One of Covent Garden’s most well-known live music venues, the Rock Garden (Not to be confused with the Rock Garden in Middlesbrough) opened in 1976 (coincidentally the same year as the founding of both the Soft Boys and the unrelated Middlesbrough Rock Garden) and hosted over 30,000 acts over the next 30 years before closing in 2008.

This basement venue hosted a wide variety of New Wave and indie bands including U2, the Smiths (both of whom played their first London gigs here), XTC, The Police, Adam and The Ants, and Suede. A number of unsigned regional bands also performed here, hoping to attract the interest of record companies.

The Rock Garden had a busy diary, with gigs on most nights; however, by the 1990s it had become a nightclub called The Gardening Club. The building is today home to an Apple Store (opened in 2010). Wikipedia entry