Glasgow in the nineties: The story behind Daft Punk’s Glasgow connection

Many wouldn’t think that there is no connection between the city of Glasgow and the French electronic music duo Daft Punk but think again.

Last year marked 10 years since their final release Random Access Memories with the album including tunes such as ‘Get Lucky’, ‘Instant Crush’ and ‘Lose Yourself to Dance’ amongst others. The album gained widespread critical acclaim as many consider it to be their finest piece of work.

Daft Punk announced that they had split during February 2021 but if we are to rewind back to the beginning of the story, Glasgow’s influence on the band becomes more apparent. Their big break came back in 1993 when they met Glasgow label boss Stuart Macmillan at a rave at Paris’ EuroDisney.

Macmillan was one of the co-founders of the label Soma Quality Recordings along with Orde Meikle who were also known as Slam. At the event, they handed him a demo tape that contained the basis of their first single ‘The New Wave’ which was released a year later. Their first commercially successful track was ‘Da Funk’ which is known as a tune from their debut album Homework but was released two years prior in 1995 as a 12-inch single with only 2,000 copies being made available.

Over a year later, the pair signed with Virgin Records but still had a strong connection to Glasgow as they performed live at the legendary Arches in 1997 on their Daftendirektour. It was a venue that Daft Punk supposedly liked to visit during the nineties, freed from their masked look according to David Bratchpiece who wrote the book ‘Brickwork’ which was a biography about The Arches.

As well as playing at the Barrowland Ballroom later that year, before then the French duo also performed live on the Renfrew Ferry which was only their third ever live appearance in front of a crow of around 600 in 1995 which has cemented its place in folklore