Billy Sloan reminisces on memories of Glasgow’s Apollo ahead of its 50th anniversary
The Apollo which used to sit at the top of Renfield Street in Glasgow would have today celebrated its 50th anniversary. The legendary venue was rebranded as The Apollo in 1973 having formerly been known as Green's Playhouse with Johnny Cash being the first act to perform in the newly renamed venue. Although it said farewell to Glasgow in 1985, it is still fondly remembered by many Glaswegian's as the venue which played host to acts such as The Rolling Stones, Queen and Wings, securing its special place in Glasgow history.
Category
🎵
MusicTranscript
00:00 theatre in Apollo countdown.
00:02 [Countdown]
00:16 T minus 20.
00:18 17 seconds. Swing arm back.
00:22 We have guidance in journal.
00:24 [Countdown]
00:36 Probably be a misnote to mention the Apollo,
00:39 your first gig was in the venue,
00:41 back then known as Green's Playhouse.
00:43 This year is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo.
00:46 How magical a venue and place was that?
00:50 Techlander, we have pushed to put it into words.
00:52 I mean I've been lucky with my work that I've travelled the world.
00:56 I've been to some of the biggest, most famous gigs in music history
01:00 like Live Aid and the Nelson Mandela Tributes.
01:03 I've been to Madison Square Garden in New York.
01:05 I've been to the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles.
01:09 I've been to Hammersmith Odeon in London.
01:12 And they're all great venues and all the gigs were great
01:15 but they don't hold a candle to the Apollo.
01:18 And that's not me being all Glaswegian and sentimental.
01:21 It was just a fantastic, and I stress the word fantastic venue.
01:27 And it was the wrong place for a rock concert because it was a cinema.
01:32 You would be too young, would you ever have gone there?
01:34 No, never.
01:35 It was a cinema, right.
01:36 So the stage was about 15 feet off the ground
01:39 because it was meant for showing films, it wasn't meant for gigs.
01:43 So if Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger or Roger Daltrey
01:46 came out and stood at the microphone,
01:48 they were 15 feet up in the air looking into the front of the circle.
01:52 So the stalls were down, down below them.
01:55 And then you had an upper circle above that.
01:58 The place was kind of crumbling and falling apart.
02:02 It really needed some serious kind of renovation work
02:06 to try and bring it up to standard.
02:09 It wasn't even the plushest place to go and spend a night,
02:14 let's be brutally frank.
02:16 But despite all that, it was the greatest single venue
02:19 I've ever had the pleasure of going to see a rock show in.
02:22 It was just fantastic because the atmosphere in the place,
02:25 the smell of the place, the audience, the performances of the bands.
02:30 I remember Melody Maker in the '70s did a poll
02:34 among some famous rock stars asking them
02:37 what was their favourite venue to go and play in.
02:39 They had people like Brian Ferry and Robert Plant and Roger Daltrey
02:42 and people of that calibre.
02:44 And 95% of them said the Greens Playhouse and the Apollo.
02:47 I was interviewing The Who, recently Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend
02:51 when they played Edinburgh Castle.
02:54 And Roger Daltrey was still raving about the Apollo,
02:57 or as he called it, the Greens Playhouse.
02:59 He remembers it as the Greens Playhouse.
03:01 And when you went into your seat, it seemed to take you ages.
03:06 You went up to the main door on Renfield Street
03:09 and a guy checked your ticket to make sure you had a valid ticket
03:12 and you went through.
03:14 And it seemed to take 45 minutes to get from there down into your seat
03:17 because it was like Doctor Who's TARDIS.
03:19 It was enormous inside the place.
03:21 And then when you get down there, they had this old carpet that said
03:25 "It's good, it's Greens, it's good, it's Greens, it's good, it's Greens"
03:28 woven into the carpet because the company who owned it
03:31 were a family called Greens.
03:33 They had venues all over the UK at that time.
03:37 And then when it became the Apollo in 1973,
03:39 those first two gigs with Johnny Cash,
03:41 and then a week later, the Rolling Stones played it on the Goatshead Suit Tour,
03:45 which I was lucky enough to go to.
03:47 They were going to re-carpet the place, but it was going to be too expensive.
03:51 It was going to cost them in excess of a million quid or something.
03:54 But they looked at this carpet, and it had been put down on the floor in 1926,
03:58 and it was real carpet, none of this foam-back stuff that you get
04:02 in carpet warehouses now.
04:04 It was real woven, thick, tough, hard-wearing carpet.
04:08 And they decided just to dye it maroon.
04:10 And they dyed it.
04:12 But if you went down really close, you could still see the "It's good, it's Greens"
04:16 And I've actually got, you were talking about collecting earlier,
04:20 I've actually got a piece of the original carpet.
04:23 There was a roll up the back stair, and I was parley with the manager.
04:27 And there was a roll of carpet up the back, and he says "Just take it!"
04:30 And I had nowhere to keep a roll of carpet,
04:32 so I went up with a Stanley knife one day,
04:34 and I cut two big chunks off, and when you put them together,
04:37 it says "It's good, it's Greens"
04:39 So I think that must be the only bit of that carpet still left in existence.
04:42 I mean, I can't think of anybody else or anywhere else that would still have that carpet in it.
04:47 But the Apollo was just, it was fantastic.
04:50 And you would queue overnight for tickets, none of this phoning up online
04:55 and booting your seats on a computer, none of that.
04:58 I mean, when we went to see The Hood in 1971, for some bizarre reason,
05:02 the Apollo, or the Greens Playhouse as it was then, didn't have a box office for rock concerts.
05:08 If you were going to the cinema, you just went up and paid in at the door,
05:11 but it didn't have a box office.
05:13 So the tickets were sold from a place called House of Clydesdale,
05:16 which was an electrical store opposite.
05:19 Do you know when you come out of Waterstones now and cross over,
05:21 where Marks and Spencer used to meet? Right there.
05:24 And it was an electrical store, so if you wanted to buy a fridge,
05:27 or a washing machine, or a vacuum cleaner, or an iron, or something like that,
05:31 you went to House of Clydesdale.
05:33 And for some bizarre reason, which I've never quite managed to fathom,
05:36 in the back shop, there was these two women that sat at a little table like this.
05:41 We booked our tickets, and you queued up, and you went in,
05:44 and you bought your ticket, and they tore them out of the book and gave it to you.
05:47 Now that's how primitive it was.
05:48 So when we went to see The Hood, we had to queue out in Turkey Hall Street
05:51 on the Saturday night at 6 o'clock, when House of Clydesdale was shut.
05:55 And we queued out right through to half past nine on a Sunday morning.
05:59 Now at that time, Turkey Hall Street was still open to traffic,
06:02 so there was traffic going up and down in both directions.
06:04 It wasn't a pedestrian precinct.
06:06 And it was freezing. I think it was, you know, September, October or something.
06:10 And we had to beg, and I mean beg my old man to let me queue overnight.
06:14 You know, I was only 14 or 15.
06:16 And we queued overnight, and then these two women arrived the following morning
06:20 with a little Tupperware dish of sandwiches and a little flask of tea.
06:24 And they went in and opened it up, and then we went in four at a time
06:27 and bought our tickets, and that was it.
06:30 But it was a great place. I really miss it.
06:33 I mean, I had so many fantastic times there, so many great experiences,
06:38 meeting bands, seeing bands, just being part of that whole Apollo audience.
06:43 And it was a bit like that song, "New York, New York, if I can make it there,
06:46 I'll make it anywhere."
06:49 The Apollo crowd and audience really knew their music,
06:53 and they could spot a fake a mile away.
06:55 So if you could cut it on that 15-foot-high stage, you could cut it anywhere.
06:59 And that's why it was just such a magical, special, special place.