The Haçienda Read online

Friday 9th NUDE Mike Pickering

  Wednesday 14th ZUMBAR Joan Collins Fan Club with Fanny the Wonder Dog; fashion PA by Marc Benedict

  Friday 16th NUDE Mike Pickering

  Wednesday 21st ZUMBAR Hope Augustus; fashion PA by Aspecto

  Friday 23rd NUDE Mike Pickering

  Wednesday 28th ZUMBAR Jerry Sadowitz; fashion PA by Tristan Williams

  Thursday 29th TEMPERANCE CLUB Yargo

  Friday 30th NUDE Mike Pickering

  NOVEMBER

  Tuesday 3rd All About Eve

  Wednesday 4th ZUMBAR fashion PA by Howl

  Friday 6th NUDE Mike Pickering

  Wednesday 11th ZUMBAR Bolo Bolo; fashion PA by Reiss

  Friday 13th NUDE Mike Pickering

  Tuesday 17th Micro Disney

  Wednesday 18th ZUMBAR Philip & Steve Diggle;fashion PA by Akimbo

  Tuesday 24th Edwyn Collins

  Wednesday 25th ZUMBAR The Amazing Orchante; fashion PA by Tailor of Two Cities

  Friday 27th NUDE Mike Pickering

  DECEMBER

  Tuesday 1st Age of Chance

  Wednesday 2nd ZUMBAR Stevie Star; fashion PA by Woodhouse

  Friday 4th NUDE Mike Pickering

  Wednesday 9th ZUMBAR Staircase to Heaven; Frank Sidebottom; art installation by Hannah Collins

  Friday 11th NUDE Mike Pickering

  Wednesday 16th ZUMBAR Tot; fashion PA by Zipcode

  Friday 18th NUDE Mike Pickering

  Wednesday 23rd ZUMBAR YULETIDE SPECIAL Vera Duckworth/Liz Dawn; fashion shows by Geese/Tailor of Two Cities/Marc Benedict

  Thursday 24th CHRISTMAS EVE

  Friday 25th NUDE Mike Pickering

  Sunday 27th ZUMBAR Dead Marilyn (Monroe impersonator)

  Thursday 31st NEW YEAR’S EVE PARTY (and mega fireworksdisplay)

  FACT 51 Limited

  Trading as: the Haçienda

  FACT 51 Limited

  Trading as: the Haçienda

  Running costs (£)

  Bank charges and interest 1923.00

  Rent 5500.00

  Service charge 950.00

  Gas 752.00

  Water 2252.00

  Electricity 2735.00

  Rates 5957.00

  Full-time manager and wages 14,640.00

  Electrician 2665.00

  Taxis 1491.00

  Buses 653.00

  Anagram 987.00

  Insurance: Fire & theft 3125.00

  Buildings 3000.00

  Public liability 1000.00

  PRS 1343.00

  PPL 582.00

  Keith Taylor 991.00

  Sundries 5790.00

  Acorn cleaners 3926.00

  Cleaning materials 513.00

  Cleansing department 478.00

  Plumbers 114.00

  Lifts 28.00

  Larry Benji 492.00

  Bessages (fire Xs) 53.00

  Bolton BM (tills) 797.00

  City Life 370.00

  DJ Alarms 88.00

  Euro Lighting 23.00

  Sydney England 28.00

  B. Gibbons 36.00

  H. Haworth (glassware) 1175.00

  Johnstone Paints 63.00

  Jonson Panas 1362.00

  N. Klagg 510.00

  MEN 485.00

  Mainstage 89.00

  Manders Paints 194.00

  Rentokil 125.00

  Petty cash: January 1350.00

  February 1464.00

  March 1337.00

  Total running costs = 70,706.00

  Great excitement, we have Sham 69 visiting our Ibizan bolt-hole tonight. The Hersham boys are thinking of making their next album in the studio we’ve been using, Studio Meditterraneo – a grand name for a not-very-grand studio – so they’re being given the full sales pitch and tour. One of the selling points, of course, is that New Order are currently using it, busy recording their next album, the one that will eventually become Technique, and if it’s good enough for New Order . . . But actually we haven’t been good enough for it!

  We haven’t exactly been busy, and we haven’t done very much recording. Almost precisely none, in fact.

  Instead,I’ve been partying.Every single night I’ve been out until the small hours only to rise some time the next afternoon, refreshed and ready to start again.Tonight,I suspect,will be no different.

  Sham 69 arrive and are met by the two owners of the studio, a couple of right heavy-metal throwbacks: imagine Status Quo crossed with Judas Priest and you have an idea of the hair and wardrobe on these guys. They give Sham a tour of the studio then we all adjourn to the bar. There, I discover that Sham are doing a gig tonight at San Antonio harbour but have no soundman.

  Step forward Peter Hook, a great fan, ably assisted by Andrew Robinson.

  It’s going to be wild, we’re assured.

  Oh, how right they are.

  So we get to San Antonio where it turns out that Sham 69 will be playing the gig – an early Ibiza Rocks – on a big raft that’ll be towed out into the middle of the harbour. Sounds good. Trouble is, they’re not playing until much, much later – the early hours – and right now it’s only nine p.m., giving us a suicidal amount of time to kill. You can see exactly where this is going, can’t you?

  We make for the backstage area, which is a barge with a public bar upstairs plus a downstairs dressing room with cabins and a private bar.

  We get stuck in and by midnight everybody is off their face. I mean, completely out of their tree. Everyone’s a right mess, not least of all Sham’s lead singer, Jimmy Pursey, who’s mithering me for coke: ‘It’s for me piles. They’re killing me,’ he moans.

  Meanwhile, my mate has cornered the two studio owners. ‘Have you tried this?’he says,holding out his hand.‘It’s great.Everyone’s on it.’

  What he’s offering them is the main reason I’ve done nothing during our four months in Ibiza. It’s ecstasy, and I’ve taken to it like a duck to water ...

  We’d read about ecstasy before we arrived in Ibiza, of course, but none of us had seen or tried it; I’d never really used drugs up to that point. But every time we went out and about, buzzing around Ibiza, it looked like everyone was dropping E and having a fantastic time.They were, as we say, mad for it.

  So, one day, after another half-hearted attempt at recording, we were sent to track some down.

  There was a bloke named Paco who ran a bar near the studio and who once served the Rolling Stones up when they were on the island. Ronnie Wood was his favourite: ‘Uno grande guy: uno gram, uno line,’ he’d say.

  Paco introduced us to a dealer named Pedro, who we got to know well during our time in Ibiza. Pedro had only one arm. I kept asking him what happened to the other one but his English wasn’t too good – or mine wasn’t – so he never understood what I meant and I never found out. Pedro was shit hot on a moped. Work that one out.

  Anyway, we got some off him. Spent a lot of money on them, too – £90, all told. We returned to the studio like the guy with the magic beans. What was he called? Oh yeah: Jack. Only, we didn’t swap them for a cow. With hindsight I wish we had, but hindsight is good like that. Instead we went up our own beanstalk.

  After we’d explained how much they cost everyone suddenly looked very uninterested, so we were stuck with these tablets. Very, very annoyed, we charged into San Ann. Once we’d pounded back a few drinks and calmed down I said:‘I know.Fuck it.Let’s try a half.’

  We swallowed. Waited ten seconds. Then, as soon as Andy said, ‘Is yours working yet?’ I experienced a need to shit like I’d never felt before and I ran around like a maniac trying to find a bloody toilet.

  Once I’d accomplished that mission, the next sensation was like having a rocket up my arse. It felt like nothing I’d ever known before. My God, it was unbelievable. We lost control. We was off.

  Tripping, we got split up in San Antonio. I came to my senses about ten hours later, five miles away in Ibiza harbour, sat on a bench and watching the sun rise. God knows how I got there but, as I stared blan
kly out to sea, I thought I saw a little black thing come out of the water. It looked like a periscope. It looked round; it was a periscope. A flaming submarine rose up and docked. All the sailors emerged from inside and lined up on the deck; someone whistled, they saluted, then all disembarked, walked past where I sat, then marched into town.

  It was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen.

  I still have no idea what navy they were. I just thought, ‘Fuckin’ hell. I’m going home.’

  Once we’d recovered from that night, we couldn’t wait to do it again. Like Alice in Wonderland we found we liked it down the rabbit hole and we spent all our time partying.We were on the guest-list for all the clubs: Pacha, Ku, Space, Eden . . . My favourite was Amnesia – especially the roof terrace – but we haunted them all: the tranny bars of Ibiza Town, the after-hours clubs in San Antonio. And, God forgive us, we drove everywhere, too, all over the island – everyone did. Each morning there’d be a different set of rolled cars all over the place. We wrote off eleven hire cars ourselves.

  It was fantastic. A permanent holiday and we’d tell anyone who’d listen at home how great it was – except the wives, of course.

  Then somebody said, ‘We’re having such a good time, why don’t we invite the Happy Mondays over?’ Perfect.

  The Mondays were friends of ours; they were like our naughty younger brothers. Though sometimes I absolutely hated their stinking guts, especially when they misbehaved. I remember them wrecking a room we’d hired at Birmingham NEC for a Dry staff party when we were playing there. They broke in, grabbed the booze and wrecked the room.I went berserk.Me and Terry were ready to throw them out but Rob said no. Shaun’s only riposte was: ‘What do you think cleaners are for, Hooky?’ I was livid. Ah well.

  That said, they embodied true rock and roll. Like Iggy Pop, Nick Cave and other people I admired, they didn’t give a fuck what anybody thought.They made Pete Doherty look like Cliff Richard.

  So I was delighted when they came to Ibiza. They arrived with our great friend Gordon the Chef (‘Hundred and forty short orders, Hooky, one night’), and brought a couple of ounces of speed to sell to pay their way. They didn’t manage to sell any of it because everyone preferred E – and after we’d introduced them to Pedro, our one-armed dealer,so did they.The rest is history.The last we saw of them they were driving off with a couple of our rentals. Into the night.

  Needless to say, progress on the next New Order record now ground to a complete halt – in fact, if anything it went into reverse. There just wasn’t enough time to party and make the record, and every night brought its tales.

  Like the night Andy and I met Paul Oakenfold, and Brandon Block I think – or it could have been Danny Rampling – in a club. These were the guys who then took Ibiza and acid house back to London, so you can imagine: it was a massive night. Along the way we’d hooked up with two lads from Stretford and at the end of the night me and Andy offered to give them a lift home.

  Which would have been a great idea if either of us had known where we were going. We didn’t, but we weren’t going to let a small thing like that bother us. Definitely not.

  I was absolutely battered – no way could I drive. I could hardly even see straight. So it was Andy in the driving seat, me in the passenger seat, the two Stretford lads in the back. Tunes on. You’ve seen Wayne’s World, right? The bit where they’re all singing along to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’? That was us. Only we were doing the Ibiza version, the house remix, making boxes and gurning.

  All the same, though, there was something wrong. Something not quite right.

  ‘There’s summat up here, Andy,’ I was saying . . .

  ‘No it’s fine,’ he said. Foot hard down.

  ‘No there’s something wrong? I can’t figure out what it is . . .’

  Then – crash.

  We were on the wrong side of the road and we’d hit another car head-on. A right shunt. Andy and I both butted the windscreen – I swear the glass had a Peter Hook-shaped dent in it – and the two lads from Stretford came flying over the seats from behind us, scraping their shins on the seat backs and ending up in our laps, bleeding. Nasty.

  ‘You ok lads?’ I asked worriedly . . .

  ‘HEAD ON COLLISION WITH NEW ORDER! YEH!’ They chorused. Fuck me.

  Still, no serious injuries sustained, we jumped out of the car to meet the driver of the other vehicle, also unharmed.

  But very, very angry. He was a taxi driver, this guy, and he was gesticulating at his knackered car with one hand, using the other to wave a fist at us, screaming and shouting, ‘Fooking English pigs. You on wrong side of road.’

  Terrified, I went into full-on diplomacy mode.

  ‘Sorry,mate,I’m really,really sorry.We’ll pay for all the damage.We will, we’re in a band.’

  I was trying desperately to calm the guy down.He was having none of it. ‘Eenglish pigs. I call police.’

  The tunes were still on in our car and the lads from Stretford were dancing in the middle of the road. Andy, too. Still making boxes, throwing shapes and gurning – which for some reason seemed to annoy him even more.

  ‘You ruin my livelihood, I no feed my children!’ he was screaming.

  Then, to make matters worse, I heard sirens in the distance. Uh-oh.

  ‘You leg it,’ I told Andy. ‘I’ll deal with it.’

  God help us. I don’t know what I was thinking.

  So Andy and the two lads from Stretford did a runner to a graveyard opposite hiding behind the gravestones, watching me as I stood waiting to deal with the police, who arrived like a Spanish Starsky and Hutch, two right big bastards. They didn’t jump over the bonnet but both drew their nightsticks.

  I gulped. One stood by the side of the car, glowering. The other one, the bigger of the two,fixed me with a stare.Then,very,very,slowly he walked round both of the crashed cars until he was standing in front of me again. He raised his nightstick and jabbed me in the chest.

  ‘In Spain,’ he said, ‘we drive on zee right!’ Then walked back to his car, me nodding inanely.

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir!’

  Meanwhile, Andy and the two lads from Stretford had decided to offer moral support from across the road in the graveyard.

  ‘Hooky,’one of them called,head bobbing up from behind a gravestone.

  The two coppers looked over at the graveyard, but there was no sign of Andy or the two lads. They looked back at me.

  Behind them I saw the heads popping up from behind the gravestones. Like that game with the moles. If only I’d had a mallet.

  I grinned back at the coppers innocently. In the end, they’d had enough, got back in their car and drove off, leaving me a paranoid wreck in their wake. Now I legged it across the road and hid too, watching as the still-furious taxi driver managed to free his car of the wreckage and drive away, radiator steaming. With him gone, we emerged like Madchester zombies from the graveyard and pushed our car on to the side of the road. Another car wrecked.

  ‘See you, lads.’

  ‘Thanks for a top night, Hooky. See you in the Haç.’

  That was the great thing about E. It made mates of you all. As a result, as soon as you’d had your first experience of it, you were always trying to convert other people to it.

  Which brings us back to the barge, and my mate who is urging the two studio owners to get on one, offering them up in his upturned palm. ‘Everyone’s on one,’ he insists.

  Stuck in the album charts circa 1979 they may be, but these two don’t pass up the opportunity to try out the new wonder drug.

  They each take one.

  Almost immediately owner number one goes completely off it, thinks Andy is a monkey and freaks out. We lock him in the car for a while to recover, but when we go back later to check he’s OK he’s disappeared. Ah well. Owner number two, meanwhile, goes hyper.

  ‘I’m going to walk back,’ he tells me, head nodding, hair shaking.

  ‘The villa is about twelve miles away,’ I say.
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br />   ‘I don’t care. I’m going to walk back,’ he insists. ‘Which way is it?’

  I’m just as trashed as everybody else,which is obviously why I point in the opposite direction to the villa and say, ‘That way, mate’, chuckling as he trots off. Oops.

  Sham 69 haven’t played a note and it’s absolute pandemonium; nobody can even string a sentence together. But, hey, the show must go on. So the band find themselves on a raft being towed out into the middle of San Antonio harbour, where they begin to play.

  However, by now it’s three a.m. and the place is empty. God knows where everybody is, but they’re not in San Antonio harbour. It’s just Sham 69 on a raft, plus me, Andy, the PA guy, a few casualties and maybe a dog or two.

  Of course we’re going mad at the mixing desk. Andy is dubbing everything up and screaming,‘Woo,woo,woo . . .’The PA guy wants to kill him for it. We go so mad on the sound that even the casualties and the dogs are driven away, but it doesn’t really matter. By the time the gig is over Sham 69 are completely incoherent with booze – they could have been playing Shea Stadium for all they know about it – so we ditch them, leave them dribbling on the barge and decide go to Eden instead.

  Phew.

  Out of the madness at last.

  And then, into more madness.

  Eden’s one of my favourite clubs, and it’s jumping. We make our way up to the balconies from where we can survey the devastation below, and there we spy some familiar faces. Paco’s here. He’s with a couple of our new friends, one a tranny, the other a lesbian, who always hang out together; plus we bump into a bunch of guys we’ve been meeting a lot – the air-traffic controllers from San Antonio airport.These guys are lunatics, I’m telling you. Total nutters. Tonight’s a weird one even by their standards – tonight they’re wearing make-up and half of them are in drag. It’s the beginning of their holidays so they are celebrating; they leave Ibiza tomorrow.

  So there we are in Eden, off our cake. The music’s hitting the spot and we’re all talking – well, shouting, really. Strange, intense conversations about how great the music is, how wonderful the club is, how beautiful Ibiza is, how life is great.

  Next thing, this German guy comes over, bawls something in my ear and indicates a corner where it’s quieter. I go with him and there he fixes me with a serious, probing stare and says, ‘It is not a woman.’