Aidan Smith on the corporate threat to King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut
Rock venues are under threat but Aidan Smith is confident that one defiant cavern will survive
Trying to find it the first time, maybe, like me, you assumed you were lost. Passing all those large, clean, stout buildings, your initial thought was probably: “There can’t be a rock ’n’ roll venue round here.” Your next thought might have been: “If there was a rock ’n’ roll venue round here, the locals would have petitioned against it, protested to their MP about it, and it would be long gone.”
But, cresting the brow of another hill – the kind of slope that vaguely reminded you of San Francisco, a city that would allow rock ’n’ roll venues to nestle in dark basements, because if it’s all commerce and no art, that’s boring and tantamount to Deadsville – there it was: King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut.
The place where anyone who’s everyone has played when they were no-one. The place where Oasis demanded to be discovered. The place which served Manic Street Preachers their first on-the-road hot meal.
The place which is a badge of honour and a boast: “We performed in Glasgow and lived to tell the tale – without having to resort to pretend fainting like Des O’connor.”
But King Tut’s is reportedly under threat because of a boutique hotel being built next door. What, another one? How many do Scotland’s cities need? Modern life is rubbish. Blur said that and, yes, they’re another of the bands whose apprenticeship included prove-yourself gigs at King Tut’s.
The story is confusing. As confusing, indeed, as the view of the King Tut’s stage on a sold-out, sweat-soaked night. The venue are worried; the hotel people say they’re being “dramatic”. Nevertheless, the venue is urging supporters: “Please help us protect King Tut’s from future risk of statutory and private nuisance actions and potential closure.”
Maybe King Tut’s are simply reminding us they’re there, something they’re perfectly entitled to do, for right now all halls are under threat. London has lost 40 per cent of its performance spaces in a decade and every UK city has suffered significant closures in that time.
Why is live music dying? Being of a certain age and still a gig-goer, most recently to enjoy my favourite practitioners of Swedish psychedelia, the immediate impulse is to give the young people of today a shake. What’s wrong with them? Don’t they go out at night anymore? Don’t they know the fun that can be had from a couple of electric guitars, a stack of amps and a Red Stripe or similarly forgotten beer which only seems to be sold at concerts? Do they even like music?
Maybe, but they consume it differently. They do something clever and possibly illegal with their laptops or smartphones to access it. On the same computers and phones they can Youtube entire performances. Some acts will have been filmed via other people’s phones on every date of the latest tour.
It’s hardly surprising that live music is dying, argues David Hepworth, because the rock star is dead. In his new book, Uncommon People, the venerable critic writes: “The age of the rock star ended with the passing of physical product, the rise of automated percussion, the combination of the committee approach to hitmaking, the widespread adoption of choreography and above all the advent of the mystique-destroying internet.”
There’s no need for any of us, young or not as spotty or bell--
bottomed as we used to be, to stand in the mud of Glastonbury when upwards of 300 BBC staff will pipe it into your home. And there’s no need to stand on a floor made sticky by obscure lager in your local venue, no matter how wonderfully scuzzy it might be.
“Rock stars were the product of an age when music was hard to access and treasured accordingly,” adds Hepworth. “Music no longer belongs in a category of otherness.” When your correspondent turned 15, there was nothing more “other” than the five members of Roxy Music sporting spacesuits, ostrich feathers and copious eyeliner.
I wanted in, so returned a pair of jeans purchased with birthday money and got their album. Did all five, including Eno who the typeface suggested might be called “End” and was possibly a woman, play guitar as the sleeve implied? I had to see for myself and, in 1973, didn’t have any option. Now, not only has the mystique been destroyed, the setting for that epochal event – Edinburgh’s Odeon – has gone, too.
Impatiently waiting on the rock ’n’ roll caravanserai to reach my town, I would memorise the names of other towns’ halls in the full-page ads in the music press: De Montford Hall, Leicester, Free Trade Hall, Manchester, Oxford Playhouse. Edinburgh, in the intervening years, seems to have suffered a higher casualty rate than most, and certainly more than Glasgow.
It seems to be a matter of civic pride if not outright defiance that the far end of Sauchiehall Street is hoaching with no less four terrific caverns in such close proximity that a drummer, at the end of the final encore, could hurl one of his sticks in time-honoured fashion and risk of it striking the bouncer in a neighbouring venue on the back of the head.
This is a city which expects – demands – to be entertained. Des O’connor discovered this and so did Mike and Bernie Winters. On another memorable night in Glasgow’s showbiz history, one of the gormless brothers was flying, and dying, solo when his sidekick – the really unfunny one – stuck his head between the curtains. “Christ,” went the despairing cry from the stalls, “there’s two of them!”
It’s the sort of defiance which you hope will keep King Tut’s rocking for a while yet.