The Locarno was unusual because we would usually go to the Flamingo or the Majestic...they were closer to the bus stop
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.”