Steve Rubie

Interviewer: Okay, so, if we just may start with… could you just let me know your name and spell your name for me, please?

Rubie: Sure, my name’s Steve Rubie and that’s spelled R-U-B-I-E.

Interviewer [00:17]: And could you tell me your date of birth and where you were born, please?

Rubie: 14th-10-52 and I was born in Buckinghamshire.

Interviewer [00:27]: And then just tell me a bit about your background in music, and were you parents particularly musical? How did you get into music and jazz?

Rubie: My parents were musical in the sense of there was music in the house but they didn’t play musical instruments. But I started playing recorder when I was about six or seven, and I had a fantastic teacher, a Canadian guy called Murray Carmac and he kind of saw I had a bit of talent, and so he included me in this… he had this recorder group that he’d written a whole bunch of stuff for. He transcribes a lot of classical work, so at the age of eight or nine I was playing kind of Bizet, you know, and Bach, stuff like that. And that was great. When I went to senior school, grammar school as it was then, I carried on going to… he had this Saturday morning thing and I carried on going to this thing that he ran. So that was how it all started, really, because I was obviously reading music by the time I was sort of nine, ten years old, working with this what became quite a big recorder thing. We used to go round doing concerts in churches and town halls and all this sort of stuff. So I was fairly experienced by the time I was eleven. And then I started playing various music and instruments. I took up with clarinet for a while and then I played guitar for a while and then I played flute. I used to go to folk clubs with my older brother, who’s a very good guitar player, and I used to take my flute along and did my first paid gig when I was about 16. In the meantime, I was listening to… my parents were very into jazz, and that’s kind of 30s, their generation, so we had Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Goodman. I used to play along to Benny Goodman records when I was sort of 12 to 13. So that’s how I got into the jazz stream, through my parents’ record collection and playing along with the various records that they had. And then I moved up, as I was saying, I played in the folk clubs and went on from there, really.

Interviewer [02:35]: So is that how then you got into the jazz scene in terms of venues as well, because I read when you went to university as well, that was particularly significant?

Rubie: Well, I went to university and studied dentistry. I didn’t go to study music at all, but by that time I’d been working in the folk clubs through our, you know… which of course took place in pubs, and my parents never went to pubs ever, they weren’t that kind of… you know, they didn’t really drink. So they used to know I was going to folk clubs with my brother, but they didn’t really realise they were in public houses. I mean, they weren’t that prudish, but they just… I was 16 years old, 17 years old. But that’s how I kind of got into playing, and then of course various people heard me and asked if I could work with them. So by the time I got to university, I was doing a reasonable amount of work already. And so when most people at university were going off to parties at the weekend, I’d go off and do gigs. So that’s how I kind of got to know the various venues, but probably the way the jazz things really kicked in was again through my brother, big influence musically on me. He went off to study, he found this bass player called Peter Ind, who I’m sure you probably have in your archive. If you don’t, you certainly should do. And Peter was this very charismatic bass player who’d gone over to America in the late 1940s, early 1950s, and had studied with Lennie Tristano out there and worked with Lee Konitz and Billie Holliday and Buddy Rich. And he came back to England in the mid-60s and was teaching, and so I kind of tagged along really and went to study with him. I was probably about 19 or 20, and that was when I first started formalising and learning how to play jazz properly, not that I think I play it properly now, but that’s how I started learning how to play the music. So I was kind of doing that while I was at university studying dentistry. It was all sort of at the same time. Venues… then what happened of course was that a lot of Peter’s students, he had a lot of students and we used to meet to listen… Peter used to have these Saturday afternoon and sometimes Sunday afternoon sessions with somebody, the odd student and some the guys he used to work with, and through that contact, that was when I first went to Ronnie Scott’s with some of the guys from Peter’s thing. That’s how I kind of got into the mainstream… and I don’t mean musically mainstream, but by the mainstream kind of jazz world.

Interviewer [05:26]: So in terms of your actual jazz activities and how they’ve developed over the years, how would you describe the nature of them and has that changed then?

Rubie: My jazz activities? [laughs] Makes me sound like a blue coat. Sort of yes and sort of no, I suppose, in a sense of when I was studying with Peter, I really wasn’t thinking of becoming a professional musician. I just wanted to be better at what I did. So in that respect it changed, because I completed my studies virtually, left before the Finals, but pretty much within five years at UCH, and then when I left I had to kind of make a decision what I was going to do next, and because I’d already studied and played music, and by that time I’d taken up playing the saxophone as well then. When I was about 21, I kind of thought, “I can’t just be a flute player. It’s not going to work.” So I started playing saxophone about the age of 21, again while I was still studying with Peter. So I kind of drifted into being a professional musician more than anything else, so that’s one of the things that changed from my original outlook, because it’s kind of what I did. And I worked as a professional musician for a couple of years, and I used to go to the 606 Club just as a musician to hang out, you know, I’d been going there since I was about 17. And then when I left… it’s funny, I’m trying to answer the question but it’s a difficult question to answer because that kind of suggests that I consciously made decisions, when I didn’t really. I mean, things just happened, which is kind of quite an interesting way to live life. It’s quite good, you know God Laughs at plans, sort of thing. So I didn’t really intent to become a professional musician but I sort of did. Then I used to go to the 606 Club, when I left university and went off to study at Trinity College, and I had to work my way through that, so I started cooking at the old club 07:37, I became a chef at the old club, which didn’t used to open until 11 o’clock at night, so it was great, so I could practice during the day. And then I used to go in and close at about four in the morning sort of thing. So that’s how I kind of originally got involved with the club, was trying to work my way through college. And then once I’d done that and I was working as a pro, I just went down one night and the guy who owned it said he was selling up and moving on, and the sale had fallen through and did I want to take it over, and I said no. And that was 40 years ago. And I’ve been there ever since, but none of that was planned. It just all sort of happened. So in that respect, things have changed constantly because things happen. When I was there until 87 and then we were evicted because they needed to redevelop the building – it wasn’t because we did anything particularly bad. So we were evicted in 87 because they need to… the building was falling down, really. And that’s when we moved to Lots Road, and obviously all these changed how one perceives who you are and what you do. The old club was tiny, maybe about the size of this room and sat 30 people. I mean, the current premises here now… we’ve expanded to fill the space available, we’re licensed for 175. So it’s a very different experience, so all these things, everything changes.

Interviewer [09:10]: So in that sense, now then, is this your major… this is your role then, you run the 606 Jazz Club. Do you do other activities as well, or is this your…?

Rubie: Well, I still work as a musician. Quite a lot, actually. I mean, so although this is my primary focus I suppose, because it has to be because it’s a bit of a big beast… we’re one of the three biggest jazz clubs in the country, we put on music seven nights a week and Sunday lunchtimes, I mean it’s… it’s a bit like the swan, there’s a huge amount of paddling goes on to keep us going. But I also work as a musician, I still do, I have my own band, Samara, and I have a quintet that I work with Jonathan Gee and various guys, and I do pick-up gigs. I just did a gig at Posk as an invited soloist, so I still work as a professional musician. I don’t teach anymore. I used to teach quite a lot at one time back in the day, when I first finished at Trinity and I was still at the old club which, as I said, it used to open late so I used to do quite a lot of teaching, actually, at one time. But I haven’t got the time to do that now. But I still play a lot and I still write some about music, and obviously running the club as well, but this isn’t my only, my sole connection to music now.

Interviewer [10:39]: So what would you say is motivated you to stick with jazz so long?

Rubie: Because it’s what I do. I’ve told this story a lot, but it is relevant to that question, which is… there was a wonderful actor, Richard Briers, who made his name doing sitcoms and stuff and eventually became a highly respected Shakespearean actor in his later years, and he was great, and I saw him being interviewed when he was probably in his 70s by then. He said he did ac certain amount of teaching and workshopping and stuff, and somebody came up to him one day and said, “I’m thinking of becoming an actor. Can you give me some advice?” And he said, “Well, if you enjoy going to the theatre and you like being on stage and you enjoy reading plays,” he said, “don’t bother.” He said that’s not what it’s about. Only do it if you have to. And by that he meant, if you have to ask, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. It’s just something you do. Playing jazz is something I do. If I get asked to play, if I get offered a gig, I don’t think, “Do I want to play?” I might think, “Do I want to play with the particular person or those particular people?” I might think that, and think, “Oh, I don’t know enjoyable that might be.” But I don’t think, “Do I want to play today?” That’s a given. That’s just a given, that’s just what I do. So playing jazz is just what I do. It’s just a gig

Interviewer [12:27]: And I mean the club itself, even though it’s changed venues, even now there’s a lot of similarities to the old venue in terms of trying to keep that same sort of atmosphere in some respects. Is there a particular motivation for that? That continuity, that kind of community feeling – do you think that’s particularly significant? Is there a reason you’ve stuck with the 606 Club in particular?

Rubie: Well, yeah, I suppose it’s because of what I do. I genuinely believe in it, as being a platform for musicians to be able to create and perform I think is important. There aren’t that many of them about. There’s a few, you know, there’s Ronnie’s and there’s the Pizza Express and the Vortex in London. But there aren’t that many, and each venue of the major venues in London has a distinct kind of feel and atmosphere about it. We’re all different, which is good, and I think what we do is we focus primarily, but these days not exclusively, on UK-based artists. But we do focus very much on the whole UK-based thing in order to provide a platform for professional UK jazz musicians to perform in an atmosphere where they feel protected and supported. And there aren’t too many of those, there are a few, but not too many, so I kind of see that as an important part of the scene, I suppose. Other people would have to tell me how important it is. I don’t really have a sense of that particularly. People say that and so I tend tot’s not something I think about that much, to be honest, but I am conscious of the fact that we are providing something which is important to the scene. I think if the club wasn’t there, the scene wouldn’t collapse. We don’t, you know, we’re not keeping it going or anything like that, but we hold up our corner. So in that respect I think it’s important, what we do, but certainly not essential. I don’t think that the jazz scene would collapse if we weren’t around, but on the other hand I like to think and I hope that what we do helps.

Interviewer [14:46]: And did you find that changing the space of the venue – did that make a difference to the audience…?

Rubie: Well, it made a massive difference because as I said before we sat 30 people. It was like somebody’s front room. We had an open fire. We used to put logs in the fire and try to stop the musicians falling into it and stuff. But now it’s a big venue, I mean, it’s 150, 60 people here including the bar on a Friday and Saturday night. I mean, I flew in… for the London Jazz Festival I actually flew over Peter Bernstein the American jazz guitar player and put him up and we put him on. It was hugely successful. Yeah, stuff like that. It’s very different. It’s very, very different from what we could and what we were able to do, what we actually did in the old club, so in that respect, yeah, I mean, it’s very, very different. Very different. The audiences are different. I think… our audiences on average tend to be on average younger than the audiences that go to places like the Pizza and Ronnie’s, for instance, and that doesn’t come from me. That comes from the guys at the Pizza and Ronnie’s, who actually say to me… when they come here, they say, “Your audience is younger than ours.” That’s kind of interesting. That’s good. So in that respect, yeah, I would say the audiences have changed, and they do change over the years because there are external factors that influence people’s interest in live music at any one time. I mean, I think it important to say of course that we are a live music venue. We’re not just a jazz venue. We put on soul and gospel and R&B and very occasionally a kind of rocky thing, singer-songwriter and all that, but the main thrust of what we do is still jazz. We put on a lot of jazz, but we also put on a lot of other music as well, and that’s quite good because what that does is that creates a bit of an overlap. So people who come to see on a Friday night, you know, Imaani or R&B, funk or soul things, and then they tell their friends and they book on a Saturday night and they’ll get to see Gilad Atzmon or Scott Lester or, the late Bobby Wellins you know, those kind of, you know… Derek Nash – 16:58, Saturday night people, which is straight-ahead jazz. And as a rule people they like it because it’s music. Audiences are very different now from what they were 15 years ago for sure. In that way I think we’re a bit of a sort of a beginner’s club, which I like. We don’t focus on the jazz audience particularly. We don’t look for the jazz audience. We’re just interested in people who want to come and hear some really high-quality live music.

Interviewer [17:29]: And do you think your own experience as a musician has influenced that movement towards that, or has the club always been quite open to different sort of live acts even in the old days?

Rubie: Well, I’ve been doing it for 40 years so it’s hard to say, but I think it’s probably always been like that, but obviously being a musician makes a difference to how I approach, how the place is run, how we deal with the musicians, the booking policy. The dynamic between the musicians and the audience. Those things are influenced by the fact that I’m a performer as well as a promoter, so I’m aware of things as a performer that one would like promoters to do. We do our best to try and cover that aspect of employing musicians, which don’t always get covered.

Interviewer [18:28]: Because I read actually that you make sure musicians get a cut still, which in terms of they get a charge for when the people come to the venue? I think I read on your website you make sure they get a fair…

Rubie: Oh yeah yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Interviewer [18:41]: Is that something that you think is something that’s changed about the… because I spoke to some other people who say that’s one of the issues now, being able to get enough people through the door, really, to be able to pay the band fairly…

Rubie: Yeah, our system’s a little different because we pay guarantee. So we have a guarantee. People will never, you know… we always… this is how our system works. They get the door and we make sure everybody gets spread out, everybody gets proper pay. So we always pay guarantee. That’s important. But the way… you covered two different things there, which is, you know, how people get paid… if ten people turn up, we will still make sure the musicians get paid. A reasonable guarantee. But you cover another very important issue, which is a completely different issue but an interesting one, which is how to you get people into the venue, how do you promote it. How… in this day and age, how has that changed? There were two different questions. So the first one’s easy to answer, which is yes, we make sure people get a guarantee. The second one is much, much more complicated. Much more complicated. Something we talk about a lot here… I have a person here called Laura Thorne who’s our marketing guru, who’s actually from America, she’s from California, and she’s been here for three or four years now. And we talk about this every day. Pretty much every day, we talk about how are we going to get somebody in tonight, how are we going to get somebody in for a sickly child. That’s our terminology for a night that’s not selling very well, so we’ll kind of focus on the nights that are struggling a little and talk about how to do that. But it’s very difficult these days to do that without having the musicians on board, because the way audiences access information. Very, very different now from certainly when I started and even over the last 10, 15 years. I mean, we used to have a monthly ad in Time Out, and that was very big, and the listings and the ad in Time Out, that was a big thing. And it cost me four hundred and… whatever it was. I mean, now you wouldn’t even dream of doing something like that. It’s a pointless exercise, putting an ad in some printed literature. I mean, it’s just… the world has moved way on from that, so obviously we have a website… we’re building a new one actually… don’t ask about that. We’re trying to build a new one, which hopefully should be done sometime before 2020. So that’s very important, but the whole social media thing and Facebook and tweeting and Twitter, which I don’t do, Facebook or Twitter, I’m afraid I can’t be bothered. But Laura does all that, you know, that’s what I pay her to do, so she spends her whole day Facebooking and tweeting amongst many other things. And that is very big. We have an e-letter that goes out. Thirteen thousand people a week, we email out to. Fifteen thousand people a month hit our website. I mean, I think it’s 12 or 14 000 people on Facebook, 10 000 or so on Twitter. We reach out to about in excess of 30 000 people a week via electronic media, and we still have nights when only 12 people turn up. Very interesting. And part of the reason for that is, although obviously we need to do that and it is effective, what we do, it’s clearly not 100 percent effective because we do have nights which are very, very quiet, but one of the issues is engagement with musicians. And this is a conversation I have with some of the older musicians and about three or four years ago probably I had an e-mail exchange with one of the older guys who was saying that, basically… we weren’t falling out initially, we were just having a debate about how one promotes… and he was saying that he didn’t feel that the musicians should be expected to promote their gigs. Very interesting. Which is, you know, in the 1970s and 1980s, even the 1990s, fair enough. It was the venue’s job to get people in. The venues would do that thing of… I mentioned Time Out and posters, you know, you do all that stuff that venues would do. Radio. Nowadays it doesn’t work like that at all. You know, the venues are very much in the hands of the musicians because people are much more specific about how they access their information. If we have an artist coming in who is… and particularly anybody who’s under 30 and a lot of people under 40, they understand the importance of social media and electronic media and all that, so they’ll have Facebook, they’ll tweet, they’ll have a website, they’ll do all that stuff to promote their music. They’ll be posting stuff on YouTube. That’s what they do because they understand that’s how it works. Now, people who don’t do that… and I should basically say it’s not that I wouldn’t employ somebody that doesn’t do that, that’s not what I’m saying, but what I am saying is that it makes my job twice as difficult when people don’t do that because it makes it much harder to reach the kind of audience that are likely to be interested in that particular artist. But when an artist is engaged with their audience, it makes it much easier for them and for us to engage with their audience, let them know what’s going to be happening, let them know that they’re going to be playing here on such-and-such a date. Otherwise it’s very difficult, it’s just throwing bits of paper up in the wind and hoping they blow in the right direction. And of course, you are competing with people who are doing this, so it isn’t just a question of us struggling to reach people. It’s also a question of those people that we are trying to reach are accessing information about other artists that they may be interested in, so if they don’t hear about our guy coming in, or our musician coming in, I should say, they’re going to look at other stuff they have on their phones and go and see that gig. So it’s a very interesting dynamic these days about how you access information, how you get to your audience, you know?

Interviewer [25:22]: How would you overcome that? It’s quite a significant barrier, especially with older artists who might be… a lot of people would be very interested in coming to see. Maybe bigger names perhaps, but how do you broach that initial bit to get the word out?

Rubie: Well what we do is… as I said a bit earlier on, we have thousands of people, tens of thousands of people now on Facebook and Twitter and website, so we just try and target those people. There are people like Hamish and Tony O’Malley and these guys… Tony’s very good, actually, he sends out a monthly letter and all that kind of stuff. But there are people that obviously don’t do that, but fall into a particular genre, so we target the genre, basically. So we kind of say, well, anybody who’s interested in soul or groove music, you know, Imaani’s going to be here, she’s the singer from Incognito, she’s great. We target by genre, so we try to reach people who may not know who Imaani is or who Tony O’Malley is, or in the jazz world, you’re trying to get people who don’t know that Derek Nash is one of the saxophone players for the Jools Holland band, yada. And so you try and target by genre and say, “We think you’re going to be interested in this because you’re interested in these other people from what we know about you. So you might want to check this out.” And that’s how we do it. It’s more of a scatter-gun kind of approach than a focused approach, which does… I’m not saying it doesn’t work, obviously it does work because that’s what we do. To make a night really successful, apart from Fridays and Saturdays, I’m talking about Sunday to Thursday, Fridays and Saturdays are a bit different. But that Sunday to Thursday thing, the ideal is for us to put those both together, so the answer is them doing their bit and us doing our bit, and so they bring in their people and we bring in our people, you add them together and then you’ve got a good all-round. Fridays and Saturdays are a little different because people are more proactive on a Friday and Saturday. People will be thinking about going out on a Friday and Saturday night, so then they’re thinking, “Where should we go?” And you have to be positioned in a place that they will see you and you will come into their purview, and they think, “Well, shall we go to this venue or to that venue or the 606 Club?” So you want to be part of that conversation, of that decision-making process.

Interviewer [27:58]: So other than, like, the social media and obviously you said you’ve got members of your team here who’ve got various roles as well. Are there any other larger structures in place that have supported the music scene that you’re involved in, that have helped the club keep going for so long…

Rubie: By larger structures do you mean internal or external?

Interviewer: Either, because obviously it’s quite a well-established club and you’ve just had your anniversary, so what’s kept it going?

Rubie: Ha! The big thing that keeps it going, to be honest, is word of mouth. We have a membership system. We have about 800 members. And obviously we’re a restaurant as well, so a restaurant is a very important of what we do. Non-members have to eat if they want to drink alcohol. That’s part of our license, so we have a big restaurant and 50 percent of our revenue is from the restaurant, or from the food, I should say. Fifty percent for the drink. Obviously the music goes to musicians. But of the revenue that comes in, 50 percent is food and roughly 50 percent is drink. So the restaurant is an important part of what we do, and that’s a very big selling thing for us as well. I like to think that generally speaking we probably do the best food of any of the clubs around, which is not to derogate any of the other guys, but we work really hard on it. I really like the pizzas in the Pizza Express, but it is pizza. The problem is they’re very good, they’re excellent, but it is very limited. You’ve got to like pizza! Otherwise you’ve got a bit of a problem. Well, they do salads and they do some other stuff to be fair. Actually, to be fair they do pasta and things. But you know what I mean. It’s relatively narrow choice. We look to do a broader, restaurant-type offering. So that’s a very important part of what we do. But the main is just word of mouth. The biggest thing… I mean, I’ve been talking about social media and how you advertise and how you promote, and that’s obviously very important, but the biggest thing which I haven’t really mentioned is word of mouth. Which is, you come down to the 606 Club because you picked up something somewhere along the line, you know, by some kind of social media method, somebody’s retweeted something maybe. So then you come down with a friend or a couple of friends and you really enjoy your evening, so what you’re going to do is you may tweet about but what you’ll also do is talk about it. Next time you see your mates or whatever it is. If you had a great night, you’re going to say, “I had a great night the other night. We went out to the 606 Club. Never been there before.” And that’s the biggest source, actually, of disseminating what we do. Word of mouth is huge.

Interviewer [30:50]: And has the membership always been something that you had as a club? The membership idea?

Rubie: Always. Even at the old club, funnily enough. Although it didn’t really mean so much at the old club. But it is… it means a lot. You get a lot for being a member, because non-members have to eat food if they wish to drink alcohol, whereas members can come drink in the members’ bar. They don’t have to eat. It’s free for members to come into the members’ bar. They get a 10 percent discount on drinks. They get a lot for membership. It’s a proper membership. You get a lot for being a member, so members get quite a lot of advantages.

Interviewer [31:26]: Is that something that’s quite common at other venues, or do you think that’s something more unique to the 606…?

Rubie: Well, I know Ronnie’s runs a membership system. I know they do. To be absolutely honest, I don’t think the Vortex do, I don’t think… I’m not sure, to be honest, but I don’t think they do. And I don’t think the Pizza does, but again I’m not sure. But I’m pretty sure that those venues don’t run the membership… kind of more… we quite an active membership in that sense. I know being a member of Ronnie’s gives you an advantage on pre-booking and that sort of stuff, but I don’t know if they get any additional advantages. I’m actually not sure, you’d have to… But I think the way we run it is fairly unique.

Interviewer [32:07]: Because that’s one of the things I sort of took away from what I read about it. It does have that more sort of a family, community… like you’re connected to it feel.

Rubie: Very much so, yes, very much so. We do talk about the 606 Club family. I’m not going to say who it was, actually, but there was… during the fortieth anniversary, one of the artists was in, cause yeah, I put on 40 bands in 30 days. Seemed like a good idea at the time. It was a lot of fun, actually, it went really, really well. Mostly. We had a couple of quiet ones, but mostly. Thirteen out of the fifteen went really, really well, so you can’t really argue with that. Musically, they all went really well, but attendance-wise. There was an artist who was in and we were chatting in the bar before she was due to play. I can’t even remember quite how it came about, but somebody said, “We’re family”, because she’d been singing here for so long. I think she said, “Why did you ask me?” I said, “Well, you’re family. You’ve been doing this gig for 20 years.” And she started to cry! It was really… she got really emotional, and I said, “Oh, don’t do that!” But it’s kind of interesting, you know? And I hadn’t really thought about it until… that was quite interesting, that. It hadn’t quite occurred to me just how powerful that was, actually. It’s just something we sort of do. But we certainly do have that sense of family in that way. I mean, I’m not being… it sounds a bit pretentious, and I would hasten to add that’s not something we set out to do. It’s not a conscious thing, like, Oh, let’s create a family. But it’s in the nature of what we do. We’re very relaxed, informal, we look after the musicians, that whole kind of thing and it does create that sort of vibe. And I’m very touched and grateful that the musicians work for not a hell of a lot of money, it has to be said. Although the money these days is much better than it used to be. But the musicians do have, they tell me they have this sense of family for the club and that’s really, really nice, and I appreciate that. That means a lot to us, it genuinely does. But it’s not something we set out to do. It’s just something that organically has developed out of the nature of how we do things here, which is… you know, I’m quite relaxed and quite laid back about things. We always feed them and look after them, you know, and if they come down on their nights off, which happens a lot, we kind of… all the staff give them hugs. You know what I mean? It’s people that are pleased to see them. We have a waitress who’s worked here for over 20 years, who can be very funny, very witty, quite caustic, and we were having this conversation one day and somebody was saying, “Oh, it’s just like a big family here.” And she looked up and she said, “Yeah, dysfunctional.” You know, we have our moments.

Interviewer [35:11]: It’s nice, because I think that’s one of the things that struck me as quite unique. You do kind of get that feeling of it just from even, like, reading the website. Just having a… you can get a sense of it and the values of the club.

Rubie: I think “values” is a good word to put on that. It’s not just about the money, which I think is true of all the venues, all the jazz venues. I certainly don’t think Ross at the Pizza and Simon at Ronnie’s do it just for the money. Those guys… but certainly we’re in a position where we can be more laid back. One of the issues about those two venues is they’re in the west end. You know, Ronnie’s comes in for a lot of stick, I know, for some of the music they put on and because it’s kind of quite commercial and all that stuff, you know. Which really annoys me, actually, because I know their rent alone is over three hundred thousand pound a year and their rates have got to get covered. It’s got to cost them half a million pounds before they even open the doors, and that’s to do with the way society’s structured and the way things have been allowed to develop, and to hold them responsible for that I think is really unfair and really unreasonable. I think Simon does a fantastic job, actually, of keeping jazz in there at all, because let’s face it, it’s a minority music. It’s always been a minority music. To find that kind of money… people aren’t going to come and see some unknown jazz quartet, students who’ve just come out of university, no matter how good they are. This is about quality, this is about survival. For us, because we’re tucked away a little bit, and it’s not cheap here but it’s not in that kind of… so we can afford to be a little bit more laid back, and I think it’s very important to make that point and for people to understand that. It’s something that we can do that some of these other venues simply can’t because they don’t have that kind of wiggle room.

Interviewer [37:14]: I mean, have you faced any particular barriers over the years that have challenged either the club or even in your own music, because as you were saying jazz in particular sometimes isn’t the most mainstream, certain areas of jazz, or even other areas of live music. Have there been any barriers? Obviously you’ve overcome them, if so.

Rubie: The main barrier is financial, to be honest. It’s just trying to make it work. I mean, it is tough and it has been tough and I would be lying if I said it’s not stressful on a day-to-day basis. It’s a little better now. But I remember years ago, it was early 2000s, and a friend of mine did an analysis… he worked for the city, and he worked out that… he analysed all of the various nights by genre and did all this for me and worked that whenever we put jazz on, we lost money. It sounds like a joke… Ronnie’s got a joke, he’s a good friend, Ronnie, and there he is. [showing a photo?] I never go anywhere without Ronnie, but Ronnie used to have this joke about how do you make a million pounds running a jazz club. Start with two million. And there is some degree of truth in that. You have to be very, very careful. There was a time, before Simon took over running Ronnie’s, when we were the only profit-making jazz club in the country. And even then we weren’t making huge profits, but at least we weren’t losing money. But it’s a constant struggle. I remember years ago, I went off, because… you know, I trained as a dentist and a musician, I didn’t know businesses, so in the early 2000s I went off and went on this course, which turned out to be really good. It came up through the restaurateurs’ association. It was a hundred quid and I thought, “Well…” It turned out to be this fantastic course and it was a trial, and it turned out to be two thousand pounds’ worth of advice for a hundred quid, because they were trialling it. It was great. I learned loads of things about margins and technical stuff about running businesses. Hugely helpful. We were assigned an advisor, somebody who was part of the thing. You had this individual who would come and sit and give you advice. And I got this guy, sidled up to me on the first afternoon I went to this seminar, and he said, “Oh, can I be your advisor?” I said, “Any particular reason?” He said, “Well, I’m a jazz guitar player.” Oh, fantastic! So that was great. So he got it. He got what we did. The point of this story is that the guy who ran this whole course was a very kind of business-orientated… “This is how you do it. This is how you make it work.” Because we were the only jazz club, and they thought we were completely unique. It was really like putting a peacock in the middle of sparrows. Oh, a jazz club! Everybody else was hoteliers and restaurateurs. They were just there to make money. So we had this whole thing. Towards the end of this course, I went up with my advisor, Dave, and I said, “Look, I’ve got this analysis. And one of the issues we’ve got is whenever we put on jazz, we lose money.” And the guy just looked at me and said, “Well… don’t put on jazz.” And I did what you just did – I burst out laughing. And he got very disturbed and very upset and said, “I’m not joking. This isn’t funny. This is a business. If you’re doing something that loses money, you have to stop doing it.” I said, “I think you’ve sort of missed the point of what we do.” And he said, “Well, just don’t do it.” He got very, very irritated with me, because I just burst out laughing. And so that is one of the things you’re up against, is how do you make promoting jazz work? Which goes back to what I was saying a little bit earlier on about Simon up at Ronnie’s, and how do you do that? Well, you have to have a mixed music policy. That’s the only way you can really make it work. I mean, the Pizza’s a little different because they don’t really pay rent for that room. It’s a part of that Pizza group, which is great, although Ross definitely… I know for a fact he has targets that he’s required to meet. It’s not quite as… dramatic, I suppose, is the word I was going to use, but maybe being slightly over-dramatic, but it’s not quite so prescriptive as Simon and I. We don’t hit our targets, we can’t pay our rent. That becomes much more problematic. So, you know, those are the barriers. How do you make it all work? How do you get over that issue of putting on jazz that doesn’t make money? That takes a great deal of thought and careful programming to make sure we keep our core values, but at the same time can survive. I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t been financially difficult. There was a point where I owed, as did Ronnie and Pete, a lot of money. It took me a lot of years to pay them back. So those things happen and you have to find a way through it, but as far as just the actual programming is concerned, no, there is no real barrier to putting on the music. I mean, I’m a big believer in the Duke Ellington thing that there are two types of music. I’m sure you’ve heard this before. There’s two types of music: good music and bad music. So if I hear something I think is good, genre will not necessarily influence me. If I hear a singer-songwriter – we put on somebody called Anoushka Lucas, who’s not jazz at all, she’s a great singer-songwriter. She’s fantastic. So I enjoy that gig. It’s fun. And we had the gospel guys in, and that’s fun. My band’s a Brazilian band, although there’s a lot of improvising. It’s basically a jazz Brazilian band. I don’t concern myself so much by genres in that respect. At the same time, I am conscious of the fact that our core programme is jazz and we put on a lot of jazz, even though we put on a lot of other music because we’re operating seven days a week and Sunday lunchtimes, that gives us the leeway to put on quite a lot of jazz and still put on the groove and the soul and all the other stuff. That helps us generate an income to keep us going. It’s a balancing act. Sometimes I get a bit despondent and think, “That’s it. I’m not putting on anymore jazz.”

Interviewer [43:55]: Are there particular sort of jazz that you focus on in the club? Have you got particular areas of jazz that you’re particularly interested in, or that your audience is particularly interested in?

Rubie: Well, no, because… the answer to that is yes and no, which doesn’t really help you very much, does it? So the answer to the question about do I put on a particular type of jazz because of the audience – no. Because that goes back to what we were talking about earlier on, which is that if I put on something which is very mainstream like Georgina Jackson, then Georgie will reach out to her audience and we will reach out to that mainstream audience, and then I’ve got Ivor Neeham and George Crowley which is at the other end of the spectrum, and will reach out… last time Ivor did a gig it was really busy. It was great. And we’ll do that as well. I’m not worried about that, that whole thing. You try and do that thing of going to people who you think are going to be interesting in a particular genre, and you rely to some degree also on the artist to help with that, so that’s not an issue. We don’t go out in the sense of the Vortex for a number of reasons. First of all, we do struggle to get people in for gigs which are experimental, I suppose is how you’d like to put it. There are various other ways of describing the music, but I’ll stick with experimental. That more sort of left-of-centre music, as I would describe it. We struggle with that here, and the Vortex cover that, which is good. So I don’t really do that for several reasons. First of all, it doesn’t really sell very well here, and secondly because those guys are already doing that, so that’s fine. I wouldn’t really want to be competing with them anyway. There are certain artists that work up regularly at the Vortex. Um… the name escapes me… who’s great, actually, I really like his band… it’s gone now. Who’s kind of the doyen of that kind of more experimental side of things, which I wouldn’t put on here because I know that’s just not going to work. So there is kind of a point where I stop, but within that… and we don’t really put on rock music or pop music. It is delineated, but within that delineation it’s pretty broad. I don’t go too far to the left or too far to the right – do you know what I mean? Within that delineation. If that answers your question?

Interviewer [46:39]: And actually linking into that, then, would you say things like rock and roll and that sort of music has had an impact on jazz and the audiences over the years and the venues you’ve been in? You’ve obviously worked in the venue for quite a long time, so when you saw rock and roll becoming a big thing, would you say that’s had any impact on jazz?

Rubie: Well, by rock and roll – I wasn’t around when… I mean, I was still at school when rock and roll was about as a kid, so I’m not that old. But you mean by rock music and funk… that’s quite an interesting philosophical musical question, actually, more than running a club. But to look at that, I think that’s kind of cross-pollinated in many ways. I think that certainly when that kind of… the rock thing really started to kick in, there was some crossover but not a lot until about the 90s. What I was conscious of when I came up… you know, I came up through the 70s, really… and when I first came up, the jazz musicians played jazz and the rock musicians played rock and the folk musicians played folk. There wasn’t an awful lot of crossover. In the old club when I first was there in 76, you’d get the odd guy come down, but mostly they didn’t really like jazz. Then somehow there was a new generation that came through. I think of people like Gary Husband, who was in the other night and who’s obviously in his 50s now. I first met Gary when he was 20, and Gary came up and that would have been in the late 70s, early 80s, and he was one of the first guys I’d come across of that generation, who were actually quite happy playing with a big band, you know, a swing big band, and then going off and doing a gig with Level 42. It wasn’t an issue for him. He was just playing drums. You started to see that more and more. You started to see guys going on tour with Simply Red and then they’d come and have a jazz quartet. And now, I mean obviously 30 years on or whatever it is, and then is completely common and that goes back to the two types of music thing. So, you know, Frank Walden, who was in last night playing saxophone, he’s a fantastic saxophone player who was working with Simon Mulligan last night. His day job is with Tom Jones. I mean, we were chatting about that, and that’s a great band and he’s a fantastic jazz saxophone player. And I was saying, “How are you finding the gig?” Cause I’m a big admirer of Tom Jones. I think he’s great. And I said, you know, “Are you still doing things like Delilah?” He said, “We do it, but it’s slightly different.” But he said, “I love doing it. It’s fun.” And so that’s… these days there are no barriers at all. It’s like just a big pot. Jeremy of the Stacey Brothers – classic, I don’t know if you know those guys. Jeremy Stacey and Paul Stacey, they’re twins. [talks to an interrupting staffer] So they’re twins and again they’re in their early 50s now, but they’ve been around… they’re contemporaries of Gary’s. Those guys… Jeremy was Sheryl Crow’s drummer for about 12 years and he’s just done two years’ touring with the High Flying Birds because they’re all great mates, you know? And Paul would play lead guitar with the Black Crowes, a big rock band, and he’s produced the last two of Noel Gallagher’s albums. They’re in all the stuff. But Paul will come down and do a standard jazz gig if he feels like, or he’ll come down with his rock band and play unbelievably loud rock music, which I wish he wouldn’t do. Well, no, the rock music’s great, it’s just the unbelievably loud bit. And he can do both. He does Ronnie’s and he’s got his rock thing. People do that now. Jeremy is now one of the two drummers with King Crimson. He did a gig here recently with a great American keyboard player from New York who’s over at the moment, and they just did this kind of contemporary New York jazz thing. That’s common now, so the whole thing cross-pollinates. So there really doesn’t… to my mind, there really isn’t now… obviously there’s a rock scene and obviously there’s a jazz scene, but everybody moves in between the scenes all the time.

Interviewer [51:28]: Do you see the same kind of audience members coming… because obviously you do different sorts of music in the week? Do you see the same people coming to jazz things who would also come to other genres of music as well?

Rubie: Yeah. Absolutely. Definitely. I mean, there are certain people who will only come to the Tommy Blaize gig, you know? And there are certain people who will only come to the Claire Martin gig or the Ian Shaw gig but there’s a fairly solid middle ground of people who will just come and listen to music, and they’re not that arsed about genre, particularly the younger generation. I would say particularly the under-30s. Because the way people access music now… and this is very interesting and I say all this because we talk about this a lot and we look at this, it’s not… I’m not pulling this out of the air, we talk about it and look at and research a lot because it’s about survival, how you keep up to speed with what’s going on. Because the way people access music these days is online, and you’re going into things like YouTube and Spotify and all these various online media that don’t pay the musicians properly, but we won’t go into that at this point, because people will just listen and hear things they like. And especially there’s a younger audience who don’t really know the difference between jazz and rock or jazz and soul, which can be a touch irritating at times, I have to say. Just sometimes you think, well, okay, you need to a have a little bit of knowledge, but on the other hand it’s very good for the music because it means they’ll come along and hear Wayne Hernandez who’s a great soul/groove singer, or they’ll turn up on a Monday night because they want to see something and they’ll see the Rhythm Kings or something, the guys playing 1930s and 40s swing guitar. And they love it. It’s music. And I think it’s great. I love that.

Interviewer [53:45]: So in that sense would you say that people that you know over the years have been always interested in your area of music, or have you often gone against the grain of your friends and your family? I know you mentioned at the beginning your parents listened to jazz, but have you always had a group around you that have also always been quite interested in your areas of music and jazz in particular?

Rubie: No is the answer to that. [laughs] No, I don’t pick my friends based on what music they like. On the other hand, most people that I know are friends obviously because I’m here so much. Most of my group of friends, not exclusively but the majority of them, are either people in the music business or people from the club who have been here because they’re interested in what we put on here. So in that respect, I suppose the answer to that is yes, but my… well, ex-partner now Sarah, we’re still very close but she’s not interested in music at all, so the answer to that is not particularly. She’s a brilliant photographer. She’s interested in the arts and the concept of creativity, and I would certainly say that the majority of my friends are involved in that aspect. You know, one of my closest mates is a great actor, so I think it would be fair to characterise… actually, having said that, one of my closest mates is actually a guy from the city. But he’s very, very interested in the music. He loves jazz. So I think it’s people who are either involved with or very interested in the arts. I think it’s probably fair to say that. I don’t know very many people who are just sort of businessmen just interested in making money, because I don’t really relate to that. So in that respect, it’s true, but do they like my type of music? No, not particularly. That’s not a prerequisite. But being interested in the arts probably is.

Interviewer [55:44]: And I mean, when you were first starting out with your interest in jazz and people around you then that may have also gone with to those sort of gigs and stuff like that, did you find that it had an impact on ideas about race and movement of people – stuff like that? Because obviously jazz is a very diverse…

Rubie: Well, now you’re drifting into a very interesting area. Which again is something that I’m conscious of and that we think about here. There’s certain things – ethnicity and gender as well is another issue that I’m conscious of, and that’s a very, very careful line that one has to walk with that. I remember… I’ve quite clear views about that, I suppose, in the sense of… I think one has to be careful about how you deal with those issues of race and gender. For instance, we have an agency here. These days it’s not that big because the whole agency thing, the music thing has changed dramatically. But occasionally you’ll get people phone up, normally advertising, and say, “We want a band that’s all black.” We’ll say, “Why?” You know, “If you can give us a really good reason for this.” Somebody phoned up and said they wanted an Afro-Caribbean pianist. We said, “Hang on – why?” And actually it turned out they were doing something based on Casablanca the movie, so they wanted somebody to play the piano. Fair enough – they wanted to reproduce that. But if it’s just because somebody thinks that’s exotic, then the answer to that is no, I’m sorry, we’re really not interested in that. That’s not something we’re going to do. People give us a really good reason for it, then of course, we’re happy to help. There was a TV programme on about one of the first black American musicians who worked in London in the 1930s. I don’t know if you came across that?

Interviewer [57:50]: I don’t think I’ve seen that.

Rubie: Yeah, it was one of the first black bands to work in the 30s here, which is very interesting it was great. And we were approached to help with that and, sure, of course, because obviously they were trying to reproduce what happened. It’s fine. So we’re careful about that. But I’m kind of… my motivation with that is quite a few years ago now, I suppose, over 10 years there was a white paper that was produced about equality in the arts and part of it was about equality in jazz, and I was asked to comment on it. It was sent to me and I thought, “Well, I need to speak to some people who this affects”, because it touched a lot on race and gender. SO I talked to several musicians, and I remember in particular talking to a very good mate of mine, Winston Clifford. I don’t know if you know Winston? Great drummer, fantastic drummer. And Michele Drees – Funnily enough, both drummers. And they both said, completely independently and at different times, they both said exactly the same thing, which was that they felt that encouraging people… I mean, this was 10, 12 years ago, so things have moved on since then, but it’s a good cornerstone to take from that, which was that encouraging youngsters who obviously come from plural backgrounds, and there was a big issue… there were these areas with Afro-Caribbean kids who were just kind of forgotten about. These days it’s a bit… people have focused more… at that point it was an issue, and obviously encouraging and focusing on those is a good thing for children to help them do that. The same with gender, which I still think now is a problem for girls. You know, she wants to play the trombone or the trumpet. I still think there’s an issue. “Oh, you should be playing the violin.” You think? Or you want to play the drums? There are still schools even now that will do that, and you think… I saw a great thing with Pierre Trudeau, actually, who was the Canadian prime minister, who was actually asked… I thought it was great, actually, I don’t know if you’ve seen this. He was asked a question, because his cabinet is gender equal. It’s 50 percent men, 50 percent women. And somebody asked him why did he do that, and he just looked at them and said, “It’s 2015.” That was it – that was his reply. I thought it was great. So all those issues are important for kids, but once you become involved in the professional environment, then you start getting to these… both of them also said the same thing to me, which is that they resent that. They resent the fact that somehow they’re not as good, so they need help and somebody needs to be coming along to help them along, because these poor people, they’re not really quite as good as other people… And that’s very interesting and I’m very conscious of that. I book people here based on how good they are, and I don’t really think about gender or race particularly. It’s not something I do because that’s arrogant, to be honest. I think there’s a great deal of middle-class white arrogance involved in this kind of… that’s my take on this. This kind of thinking you need to support these poor people because they can’t support themselves. Like, you think? I don’t think Winston or Michele have a big problem finding work, you know? They’re good. That’s… that’s all you need. So within those terms, that’s how I look at what we do. Having said that, obviously if there are two people who I think are equally as good, then maybe I’ll think, “Oh, okay, let’s give X a gig”, because to be honest from a race point of view, that’s really not relevant these days. Everybody plays together… I should qualify that, really, I don’t think about people’s race at all. I mean, it doesn’t even occur to me. In fact, somebody was asking me about… they were looking for a bass player for something very specific, and I completely forgot about a mate of mine who’s actually Afro-Caribbean. I just never even thought about it. It’s not in my purview. Gender is a little different. Sometimes I will actually book somebody on the basis of gender if I think they’re actually good enough, just because I think they’re not going to get asked to do this gig, maybe because there is still this issue about gender, so I will sometimes do that occasionally but only if I think they’re good enough, not because I’m trying to put somebody in who’s not good enough. If we’re talking about people who are equally as good then, yeah, let’s put so-and-so in because they’re new on the scene and could do with a bit of help. But not help as far as musician terms, just people knowing who they are and hearing about them.

Interviewer [1:02:55]: Would you say that you see more female jazz musicians now than you did at the start of your career?

Rubie: Oh, loads. Loads and loads. Loads more. Absolutely. For sure. I think there are some fantastic saxophone players around now. Trish Clowes works here regularly and Tori Freestone. I mean, there’s a whole team of them. I mentioned Mich and Sophie Alloway. Great bass players now. There’s Flo More who’s just coming through, fantastic, Daisy’s just coming up through the academy now, and Julie Walkington who I think is a great player. So yeah, there are loads more than probably 15, 20 years ago. Twenty years ago, I might have struggled a bit to make a list of people that I think are up to the standard we look for. Nowadays I can reel off a list and I’ve probably missed off a ton of people. And that’s to do with the colleges. That’s to do with the colleges and the fact that the courses are now throwing out these musicians who are really good. Really good.

Interviewer [1:04:14]: And just… um… I’m not sure this is the place or not, but just out of interest, really, does your musical interest at any time – have they ever coincided with any political view that you’ve held as well? Because for some people, jazz has actually been quite a political thing at times.

Rubie: [laughs] I have a problem with that. I mean, I have quite strong political views. I’m a very political person. I have a number of friends involved in politics, and I’m very interested in politics. However, I don’t think that has anything to do with music and I have a problem with people who do that because, I mean, the music is the music. You shouldn’t be including or excluding people based on an intellectual concept. You know, music isn’t about the intellect. Music is about emotion and it should be visceral to a degree. Obviously different people have different ideas about how visceral it should be. Evan Parker – who I was trying to think of – and Evan who I love, I think he’s a great player and fantastic guy – I’m not likely to put Evan on here because that just doesn’t work for us, and Evan’s view of the music is more visceral I suppose. Mine is more… well, it’s a mix of intellect and emotion, so you work with more of a structure. I’m not saying I’m right and he’s wrong, it’s just we have different ways of how it works. But to start actually allying it to intellectual concepts – I think that’s problematic. That’s one of the problems I have with modern art, actually – the fact that you have to know what it means before you can understand it. Well, I’m sorry, that’s not art. That’s an intellectual exercise. That’s a different thing. So in that respect, yeah, I don’t... when I play, I play, and that’s something very different. What I have to say after I do that… that’s fine. If you want to use music as a platform, okay, I’m not that keen on that particularly as a concept. There is this body of thought that art, of which music is part, should be intellectualised and in some ways I think it’s been hijacked by people who – this is my personal opinion, it’s not right or wrong – but I feel it’s been hijacked by people who aren’t particularly creative, and who aren’t particularly artistic, but who like the idea of being an artist. It’s an intellectual concept for them. It’s that whole thing going back to the beginning, I was saying about only do it if you have to. These are people who are doing it because intellectually they want to be an artist, but they don’t have… well, the talent or the dedication in many ways, I think, to actually do it properly, so they introduce an intellectual aspect to it that allows them to call themselves an artist without really coming to grips with it. And particularly coming to grips with the emotion. And when I say “talented”, I’m not saying they’re not talented people, but to me being an artist is about the combination of emotion and intellect. It’s this kind of middle-class concept of being intellectual but kind of denying the emotional aspect of the music, so everything is about the intellect and very little is about the emotion. So I have an issue with that, yeah. It doesn’t make them bad people. It’s just not art that I’m especially interested in. Does that make sense?

Interviewer [1:08:00]: Yeah, perfect sense. That was really interesting, actually. Um… so just then moving into the final set of questions, really, which is all linked to the long-term contributions as you see them, really. So you’ve done various things throughout the years, and it doesn’t have to the club – anything, really. What would you say are your particular achievements you’re proud of in terms of jazz or music?

Rubie: Living this long. Just surviving. Well, obviously the club – we’ve managed to keep this going for 40 years. And I say “we” very carefully because you know I haven’t done this on my own. I have a here, and over the years I’ve had various people on the team who’ve been very dedicated and worked for not a lot of money, again, to try and keep it all running… and, well, A) keep my vision on line and B) keep me in line, you know. They say, “You can’t do that”. Okay, fair enough. They worked very hard to make it all work. There’s no question about that. The guys in the kitchen, on the floor... James has been here for over 10 years now, he’s a senior manager down there, and all the people in the office – Will and Sam and before that Ros and Janet. All those people that have worked here over the years. It’s very much a joint effort. I get a bit concerned when people say, “You’ve managed to keep it going for 40 years”, you know? I mean, actually, I haven’t managed to keep it going for 40 years – we’ve managed to keep it going for 40 years. It’s pretty important for people to understand that. That I can’t do this on my own by any matter or means. I need a whole team of people working. My job is to try and get it as focused as I can. Doesn’t always work, but you know, we do our best to try and get everybody focused and moving in the same direction. So that’s important. So yeah, I’m not a prideful person to be honest. I have to be honest, this isn’t the first time I’ve been asked that question, especially recently with the 40th. And I’m not a particularly prideful person. There’s not a whole lot of things… Yeah, it’s nice to have been able to keep this going for 40 years. I suppose I get some satisfaction from that. “Pride” is a word that I’m wary of. I suppose my playing is better now. I keep practising, I keep working on my playing, so that’s something that I think always needs improvement constantly. Constantly trying to do better with that. I think just surviving. Just still being here, you know, is something that I’m pleased with. But pride… I don’t know. I don’t know, really.

Interviewer [1:10:49]: Yeah, so… in terms then of jazz just generally, would you say it’s had any particular, to you mind, impact on British culture or London in particular, the venues here, obviously you have quite a knowledge of them. Would you say they’ve had any particular influence on local cultural…?

Rubie: [laughs] I’ve been asked that question before as well, and the problem with that is because I’m trained as a scientist back in the day, I would have to say to you, well, the problem is that I can’t answer that question unless we have a parallel universe where there are no jazz clubs. Because it’s a very difficult question to know what the answer to that is, unless you can compare it to something that isn’t. So I don’t know, is the answer to that. What I would like to think it has, and I think what’s interesting certainly in the London context is the number of really, really fine musicians there are around these days. I say this a lot now, I’m on record as saying this quite a bit, that outside of New York, which is basically the mecca of modern jazz… outside of New York, London probably has the strongest strength and depth of any major city in the world, which is not to say there aren’t great players around, because there are. We have this exchange system that we do, sending people out to Hungary, well, to Europe. Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, France, Italy – we send musicians out there and we take musicians here on an exchange programme. We’ve been doing that for five years now. And so I’m aware of the fact that what’s going on around Europe to some degree, and there’s some very, very good players out there, but until you’ve got strength and depth… I could probably think of... I could reel off six world-class piano players, people who can go anywhere in the world and just work. Great players who work out of London. And that’s unusual. There are normally two or three great players, but you know, six or seven – that’s really unusual outside of New York. And so I think that has had quite an impact, and that’s all to do with the colleges and the fact that, you know, when I studied at Trinity before the first ice age, back in those dark old days, you know, there was colour television… but back in those dark old days, when I was at Trinity and the guy I studied with, who’s fantastic, William Bartlett –, my flute teacher who played with the BBC Concert Orchestra – and he loved the fact that I was a jazzer, he loved it, that was great, but that was really unusual back in those days. We’re talking whenever that was, 70s. Back in those days, if you were caught playing jazz on the premises of the Royal College of Music, you could be sent down for a month. For playing jazz on the premises. And the guys who used to practise, the jazz quartet that used to practise in the basement, they had to put sentries out in case they got caught.

Interviewer [1:13:53]: Was there a reason for that?

Rubie: Yeah, they hated jazz. The Royal… jazz was considered to be the devil’s music. Absolutely. And that was in the 1970s. And now, of course, the Royal College run their own jazz course. , actually, who runs the Saturday jazz course just emailed me to say, because they did a concert here last year, can they come and do another concert this year? “Can we do a concert next June? Everybody loves it and the principal turns up”, you know what I mean? In that period things have changed a lot. Massively, massively, because all of the colleges now have jazz courses of some description or another. The Royal College don’t do a full-time one, but the Academy do, the Guildhall do, Trinity do, Middlesex… they all have these full-time jazz courses, which means they’re churning out these really talented young players. And that without question has had an impact on the London jazz scene for sure. And actually I’m being a bit unfair as well, because the BRIT School is turning out some very good… and BIMM turns out some very good… there’s a quite a lot of these guys. There’s really good pop guys as well doing the pop tours. The standard of music education around jazz and pop and rock music is so much higher now than it used to be, and so the strength and depth of music in and around London is really high and it’s really deep, and there’s no question that has influenced the standard of music that comes in and goes out.

Interviewer [1:15:32]: That’s great, thank you. Um… and just think then, because obviously again you’re in your anniversary year, what is the future of your activities in terms of the club but also in terms of your own music as well?

Rubie: Well, survival is obviously the future. Sorry, I’m just going to have to have a… sorry, I didn’t offer you anything to drink – I apologise. I don’t drink tea or coffee so I’m not very good with that.

Interviewer: No, that’s fine.

Rubie: Survival is always top of the agenda. Our main aim is to be here this time next year. It’s that thing, you know, whenever they ask the soccer players and all those people who play team sports, football… they always say, and I watch rugby… “Were you thinking about this match?” “No, we’re just thinking about our next match.” That’s what they always say, which of course probably not true, but that’s what they always say. “We’re just thinking about the next match.” And in some ways that’s true here. We’re thinking about what we’re going to do next month and six months’ time. I mean, we have plans obviously. We have the new website. But in many ways what we’re doing is reactive, which is how it needs to be. We are proactive to some degree. We were the first people… I was the first people to have a website, the first jazz club ever to have a website on the internet. And we were the first people to put music on there, then the first people to put YouTube clips up. We’re very tech- and internet-conscious here, and when we get the new website up, we’ll be doing things like streaming and all this kind of stuff, which isn’t new but we want to do it in a different way to what people have been doing previously. So we have concepts and ideas about what we want to do, moving it forward, but in many ways it is… well it’s a mixture of being reactive to what’s going on around us and being proactive in the sense of trying to get in front of what other people are doing based on what we see is happening. So that’s kind of how I see it going forward. I mean, as far as the programming and the club itself is concerned, I see that as something which is… well, we’re always trying to improve. We’re always trying to improve the programming. But I’m not looking to make any major changes to what we do in terms of the food offering or the… you know, we want to make it better, that’s for sure. You always want to make it better, and it is getting better. There’s no question that the food is better than it was five years ago. Good – really good. And the programming – we’re always looking to try and keep on top of that, make sure you get the best people in you can, but there’s nothing new with that. That’s just an ongoing process of trying to be better all the time. As far as doing different things are concerned, that’s probably focused more around the electronic side of it, the online aspects, how you reach out to people and trying to keep in front of the wave, basically. Does that make sense?

Interviewer [1:18:45]: Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Rubie: God, that’s unusual! Most of my team would say that’s a rare event.