Motörhead, The Clash, The Damned, The Jam, Simple Minds.
All iconic bands, and Roger Armstrong had a part to play in the birth of them all.
Armstrong moved to London from Belfast – via Dublin – in the mid-1970s.
But before he left Ireland, Armstrong had already encountered a rock icon while tour-managing Horslips.
That was through his friend Ted Carroll, who managed a promising Irish band called Thin Lizzy.
“Phil Lynott used to stay in my flat,” Armstrong told BBC News NI.
“I had a spare room in the flat and he would stay there.”
After managing Thin Lizzy, Ted Carroll sold records on a stall called Rock On in Soho in London and later opened the Rock On record shop in Camden.
Roger Armstrong moved to London to join him and Rock On had some notable customers, including the late Shane MacGowan long before he joined The Pogues.
“He would turn up at the stall and buy records and he was very knowledgeable about music, Shane,” Armstrong recalls.
MacGowan soon joined his first band – a London punk rock outfit called the Nips.
Others to frequent the stall were members of The Sex Pistols and The Clash.
Armstrong and Carroll soon took their love of music a stage further, setting up their own label called Chiswick Records.
The third record released by Chiswick was by a band called the 101ers, with a front man called Joe Strummer.
Strummer later joined The Clash, who signed to the major CBS record label, but according to Armstrong his talent was obvious from the start.
“Ted came into the stall one day and said, ‘You’ve got to go and see this band, the lead singer’s an absolute star,'” Armstrong said.
So the two went to see Strummer and the 101ers in a small student venue.
“Joe was performing like he was playing the Albert Hall or Woodstock, giving it his all,” Armstrong remembers.
“The energy levels coming off Joe, he could have powered the venue himself.”
Chiswick records also had their eye on other new talent.
“The one we got closest to was The Jam, because Paul [Weller] used to buy his Motown records off me,” Armstrong said.
The Rock On stall actually provided the electricity for one of the first ever gigs by The Jam in Soho market.
“They were powered off our lightbulb essentially!” Armstrong laughed.
