In 1983 Everything But The Girl – a student indie duo who were flirting with bossa nova – played a gig at Ronnie Scott’s. This was the brief moment of the New Jazz Scene. The Times came to review us and wrote, “the avant-garde rock kids have had a novel idea: let’s turn Ronnie Scott’s into a jazz club”. It was cheeky of us youngsters, acting like we’d invented cool.
Ronnie was still alive then, but I don’t remember whether he was at the club that night to see what we were doing. A large part of what we were doing was, of course, paying our respects.
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