The speakers are silent and floors unfilled but as V&A celebrates club culture, experts insist unlocked Scots will keep on dancing Clubs are crucial. Places that deserve to be celebrated
The Locarno was unusual because we would usually go to the Flamingo or the Majestic...they were closer to the bus stop
I grew up near Dundee and went to Fat Sams during my later teenage years, but after moving to Glasgow in 1993 clubs were an important way of how I got to know the city, a way of meeting brilliant and creative people.
The people who came together in those spaces were remarkable. They were definitely places to be seen, but also drew amazing artists, designers and musicians together.
It would usually be the Sub Club or The Arches but The Garage and other student clubs were also a good laugh. Outside of Glasgow, Club 69 in Paisley had a great reputation. I saw lots of incredible DJS in Glasgow, including Slam, Richie Hawtin, and Andy Weatherall.
I never saw myself as a clubber, though lots of my friends were – they were passionate about this culture and how it formed a really important part of their identity. That’s something I find fascinating – how we can each design our own identities through our music and fashion choices and interests.
It’s certainly part of what is so liberating and empowering about the communities that develop around different clubs or different scenes.
It’s only with hindsight I appreciate just how important clubs are as cultural spaces, especially for young people. For me, it’s one of the reasons V&A Dundee putting on an exhibition about nightclubs is so important at this time, as we’re all craving opportunities to socialise together again when it’s safe to do so.
Looking back I can see how the design of clubs was something that caught my attention. I also loved Bar 10 opposite The Lighthouse, where I worked early in my career. It was designed by Ben Kelly, who also did the interior design of The Hacienda, and it was such an important architectural space for Glasgow to have. Sadly it’s now gone, a real loss.
So many parts of our lives have been affected by the pandemic, but the economic impact has been devastating on clubs and other areas of live performance like theatres.
Clubs are a crucial part of our culture, part of the rich fabric of what makes all of us creative, expressive human beings, and I’m really pleased we can take this opportunity to shine a light on why they matter so much in the Night Fever exhibition, linking Italy in the 1960s and New York in the 1970s to the wonderful Scottish club scene.
It is September 1962 and Janet Mitchell and her friends from Penilee, in Glasgow, are twisting, shoes off, at the grand reopening of the Locarno, one of the city’s best-known dancehalls, blissfully unaware the moment is being captured by a press photographer.
The dancehall, named after a peace treaty, would later become Tiffany’s, a live music venue, and then a casino. Here, Janet recalls the moment and the era: “I remember being on the bus to work when I saw a guy reading the paper in front of me and, to my absolute horror, saw our picture.
I spent all day hoping my mum and dad wouldn’t see it. Needless to say they had already been shown it by the time I got home.
We didn’t usually go to the Locarno but Sandra, one of my friends, had got tickets for the reopening.
It was a charity thing. We were just dancing and having a laugh when some strange guy jumped in beside us. He had obviously seen the photographer but we hadn’t.
We would not normally go that far up Sauchiehall Street. We’d be in heels and wouldn’t walk far from the bus stop. The bus would take us almost to the door of the Majestic at the other end, or the Flamingo, on Paisley Road West, so we’d most often go there. There was the Plaza over on Victoria Road but that was always a little “last chance ranch” and we liked to think we were women of sophistication, as we ran for the midnight bus out of George Square.
It was 1962, so we’d have been 19, in between the old dancehalls and The Beatles, who changed everything. The discos came in a few years later but before that we’d be dancing to Buddy Holly, Chubby Checker, people like that. I’m assuming that’s Chubby Checker we’re twisting to in the photograph. We’d go to traditional jazz clubs too, to see George Penman’s band or the Clyde Valley Stompers at the Grand Hotel at Charing Cross.
It was a huge scene, there were loads of dancehalls and they’d be mobbed. It was terrific. We had great fun.”