A bit more fun on Google Earth recently tracking the places where Beatles and Sex Pistols used to hang out. My GE post “14 scenes of London rock history” is here.

The geezers above are, left to right, Charles II, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Mick Jagger and Dylan Thomas, all of whom used to get pissed at (among many other places) the King’s Head and Eight Bells pub on Thameside Cheyne Walk.

Originally it was two pubs – Henry VIII would hoist a pint in the King’s Head and his posse at the Eight Bells. Later it was naval officers in the former, rank and file in the latter. Now it’s all gone, replaced in 2003 by a posh French restaurant.

This is where John met Yoko, at 9 Masons Yard, now home to solicitors Addie and Co. But it was the Indica Art Gallery in November 1966 when John Lennon popped by to see the exhibition “Unfinished Paintings and Objects by Yoko Ono”.

He was introduced to the conceptual artist and she handed him a card bearing the instruction “Breathe”. Eighteen months later Lennon left his first wife Cynthia and the ballad of John and Yoko began in earnest.

And this is where the curse of Curzon befell Moon and Mama. The red-brick apartment building at 9 Curzon Place is where both Keith Moon and Mama Cass Elliot breathed their last – in the same, top-floor flat, #12. Both were guests of the owner, Harry Nilsson, who wasn’t there on either occasion but quickly dispensed with the place after Moon’s death.

Elliot, formerly of the Mamas and the Papas, was staying here in July 1974 while performing at the Palladium. She died on the 29th at age 32, not choking on a sandwich, as was widely reported, but because of a heart attack.

On September 17, 1978, the unparalleled drummer of the Who, who had been a friend of Mama Cass, returned from a party thrown by Paul McCartney to celebrate the release of the movie “The Buddy Holly Story”. His girlfriend Annette Walter-Lax discovered him unconscious the next afternoon and he was pronounced dead at hospital from an overdose of a prescription drug.

The revered prime minister Benjamin Disraeli died in the building next door, though Somerset Maugham and Beau Brummell, who lived nearby, survived quite nicely.

8 Kingly Street was the site of the rock club Bag O’Nails, which tourists continue to confuse with the still-open Bag O’Nails opposite Buckingham Palace.

This one was not only popular with the likes of Jimi Hendrix (who played his second UK gig here), the Animals, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, the Hollies, the Small Faces and the Rolling Stones, but the spot where Paul McCartney met Linda Eastman on May 15, 1967, while watching Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames perform. Fleetwood Mac’s John and Christine McVie also first linked up here.

From 1969 to 1999 the Kensington Market at 49-53 Kensington High Street was where you went for your hip clothes and counterculture gear, and circa 1970 you would have been able to buy some from Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor, who ran one of the stalls while putting together a band called Queen.

At the corner of Broadwick Street and Duck Lane in the early 1960s was the Bricklayer’s Arms, a pub whose upstairs provided rehearsal space for the soon-to-fledge Rolling Stones. Some of their first rough gigs were around the corner on Wardour Street.

At 33 Wardour Street is O’Neill’s Music Room, part of the Irish-theme pub chain, but during the 1960s this was the Whiskey A Go Go, London’s first disco, where the Who and Jimi Hendrix spent many an evening, sometimes joining the bands onstage to jam. Downstairs was the even more popular Flamingo, a jazz and R&B club.

In 1981 the joint reincarnated as the Wag Club, scene of hair-raising debauchery in the presence of Boy George, John Galliano, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Neneh Cherry and many more, dancing under the influence of the day’s top performers.

Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa made their UK debuts here, Sade played played one of her earliest gigs and the Beastie Boys, Fine Young Cannibals, Tom-Tom Club and Bananarama occupied the tiny stage as well, as did the Pogues on the night Caitlin gave Shane McGowan (seen here) a righteous clobbering. Jah Wobble DJ’d at the Wag before joining Public Image Ltd.

The Wag went under in 2001, ceding its name to English footballers’ wives and girlfriends.

From 1964 to 1996, 90 Wardour Street was the site of the Marquee Club, in earlier days the hottest rock’n'roll venue in London, scene of early gigs by the Yardbirds, Pink Floyd (shown here) and David Bowie, and later U2.

The Who trashed their gear there, and the Sex Pistols were banned for doing the same after their first proper London gig, and it was here in 1962 that Brian Jones’ Blues Incorporated spawned the Rolling Stones.

430 King’s Road was a club and togs shop called Sex in 1976 when Malcolm McLaren pulled together some young rowdies and called them the Sex Pistols. Music has never been quite right since.

David Bowie’s birthplace, 40 Stansfield Road, on January 8, 1947.

The Portobello Hotel at 22 Stanley Gardens has been called Kensington’s answer to the grittily historic Chelsea Hotel in New York, though Alice Cooper keeping his pet boa in the bathroom of No 13 hardly ranks with Sid and Nancy.

The Portobello Gold Bar at 95-7 Portobello Road, formerly the Princess Alexandra Pub, was once a hangout for Motorhead’s Lemmy, Hawkwind, the Sex Pistols and the Ramones, not to mention a venue for one of Bill Clinton’s sax concerts, in 2000.