The new Mod bands of 1979 incubated there, groups such as the Purple Hearts, Secret Affair, The Chords and (spit) the Merton Parkas. The Bridge was always chock-a-block for Mod nights. Many of the 2-Tone bands appeared too. It was a heady time to be young and alive.

When I managed the Cockney Rejects, from nearby Custom House, it seemed logical that they should play at the Bridge too and so the pub became the birth-place for the new exciting street-Punk of the Oi bands. Cock Sparrer, The Business, The Angelic Upstarts, The 4-Skins…these groups, who went on to inspire today’s monster bands like Green Day and Rancid, cut their teeth at the Bridge House.

Many American Punk Rockers still make the pilgrimage to E16 to see the site of this temple of spiky dreams.

My association with the pub goes back to the mid-1970s. I first saw Chas ‘n Dave there, and then, almost inevitably, The Tickets.
Canning Town was always a rough area, and many of the pubs were notorious for trouble, but not the Bridge. The Murphy family made sure of that. Bands and punters alike appreciated the good-time feel of the place. I loved it enough to have my 25th birthday party there. Cock Sparrer reformed for it and Terry’s wife Rita even baked me a cake!  I enjoyed the evening far too much to remember much about it now. In fact, the many years I spent going to the Bridge have merged into a series of indistinct but happy memories. Stand-out gigs include performances by Steve Marriott, Judge Dread, Iron Maiden and Rory Gallagher. And for every one of them, the place was more packed than a Toyko tube train.

At one stage, when the Purple Hearts were on stage, the cellar needed emergency building work because the sheer weight of people above was putting a severe strain on the ceiling.

I saw Depeche Mode at the Bridge, they played with their synthesizers mounted on beer crates! And Terry allowed me to put on two Prisoners Rights benefit gigs, which saw the Cockney Rejects at their brilliant, blistering best.

(Them beer crates cost 50p each deposit and they use to nick them for there next gig - so they pinched the ones I had pinch; justice was done - ha ha – Terry)

Back then, Terry’s son, Glen, who was to go on to find TV stardom as George Green in the ITV smash hit series London’s Burning, was a humble barman. Another son, Darren, played bass in the legendary Wasted Youth, an early Goth, post-Punk outfit with echoes of Syd Barrett. They were better than I gave them credit for, but hey, you can’t be right about everything.

Terry formed his own Bridge House record label, another first, to bring out Wasted Youth’s records and other seminal releases like the Mods Mayday compilation of 1979.
The Cockney Rejects story is about to be made in to a film, so somehow we’ll have to recreate the look, sound and feel of the Bridge House. It’s going to be tough. The place was a one-off.
I can never drive through Canning Town without looking over at where the venue used to stand and feel a warm glow of nostalgia. Today’s charts are full of manufactured muppets and karaoke warblers. The Bridge House stood for something better: real music, raw music. The sounds of the street!
Garry Bushell 2006

[TERENCE]

http://Billy Bragg.

We first encountered Billy when we started the talent contests at the Bridge. He told us that he had been to the pub a few times and being a solo artist he hadn’t asked for a gig because we were band orientated.

He had seen the advert in the NME and decided to enter. When he told us he was a local boy from Barking, we put him up the front of the playing list.

We started the talent night because my son Glen had been chosen to appear in a play,Oba Futervarda, in Stratford with a four week run. So we had to fill his Tuesday theatre night, which he had been producing and acting in.

We were over run with tapes and had to have regular tape playing sessions, which I thought was a good idea. So on a quiet night, we would put the tapes out over the PA. The bands would come down to hear their tapes and we had a Jury of well-known musicians to judge them.

We finally got down to 12 tapes and booked the bands to play live, three bands a night and the winner of each night getting to the final. Billy Bragg was the winner of the semi final Eventually the four finalists played and. I had never seen anyone so happy.

This was in the final year that we were at the Bridge House, so the next time I saw Billy was after we had moved to the Merlins Cave. We had stayed in touch and when we booked Roy Wood the bearded wonder of Wizard and the Move as the headline act for the launch of the new venue we gave Billy the support.

This was going to be a big night, Roy Wood we thought was still a big name, we booked him from an agency owned by an old friend, Kenny Lynch. Well, Roy Wood arrives, all the agency people were there and Wood stays for about 20 minutes and informs his agent that he’s not going to do the gig and he left.

We were in a real state. We had advertised a big name to try to get the new venue of the ground. Now we had got egg on our faces and Billy was there waiting patiently. I walked over and said sorry Bill the gig’s been cancelled and we are not opening the theatre tonight. Billy really went into one, ‘leave of, let me play. I got management, and record companies coming to see me. This is my big chance’. I felt really sorry but it just was not economical to open. We had to have staff in a empty hall costing us money when we would not be taking any. Then Billy came back nearly in tears, pleading with me to play. ‘I don’t want no money, nothing, just let me play’. I relented, this was a local boy trying to make it, I had to give him his chance.

He went on stage at 8.O’clock and played without a break until 11pm. He had the audience shouting and screaming. This, I believe was the making of Billy Bragg, he was sensational. That night he signed a management
contract and a little later a recording contract. Today he is a star.

What we did when woods swallowed it, was we left all the doors open while Billy was on stage so the punters knew they did not have to pay and of course once they heard Billy, they stayed.
So we did take a few quid. And Billy Bragg got what he wanted and some money to go home with.

[TerryMurphy]

AGRO.

We had started to have the battle of the band nights(and it was) with four bands playing once a week it was going well, after a couple of weeks, this band turned up from South London with two coach loads of fans. The band went on stage and they were struggling with their sound - out of tune, they were terrible. The crowd got on their back, even their own fans.

The vocalist started shouting abuse, kicking out at the fans in the front of the stage. I told him to behave himself, he then threw a glass into the crowd, that was it, he had to go. I pulled the plug on them, I fronted them on stage told them to get out of here, They jumped into the audience and started fighting. In we go, threw them and their fans out. We were battling with them; our policy was never to call the police and we never had minders, so me and my boys, Terry Jnr, Glen,. Lloyd, and Darren were on our own. Well, three loyal customers helped us out, Mick O’Brian, Dermot and Andy Rowland. We lock the doors, when we got them out, they start kicking the doors, throwing bricks through the windows. We got in a grouptogether, I open the door and run at them. We stay together as a group and as they come at us we pick them off. It was a real battle. As we were fighting, I threw a punch and my watch came off. Like an idiot I bent down to pick it up and got a kick full in the face. Mind you, the watch was a rare collectors  item a Gold Omega Constalation. to get it back, was worth a kick in the face, only a black eye and busted nose, no problem, After about ten minutes we started to get the better of them. We ended up chasing them , at least forty people, down the road. They jumped on their coaches, drivers revving up, and were gone.

Quite funny really seeing seven or eight people chasing forty or fifty down the road. Our policy at the Bridge was, we were there to stop trouble not start it. Sometimes you have to show your authority and this can start trouble but you can’t let liberty takers get away with it. We got a call the next day from, it was said, an equipment hire company, saying they had to pick up the band’s equipment that had been left. If this was a hire company, they were the hardest working men ever, they were in and out in minutes. They were in no danger, we never carried grudges. We were well prepared in case they fancied a return  Lloyd had got a few of the snipers, ready.

 I should have known when I booked them, the Old South Londoners love a fight.
.I, earlier in my life had done a lot of business in South London ,and I believe they are very  similer to us, West Ham boys .

[TerryMurphy]

6532911 713fri

[TerryMurphy]

Here is Steve Harris memories of his beginning in Music

[TERENCE]

Forward By Steve Harris
The following  was written on Sunday 18 January 2004 whilst Steve was in Sao Paolo, Brazil
 on Iron Maiden's Dance Of Death World Tour.
The Bridge House
Ah, the Bridge House! Now most Iron Maiden fans will know and think of the Ruskin Arms
 as the most important pub in Maiden's early career, but in some ways,
a pub called the Bridge House was just as important and influential,
as it was here that Maiden played many of its earliest gigs, even before we ever played the Ruskin. In fact,
 even before Maiden in 1975 was formed I played the Bridge House in two other bands.
I played there for the first time in 1973 in my very first band, Gypsy's Kiss.
We were a Hard Rock band formed from school mates and other friends and only played the Bridge House
 three times and did only two gigs at another East London pub called the Cart & Horses
 before we folded after just five gigs together. Musical differences of course!
And then I joined a band called Smiler, a Rock Blues band and did quite a few gigs around London with them,
 including a few at the Bridge House in 1974 before leaving to form Maiden in 1975 (not 1976 as most people believe!).

The Bridge House was very important to Maiden's early life. Having played there in two previous bands
it was a goal of ours to play there on a regular basis. lt was an important place for us and other local bands
and friends. It was a buzzing place at the time in the local Rock community and become an important gathering place for us to make our plans whilst checking out other bands who were ever present on the happening Rock scene of the time. I remember from my diaries that we were paid £15 for our first gig (not each, for the whole band!) but this was the going rate at the time for a Monday night and some pubs even charged bands to play.
The 'Guv’nor' of the Bridge House when Maiden played there was Terry Murphy, a big, affable ex-boxer
who took no nonsense and therefore we hardly ever saw any trouble in the place.
It was a hard but safe place to go (unlike many other pubs) and had an exciting atmosphere.
The Bridge was a strange place in some ways, stuck right next to the Canning Town flyover
with an unusual configuration for a Rock venue as it was split into two levels
with the bar running along the middle of the pub on the upper level opposite the stage and very close to it,
so that when you were on the stage, which was very wide, but not at all deep,
 you felt like you could almost lean over and shake Terry's hand at the bar! Of course,
 the gap was bigger than that but even when the place was jam packed there was still only a few rows deep
 of crowd between the stage and bar. I always remember Terry leaning on the bar when not serving,
watching the band and ringing the bell for last orders like a town crier! God knows how he could hear
 the customers, he must have had ear plugs in, but he didn't complain too much about the noise level!

Terry used to let us get changed into our stage gear in a cellar downstairs,
just off to our left of the stage and was generally very helpful, except at one point
 when we had to take a break from live performances to replace yet another member of the band
 who had left for the usual ‘musical differences’ reasons. It took a while to find a replacement and rehearse
him in and when I approached Terry for a gig at the Bridge House again I was told that we would have
 to go through the process of starting again on a Monday or Tuesday night which were his audition nights
usually. We would have to graduate up to a Thursday again and would only get a Friday or Saturday night
 spot if he had a cancellation. While this was probably fair enough, we had a very large following
and I remember having a moan at him because, as I pointed out, we could pull more people
 on a Monday night than some of his bands could pull on a weekend.
 But obviously that was to his advantage so he remained adamant and stood his ground,
 so we ended up playing the Ruskin Arms on weekends instead!
 We were a bit put out and regarded it as his loss and told him so.
That was the only time we ever had cross words.

The Ruskin was run by another fellow ex-boxer and a relation of Terry's called Joe Lucy.
In fact, Terry's son Glen was also a young up and coming boxer at the time we played the Bridge House
and I remember him coming in to the pub with his kit after training while we were setting up our gear
getting ready to perform. Glen was also a very nice, affable lad,
 who later went on to become an actor known for playing a key part in a regular TVseries,
  London's Burning. Glen became a star and a few years later formed a
celebrity and ex-West Ham football XI to play charity matches of which I was invited to play in many times.
So, I have still kept in touch with Terry and Glen over the years and they have still remained
the very nice down to earth people I knew from all those years ago.
Terry really helped Maiden at a very hard and important stage of our career and kept the Rock
 scene alive in East London for a long time and I thank him heartily for it. Cheers Terry!
Steve Harris