A former London recording studio where everyone from Jimi Hendrix to the Spice Girls made albums is to return to its original life as a cinema.
Olympic Studios in Church Road, Barnes, will reopen on October 14 with two screens, a café and dining room and a members’ club, after local businessman Stephen Burdge stepped in to save it.
One recording studio will remain in the basement. Mr Burdge, 45, said that when the studios closed in 2009, it was rumoured the site would be bought by a retailer or developers looking to build flats, which seemed “a shame and a missed opportunity”.
Over a curry in the restaurant opposite, a group of friends decided something should be done, but by morning all had dropped out except Mr Burdge, whose main business is making posters and trailers for films including the recent James Bonds. He persuaded his wife Lisa that they should sell their home to help raise £3.5 million to buy the site from EMI, then spent two years winning planning permission.
He said: “That was the big risk. Although it was a cinema for 50 years before it was a studio, there was no guarantee we could turn it back.”
Most of the work was funded by selling 250 founder memberships at £5,000 each. The building started life in 1906 as Byfeld Hall, when it hosted an early form of cinema called a bioscope.
In the Fifties it became a recording studio and was used by the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Pink Floyd, BB King, Madonna, U2, the Spice Girls and Led Zeppelin.
