Roger Mairlot remembers the date 22nd March, 2014 well: It was the day he broke his personal record of going to the most gigs in one night. “Some people climb mountains, others run marathons; well, I do extreme gigging,” says the 74-year-old, who’s been gigging nearly every single day since he retired in 2008.This particular record-breaking day saw him go to six gigs at six different venues all over London. He started in Shoreditch, where folk singer Joanna Serrat was playing at Rough Trade East, in the late afternoon. As usual, Mairlot secured a spot near the stage for a clear view of the gritty details, “where musicians pick their nose, scratch their head or break a string,” he says. Next up was some blaring garage-rock from Abjects and unrestrained screams of grunge band Bad Grammar, at the nearby Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen. Mairlot cuts a distinctive figure, still and quiet, standing out from the crowd of moshers and headbangers. “Music is a serious game,” he says, one which calls for his undivided attention.
Advertisement
By 9PM he’s on a bus to Hackney Central – for sets by Spotlight Kid, then The Enters – and at 11PM, he reaches his last stop, north London’s The Macbeth. After catching two songs by Dignan Porch and Sauna Youth, he reluctantly makes his journey back to Richmond. Nearly two hours and a severely delayed bus later, Mairlot crashes in bed – gone 1AM – to recharge before another round of back-to-back gigs tomorrow. And breathe.
74 years young: Roger Mairlot.
If you ask me, most 20-somethings would call it a night halfway through this schedule, let alone someone in their 70s. But this is a typical day in the life of this music fanatic. Retirement may be about winding down for most people – gardening, perhaps – but for Mairlot it’s about living out his dream of going “mad” on live music. Every morning, after breakfast, he devotes hours to planning his music-filled evenings, writing exact timings on a piece of paper. At the end of the night, he stores them carefully with the piles of other schedules he has going back to the early 00s. Over the years, Mairlot has become somewhat of an icon of London’s indie and rock live music scene – so much so, he’s actually bringing out an autobiography. It was Debbie Smith, of the electro-pop band Blindness, who gave him his nickname after recognising him at one of their shows in 2014. “You’re a regular gig slut!” she said, and the name stuck.
Always near the front like a die-hard fan.
Typically dressed in an ornate military jacket with a dozen badges and grungy shoes, the retired car mechanic is hard to miss. “We couldn’t help but notice him at all our gigs, not to mention the ones we attended too,” says Andrew Flood, drummer in the pop-punk band When Young.
Advertisement
Alice Go, vocalist in punk band Dream Wife, first noticed Mairlot standing in front of a raging mosh pit at one of their gigs. “Even though he seemed like the oldest person in the crowd, there was nothing fragile about him,” she says. “He was in his element.” Mairlot quickly became a “staple” of Dream Wife’s early shows. “Before each gig, the Wives and I would always acknowledge, ‘The Gig Slut is here!’” continues Go. “We were just as excited about seeing him as he was us.”
Truly never too late to dive into your passions.
It’s not all without effort, though. Sitting in a grubby corner of the Brixton Windmill, a landmark of South London’s live music scene, Mairlot tells me about the challenges of finding gigs and the arduous journey there and back. On average, the commute from Richmond to a venue in east London is an hour and 30 minutes. The transport strikes over Christmas extended it to over three hours on some days, but even that didn’t deter him. You may be wondering, um, why can he be arsed? Well, it’s a little bit of reliving his youth and simply making up for lost time. Growing up in Richmond during the swinging sixties, Mairlot was part of a youth culture that propagated a hedonistic lifestyle and artistic experimentation. At 17, he and his friends dropped out of school. “We’d had enough of education,” he says. “We wanted to get out and live.” They were the “kids on scooters” who roamed the streets of London without any destination in mind.
Advertisement
With a full-time job as a car mechanic, Mairlot didn’t have much time for gigs, but his life has always been deeply intertwined with music. The Kinks were his first love. “They were the best because their songs told stories of the city,” he says. As a born and bred Londoner, Mairlot recognised himself in their lyrics.
Proof that energy isn't bound by age.
He attended as many concerts as he could with his wife, and even when his full-time job stood in the way, Mairlot devoted Sunday afternoons to engrossing himself in his vinyl collection. Listening to music is, for him, a ritual that demands his full attention. “I can only have music playing while I’m washing up, because the brain is empty,” he says. “I can’t read and listen to music at the same time.” Ultimately, recordings are poor substitutes for the intimacy of gigs, though. “I wish I could’ve seen The Kinks in a little place like this,” Mairlot adds, gesturing to the Windmill.He then presents me with an old account book, bound in leather. “This is a real gem, I don’t know if anybody’s ever seen this,” says Mairlot, sifting through pages filled with thousands of shows. “I called it The Book of Bands.”
Onto the next one.
He proposes a game – I give him the name of a London-based band I’ve seen and, using his book, he will check if he’s seen them, too. A four-piece band comes to mind, but I can only recall the first word of their name. He immediately knows who I’m thinking of and chips in with, “White Fever”. From his archival memory, Mairlot pulls out detailed information about vocalist Ida Jacobsson-Wells, including the previous band she was in, We Walk on Ice. When I ask him if he’ll ever tire of going to gigs, his answer is a confident “no”. As long as there are gigs in London, Mairlot will be dashing through the streets, handwritten schedule in hand. “My wife thought I was having an affair because I was out every night,” he says heartily. “But I really wouldn’t have time.”