If the Sub Club was the underground and the Arches the arts venue, the Tunnel was the superclub — the glossy, big-name, dress-to-impress heart of mainstream Glasgow clubbing. Opened in 1990 in a basement on Mitchell Street, it is widely remembered as the city’s first true superclub: a 1,100-capacity room of marble and chrome where the biggest DJs in the world played to a crowd in shiny shoes and multi-coloured Ted Baker shirts. For nearly twenty-five years it was where Glasgow went when it wanted a big night out, and it earns its page as the definitive venue of that scene.
The Superclub Look
It looked the part, which was much of the point. Where the Sub Club revelled in its dinginess and Nice N Sleazy in its grime, the Tunnel was sleek and aspirational — a designed, upmarket space that matched the glamour of the guest list. This was clubbing as event, as occasion, as somewhere you dressed up for; and in the house-music boom of the 1990s, that formula filled the room to its 1,100 capacity weekend after weekend.
World-Class Bookings
The bookings were genuinely world-class. The Tunnel’s guest DJs over the years read like a roll-call of dance-music royalty — Tiësto, Paul Oakenfold, Judge Jules, Roger Sanchez, Danny Rampling, Trevor Nelson, Boy George, Pete Tong, Masters at Work, David Morales — the international elite of house and dance, drawn to a club that had become a fixture of the UK circuit. Its Friday night was Ark and its Saturday night Triumph, with a monthly Renaissance Night, and its resident DJs (Michael Kilkie, Simon Foy and others) became local heroes in their own right.
The recognition was formal as well as popular: in 1995 the Tunnel was named UK Discotheque of the Year by the British Entertainment and Discotheque Association — national confirmation of what Glasgow already knew, that the Mitchell Street basement was operating at the very top of the British club scene. For a city sometimes overshadowed by London and Manchester in the clubbing press, the Tunnel was a point of genuine pride.
It was part of the wider empire of Glasgow nightlife too, owned across its life by the CPL and Hold Fast entertainment groups that also ran the Cathouse and the Garage — a reminder of how tightly interwoven the city’s club scene was, a handful of operators and DJs shaping the nights of a whole generation across a clutch of venues within a few streets of each other.
The Closing
The Tunnel closed in 2014, after twenty-four years — a long innings for any club, and a genuine one for a superclub, a format that burned bright and often brief elsewhere. The Mitchell Street basement was taken over by the G1 Group and became a bar called Revolution; the space still hosts club nights, and — a testament to the loyalty the Tunnel inspired — regular ‘old skool’ reunion events still pack the old basement with those who danced there first time round.
The Tunnel earns its individual page as the flagship of Glasgow’s mainstream 1990s clubbing — the superclub that proved the city could stage a night as glossy and star-studded as anywhere in Britain, and be recognised nationally for it. Between the underground of the Sub Club, the arts-venue grandeur of the Arches and the glamour of the Tunnel, Glasgow’s golden clubbing age had all its bases covered — and on Mitchell Street, for a quarter of a century, it went large.