Few Glasgow venues have a name as recognisable as King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut. Since opening on St Vincent Street in 1990, it has welcomed some of the biggest names in music. It has built an international reputation as a place to catch emerging bands at close quarters.
King Tut’s has welcomed an extraordinary roll call of bands on their way to bigger stages, from Oasis, Blur and Radiohead to Pulp, The Killers and Manic Street Preachers. Scottish acts have been central to its story, with Biffy Clyro, Frightened Rabbit, Paolo Nutini, Franz Ferdinand and Lewis Capaldi among those who have played the intimate Glasgow venue.
Its reputation was cemented in May 1993, when Alan McGee spotted Oasis there – a night that remains one of the most famous in British music history.
Behind the famous name is a story rooted in Glasgow’s late-night gig circuit, the year as European City of Culture and a lone promoter’s determination to break a deadlock around live music.
Before King Tut’s, licensing restrictions meant small gigs often started at midnight in nightclubs. Stuart Clumpas saw an opportunity to give bands and audiences a home with more sensible hours.
He found it in a pub called Saints and Sinners, borrowing the new name from a favourite New York hangout despite warnings that Glasgow would never take to it.
Thirty-six years later, we tracked down Clumpas, now living in New Zealand, to hear how one of the city’s best-loved music venues began.
Take me back to Glasgow in the early 1990’s and tell me a bit about how King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut got started.
“The prelude to it was years of doing gigs at clubs because of the Glasgow licensing rules which was the real trigger for it. I was running a club in Dundee and we used to put on bands on a Sunday night, and the co-owners had a place called Henry Afrikas in Glasgow and they used to do gigs on a Thursday.
“The whole Glasgow rule was that you could not charge to get into a pub.
“You could charge if it was a nightclub or a club license, but not on a pub license. Nightclubs or clubs got licenses from 10pm to 2am, but they weren’t allowed to trade, shall we call it, across pub hours.
“We ended up doing gigs in nightclubs, but they make their money on Friday and Saturday nights, and they weren’t about to give them away. So basically, gigs in small places happened on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday and a Sunday night at midnight and it was shite.
“Maybe it wasn’t but the bands went on at midnight. They went on at midnight in Fat Sam’s and at Fury Murray’s. Barrowlands’ doors are at 7pm, support at 8pm and main band at 9.15pm, this is just nonsense.
“No wonder nobody can come to see bands.
“There was a little bit of pressure on the council in 1990 as that was the year Glasgow was made European City of Culture.
“They changed the rules to say that if you had a separate area in the pub from the normal bar, you could charge to get in.
“In other words, there would always be a proper pub area that people could come into for nothing. But yeah, if you had a separate area that was closed off for it, you could put a band on.
“I started looking around, and I remembered a place called Saints and Sinners, which I used to go to for parties for years, and it was a combination of that plus the people. It was owned by some people who had a big portfolio of pubs that were in Scotland and Newcastle.
“I knew them and somehow… I can’t remember exactly how I did it, but I got the sublease off them for Saints and Sinners and off we went.”
After you got the sublease for Saints and Sinners, how did the name for the venue come about?
“I at the time used to manage a band called Love and Money, and they’d been recording in New York and stuff like that.
“We used to go to this place called King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut on the Avenues, it closed, but I always remembered it.
“It was just a funky wee place. It only lasted for about two or three years, and I just loved the name, and basically I nicked it.
“I remember getting on the plane one night back from New York with the band and going, ‘I’ve got Saints and Sinners and I’m going to call it King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut.’
“And they go, ‘You’re off your head.’ And I’m going, No, I’m not because the back will be the Wah Wah Hut and the bar will be King Tut’s.
“They replied. ‘Stuart, it’s no New York, it’s Glasgow. You can get away with a place called King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in New York, but you’ll never get away with it in Glasgow.’
“Here we are, 36 years later. And it worked. I put my hand up and say, Look, I didn’t come up with it. I nicked it, so, call me a magpie or whatever. I’m guilty as charged.”
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut is at
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut was at 112 Avenue A at 7th Street in the East Village, New York City.