We visited Max’s Bar on Glasgow’s Queen Street to speak to Norry from Lost Glasgow about how its former site, The Rock Garden, came to be a cool hang out spot for the city’s youth and revolutionised pub culture into how we know it today.
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00:00The late 70s period was when Glasgow really started to change, and Glasgow's drinking and dining scene really started to change.
00:09Okay, so today we are in Max's Bar, formerly the Rock Garden, with...
00:15Formerly Lane's Bar and Lunchroom.
00:18There we go. So, Norrie, tell me all about that.
00:21I'll tell you when I first knew about it. Growing up on the south side, I had two very, very cool brothers as neighbours, David and Keith Band.
00:36David probably had just started at Glasgow School of Art, and he said, this would be 1978, he said,
00:45I've got a job in a new Glasgow bar called The Rock Garden. Where is it? It's on Queen Street, right?
00:53And then the next thing, obviously I had an older brother who's three years older than me, so probably about the time my older brother was like 16, 17,
01:03he was coming in here and coming back and going, we were in The Rock Garden last night.
01:08We saw David from up the road, he was behind the bar, but we hid from him because he knows we're underage.
01:13But we saw so-and-so, and we saw so-and-so. Pre-City of Culture and all the rest of it, late 70s period, was when Glasgow really started to change,
01:22and Glasgow's drinking and dining scene really started to change, because historically, Glasgow pubs were, for the most part, men-only institutions,
01:34and they were dark, and they were dingy, and there was no music, and if there was any food, it was pie, beans and chips, fish and chips on a Friday.
01:43Two cousins, Ron and Ken McCulloch, started changing the Glasgow drinking and dining scene beyond all recognition.
01:56Ken McCulloch, who left school at 16, no qualifications, got a job in the Central Hotel, but it was still owned by British Railways.
02:08Of course, at this point, British Railways had hotels all over Scotland, and they were the best hotels.
02:15Central Hotel, Glen Eagles, the North British and George Square, beside Queen Street Station, obviously hotels at the big Edinburgh stations as well.
02:27So Ken went in as a training chef, and worked his way up, and as still a very young man, realised that something had to change.
02:39First of all, went off to Riostakis, the great Glasgow hotelier, who arrived in Glasgow aged 13, selling his mother's handmade lace door-to-door,
02:51and built up the whole Riostakis empire, went to Riostakis and said, look, I can make you money, because you need to do things better.
03:00And Ken would basically go into venues, sack all the staff, bring his own team in, who were just up to the nines when it came to service, style, modern eating habits, and all the rest of it.
03:15So out went the pine beans, in came more modern, more Mediterranean themed food, lighter food, lighter bars, better trained staff, better trained chefs.
03:29The first super trendy bar in Glasgow was one called Charlie Parker's, named after the great American jazz saxophonist, and that was Ken McCulloch.
03:42And his cousin Ron sort of looked at what Ken was doing, and thought, yeah, we need to change.
03:49And it wasn't just change for change's sake, they saw that there was money to be made in it as well.
03:55So Ken and Ron took on laying bar and lunching rooms, which had been a pretty staid, all male sort of bar, lunch place, literally since the 1880s, 1890s.
04:15At some point in the 20s or the 30s, the beautiful Art Deco facade went on, which is now listed.
04:23But they walked in and saw, for want of a better, a sleeping giant, and said, if we could turn this round and get rid of the bowler-hatted and suited businessmen, because that's really what it was filled with at lunchtime.
04:40It was famous for its sandwiches. It had always been famous for its sandwiches.
04:44It was also the first place in Glasgow, again in the 1880s, 1890s, to offer almost self-service.
04:51Historically, you would have filled your tray and gone to the wee waitress and paid for it all before you ate it.
04:58In this place, you helped yourself, and then you went up to the waitress at the end of your meal, and she counted the empty plates.
05:05In the late 70s, you've got the 60s generations coming through.
05:09They don't want that. They want something a bit more sophisticated.
05:13They probably don't want to go to a chain stackist place.
05:16So, as I say, the McCulloch cousins looked to each other and said, we can actually change the whole culture of Glasgow.
05:23Wining, dining, pubbing, and all the rest of it.
05:27So, as I say, in 1978, they opened this place, and it basically was the start of a revolution in Glasgow in terms of bars and dining out and drinking.
05:37Because all of a sudden, you were seeing drinks behind the bar and on the taps that you hadn't seen anywhere else.
05:43I probably started coming in here when I was about 16, and it was the first place I'd ever discovered Stella Artois.
05:51And I don't know if you know the effect that pints of Stella Artois can have on a 16-year-old, but literally two pints of it are fleeing.
05:59So, I soon learned how to regulate my Stella Artois intake and realised it was a bit strong for me.
06:07At that point, you were coming in here, and half of the bands in Glasgow were all hanging out in here and making plans and getting record deals.
06:18At that point, if you looked good in Glasgow, Glasgow had all of a sudden got such a reputation that every A&R man in London was coming up to Glasgow every weekend.
06:28And if you looked cool, they would literally jump out of a close grab you and give you a record contract.
06:34So, you had Hipsway, Loving Money, the Bluebells. The Bluebells played their first ever gig in here.
06:42And because, at that point, the bar wasn't licensed for live music, they had to advertise it.
06:48And I can't remember whose 21st birthday they advertised it, because that's about the age they were at the time.
06:54They were all in their early 20s. I can't remember if it was Bobby or David McCluskey.
06:59They advertised it as his 21st birthday, but everyone knew it was going to be a gig.
07:05And of course, rather than giving out tickets for somebody's birthday, they were selling the tickets.
07:10I think it was like £1 or £1.50, because they were going to put on a gig.
07:14And off the strength of that, within months, they had a record deal.
07:18Punk happened in London in 76. It didn't really get to Scotland until 77.
07:24By 78, we were already into what they would call new wave, post-punk, starting to head into the new romantic era.
07:34But you also had disco going on. You also had a sort of soul and funk revival going on.
07:40And all the tribes used to gather in here on a Friday and a Saturday night to see what each other was wearing, to hear what each other was listening to.
07:49And at the end of the night, folk would go...
07:52And at the end of the night back then, the end of the night was half eleven, chucking out time.
07:58But it was about half a dozen clubs then you would go to.
08:02And we used to sit over in that corner. That was our sort of gathering spot.
08:08So much so that we called it the gang hut.
08:12And then usually, a Friday night, we'd always end up in Maestro's in Scotch Street, which is sadly no longer there, which later became the Cotton Club.