MUSIC | Feature
HIGH NOTES
Will Glasgow’s newest, and biggest indoor venue, have the X factor? David Pollock explores The Hydro before its opening this month
Any venue that opens with a first week that includes four nights by Rod Stewart alongside dates with Fleetwood Mac, rumoured Superbowl half-time act Bruno Mars and the stage production of Jesus Christ Superstar might not set hipster hearts aflame, but it should also give the impression we’re talking about An Event occurring here. Make no mistake, whether the X Factor tour gets your juices flowing or not (it rolls up in February), in raw economic terms, the opening of Glasgow’s Hydro (or to give it its full title, The SSE Hydro Arena) is surely the biggest thing to happen to live music in the UK this year.
If you’ve driven across the Kingston Bridge in the last few months, you’ll know the one we mean: the futuristic upturned bowl dwarfing the nearby Clyde Auditorium and SECC sister venues, the one which looks like it was modelled on the Daft Punk helmets. At full capacity it holds 13,000 per performance (that’s 3000 more than the strikingly obsolete-looking SECC), and the ambitious stated intention is for it to become ‘one of the top five entertainment arenas in the world’.
‘It depends how you evaluate the top five,’ ponders The Hydro’s director of concerts, events and ticketing John Langford. ‘Generally it’s from an annual poll done by the industry magazine Pollstar which measures the top hundred based on footfall over the year. In fact, I’m confident
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we can get into the top three based on projections for the next five years, which means we’d need to get about a million people a year through the venue. I’m confident we can do that. We’re already seeing a tremendous demand.’
Let’s put that in perspective: only New York’s Madison Square Garden and London’s O2 will be bigger. Based on a Roman amphitheatre design by architects Foster + Partners, The Hydro differs from the SECC in that it’s a purpose-built concert arena rather than a multi- use exhibition and conference centre. This means, says Langford, that, ‘pretty much every seat in the house is a really good one, both for the view and the audio,’ particularly with the Arenamation screen which wraps around the interior wall.
The knock-on effect is that Glasgow can now attract more and bigger artists throughout the year, rather than just to Hampden on select summer dates. This is due to a combination of high-end production facilities, increased concert capacity and frankly, the fact that the heightened experience everyone will be receiving means that promoters can charge more for tickets. Upcoming shows include Disney on Ice, Andrea Bocelli, Celtic Connections, the MOBO Awards, Black Sabbath and two nights from Calvin Harris, ‘which sold out within hours’. Glasgow is the perfect spot, says Langford, because not only is it a city with a huge appetite
for live music, but the catchment radius for the concerts the new venue will stage stretches all the way down to Manchester and Liverpool. ‘Over March, April and May we only have something like 14 days where we aren’t booked,’ he says. ‘So the challenge for us is what we do over the summer months, and that’s where we work with the Commonwealth Games, with Events Scotland and trying to attract really big headliners from festivals down south that we now have the capacity for. We’re announcing two really, really big pop shows shortly that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise: huge productions that only this modern arena can handle.’
Rod Stewart plays Mon 30 Sep, Wed 2, Fri 4 & Sat 5 Oct.
Fleetwood Mac (pictured) play Thu 3 Oct.
Bruno Mars plays Sun 6 Oct.
Micky Flanagan plays Thu 10 Oct (see preview, page 53). The Proclaimers, Glasvegas and Roddy Hart play Sat 12 Oct.
For all shows at The Hydro, Glasgow, see hydro.com.