![]() ![]() At some point came a thought that struck with the force of revelation: I was going to become a pop singer, and sell out a gig at King Tut’s. Then, suddenly, I felt as if I were standing on stage, the lights dimmed, preparing to play with a band – a Gibson guitar in my hand, sonorous, crashing drums at my back. I’d never been to a live indie concert before, but the chalkboard gig listings, embellished scratches of blue, yellow and rose-pink on black, seemed to spark my imagination. ![]() I felt noticeably underage, as if all eyes were on me, but it seemed just the sort of place where I could fit in. Two bored-looking, rakish bar staff in flared jeans stood chatting behind the counter. The inside, I still remember, was all muted buzz and dimmed lighting, nothing particularly louche, nothing too dangerous. It had been invisible right up until the moment someone or something told me to poke my nose through its swinging doors on St Vincent Street. I was maybe 14 or 15 when I discovered King Tut’s for the first time. New York magazine put a night at the club in their top 10 euphoria-inducing experiences you could ever have, even above climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in East Africa or rolling out of bed in the Maldives. BBC Radio 1 has consistently named it the UK’s best music venue (“King Tut’s has got everything I like,” praises legendary radio DJ Steve Lamacq), while NME describes it as, “Quite possible the finest small venue in the world.” ![]() Twenty-five years down the road since the first guitar chord rang out is also not a bad moment to stop and ask: what got us here? Today, the club’s reputation extends far beyond Glasgow. “If you could score a gig in Tuts,” Jon Lawler, lead singer of Glasgow-band The Fratellis, once said, “you always had the sense that you were on your way.” There are lead singers and guitarists right now – some of whose records you may well own – who weren’t even born when the music venue first opened in February 1990, and whose lives could well have panned out entirely differently had they never landed their first gig at the hallowed venue. It has been a long quarter-century since King Tut’s started Scottish music lovers on an aural adventure that has introduced them to the likes of Oasis, Radiohead, Coldplay, The Verve, Blur, Pulp, Manic Street Preachers, Franz Ferdinand, and Biffy Clyro. For one night only, the new heroes of rock are in town. At last, after an interminable hour or so, the doors swing open, the crowd surges forward, and the dance floor turns into a raucous bear pit of revellers illuminated only by flickering spotlights. The hype bills the headline artist as: the triumphant sound of tomorrow the audience is in the mood to be convinced. Up a flight of neon-lit stairs, the soundcheck can be heard, all drums and guitars, muffled like a blast of radio interference. Inside, hooded parkas are swapped for rock-show T-shirts, while others feverishly queue, waiting for the doors to open. It is 8pm, in the twilight sparkle of late October, yet even without a fanfare or flashing billboard lights, there is a thrum of anticipation. It’s tucked away from the workday rush of Glasgow’s mercantile quarter, as if the unassuming basement club has been told off too many times for making a racket. King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut neither swaggers nor reveals itself bathed in burnished neon like most music venues. 22 November 2015 Twenty-five years since it first opened, live music venue King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut is still the epicentre for British rock ’n’ roll. ![]()
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