Rock and Roll Walking Tour of Soho London

We had an amazing time on the Brit Music Walking Tour! Exploring the vibrant rock and roll history of Soho was both fascinating and fun. Our tour guide was not only incredibly knowledgeable but also brought great energy and humor to the experience. It was the perfect mix of music, stories, and entertainment. Highly recommend this tour for music lovers and history buffs alike!

Amazing tour, very informative and I have a few stories from our brilliant guide, Spencer Gibbins who was part of the 60s music scene in london. Couldn’t have been better qualified to bring the tour to life!

We pretty much felt like we got what we paid for. The price is affordable; you hear some good stories about the artists, and you learn about how much the area has changed over the years.

If you love the Beatles, David Bowie, and Elton John, you will love this tour. Probably half the tour is about them. While mentioned, The Kinks, Stones, Who, Animals, Clash, and others....could have been covered more.

This is a personal bias, I know, but to me the Beatles were an opportunistic glorified boy band from Liverpool, while The Kinks put together an eclectic, timeless array of artistic beauty that has always been under appreciated. I was hoping more would be covered about this true London band. Our guide, Jess, did talk with me briefly as we were walking and was kind enough to chat about their influence on rock history. Just wish more people knew about them. I was hopeful, but not surprised, that they are merely glossed over on this tour.

Again, though, it was a good price, and a nice-paced walk through an iconic, though quite evolving, area of this great city. Jess was quite well-prepared and affable throughout the tour. It was worth two hours of our time. Sorry for the Kinks' rant! ;-)

The guide was very knowledgeable and friendly and the tour was brilliant! Realky informative and fun. We learnt loads about famous venues and stars young and old. Well worth it.

Cari (sp?) was an amazing guide - he was very knowledgeable about the London music scene and is a musician himself. He was also personable and funny and the 2 hour tour passed too quickly! We booked a private tour for just the 4 of us. He showed us so many important sites and regaled us with insider stories about the Stones, Beatles, Hendrix, Bowie, and many more. We all had a great time. Highly recommend. Thank you!

We enjoyed a great London Rock Tour last Wednesday, 11th September, with Rob Woodford as our excellent Guide. It was a birthday present from my wife and I was looking forward to it. It surpassed my expectations and Rob was friendly, enthusiastic and knowledgeable; in fact, he couldn't have been better. I already knew quite a lot of the information he gave us, but it was good to have much of it put into context. I worked in the Piccadilly area during much of the later "swinging 60s" and spent many happy lunch hours walking around the areas that Rob took us to. Of course, most of them have changed for the worse since those days; Carnaby Street was colourful and vibrant, whereas it's now pretty soulless. The same can be said of Denmark Street, which is no longer exactly "Tin Pan Alley"! However, I could remember them as they were and it was good to revisit them. The amount of detail that Rob gave us greatly enhanced them. Sadly, in those days we didn't have mobile phones with cameras and I didn't have the foresight to carry a camera with me. Still, there's always Google images to check out!
I would have no hesitation in recommending this Tour to anyone who is interested in discovering more about the roots of Rock 'n Roll in those early days. Particularly if Rob was their guide. Thank you for a brilliant couple of hours!

The tour was a great experience. Our guide took us to several iconic classic rock sites in Soho, accompanying us with anecdotes, images and related songs. He was very friendly and made the two hours very enjoyable.

I ve taken the tour ran by micheal in soho.
It lasts 2, 5 hrs and it shows us a lot of things related to the music business in soho.
You can perceive micheal's real interest in music while he was showing us the place. So if you are interested in mid 60-70 music this tour is for you

This is a really good tour, especially for Boomers like us! Our guide, Danny, was outstanding, very knowledgeable and with many stories and anecdotes that added to the experience. The length of the tour was just right, as was the group size. A nostalgic and informative trip down memory lane if you like your rock and roll. Highly recommended.

Very informative and full of funny facts. The guide was easy to understand and made it a memorable experiance. We had not walk too far.

We took a walking tour of London on 22/6/24. It was a Christmas present for my hubby. Our tour guide was called Spencer, who is famous in his own right, and he was amazing. His knowledge and personal stories of the time and his interactions with musicians, gangsters, club owners, studio directors just made it so real. I would definitely recommend the tour. Bravo Spencer, bravo

This tour is like a dream come true if you love British Roch music. You are going to locations of then popular concert venues like the Saville Theatre, Ronnie Scotts, and the Marquee Club, as well as important studios of the time, like Trident Studios and Regent Sounds Studios. The tour guide also has tons of knowledge and tells a lot of stories about the big artists, including, but not limited to, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and Queen. It is worth every bit of money.

Excellent tour. We were lucky to get Spencer as our guide, he created the tour and had first hand knowledge of the musical legends and locations. Great stories and history. Definitely reccommend.

This tour is amazing! So much history brought to life with the guide. I can’t express how grateful we were to see the sights and hear the backstory behind everything!

There's a small point to get out of the way here so I'll do that first, then we'll get onto 'the good stuff'!

The meeting instructions aren't great! 'Tottenham Court Road Station, Exit 3' - the station exits aren't visibly numbered where we got off our train! If you're going to use a reference like that, use one that is conspicuous and which everyone (from outside London!) will readily see when they're INSIDE the station!

We came off the Elizabeth Line which we now know isn't actually in the main station. It would have helped to include that detail too.

The Google Street View image which was provided saved us but it took some working out. In 2024, a WhatThreeWords reference would have bene far simpler and would saved some hunting around.

Onwards...

The weather was kind. Not too bright or hot but certainly not cold and wet. I know this can't be controlled but bear it in mind when booking because bad weather will ruin your experience.

Michael - our guide and host - fantastic!! No, really - an absolutely great guy and totally in the right job! Interesting, funny but at the same time, subtly 'aware', observant and did a great job of keeping the group together while remaining superbly informative and entertaining at the same time.

The tour is full of surprises! Even for someone who has visited London quite a number of times now, it was amazing to discover how many places - SO significant in British music history - are either just 'tucked away' or even 'hidden in plain sight'! Sometimes all you have to do is look higher than your normal eye line and revelations abound.

Fortunately - as mentioned above - Michael is damned good at his job and pointed out a number of things/places where most of us would be familiar with the resultant 'product' but to be standing right next to 'where it happened' puts quite a different context on things.

It's an energetic event - make no mistake - hence the title of this review. You'll cover a lot of ground - sometimes quite quickly (mainly to maximise 'talk time' at the next point of interest) so DO consider this and prepare accordingly!

As Michael will explain, today's Soho is a VERY different place from that of the early 1960's but the references to those early days remain and for someone of my age and background, it was quite something to stand outside what had been Trident Studios - in the middle of an area where Marc Bolan had 'recruited' Rick Wakeman to play piano on 'Get It On' and the 2I's coffee bar where what was to become The Shadows was formed and where Hank Marvin and Ian Samwell invented the Hand Jive.

We even included a brief 'excursion' into the '90's with a gloriously (!) detailed explanation of how the cover of the Oasis album 'What's the Story...' was shot - right where we were standing!

If you're a British Music 'anorak', this tour really is for you. Get the right shoes on and go do it!!

If Spencer is your tour guide then instead of "Rock and Roll walking tour" it should be called "Spencer, my life me,me,me,I,I,I". Within the first 10 minutes he was laughing at how I was dressed in a heavy coat and hat because "he" was warm. He then insulted how we just visited Stonehenge. I explained that we have wanted to see it for many years and we enjoyed ourselves. He wouldn't drop it and again stated that it's "just a pile of rocks". So within the first 10 minutes he insults how I am dressed and laughs at where we chose to stop and visit. It really should be renamed "Spencer, drink you way around Soho". If you take a shot every time he said "I" or "me" you would drunk within an hour. We thought this would be an informational tour and not about all of his "friends" that he knew from the 1970's. When others in the group would try to answer one of his endless questions and got just a small bit wrong he would immediately point out how wrong they were. Spencer did admit that he was filling in for another tour guide that was sick and being on the tour made me sick...of him.

Very nice and interesting tour with Spencer ... He is a great orator !!! Funny facts, nice places, great walking tour !!!