GLASGOW: CLYDESIDE COOL
Scotland’s city of music becomes Britain’s city of sport as it gears up to host the Commonwealth Games this month.
“WE call it The Pie, aye,” a cabbie explains as I head towards the latest landmark attraction to grace the banks of the River Clyde. Designed by Foster and Partners and modelled on a Roman amphitheatre, it is officially known as the SSE Hydro.
At a cost of £125-million, this is Glasgow’s answer to London’s O2 Arena. It comes with a roof that can glow in a choice of 12.8 million colours, a forest of “digital totem poles”, and space for 12 000 spectators. The lineup of live entertainment already booked is impressive, including the opening ceremony for the Ryder Cup in September.
The SSE Hydro will also be one of the venues for the XX Commonwealth Games, when 6 500 athletes from 71 nations will gather in the city for 11 days of sporting competition. The organisers predict a global audience of 1.5 billion.
If you’re a fan of gymnastics, netball or boxing, and secure a ticket, then you might well see these sports inside the new SSE Hydro. My dream scenario, though, would be to catch some indoor racing at the 4 000capacity Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome, which opened in 2012 as part of the whopping £113-million Emirates Arena that has arisen next to the home of Celtic FC. We’ve all seen those precision cyclists in their brightly coloured kit and pointy helmets on television, but it’s a mighty shock to behold the track they compete on — in this case, a 250m loop of blond wood of great sculptural beauty that swoops up to a scary 44-degree angle at each end. Competing here must be like trying to do high-speed ballet on two wheels while on the deck of a storm-tossed yacht.
The good news is we can all have a go on this track — for just £10.20 (R187), including equipment and a chance to see the goldpainted cage where multiple-medal winner Sir Chris stores his hi-tech steeds. It’s all part of Glasgow’s commitment to involve Britons in the Games (you can also try mountain biking, shooting, table tennis and lawn bowls at various venues), and typical of a community-minded city where a major attraction is called the People’s Palace, a museum devoted to its history, housed in a splendid 1896 building on Glasgow Green. Admission is free, as it is to many other fine museums including the Burrell Collection, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and the Zaha Hadid-designed Riverside Museum.
And just in case you haven’t got the message, in June last year the marketing gurus rebranded the city with the slogan “People Make Glasgow” — which is at least preferable to the woeful “Incredinburgh” strapline its neighbour came up with the year before.
The smartest distinction between Glasgow and the Scottish capital I’ve come across is from the Orcadian writer Edwin Muir, who in 1935 observed how “every Edinburgh man considers himself a little better than his neighbour, and every Glasgow man just as good as his neighbour”. In truth, there is an exciting synergy between the cities. Over the past few weeks, Glaswegians have been popping over to Edinburgh for its festivals, while Edinburghians have travelled west for a bevy of events including the World Pipe Band Championships and the new, annual Summer Sessions pop concerts recently launched in Bellahouston Park, which drew rain-defying crowds of up to 30 000 to see superstars such as Eminem and Kings of Leon last year.
“You’re the best audience of our tour!” yelled Caleb Followill, lead singer of the latter, paying tribute to Glasgow’s reputation for having some of the most passionate and receptive music fans in the country. And that’s not just down to mass inebriation.
These days the biggest draw in Glasgow isn’t Charles Rennie Mackintosh, or, thankfully, deep-fried Mars bars. It’s the musical life — as befits its status as one of only five places around the world to be declared a City of Music by Unesco. Nearly half of its visitors are under 35, and every week some 130 musical events take place. And while its dishevelled streets have given us many famous performers from Lulu to Franz Ferdinand, it’s by no means all rock‘n’roll. Every January the Celtic Connections festival attracts more than 100 000 Celtic music lovers, while one of the most appealing events in the build-up to the Games was a nationwide “Big Big Sing” featuring massed singing events and an online Commonwealth choir.
You can learn a lot more about this heritage by downloading the entertaining audio tours created by Walking Heads, which guide visitors to myriad points of musical interest in the city centre to a backing track of locally inspired sounds. Here is the low-down on how Oasis were discovered at the 300-capacity King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut 20 years ago. There is the 1857 Panopticon, the world’s oldest surviving music hall where Stan Laurel made his debut.
“Whatever happened to the Barrowlands?” Debbie Harry asked when Blondie played the Clyde Auditorium, a somewhat sterile venue next door to The Pie that is better known as The Armadillo. Nothing, is the answer. Properly called Barrowland (most people add an s, as if it was some kind of dream state), this rundown ballroom opened in 1960 and is still going strong with acts such as Paul Weller and Manic Street Preachers appearing in the next few months. With a wood-sprung dance floor, monumental oak pillars and room for 1 900 people, it’s a legendary engine of memories — you don’t have to go far to find someone whose parents or grandparents met there. A new book,
Barrowland: A Glasgow Experience, chronicles its lively past. Fittingly, its huge, shooting star-spattered neon sign (erected in 1985 to bring a touch of Vegas to Glasgow’s East End) inspired the logo for the cultural programme that is part of the build-up to the Commonwealth Games.
“Definitely Bowie in July ’79,” says its manager, Tom Joyes, when I ask about the most memorable performance he’s seen in over 20 years of service. Touring Barrowland’s unashamedly dated halls and dressing rooms, with their authentic ’60s lino, it’s telling how both bands and fans still adore this great, sweaty, beery lovebarn.
Will the Scots warm in the same way to a massive new people-processing machine like the SSE Hydro? Will The Pie be spoken of with as much fondness as the city’s cherished small venues, from the DJ-filled caverns of The Arches beneath Central Station to the on-trend performances and after-parties held at the SWG3 warehouse in the West End? I’m not sure, but one thing is clear — if you do go to Glasgow for the sport, get ready to have a dance too.