The Haçienda Page 3

  So we did. They let us set up and play and we went down a storm. Those were the days.

  Despite the Electric Circus closing in October 1977, by 1978 the Punk scene had really grown and there were gigs all the time. The only thing that stopped us going out every night was cash: one or two shows a week was our limit. When we could afford to go out, though, we were spoilt for choice:Rafters,the Ranch,the Factory nights at the Russell. There were gigs all over the city. One venue, called the Squat, had been taken over by hippies and all the punks used to go there; any passing group could set up and play. It was great for a time, a really good scene, but by the following year it had splintered with both the Ranch and Rafters closing to punk.

  Out of ambition and necessity we expanded our territory. Joy Division pretty quickly became quite successful, so we performed not only around Britain but also in Europe. We felt so happy to be liked for what we did as musicians, we played anywhere that asked us; then, as the money came in and bigger concert promoters hired us to play,we earned enough to quit our day jobs.Everything seemed to be moving forward in the best possible way:Rob was running our careers,Martin Hannett was producing our records, Pete Saville designed the covers (convinced in his own mind that people bought our stuff because they loved his art rather than the music),Factory released it all,and we felt like we were really on our way.

  By early 1980 plans were afoot for us to tour the United States. By now we’d released one album, Unknown Pleasures, with another one, Closer, already recorded.

  All that came to an end when Ian killed himself, right before we were to fly to America. Personally, of course, we were heartbroken. Professionally, we were back to square one. As you can imagine, it was a tough time – but that’s a story for another day.

  Anyway, we picked ourselves up and Barney, Steve and I decided to keep going. We called ourselves New Order. Barney became lead singer;we toured as a three-piece,with the songs from the album that would become Movement, and after a while Steve’s girlfriend, Gillian Gilbert,became supplementary guitarist and keyboardist.

  If you liked alternative, underground and non-mainstream music in 1980, you read the weekly music papers and listened to John Peel. Indeed it was Peel, a huge Joy Division supporter, who first announced the death of Ian Curtis to a nationwide audience. Weeklies Melody Maker and the NME were on strike (the NME would return from its six-week break on 14 June with an Ian Curtis cover), so it was left to Dave McCullough in Sounds to provide the music papers’ sole contemporaneous obituary, almost a fortnight after his death. In purple prose somewhat derided at the time, he ended by saying, ‘That man cared for you, that man died for you’, reflecting the impact Joy Division had made in a relatively short space of time. Already beloved of the NME and Peel, their appeal was to go mainstream with the release of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ shortly after Curtis’ death. With the singer’s suicide lending an already jawdropping song extra poignancy, it propelled Joy Division up the singles charts and on to daytime radio, pulling Unknown Pleasures back into the mainstream album charts (it was already a permanent fixture on the fledgling independent charts, which had been introduced in January 1980), where it reached a high of number 71 in August that year – sales having been further boosted by the release of Closer, a number-6 album, in July.

  Interest in both albums was of course generated by Curtis’s death but also by a mini-controversy surrounding Peter Saville’s sleeve for Closer, which showed a photograph of the Appiani family tomb and was thought to be a tasteless reference to the suicide. A bemused Saville pointed out that the design had been finalized prior to Curtis’s death.

  As the year closed, the profile of Joy Division was at a high from which the band has never truly descended, and sales were giving Factory the financial health it would need to even consider projects on the scale of the Haçienda.

  It was the year of the Iranian Embassy siege, of the continued reign of the Yorkshire Ripper, the ever-present threat of nuclear war and the assassination of John Lennon. A dark, moribund year.

  The Oasis Club

  On Lloyd Street, the Oasis was ‘the north’s largest coffee bar and rhythm club’ and ran during the early 1960s when it hosted all of the era’s big bands, including, of course, the Beatles. Towards the end of the decade it fell out of favour and its audience drifted towards the Twisted Wheel. After that it became Sloopy’s, then Yer Father’s Moustache.

  The Twisted Wheel

  The original Twisted Wheel opened in Brazennose Street in 1963 playing R&B and chart music before moving to Whitworth Street in 1966,where it gained a reputation as one of the country’s best soul clubs, staging all-nighters and hosting soul stars of the day, including Edwin Starr and Ben E. King. It was in a feature about the club that the term ‘Northern Soul’was coined.However,after problems with drugs the club closed in 1971. It reopened on Whitworth Street in 1999.

  Pips

  Based on Fennel Street, Pips had six dance floors during its heyday in the late 1970s, and was a hangout for many of those would go on become the big names in the Manchester music scene. You could expect to see Peter Hook,Barney Sumner,Ian Curtis,Morrissey,Peter Saville and Johnny Marr among the David Bowie and Bryan Ferry clones and for this clientele the big draw was the Roxy Room, where they could hear DJ Dave Booth of Garlands fame playing David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Kraftwerk. Later, in January 1978, Joy Division’s first concert as Joy Division was at Pips.Bryan Ferry,after a Roxy Music gig at Belle Vue, was famously refused entry on the grounds that he was wearing jeans. The club closed at the beginning of the 1980s but later reopened as the infamous Konspiracy.

  The Reno

  The Haçienda’s first resident DJ, Hewan Clarke, cut his teeth playing jazz-funk at the Reno on Princess Road in the late 1970s. It was situated below the Nile, which played reggae, and together the two clubs had a fearsome reputation – as opposed to Rafters and Rufus in town, where the sounds were more commercial. A mainly black crowd would pack Renos until five or six in the morning, the air heavy with weed smoke, the dancing serious. Clarke later moved to Fevers, where he came to the attention of A Certain Ratio and Tony Wilson . . .

  Legends

  Based on Princess Street, Legends took over from Pips as Manchester’s main alternative hangout, especially on Thursdays. Wednesday nights, however, were presided over by DJ Greg Wilson, who, later, would also play a major part in shaping the Haçienda’s musical direction,educating audiences in a new, streetwise sound that was set to drag dance music out of the cul-de-sac offered by disco: electro. More on him later.

  Electric Circus

  Along with the Ranch and Rafters, the Electric Circus was one of the main Manchester venues to cater for the interest in punk after the Sex Pistols played the Lesser Free Trade Hall in June and July 1976; indeed, the Pistols would play this Collyhurst Road venue twice,further inspiring the home-grown bands. Around these venues, and with the Buzzcocks at its core, grew what we know today as the city’s post-punk scene (though everybody simply called it punk at the time), championed by journalists such as Jon Savage, Paul Morley and Mick Middles and spawning labels Rabid,Factory and New Hormones.Rob Gretton was part of the same scene.As DJ at Rafters,he had first seen Warsaw there, then later saw them again as Joy Division at the Electric Circus; he subsequently approached Barney at a Manchester phone box with an offer of management and got the job. The Electric Circus closed in October 1977, though Rafters, the Ranch and the Oaks in Chorlton remained popular punk venues.

  The Factory

  Wilson and Erasmus hosted the Factory nights at the Russell Club/PSV in Hulme between May 1978 and April 1980, before the idea of the Haçienda was mooted. As host of Granada TV’s So It Goes, Wilson was able to entice those who appeared on the show to play the Factory: thus the night hosted performances by a mouthwatering who’s-who of big names, including Public Image Limited, Pere Ubu, Magazine, Suicide, Iggy Pop, Stiff Little Fingers, the Pop Group, the Specials and Dexys Midnight Runners. Those who attended spea
k fondly of the Red Stripe, the goat pasties and the reggae played by the in-house DJ between bands.There was,they say,a very palpable sense of a scene developing.

  It’s fair to say that many of those involved in the early stages of planning for the Haçienda expected it to be like the PSV, which was quite dark and stuffy, had low ceilings and complied with most people’s expectations of a music venue. The Haçienda was to overturn all of those expectations – indeed, it would be instrumental in creating many new ones.

  It took a long time for New Order to recapture the ground we lost when Ian died, not to mention the emotional fall-out, which still gets me now. There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think of him and what we achieved. But by 1981 we were climbing the ladder again. We were touring and visiting great clubs in amazing cities. We liked the sleaziness of the places we discovered in New York, places like Hurrah, Danceteria, Tier 3 and Eden. In Manhattan at the time you’d find these steamy, sweaty, dark, low-end clubs, like the Fun House, a black-painted box that just felt vibey, and then you’d go into ritzy places with art installations, like Studio 54 and Area.

  But whenever we returned it was to a Manchester scene that was still pretty stagnant. So it was, then, that Tony and Rob came up with the idea of opening their own place – they’d been impressed by what they’d seen in New York, and promoting the Factory nights at the Russell Club had gone well.

  At first New Order didn’t really listen. We were concentrating on making music. Eventually we were forced to pay attention because whenever we’d get into conversations with Rob the club would always be his main subject. It got so it was all he’d talk about. His pitch centred around the notion that people like us deserved somewhere to social-ize;and this club would serve that need.He insisted that,as Manchester treated us well, we should give something back. (All very altruistic, of course, but we didn’t realize that he meant to give the city everything we had, financially and emotionally.)

  He told us the club would cost around £70,000. Being a small label with limited overheads,Factory possessed some capital,which could be invested – money from the sale of Joy Division records, presumably – so the label would pay half. The other half would be paid by New Order and would be tax-deductible as an investment.

  What? We couldn’t believe it. £35,000. We were musicians living on £20 per week.Where the hell was this fortune going to come from?

  ‘We’ll use our profits from the sale of Unknown Pleasures,’ he replied. He had this habit of pushing his glasses up his nose when he spoke. ‘We’ll put that in. It’ll be a great investment – and on top of that we’ll finally have somewhere to go to. Double bubble.’

  Mind you, if the money really was to come from the sales of Joy Division records, then Debbie Curtis – Ian’s widow, who received his share of band revenue – needed to be declared a partner in the club. But she never was. Rob left Debbie out of it by naming New Order, not Joy Division, as partners and stating that the money came from the sales of New Order’s records. However, I’d imagine revenue from both bands was used to pay for the club: if you think about it, Joy Division had at the time sold more records than New Order, so it’s only logical to assume that they served as the primary income.

  Either way, we’d agreed to fund a club.

  A new face had joined the Factory team by then.He was Howard ‘Ginger’ Jones, a local promoter who had impressed Rob by promoting a successful New Order gig at the Manchester Students Union. In conversation with Rob Gretton he’d said that one day he hoped to run a nightclub in the city that would provide an alternative to the Manchester raincoat-brigade scene. Gretton, who recognized a kindred spirit when he saw one, hired him virtually on the spot. Ginger’s task: to find a venue. One of those initially considered, then dropped, was the Tatler Cinema Club, but it was too small. They settled on a carpet warehouse on Oldham Street (near what would eventually be Dry), which was perfect. The purchase fell through, but the team were suitably fired up about the club and rushed into looking for another place. They found the International Marine Centre – a huge open space which was part of a building on the corner of Whitworth Street, not far from the Russell Club. Little more than a disused warehouse, it nevertheless fired the imaginations of Jones, Wilson, Gretton and Erasmus. Factory took the lease. Notably they didn’t buy the building, just took the lease. A mistake that would come back to haunt them.

  As plans began to move forward, Mike Pickering came aboard. He was a friend of Gretton, having met him years ago, aged sixteen, when the two Manchester City fans were being chased by Nottingham Forest fans at an away game. ‘I just jumped in a garden and hid behind a hedge and he

  did the same thing,’ said Pickering. ‘That was it then. We were best mates.’

  In 1979 Pickering had relocated to Rotterdam, where he lived with Gonnie Rietveld. Together they formed the band Quando Quango and hosted nights at a squat in a disused water works. There he began DJing (‘Chic and Stacey Lattislaw’), as well as inviting Factory bands to play, having stayed in touch with Gretton.

  Those who made the trip included A Certain Ratio, the Durutti Column, Section 25 and New Order – the latter’s second performance after the death of Ian Curtis. It was there that Gretton told Pickering about the Haçienda.

  Gretton had legendary powers of persuasion.It is said that he was able to talk people into performing pranks on his behalf: pushing people into swimming pools, or trashing bars. So he had no problem talking Pickering into returning to the UK to take care of booking acts for the Haçienda. With the site still ‘a pile of rubble’, according to Pickering, he was back in Manchester preparing to launch a club that had yet to be built.

  Rob and Tony wanted it run like a seven-days-a-week members’ club. They imagined that if someone popped into town they could stop by and get something to eat,have a cup of coffee or a beer.Furthermore, it could be somewhere you could go wearing whatever you liked. No dress code. Before it accomplished anything else, our place changed the face of clubbing in Manchester on that level because other clubs soon realized they needed to adapt.

  Now all we needed was a name, which came from Tony. He’d got it from Leaving the 20th Century: The Incomplete Work of the Situationist International, a book published in 1974 as a limited edition that became something of an underground classic. It featured essays from a magazine called Internationale Situationniste that said society had become boring, and that the only way to put everyone back on track was to create jarring ‘situations’ by combining all types of art, including architecture. Rob and Tony saw the club as a means of doing so. Situationism was their thing, not mine, although some of the concepts stuck with me and the people around us.

  And you, forgotten, your memories ravaged by all the consternations of two hemispheres, stranded in the Red Cellars of Pali-Kao, without music and without geography, no longer setting out for the hacienda where the roots think of the child and where the wine is finished off with fables from an old almanac. That’s all over. You’ll never see the hacienda. It doesn’t exist. The hacienda must be built.

  Ivan Chtcheglov, 1953

  Tony picked up on that last phrase, ‘The hacienda must be built’, which became his call to action and gave us ‘hacienda’. To that was added a cedilla – so legend has it, in order that together the c and the i looked more like the number 51, which was to be the club’s catalogue number – and we had our name: the Haçienda.

  ‘Punk had levelled the ground,’ said Peter Saville. ‘It had burned for about eighteen months and all of us involved in that moment were wondering what you then build. There was a strong feeling that it was a post-revolutionary moment and that you had to then build the future.The Haçienda must be built was a great statement for that moment in time.’

  However, Saville didn’t feel able to design the club. He was shown around the yacht showroom by Gretton and Wilson and was stunned by the space and flattered by the offer, but ultimately thought it a job more suited to Ben Kelly, of Ben Kelly Design.

>   London-based Kelly was a veteran of the punk years, having been at its epicentre: he was one of those arrested during the Pistols’ infamous Jubilee riverboat escapade; he spent the night in the cells and was later given a two-year suspended sentence. He had designed the shop front for Malcom McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s legendary Seditionaries clothes shop on Kings Road, where anarchy shirts, bondage suits and parachute tops were available to London’s punks – a more fashion-conscious bunch than their Manchester contemporaries. He’d also designed the Glitterbest office, HQ for McLaren and the Pistols, then was asked to make their Denmark Street rehearsal rooms habitable. (Upon arriving there for the first time, he found himself being chased down the street by the Pistols’ drummer, Paul Cook, who was wearing just a pair of underpants.) Next he was asked by Steve Jones to do some work on his West Hampstead flat. The brief: ‘I don’t care what you do, as long as it impresses the birds.’ It worked – Kelly recalled seeing most of Hot Gossip leaving Jones’s bedroom one morning. So, for Factory,his punk-rock credentials were impeccable.

  Kelly and Saville had already collaborated on the sleeve for a single by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (an ex-Factory band who have since moved to Virgin, where Saville had links), plus a Section 25 release for Factory.Work on the Haçienda would be an altogether more complex and three-dimensional task.

  ‘I got on a train and went to Manchester to be met by Howard ‘Ginger’ Jones in a red sports car,’ Kelly told journalist Miranda Sawyer. ‘We went to this place and Mr Wilson was there, Mr Erasmus was there, we walked round it and Tony Wilson said to me, “Do you want the job?” And I said, “Of course I want the fucking job.”’

  His first task was to deal with the often conflicting desires of the Factory people, with their imaginations sparked by trips to New York nightclubs: the Fun House, Hurrah, Danceteria, and Paradise Garage. Gretton and Wilson had returned from these trips full of adjectives like ‘dark’, ‘intense’, ‘sleazy’, while the New Order contingent had been seduced by the half-lit corners and sense of mystery they’d encountered.