Don't Hang Up

The musical legacy of the telephone

The first prototype of the red telephone box, Royal Academy, London

I’m tapping my knuckles on a red telephone box, just above the door handle. The box is empty, and a man standing nearby is giving me a strange look. If I were him, I’d probably do the same.

“Just checking if it’s iron or wood,” I explain. He still looks unconvinced. But I’m satisfied with my findings: iron. It’s the wrong box.

My journey of musical discovery around London’s Soho has taken me across Regent Street into Mayfair. While Soho is vibrant, eclectic, and still slightly bohemian with a sharp edge, Mayfair is exclusive, elegant, and polished to perfection. Yet, the latter offers plenty for music enthusiasts. This district, often viewed as a luxury retreat, holds the street where Ziggy fell to Earth, the rooftop where The Beatles gave their final live performance, and the building where Hendrix and Handel were neighbours (geographically if not temporally).

Today, I’ve ventured into Mayfair to find one of the world’s most significant architectural icons—an object that has shaped our culture and, for those of a certain age, our daily lives. This unassuming creation has also inspired some remarkable music.

On Piccadilly, the Royal Academy of Arts is a stunning blend of neoclassical grandeur with Victorian-era additions. The stately entrance is framed by intricate stonework and symmetrical carvings that draw the eye upward to grand windows and rooftop balustrades. Beyond the doors lies an elegant courtyard, often home to art installations that juxtapose the historic surroundings.

But I’m not here for the Academy’s neoclassical splendour. I’m here for a telephone box. Flanking the Royal Academy’s entrance on Piccadilly are two red telephone boxes, their bold crimson standing out against the Academy’s muted façade. One is made of iron; the other, wood.

I find my way to the wooden box, open the door, and step inside. I take a photograph, which I’ve shared with you above. This is no ordinary phone box. It’s the world’s first red telephone box.

This wooden prototype of the K2 telephone box, designed in 1924 by Giles Gilbert Scott, predates the 1,700 iron versions installed mainly across London from 1926. The box I had tapped earlier, however, is one of the first K6 designs—a refined version created in 1935, with 60,000 installed across Britain.

Standing inside this prototype feels significant. It’s a piece of design history that fundamentally changed the way we communicate. This box changed our world.

The Red Phone Box

The classic red telephone box—of which the K6 is the most ubiquitous—is a design born of an era when we needed private spaces in public places for our conversations. With its cast-iron solidity, this crimson king of the pavement became an enduring emblem of British identity, standing proudly from Unst to Uxbridge, Belfast to Barry. (Granted, Hull has cream-coloured ones, but they’re still K6s.)

Giles Gilbert Scott, the man behind this iconic design, came from an architectural dynasty. His grandfather designed London’s St Pancras Station and Dundee’s McManus Galleries, while Scott himself shaped Britain’s skyline with masterpieces such as Liverpool Cathedral, Battersea Power Station, and Bankside Power Station—the latter now home to the Tate Modern.

Scott’s work was a blend of tradition and innovation, marrying historical influences with contemporary needs. The phone box, with its neoclassical flourishes and practical functionality, shares this balance with his other designs, such as the Gothic-inspired Liverpool Cathedral. Whether crafting a vast cathedral or a compact phone box, Scott demonstrated a mastery of proportion, timeless aesthetics, and cultural resonance.

Yet in an age when public services have been privatised and our private lives we seem keen to publicise, what future is there for the red phone box? With over 2,000 listed as protected structures, they’re not going anywhere, but their purpose is evolving. They’ve been repurposed as libraries, art galleries, defibrillator stations, and even a cake shop in Argyll. The phone box will continue to ring the changes on its public role.

The red phone box is a cultural icon. It plays a starring role in Local Hero. Harry Potter uses one to enter the Ministry of Magic. Banksy turned it into an artwork. Bowie used it to frame his greatest creation - Ziggy Stardust – which is surprising really, since all members of his Spiders from Mars band were from Hull.

Songs and Stories

The telephone box, once a silent witness to countless conversations, has also inspired some of the most memorable songs in our cultural canon. It’s no surprise that a design so tied to communication and connection has found a natural place in songs.

I asked writers on Substack to share their favourite telephone-inspired tracks, and with their help, I’ve curated a playlist that celebrates the red phone box and its cultural legacy (Spotify below and Apple Music here).

Given the red phone box’s cultural significance, you might expect it to be a more prominent subject in music. While there are countless songs about telephones, references to the phone box itself are surprisingly scarce. Still, there are two that serve as the perfect starting point for our playlist.

Red Frame/White Light – Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD)

On the corner of Birkenhead Road and Greenwood Road on the Wirral Peninsula is a K6 telephone box. It was used as an unofficial office by OMD at the start of their career. They would meet in the pub over the road, and use the phone box for organising their gigs. The song includes the number of the phone box, excluding the area code. The song was first performed for Radio 1’s John Peel, becoming OMD’s second single in 1980, and their first record to chart.

D’ye Ken John Peel - The Yetties

I know what you’re thinking, but no. Different John Peel. This is a Cumbrian hunting song from the early nineteenth century. It is performed by the traditional English folk group The Yetties, named after their village of Yetminster in Dorset. The group flew well under the radar of fashionable folk music, yet they were extremely popular. From turning professional in 1967 until retirement in 2010 they recorded 45 albums, performing all over the world, and hosting a regular BBC Radio 2 series for a time. Their version of The Archers theme tune is used on the long-running radio drama every Sunday.

The Yetties got their break, which led directly to their successful career, from a London radio producer who wanted them for a show. None of the group was on the phone, but the producer found the number of the phone box in Yetminster and rang that. At that very moment, the local vicar was ambling past the box, answered the phone and took the message, which he passed to the landlord of the White Hart pub, where the group drank. The rest is history.

Telephone and Rubber Band – Penguin Cafe Orchestra

Penguin Cafe Orchestra is a delightful fusion of English pastoral, folk, modern classical, and leftfield eccentricity. Although founder Simon Jeffes passed away some years ago, his son Arthur continues the legacy with his own group, Penguin Cafe, performing both new compositions and classic ‘Orchestra’ pieces. Telephone and Rubber Band was recorded using (you’re probably ahead of me on this) a telephone and a rubber band. This beautifully minimalist piece of music transforms the dial tone into an unconventional yet integral instrument.

Einstein a Go-Go – Landscape

Landscape, a pioneer of British synth-pop, was musically daring and lyrically sharp, often with a darkly satirical edge. Why their one album wasn’t a massive success is a mystery to me. Possibly the lyrics. Possibly its title. But if you get the chance, give a listen to From the Tea-rooms of Mars to the Hell-holes of Uranus. From this album came their one hit, Einstein a Go-Go, an irresistibly upbeat and danceable track about a nuclear terrorist.

The song opens with telephone calls made to various government offices, including the White House and London’s Israeli Embassy. It also features a distinctive motif created on a Lyricon, an early wind synthesiser boasting a six-octave range. Much of the album was crafted using the Roland MC-8 MicroComposer—an early digital sequencer that cost more than a family car and was famously championed by Ryuichi Sakamoto. As the band explained, “We would handwrite code on square maths paper and then wait 20 minutes to save everything.”

Don’t Hang Up – 10CC

I love this song. It’s a brilliantly conceived and masterfully executed piece, with lyrics that rival the wit and cinematic storytelling of Noël Coward or Cole Porter. 10CC was a band driven by two distinctly talented songwriting teams: Stewart and Gouldman, known for their commercial pop sensibilities (I’m Not in Love), and Godley and Creme, whose art-school-inspired, rule-breaking approach birthed gems like this one.

The magic of the band, fuelled by all four members’ skills as singers and multi-instrumentalists, produced some of the finest pop music of its era. Don’t Hang Up was one of the last songs recorded before the group disbanded. Post-breakup, Godley and Creme became renowned music video directors during MTV’s heyday. The track also features the Gizmotron, a device invented by the duo that transforms a guitar’s sound into something reminiscent of a synthesiser.

Bless the Telephone – Labi Siffre

While Don’t Hang Up is a symphonic, high-drama masterpiece, Labi Siffre’s Bless the Telephone is an understated, tender meditation on how the telephone can bring love and connection into everyday life. Siffre’s remarkable story deserves far more attention than I can provide here, and it’s a tale we’ll delve into further in our dedicated Soho Stories series.

Siffre stands as one of the most radical and significant figures in British popular music: an openly gay, Black singer-songwriter who was dropped by record labels for refusing to stay closeted. His songs, such as It Must Be Love and Something Inside So Strong, remain profoundly moving. Reflecting on the latter, he once recounted how, after watching a documentary about apartheid, “I sat down, played a C chord, threw my head back, and sang the first two lines of Something Inside So Strong. I realised I was writing about my life as a gay man, and I found myself crying.”

Starman – David Bowie

What’s the most significant, history-altering line of a song? The answer is obviously: “I had to phone someone, so I picked on you,” from David Bowie’s Starman. And I’ll tolerate no dissent on this.

On July 6, 1972, Bowie performed this song on Top of the Pops. At one pivotal moment, he pointed directly at the camera, draped an arm around Mick Ronson, and sang that iconic line. Things were never the same again. For any of us.

Music journalist David Hepworth captured the moment perfectly: “The way Bowie pointed that finger, smilingly draped an arm around Mick Ronson, and looked beyond the camera to engage the audience sitting at home, stickily hemmed in by disapproving family members, seemed in perfect alignment with the new Ziggy Stardust persona we’d been reading about. It felt like an arrival long overdue.”

Hepworth rightly notes that while Starman was a pop-friendly, chart-ready track, it wasn’t the song itself that ignited a generation—it was Bowie’s gaze, his attitude, and his ability to connect so deeply with his audience through that one lyric.

“I had to phone someone, so I picked on you” Photograph: YouTube/GreatGuitarHeroes

Telephone Thing – The Fall

David Bowie’s reputation for cycling through musicians pales in comparison to Mark E. Smith’s revolving-door approach to band members in The Fall. Over 40 musicians passed through the group, and even journalists attempting to track them all have run into logistical challenges—such as the fact that the original drummer was known only as “Dave” (or possibly “Steve”). Keeping records was never one of Smith’s priorities.

Telephone Thing is a favourite of

Margaret Bennett

, who praises “the music, the attitude, the one-off magic of Mark E. Smith, and the endless carousel of musicians he collaborated with.” Recalling the incident, he said: “One time, I was using the phone a lot and I dialled a number, but I could hear people munching sandwiches and talking about my last phone call. I actually rang the operator and said, ‘Look, I’m trying to dial a fucking number here, and I can’t get through because people are talking about my phone calls! Do you have a bleedin’ license for this?’”

All I’ve Got to Do – The Beatles

The first of two telephone songs by The Beatles, although they were to record three in total, all written by John Lennon. The first we will consider was recorded in a morning, the second over two years. This song is the second on their 1963 album With The Beatles - the first album I owned. According to McCartney, the song was only introduced to the band by its writer the morning of its recording, which demonstrates both the speed that they were working at that time, and their ability to conjure a highly polished arrangement almost instantly. Lennon said that he wrote the song specifically for the American market, “because the idea of calling a girl on the telephone was unthinkable to a British youth in the early 1960s”. Unlike Americans, most of us Brits weren’t on the phone.

You Know My Name (Look Up the Number) – The Beatles

The Beatles play jazz. Who knew? John Lennon conceived the song as a mantra, a slight variation on the slogan printed on the front of the phone directory in 1967. Most of the music, which covers styles from ska through mambo to jazz was recorded by the band in the summer of 1967, while the vocals were recorded just by John and Paul two years later, in a Goons-inspired session. McCartney has described it as “probably my favourite Beatles track.”

The People’s Favourites

The above songs are not only personal favourites but also illustrate the enduring role of the telephone in Britain’s music culture. Fellow Substackers have shared their own favourites, each offering a unique take on how this ubiquitous device inspires musical storytelling.

Steve Bradley

highlighted Telephone Operator by Pete Shelley, remarking, “While Shelley is rightly celebrated for his contributions to Buzzcocks, his solo career really flies under the radar. This track is a perfect example of why his solo material deserves a closer listen.”

Pursuing this musical path further,

Mark Kureishy

went for No Reply by The Buzzcocks “not because I’m obsessed with them, though it may appear that way, but because I love the way the song’s intro just crashes into the ringing tone at the beginning.” Mark’s obsession led to a further suggestion of the band’s song Boredom, which I’ve not included here. Great though it is, there’s only so much Mancunian punk a playlist can accommodate.

Despite being a minor hit in 1978, this was the first time I’d heard Hello, This Is Joannie (The Telephone Answering Machine Song) by Paul Evans. Thanks to

Anna Sayburn Lane

I am now familiar with this death song. It tells the story of a guy who makes his girlfriend angry after an argument, so she drives home. The next day he rings her and gets her answering machine. This happens a couple of times. He then learns that on her drive home she crashed the car and died. Again this is a case where American phone culture is a step or two ahead of us. As Anna explains: “not exactly a favourite but as a kid I remember being confused by the first song to use a telephone answering machine as part of the lyric. I don't think answer machines had arrived in south London by 1978”. I can confirm they were pretty thin on the ground in north London too.

Both Hands by Ani DiFranco was suggested by

NickS (WA)

who explains that “DiFranco uses the telephone as a metaphor for the relationship failing— wanting to connect and being unable to get through.” Failed relationships are themes explored by DiFranco, 10CC and in the song Martha by Tom Waits. As

Deryck

comments, this song “captures the idea of a long distance call on a landline (which seems so old fashioned now).” Indeed it does.

In the box marked redundant telephone technology, along with long distance landline calls and answering machines are switchboard operators.

Michael Maupin 🄾🄵 🅂🅃🄾🅁🅈🅂🄷🄴🄳

has come up with Switchboard Susan by Nick Lowe, saying how “It’s hilarious how the voice of one person can be sexually exciting - Nick Lowe brings the humor and heat.”

The story of an ‘academia girl’ seeking to leave a relationship with a married man is told over a fast paced dance track in He's on The Phone by Saint Etienne, described as “a vastly underrated track” by

Linda G

who also explains how “I've had it as my ringtone for ages. Just a cheerful, happy sound. As well as an underrated song, Saint Etienne are also a very underrated band. The opening 30 seconds is fabulous.”

Hanging on the Telephone – Blondie

And so we come to the final song suggested by the Substack community. And it’s the best for a whole variety of reasons, but most especially because it is about a red telephone box - almost certainly a K6. Now, I’m sure there will be those who argue that a song written by a Californian punk and covered most famously by a New York new wave band can have nothing to do with the creation of Giles Gilbert Scott, but listen. Listen carefully.

The protagonist is very clear from the outset that “I'm in the phone booth, it's the one across the hall”. She’s American, so is more likely to say ‘booth’ rather than ‘box’. But the defining clue as to where the booth/box is located comes in the first five seconds of the song. We hear a ring tone. We hear a British not American ringtone. So if she is in a phone box (which I think M’learned friend would agree we are) then in all likelihood it’s a K6.

But how many phone boxes are located in a hall, I hear you ask. Well, at least one. The photograph below shows a K6 embedded in the wall of a hospital’s internal hallway in Dundee, Scotland. I rest my case.

Internal hallway, Kings Cross Hospital, Dundee

Novelist and music writer

Gayle Ramage

who proposed the song summed it up perfectly: “Hanging on the Telephone is such an energetic song from start to finish. It’s a highlight of the Parallel Lines album and a heck of an opener. It serves as a bridge between the punkier sound of Blondie’s first two albums and the more commercial pop and disco sound of Parallel Lines.”

Your Mission

Now it’s your turn. Create a playlist of your own favourite telephone-inspired songs, and the next time you’re in central London, take a trip to the Royal Academy. There, you’ll find the first-ever telephone box. Step inside, gently pull the door closed behind you, and let the music take over. As you listen, remember: this is where the story of the telephone—and its musical legacy—began.

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