The Haçienda Page 26

  The police freaked and came down mob-handed to search for this guy. Damien kept them busy at the door while the guy got cleaned up and bandaged in the kitchen. With the help of one of the bar staff (a guy who we later discovered was there as a spy for the Salford lot, would you believe!), Ang put a hat and a big coat on him, then smuggled him past the police – pretending he was pissed and had passed out. They just shoved him in a cab, put £200 quid in his top pocket and told the taxi driver to drop him off in Swinton, where he lived. That got rid of the evidence and got the doormen off the hook.

  Then Ang went to deal with the police, who didn’t believe her when she told them he’d gone. They emptied the club, shut it down for the night, and proceeded to search the place from top to bottom. We knew what had happened but Anton looked around the basement, showing willing.Unfortunately he found a gun in there,which sent him absolutely hysterical. He garbled about it to Ang, who’d developed something of a blasé attitude to it all and told him, ‘If you’ve not touched it, it’s OK. Just relax, cover it back over and leave it there.’

  He had to bluff the rest of the evening out, but the police eventually got bored and left with another dire warning ringing in our ears.

  Anton had always wanted to go to the directors’ meetings on Thursdays. When eventually he was given permission to attend one week, he came in full of serious suggestions about stock-takes and brimming with ideas about staff rotas and wastage, etc. Tony almost immediately stood up and screamed at him to leave – telling him to get the fuck out, that he had lost the ethos of what we were really about.

  Anton was never allowed in again. He panicked – even more than when he’d found the gun – thinking he’d get sacked. In fact Tony later took him aside to reassure him that his job was secure: ‘Don’t worry, darling,’ he said. ‘It’s just how we are.’

  Nobody expected to hear sensible ideas at these meetings. They just wanted to talk football and birds, to argue and place bets on how many customers might show up based on our attendance projections, and to drink.

  I called them Mad Hatter’s Tea Parties. They were utter, utter nonsense that went on from two in the afternoon until early evening in the Round House section of the Haçienda building. The room became so hazy from everyone smoking draw,you’d lose track of time completely. The Round House (Shit House, I’d call it) was freezing during wintertime, impossible to heat. I’m sure we met there only so we’d feel like we’d got some use out of that half of the building. It always drove Alan Erasmus mad that we’d not rented it out; he made Paul Mason’s life hell because of it. Office space like that in Central Manchester would be considered prime real estate today. It wasn’t back then.

  We’d start off sober.When we were sick of the latest tales of woe, Rob would order and pay for a crate of Sapporo. There’d be a dull middle bit spent sorting out a few practical things out – which burgers or toilet rolls to buy, for example – then things would degenerate as Rob simultaneously skinned up and slagged everyone off. Tony, always fashionably late, would leave first, usually followed by Ang and Paul Mason, leaving Rob and me to finish off the beer, befuddled.

  This routinely meant the beginning of my weekend. I’d go to Dry afterwards,then to Paradise Factory,arriving home about midnight on Friday to recover before picking the kids up on Saturday.

  At one Thursday meeting talk centred around how much VAT we owed. It seemed that our debts with the bank had become such a problem that any money we deposited was being swallowed by the overdraft on the current account.When the quarterly VAT payments were due there was no money put aside to pay them.

  There I sat, a dumbo from Salford, looking at the management notes, trying to make sense of them. On paper everything appeared good. Profit from tickets? Yeah. Profits from bar sales? Yeah. Profit from the cloakroom? Yeah.

  ‘Where’s the VAT?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, that figure includes the VAT,’ somebody replied. They hadn’t deducted the VAT from the figures.

  ‘Surely it’s not profit then?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yeah. You’re right, We’ll have to change that.’

  Fuck me. That had gone on for twelve years.

  No one had thought to keep the VAT money separate so as to ensure that the sour-faced bastards at HM Customs & Excise remained paid off and happy (impossible,I know,but you have to try anyway).We slipped nine months (three payments) behind at one point, accruing late fees all the while: 17.5 per cent of three months’ turnover at £300,000,which amounted to about £40,000 a quarter with penalties.

  Meanwhile, we settled in as comfortably as anyone could with the gangsters. Indeed, some of the staff took interest-free loans from them rather than go through a bank. They’d borrow cash for a month at a time, sometimes as much as two grand, and be given a date on which they had to pay it back. Because of their connection to the Haçienda, the staff weren’t charged interest – although by the same token neither were they able to welch. They might default on payments to a bank, but they’d never default with the gangs.

  We saw unspeakable acts of wanton violence at the door. Horrible things were done to or by our doormen, then Damien would have to step up the next day to broker a deal – like a regular businessman – to smooth things out and save face.

  For example, one night our doormen got attacked by a gang from Broughton. We had a hydraulically powered shutter door at the club, which shot down if you banged a button (God help anyone who got in its way). On this occasion they got the shutter down but the gang poked machetes and swords through the viewing slat. Our guys poked knives back. (Suzanne went mad; they used her best kitchen knives.)

  Things died down, but honour needed to be satisfied so one of the doormen and his back-up went looking for revenge. (We later found out that the back-up was four armed guys in a car parked round the corner of the club every night it was open,in case of emergencies.)

  The other gang were in Home by now, the doorman’s spies told him, so an associate let him into the club via the back door. He went in alone to get his respect; the others were supposed to help if it went tits up. Inside, the other gang had been warned he was coming. They were ready and shot first. There was complete pandemonium, everyone screaming,panicking,trying to get out of the way.He tried to return fire but his gun jammed so he ran back outside and got shot in the thigh – just before he slid under a car to escape. His back-up were so busy listening to a Graeme Park mix tape in their car, they didn’t hear the

  gunfire (Graeme’s tapes were legendary). Our guy had to stay under there for a while, till things calmed down, in case he got killed. He went berserk when the others eventually came to find him. He had such an amazing capacity for pain, though. He actually went home, showered, burned his clothes, put clean clothes on, and then finally went to hospital – all with bullets still lodged in his leg.

  Tony, Rob, Alan and I visited him in hospital in the middle of the night (there’d been another of those awful phone calls) and he told us what had happened. Apparently the coppers had come in to interview him just before we arrived; he’d got rid of them by picking up a chair and telling them he’d throw it out the window unless they fucked off. While he was recovering, a £30,000 compensation deal was brokered. If the shooters didn’t pay, there would be retaliation. Thus the matter was resolved by the paying of a fine. Rough Justice.

  Ang Matthews asked one of them how he could live this way.

  He told her, ‘What’s the worst somebody can do? They can shoot me. If I’m shot dead, then it don’t make any difference to me.’

  He didn’t give a fuck. I don’t know if you call that courage. They were hard, hard men who acted decisively and took incredible risks. Amazingly,they had a soft side,though they let very,very few people see it. They could be incredibly nice and gentle, a weird contradiction. I suppose I was privy to that because I became friendly with them. They’d let their guard down occasionally but it would always go back up before too long. Honestly, hanging around with people like them felt cool. Like
being an insider, dangerous but exciting. I remember one of them surprising his girlfriend with a weekend break in Greece. They duly arrived and he pulled out seven grams he’d secreted. All went well for a while, then some small argument escalated to the point where he smashed up the hotel room; she ran out screaming for help and brought the entire bar staff back upstairs. He leathered them, all seven of them. It took ten riot police with tear gas to overpower and arrest him. He was deported the next day. Who said romance was dead?

  Our bouncers were so powerful and so bloody violent that anywhere we went we had the cachet of being associated with them. I remember one night going to the Paradise Factory (the club built in the Factory office building after it was sold when the company went bump) with a younger bouncer from the Haçienda – let’s call him Jack – who was a bit like me: off it. We’d become friends, but hell he got me into some trouble.

  The bouncers inside the Paradise Factory were fucking nasty,really obnoxious. After about ten minutes I asked, ‘Are you getting the vibes? It’s really heavy in here.’

  ‘Oh,no,no,no.Don’t worry about it.Everything will be fine.’

  He went back to talking to some people he knew and I thought, ‘I can’t fucking bear this.’ I finally talked him into leaving.

  We went back to the Haçienda and I said, ‘Fuck, the security were a bit unfriendly in there, mate.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Well, I had one of those guys up against a wall with a machete last week. That’s probably why.’

  They’d refused entry to our flyer people and we had a reciprocal deal so the lads had gone down to sort it out.

  ‘Oh, now you tell me.’

  Visiting dangerous territory was a way of showing face. Things like that happened all the time when we hung out together. I came to understand his reputation through the sudden change in mood whenever we’d go someplace together. I’d think, ‘God, it’s really tense in here.’ And leg it.

  Another time, we met at the Corn Exchange in Manchester, which is now the Triangle, where he bought a knife off a stall – this big, fuckoff SAS survival thing with a serrated edge. I asked, ‘What do you want that for, then?’

  He went, ‘Oh, it’s for me collection at home. You want to come to the Conservatory for a drink?’

  Like a mug, I said, ‘Yeah.’ In there we sat down and had a drink with another well-known gangster.The manager of the Conservatory came over so I thought I’d leave them to it and started to move off. Then I saw them brandishing Jack’s brand-new knife. There’s me, sitting there like I’m in on it with them. I went spare: ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I don’t want anything to do with it . . .’

  He just laughed.

  I could do nothing but apologize profusely to the manager the next day.He said not to worry,he was used to it.

  Fuck me. We were all in the same boat.

  I suppose Jack saw me as his mate. He’d stand next to me at the Haçienda, minding me. One night two kids walked up, saying, ‘Hi, Hooky, we’re from Chicago. We’ve come all the way out here just to see New Order and their club.’

  Jack started yelling, ‘What are you fucking twats doing? Leave him alone?’

  I said it was all right but he just kept screaming – ‘You fucking cheeky bastards!’ – and threw them straight out without listening to me at all. A bit over-protective. Like a dog with a bone.

  Those incidents aside,we got along well and went to a lot of parties together. We knew all the same people, so there was common ground. If he sussed that I had something on me when I met him at the door, he’d leave his spot and stand beside me all night. It was like having my own private,uncontrollable,psychotic (but very friendly) bodyguard.

  There are stories about bouncers you wouldn’t believe. Like the fact that around Christmastime they’d ‘ask’ all the customers to each put £1 into a collection, which they’d duly take to a local children’s hospital. Very thoughtful.

  And say what you want about Damien Noonan, but he was devoted to his family. One night Ryan Giggs from United showed up. Damien told the doormen, ‘Keep him here.’

  Damien went home, roused his kids out of bed, dressed them in their Manchester United kits and drove them back to the club – this took an hour – then got their picture taken with Ryan and finally let him go in.

  Whenever I came to leave the club and needed a taxi home, Damien had a habit of flagging down the nearest one and hauling out whoever was inside it regardless of what I or the driver said in protest. To my eternal shame I never refused to get in, though. (Do you know how hard it is to get a taxi at three a.m.on Whitworth Street on New Year’s Day?) I once dragged my mate Ken out of the cocktail bar (off his head, talking to the wall) and Damien outside insisted on finding us a taxi.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I told him. ‘I’ll walk down to the Ritz –’ this being another club just down Whitworth Street West – ‘he needs the air.’

  Damien wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Stay there, mate.’ You could never argue with him.

  He called a taxi over, ejected the people inside by screaming, ‘Fucking get out, you twats, this taxi’s for Peter Hook.’ Then he put Ken and me in it and closed the door.

  As we drove off the driver asked, ‘Was that Damien Noonan, then?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Ken blurted out:‘Just drive,you bastard.’

  I told him, ‘Shut up, will you? Leave him alone.’

  Ignoring Ken, the cabbie went on: ‘Yeah, I was in the nick with Damien.’

  Knowing even as the words came out that I shouldn’t say anything, I nevertheless asked,‘Oh,what were you in for?’

  ‘Murder.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I thought.

  Ken yelled, ‘Shut up, you bastard, and drive. Get me home; I want more!’

  ‘Just shut up, Ken.’

  In the end I had to slap him before he got us both killed.

  ‘Yeah, I was in for murder,’ the cabbie continued. ‘I killed this guy. Ripped his fucking head off, I did. His wife thanked me. He was such a bastard.Come to think of it everyone thanked me’

  All I could think was, ‘How do I get in these situations?’

  I looked outside. It was five in the morning and the sun was rising. What a life.

  The club struggled on. Noonan’s lot ran the door very well for a while but, as drug use increased, crime became more lucrative and the gangs started getting heavier and heavier.The violence increased.

  Indeed. Dominic Noonan, who worked with his brother for the club, later told documentary-maker Donal MacIntyre that the Haçienda was a ‘tough door’; that gangs from Moss Side, Cheetham Hill and Salford would turn up, all wanting to get in for free, ‘so me and some of the lads who ran the door said enough was enough, let’s take the trouble to them – and we did.’

  He and another doorman paid a visit to a pub, his mate with a shotgun, Dominic wielding a machete. ‘One of the gang lad’s dogs was about [doglovers and vegetarians might want to look away now] so I just chopped its head off, carried the head inside the pub and put it on the pool table. I more or less told them, “Stay away from the Haçienda or the next time it’ll be a human head,” and they never came back.’

  The club’s eleventh birthday passed joylessly. Someone bottled David Morales (we had our suspicions who did it), managing to gash his back wide open.

  ‘You don’t pay me enough to bleed,’ he told us.

  It should have been a proud night. Instead, total anarchy. Gangsters fondled girls walking up and down the staircase into the basement. They felt untouchable. From that point on, things were awful. The gangs were ruling the roost and, try as they might, our doormen could-n’t control them.

  That night some of the Salford lot kidnapped a friend of mine. They told her they were taking her to a party, but instead they kept her at one of their houses high on acid for two days, during which they tried to persuade her to take her jeans off and whatever – just to mess with her mind, hopefully. She escaped when one of the gangster’s mums came round. They also kidnap
ped a guy whom they’d discovered had dealt Es behind their backs. They took him to Ordsall, put him in a sack and kept him there for three days, giving him the occasional kicking. As with the girl, they fed him acid for the duration. Apparently this was a favourite trick of theirs, which they employed to ensure that nobody dealt without them getting a cut.

  Meanwhile, the debts were piling up. Hidden away in the minutes of management meetings from the middle of the year is an anonymous report detailing ‘the bailiff situation’.Also listed are sundry creditors:

  without whom the running of the club becomes almost impossible. The involvement of bailiffs has become an issue towards the end of this week. Three in one week is hardly to be expected. The ones working for PRS are very aggressive (I know them from Factory days,and if payment is not made then they will take away whatever is required). The ones working for the rates people are less of a problem, but we obviously need to keep them happy each week. The third one works for the court, and is merely collecting small CCJs, but cannot be ignored.

  For the next four years the Haçienda took up much of my time. At one point I nearly swapped music for full-time management of the club at Rob’s request. New Order basically quit after we finished touring in 1993 – although we’d eventually get back together again, in 1998 – and we never socialized during the interim. Until the reunion I’d seen Bernard only twice in five years, and in all that time I didn’t see Steve and Gillian even once. Without New Order to think about, Rob spent most of the time developing his record label, Robs Records, signing acts like Gabrielle’s Wish and Sub Sub, who he’d showcase at the club. He’d spend most days in his office, tending to business or staring out of the window. The staff respected him for his reputation, his intelligence and his ability to spot great bands, but they learned not to disappoint him, either. If he noticed a spelling error on our flyers, he’d fly into a blind rage, insisting that they be reprinted or corrected by hand. He still genuinely cared about all the aesthetics.