eel pie island

thinking a lot lately about "scenes" and their ephemeral nature (wreck room, black dog, whitewater tavern), i stumbled upon this item on the bbc website about eel pie island, birthplace of the brit r&b boom and subsequent profusion of bands including the stones, who, yardbirds, small faces, and so on. particularly interesting were the comments of arthur chisnall, a ww2 vet and the scene's unheralded godfather, on what motivated him to get it started in the first place.