The Haçienda Read online

  They would, though. Given time.

  For the moment, the Haçienda would be best known as a live venue, hosting some legendary shows.

  The difficulties we had getting the place open only worsened from that point on. Yes, the premiere night was packed (the booze and entrance was free – what do you expect?), but after that you could literally count on your fingers the punters who turned up each night.

  Even so, Tony and Rob went full tilt, keeping the club open seven nights a week, plus lunchtime on Saturday and Sunday, the ethos being we always offered the members somewhere to go. Now, if you ever saw the Haçienda, you’d know it was hardly the most convivial venue for an afternoon club. The glass roof made it too bright during daytime, and the size of the place made it cold and uncomfortable. It was like trying to relax in a museum café,and nobody really wanted that kind of atmosphere.

  We also employed a chef. I ate there because he was really good. He concocted these wonderful stuffed-chicken pancakes with a creamy sauce that I thought were amazing. Of course, as a co-owner I didn’t have to pay to eat at the Haçienda, so I thought I was getting a bargain. Little did I know I was actually paying a fortune for them.He didn’t last that long – just a matter of weeks – because he didn’t cook for anyone apart from me.Shame.He was a great chef.

  The hopes for the place were ridiculous, really, because no club is open seven nights a week. Common sense should have told us that after the first month – when we hadn’t made any money at all during the daytime because nobody came and the place was fully staffed for a non-existent clientele – we should have changed things immediately. Yet we stayed open that way for what felt like two years before anybody had the brains to ask, ‘What the fuck are we doing?’ Bizarre.

  And what the fuck were we doing? Probably Rob gambled on people having a change of heart and coming in again in record numbers. He was compulsive that way. I once saw him on a ferry going to France, placing bets till he was the last one standing. He turned his pockets out, doing his elephant impression, and when his money was all gone he went to bed.

  Initially,entry to the Haçienda was free between Monday and Thursday (for members this was; the club had a members-only licence for the first two years). Those who came through the door tended to congregate in the Gay Traitor bar. ‘We’d have fifty or sixty people just sitting round having a drink, and those people loved it,’ said manager Howard Jones. Big gig nights – New Order, Culture Club, Bow Wow Wow – could do well, attracting up to 1400 people, and weekend club nights were also attracting ‘never less than 1000 people’, according to Jones. ‘What caused the financial problem was that club was open seven nights a week, for six months from the opening night.’

  I remember it being more like two or three hundred on even the weekend club nights,but everyone’s memory is different.

  The best thing about the early days of the Haçienda was that each night revolved around the club itself, not any one DJ or concept. It offered an overall aesthetic experience. We hired Claude Bessy to produce the video installations,which became very important in setting the tone. The first thing many people noticed were the film collages – cutups – that he projected on the screens. Steve Morris got involved with that too for a little while in the early eighties. We got in trouble over it with the Jewish community in Manchester because Bessy utilized

  a lot of Nazi stuff,intercutting Hitler speeches – in a very punky way – with all kinds of footage,creating a sort of editorial comment on events of the day.

  Someone picked up on it,imagining all sorts of pro-Nazi messages, similar to what had happened with A Certain Ratio and New Order, and the Jewish Chronicle held Tony to blame. It never went anywhere once everybody understood the context, but Tony was pleased to end up in the Jewish Chronicle – it was his first front cover.

  To a degree,we tried to turn it into a hip-hop sort of place,like the clubs in New York, with different rooms and events: fashion shows, gigs, things like that, but for years we couldn’t establish it as anything but a concert venue.Nothing else really took root.

  The New York influence came through Ruth Polsky. Ruth – one of the unsung heroines of the era – had been the first US promoter to dive into the British punk and post-punk scene, bringing a lot of the bands over for their first tours of America.

  The thing that most impressed us about the American clubs was that we got in for free. Everyone was so in awe of groups: ‘Oh, man, you are New Order? Come on in.’

  If we went to a club in London, we’d say, ‘Hi, we’re in a group,’ and they’d go, ‘Yeah? Fuck off.’

  America dazzled us. For a young guy from England, it seemed like somebody giving me the keys to a sweet shop, saying, ‘Take what you want.’And the girls in America were very easily impressed,whereas in England they couldn’t give a fuck if you were in a group. Americans were much more friendly, much more open about sex. In England you just about had to be married before you slept with a girl. In America, if you carried a guitar or had an English accent, somebody’d shag you. We had a wild time over there.

  That’s why New Order toured the USA so much during the 1980s: the weather was great, and we could go everywhere for free. Europe was shit in comparison. For years, we concentrated on America with great success,and did tour after tour there.Unfortunately,we later discovered that nearly all of the money we’d earn from playing over in the states got sucked up by the Haçienda’s black hole. Our shows became benefit concerts to keep the club open.

  New Order first played the club on 26 June 1982.

  The first time we played in the Haçienda Rob told our sound guy Ozzie to fit a huge PA. We were setting the club off, I suppose, by being the loudest thing yet. We sound-checked OK but, when we came to play, on the stroke of the first chord the power for the stage blew out straight away.Seems they were trying to save money (for the first time) by putting in a thirteen-amp stage supply instead of a fifteen-amp as it should have been. Ozzie put silver paper around the fuse so we could carry on, while a roadie was fanning it to keep it up cool. Great gig, though. A total sell-out. The money earned, the same with all our gigs there, disappeared into the club’s coffers.

  What often happened with New Order, gig-wise, was that whenever the Haçienda really needed money we would play there and the club would take the profits – much to Bernard’s annoyance; it drove him fucking mad.

  Plus, while we were living hand-to-mouth, we were pretty generous to other bands who played the club. Right from the start, Rob paid groups who played the Haçienda a flat fee, rather than a door deal based on how many tickets they sold. That’s unusual: in the days of Joy Division promoters would tell us something like, ‘We’ll give you £100 up front, plus 50 per cent of what we make at the door up to 400 people, then 90 per cent of what we make at the door from 400 to 600 people. Blah blah blah . . .’

  It was a sliding scale that rewarded you for bringing in larger crowds, and protected the club owners in the event that nobody attended.

  Easy enough system? Well, Rob hated it. He thought it was too complicated and boring. His ultimate aim was to spare other bands the pain that Joy Division went through when we toured: promoters who’d offer a generous deal, only to later come up after the gig and say, ‘Oh, you put loads of friends on the guest-list. I can’t pay you.’ He wanted to do things even more simply by telling musicians, ‘Come play at the Haç. We’ll give you a thousand quid regardless of how many people come in.’

  He wanted it to be a musicians’co-op,which made it a very popular spot. Even if the acoustics inside were shite, the money was great so the response was fantastic.

  A fine example was Teardrop Explodes in May 1982. They were massive at the time and Rob paid them £3000 to do a ‘secret’ gig (nudge-nudge, wink-wink, but you’re supposed to let the word out so everyone will come).

  We kept it so secret only eight people turned up.

  MAY

  Friday 21st OPENING NIGHT Bernard Manning; ESG

  Saturday 22
nd Cabaret Voltaire

  Thursday 27th Teardrop Explodes

  Saturday 29th 23 Skidoo

  JUNE

  Tuesday 1st Vic Goddard; Subway Sect

  Tuesday 8th John Cooper Clarke

  Friday 11th James King & the Lone Wolves

  Tuesday 15th Orange Juice

  Saturday 19th Culture Club

  Tuesday 22nd Defunkt; the Higsons; the Kray Brothers

  Wednesday 23rd The Durutti Column

  Saturday 26th New Order (The first of the band’s many shows to serve as de facto fundraisers for the club)

  Set-list: ‘Dreams Never End’, ‘586’, ‘Procession’, ‘Chosen Time’, ‘Truth’, ‘Senses’, ‘Ultraviolence’, ‘Everything’s Gone Green’, ‘Temptation’, ‘In a Lonely Place’

  Tuesday 29th Swamp Children; 52nd Street

  JULY

  Saturday 3rd Funkapolitan

  Wednesday 7th Liaisons Dangereuses

  Friday 9th A Certain Ratio

  Set-list: ‘Kether Hot Knives’, ‘Back to the Start’, ‘Showcase’, ‘I’d Like to See You Again’, ‘Tumba Rumba’, ‘Skip Skada’, ‘Axis’, ‘Sommadub’, ‘Who’s to Say’, ‘Hot Nights’, ‘Guess Who’, ‘Touch’, ‘Knife Slits Water’

  Wednesday 14th Echo & the Bunnymen

  Saturday 17th Simple Minds

  Monday 19th Blancmange

  Set-list: ‘Can’t Explain’, ‘I Would’, ‘I’ve Seen the Word’, ‘Kind (Save Me)’, ‘Running Thin’, ‘Feel Me’, ‘Cruel’, ‘Wasted’, ‘Waves’, ‘God’s Kitchen’, ‘Living on the Ceiling’, ‘Sad Day’, ‘Kind (Save Me)’

  Thursday 22nd The Birthday Party

  Wednesday 28th Buzzz

  Friday 30th J. Walter Negro & the Loose Jointz

  AUGUST

  Wednesday 11th Allez Allez

  Friday 13th Delta 5; Secret Seven

  Saturday 14th Bauhaus

  Tuesday 17th Rip, Rag & Panic

  Thursday 19th Bow Wow Wow

  Saturday 21st The Jazz Defektors

  Wednesday 25th The Associates

  SEPTEMBER

  Thursday 2nd Tik & Tok

  Monday 6th W.B.

  Thursday 9th The Pale Fountains

  Monday 13th Annette Peacock

  Monday 20th Yazoo

  Tuesday 21st Mark Stewart’s Mafia

  Thursday 23rd The Durutti Column

  Monday 27th The Appollinaires

  Wednesday 29th Maximum Joy

  OCTOBER

  Monday 4th William S. Burroughs; Psychic TV (The audience all sat down)

  Tuesday 5th Jah Wobble

  Wednesday 6th Palais Schaumburg

  Thursday 7th The Psychedelic Furs; Sisters of Mercy

  Tuesday 12th Blue Zoo

  Wednesday 13th Brilliant

  Friday 15th Pulsallama

  Sunday 17th Blancmange; Fiat Lux

  Monday 18th Gaspar Lawall

  Friday 22nd Eddie and Sunshine

  Monday 25th David Thomas

  Tuesday 26th Cabaret Voltaire (video screening)

  Wednesday 27th J. Walter & Members

  Thursday 28th Buzzz

  Friday 29th The Thompson Twins; Tears for Fears

  NOVEMBER

  Friday 5th Ludus

  Tuesday 9th Swans Way

  Thursday 11th The Higsons

  Friday 12th The Honeymoon Killers

  Wednesday 17th Big Country

  Friday 19th Hey Elastica

  Monday 22nd Gregory Isaacs; Michael Smith

  Wednesday 24th Orange Juice; Strawberry Switchblade

  Friday 26th Sandi & the Sunsetz

  Monday 29th Palais Schaumburg

  DECEMBER

  Monday 6th Dillinger

  Friday 10th Grandmaster Flash

  Monday 13th Thomas Dolby

  Friday 17th Blancmange

  Wednesday 22nd A Certain Ratio

  FAC 51 The Haçienda

  11/13 Whitworth Street West

  Manchester M3 3AL

  Function: club, disco, videotek, venue, club

  Telephone: 061-236-5051

  Opening: 21 May 1982

  Facilities: 3 levels, 3 bars, dance floor (136m2), stage (72.25m2), restaurant, balconies, basement

  Capacity: 1650

  Dance-Floor Sound and Light: control equipment by Gamma, 15,000 watts of lighting, 43km of 1.5mm hard wire

  Video: 2 × 2540mm low-gain screens, 2 × Sony VPK 720PS video-projection units and power packs

  Colours: Pigeon Blue, Poppy, RAF Blue Aztec Gold, Salmon Red, Black, Aluminium, Pale Gold, Goose Grey, Signal Red & Light Orange

  Approach: industrial fantasy

  General Manager: Howard Jones

  Booker: Mike Pickering

  Design: Ben Kelly/Peter Saville (graphics)

  Lights, Sound, Video: Martin Disney

  Admission: members only

  Membership: £5.25 per annum

  Age Limit: over 18

  Application: Passport photograph,SAE,and cheque made payable to FAC 51Ltd.,and sent to The Haçienda,11/13 Whitworth Street West, Manchester, M3 3AL.

  Intention: To restore a sense of place. ‘The Haçienda must be built.’

  Licensing regulations attendant on the building of the Haçienda mean that admission to the club is restricted to members only. We will endeavour to keep our door and drink prices as low as possible. Membership will be £5.25 per annum. We believe that this is a small price to pay for a higher state of awareness.

  ‘Well, you’ve blown it now. You’ll never see The Hacienda. It doesn’t exist anywhere. THE HACIENDA MUST BE BUILT.’

  FAC 51 the Haçienda: application for membership

  Name:

  Address:

  Date of Birth:

  What You Want from the Haçienda:

  I am over 18 years of age

  I agree to be bound by the rules of the club

  Signature:

  Admission to members only For official use only

  N:

  A:

  DOB:

  O. Stamp

  Marvin Gaye – ‘Sexual Healing’

  Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five – ‘The Message’

  ABC – ‘Poison Arrow’

  D Train – ‘You’re the One for Me’

  Soft Cell – ‘Torch’

  Rockers Revenge – ‘Walking On Sunshine’

  Junior – ‘Mama Used to Say’

  The Associates – ‘Party Fears Two’

  New Order – ‘Temptation’

  Yazoo – ‘Only You/Situation’

  Dazz Band – ‘Let It Whip’

  Kid Creole and the Coconuts – ‘I’m a Wonderful Thing Baby’

  The Peech Boys – ‘Don’t Make Me Wait’

  Roxy Music – ‘Avalon’

  Alton Edwards – ‘I Just Wanna’

  Patrice Rushen – ‘Forget Me Nots’

  Kool and the Gang – ‘Get Down On It’

  Spandau Ballet – ‘Instinction’

  A Certain Ratio – ‘Knife Slits Water’

  Soul Sonic Force – ‘Planet Rock’

  ‘Jon Savage’s letters page [includes] the following gems: Legitimate gripes. [Member numbers] 04408 and 01510 note that the price of a pint of lager at the Philby Bar has increased from 66p to 70p, and that “£3 for Bauhaus is unreasonable“, a request for better chips, a public telephone and a playing list, and [member number] 00419 a.k.a. [local promoter] Alan Wise sends “a letter of protest that is so boring that I will not say any more”.’

  From ‘FAC 51 the Haçienda Newsletter 6’

  ‘It’s very fitting that [the colour] International Orange was used in the Haçienda as it’s an active, creative and exuberant colour, between the passion of red and the mental stimulation of yellow. Orange is full of energy and will always be used to promote vibrant optimism.’

  Inner Spaces documentary, BBC2, 2004

  ‘Opening night: Tony Wilson complained about the acoustics. They were crap
, he said. They were blah and blah. Six years later he would-n’t be complaining any more. Six years later he’d be talking breathlessly about the high roof, about Gothic cathedrals – about hymns to the Gods.’

  Peter Saville

  ‘It cost £5.25 to become a member of the Haçienda and for that you would get a pound discount on everything. Which meant you got in free half the time. Drink was alehouse cheap at this stage. Many people came simply to get slotted and found themselves sitting on the floor listening to William Burroughs reading aloud from his mucky books.’

  John McReady

  In January a press ad promised that: ‘Over the next two months the Haçienda will be returning to what we consider to be the best of the Manchester bands rather than place these acts in support slots at the mercy of main groups’ sound engineers. We offer the opportunity to display their wares in a proper manner.’

  But times were hard for the club, partly because it remained ahead of the pack. Booker Mike Pickering had a reputation for booking bands months before they made it big, and it became a standing joke that other promoters could benefit simply by booking the same bands six months later and reaping the financial rewards.

  While others profited from its foresight, the Haçienda gained a name as a worthy, arty place, full of good intentions but not of customers. The suicidal cavalier opening policy meant that the club was often catering for fewer customers than staff; bands were being paid more than the going rate, no matter what size audience they attracted; pilfering was rife and overheads were vast. For the owners, keeping the club going was already a hands-on task ...

  At that time, the only thing keeping the Haçienda going was the success of Joy Division and New Order.We were earning so much for Factory that they could afford to be complacent, at least for a while.

  Meanwhile, the club was losing an average of £10,000 a month, much of that in wages. There was this guiding principle that if we paid our staff well they would be loyal and work hard. That was the principle, but in reality it was bollocks: some of the employees just got paid more to rip us off. They must have thought it was fucking Christmas. The whole thing functioned on misplaced trust, and we got shafted.