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McLagan’s memories remain strong: ‘The audience was full of musicians. Loads of them. You’d see them all in the front row – “Do you see that?”, “Yeah”, “Well I can do that too”. We were all kids, but when you saw the Stones it was “Fuck me, it’s possible…” ’

McLagan performed at the hotel after he helped the Stones cart their equipment across the bridge and simultaneously secured a support slot for his band, the Muleskinners. ‘The dressing room was a tiny little space above the stage. After being in the audience it was a thrill getting in there, but really, it was horrible. The piano on the side of the stage was all beaten up – people poured drinks into it and there were bits of broken glass among the hammers. It was a very stinky place, but Arther [Chisnall] kept it going; he had a love for the music. I wish I could go back there – I wish I could see Memphis Slim again. Although Jeff Beck was too fucking loud!’ Feature continues

The link to the mainland (image credit: Chris Faiers)

The hotel’s condition wasn’t helped by the hundreds of weekend revellers – up to 500 – and in 1967 it closed after attention from the police. After briefly reopening as the prog-happy Colonel Barefoot’s Rock Garden (Sabbath and Floyd both played), the squatters moved in – ‘200 dossers, hippies, runaway schoolkids, drug dealers, petty thieves, heroin addicts, artists, poets, bikers, American hippy tourists, au pair girls and Zen philosophers from all over the world’, who consumed vast quantities of LSD and opened a sex room for orgies, according to Chris Faiers’ memoir ‘Eel Pie Dharma’.

At the same time, Baylis moved on to the island, first sharing a flat and then building his own home – ‘I had to put the power points halfway up the wall because it kept flooding’. The river can still be a problem. Harrison explains: ‘the buildings here are raised because this is flood plain, and if you build on flood plain you stop the flow and put pressure on places like Chelsea that are very low.’ Harrison faced a raft of such problems when building his house – it’s a conservation area, so there are plenty of requirements to meet, and neighbours to keep happy.‘I’ve tried to keep the character of riverside buildings, but there was lots of going back and forth to get approval and every detail was argued about.’ Which is ironic given that when the hotel burnt down in 1971, an ugly, ‘lavatorial’, modern block called Aquarius went up in its place. ‘They were building the flats at the same time I was building my house,’ says Baylis. ‘And I was able to nick half their bricks. They call my house Number 19 Aquarius.’ No trace of the old hotel now remains.

An abandoned Barbie belonging to Rosa Diaz

Harrison gives us a tour of the island. At one end, down a gated track, a group of old houses look like they should be on the Isle of Wight. ‘That’s where the old-timers live. These little seaside huts used to be like holiday homes – according to Baylis, people kept their mistresses there.’ A path runs east-west along the main body of the island, with unusual-looking houses on either side (there are a number of architects on the island). One is maroon, with a front garden festooned with naked Barbies, a decorative flourish from resident costume designer Rosa Diaz who liberated the dolls from Hasbro years ago. She says ‘People have started to leave dolls on my doorstep. My garden has become an orphanage for lost dolls. It’s very Eel Pie.’ At the end of the path is the metal door of the island’s last working boatyard and on the other side lies ‘the interesting bit of the island’ – a warren of studios for artists and sculptors, colourful and ramshackle, with bric-à-brac and old tools strewn all over the floor. It’s here that Harrison is building a new block of studios next to his own swanky home, which boasts a rehearsal space in the ground floor for the Mystery Jets (Harrison, his son Blaine and two of Blaine’s friends).

Henry Harrison, Eel Pie resident and Mystery Jets band member

For a while, until the complaints turned official, prog-punk popsters the Mystery Jets played concerts here, once again pulling crowds of 200 over the bridge to sweat in the tiny rehearsal room, rekindling the island’s musical spirit. Harrison has even entertained the idea of putting on an annual Eel Pie Festival with other up-and-coming bands from the Twickenham area such as Larrikin Love, Jamie T, Airhammer and Good Shoes (none of whom are actual Eel Pie residents) – a scene dubbed, not in total seriousness, Thamesbeat. But that was nixed by locals, who seem to like the idea of having a band on the island, just so long as they don’t have to actually hear them. Mystery Jets were still happy enough to put a picture of the old hotel in pride of place on their album sleeve, and their music is inescapably influenced by their surroundings. They sample drills from the boatyard and will attempt to make a usable sound out of just about anything they find lying about on the island.

But in the absence of any further concerts, the island’s entertainment is now provided by regular film screenings for residents that take place during the summer in a small barbecue area that’s circled by abandoned boats and adjoins a nature area, with a trampoline for the kids. It’s idyllic. As McLagan says, with a sigh, ‘The island always was very special.

Baylis is still smitten. ‘The island grabbed me and I’m stranded here. I’ve got a great view of Ham Common, an indoor pool, a hot-tub, a boat outside, a couple of ladyfriends who look after me, if you follow, and an E-Type Jag on the mainland so I can still play Jack the Lad. I’m as decadent as I’ve ever been.’ Baylis, ‘I remember crossing the bridge in ’63 and hearing the Rolling Stones playing and I thought: Fuck this – and turned round and went home. I didn’t know they’d turn out to be so good – I just thought it was a ghastly sound.’