The story of Oasis being discovered at Glasgow’s King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut
We sat down with John Paul Mason, music lover and rep for King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow City Centre, the very place Alan McGee discovered Oasis in 1993 and offered them a record deal.
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00:00Something about those Definitely Maybe shows, I was like,
00:02it's Mourning Gory anniversary next year.
00:05If ever they were going to do it,
00:06surely it would make sense to be next year,
00:08and then, lo and behold, it is.
00:11This Is King Tut's and Upstairs Is The Wah-Wah Hut,
00:13that's what was in the original press release.
00:15And yeah, like three years into its existence,
00:19there was a three-band bill one night,
00:22Boyfriend, Sister Lovers, 18 Wheeler.
00:25That particular night, a band had rocked up from Manchester
00:29in a van that they'd chipped in their last money,
00:31apparently, to get that van to come up,
00:34because they'd heard that Sister Lovers,
00:36who they shared a rehearsal space with in Manchester,
00:38were playing here.
00:39They were like, well, we want to play King Tut's in Glasgow.
00:42We are going to play King Tut's.
00:43So they come up, and then the equivalent of me
00:47repping the show goes to the back door,
00:50and there's a band in a van called Oasis,
00:53and they're asking to play.
00:55And then I think a phone call was made
00:56to the higher haegens, and they were said
01:01that if they can figure it out between themselves,
01:03then they can play.
01:04So they ended up playing, I think, a 20-minute set here,
01:07but McGee was here, importantly,
01:09and he'd come to noise up his ex-girlfriend,
01:12who was in one of the bands,
01:13just to be a nuisance and be at the gig.
01:16So he saw Oasis, said, he's got a record deal,
01:19and Noel was like, no, and he went, do you want one?
01:22And he was like, yeah, all right.
01:23And then I think Noel then went
01:26and did some reconnaissance on McGee,
01:28just to find out who Creation were,
01:29who the label were, who he was as a person.
01:32Got a lot of good feedback, you know,
01:34the fact that he'd put out Primal Scream,
01:35Jesus and Mary Chain, Teenage Fan Club, many others.
01:40They've never, ever played here as a band.
01:43Since then, the only real things that have happened are
01:46they have both been here
01:48for the 20th anniversary birthday party,
01:51and they were given the original King Tut's
01:55wooden sign from out front,
01:57and they have it in the lockup,
01:59because Brian Cannon, when he was taking pictures
02:02for the 30th anniversary, definitely, maybe,
02:05Noel took him to the lockup,
02:06and he said, oh, here's the King Tut's sign,
02:09and he was like, I'd really like that included.
02:11It was Noel that pushed for that
02:12to be included on the sleeve.
02:14And then obviously Liam came to shoot a video here,
02:16which I was the rep for that day,
02:19so he was supposed to come in the back door,
02:21and then a few minutes before he was due to arrive,
02:24we got word on our radios,
02:26I mean, it was like loads of security,
02:27and just, it was all hands on deck,
02:29and there was obviously a film crew,
02:31Shane Meadows with his film crew and all that,
02:33and the next thing we got, he's coming in the front door,
02:35and then I like run down the stairs,
02:37just as Liam's like walking up those stairs
02:40and walking into the venue,
02:41so I see him just walking in like that,
02:44looking around, and then he walks into the room,
02:47and he's just standing, looking at the stage,
02:49and it was, and I was from a distance
02:52just seeing this happen,
02:53and it was a complete out-of-body experience for me,
02:56because I was like,
02:57I can't believe Liam Gallagher's in Tut's.
02:59Like, of all the places he could have shot a video,
03:02he chose Tut's, because it meant something to him.