Me in Chelsea in the 60's pt1

My first studio was above a hardware shop on the Kings Road, it is now a Starbucks Coffee Shop, and is attached to the Chelsea Potter Pub. I shared this studio with a photographer called Johny Clamp. We both did freelance work for the Record Companies. Mainly Philips Records, which included Fontana. The entrance to our studio was round the corner in Shawfield Street. It is amazing how life turns full circle sometimes. In the late seventies my Design Group, Design Machine, was still involved in designing for the Music Business, but we had added the Rag trade to our portfolio. By now Design Machine had moved to Sedley Place an alleyway off Oxford Street, down the side of HMV. We got a call from a start up Jeans wear company called FUS Jeans. They needed a Jean labels posters etc. The address they gave had a familiar ring to it. Yes they were based in my old studio. Anyway I digress. The fact that we were based practically in the middle of the Kings Road, equi-distant from Sloan Square and The Worlds End, had us slap bang in the middle of the action. From our vantage point overlooking the road we missed nothing. How we ever turned around the work is a mystery. Yet we both made a good living. A sleeve design could be invoiced for £500 that is probably £1500 in todays money. The funny thing is with the advent of computers you would be lucky to get £500 for a CD insert today. So I only had to design one sleeve a month to be comfortably off. Of course it was all spent too quickly. Clothes, Booze, fancy restaurants all ate into it. I think the rental on the two rooms was £10 a month or something silly. The clients being clients wanted to be shown a good time in Chelsea once a week, and the bills could run into the £100's, therefore the price for a sleeve could only go up. Eventually for big rock bands the sky became the limit.