The Observer Music Monthly - "The Hacienda: How Not To Run a Club" Review - 27 September 2009

The agony and the ecstasy 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/27/hacienda-peter-hook

Walking through today's regenerated and gentrified Manchester, it's almost impossible to recall how dark and depressing the city was in the late 70s. The home of the industrial revolution was at a low ebb and the only people who believed any kind of revolution was now possible were the romantic idealists behind Factory Records. Emboldened by the spirit of punk and an excess of civic pride, Factory's founders, in particular Tony Wilson and Robert Gretton, believed in Manchester more than they believed in themselves.

The Haçienda club, launched in 1982, was the physical realisation of their vision; Wilson found the name in an essay by French theorist Ivan Chtcheglov entitled "Formulary for a New Urbanism" ("We are bored in the city, everybody is bored, there is no longer any temple to the sun... you'll never see the Haçienda. It doesn't exist. The Haçienda must be built.")

Inspired by New York clubs like Paradise Garage and Danceteria, the Haçienda was initially funded not just by Factory but also its star band, New Order, managed by Rob Gretton. The band, including bass player Peter Hook, were co-owners and £100,000 of their money was diverted into the venture, even though, as Hook recalls, "we were living on £20 a week". Manchester in 1982, however, wasn't quite ready for a New York discotheque.

Hook was always the most visual and garrulous member of New Order and spent, or misspent, more time than most in the Haçienda. Told chronologically, with a chapter for each year, his book is a personal, chatty, insider's account of the club's history, from the early years when it opened every night, almost as a civic duty, despite the fact that it was often empty, through the euphoric years when it brought acid house to the UK, to its demise, dogged by gang violence. Factory were idealists, but as Hook's tales of ineptitude illustrate, they didn't have a clue about running a nightclub.

Many of the anecdotes are already the stuff of club folklore, but other more personal stories provide fresh insight. Paul Mason is widely credited as bringing a more professional approach when he took over as manager in 1986, but even at the club's peak in the late 80s and early 90s, the people making real money were the DJs, drug dealers and gangsters, not the club itself.

At times, Hook's account reads like Carry on Clubbing, as when the takings are set alight by indoor fireworks on New Year's Eve and Hook finds Mason on his hands and knees desperately trying to smother the flames. At other times, it's much darker, as the club battles against Greater Manchester police's attempts to revoke its licence. Hook recalls how he spent a night on the door in 1991 and in a couple of hours witnessed "four fights, one gun pulled, two bar staff assaulted, rough justice in the corner, drug dealing and drug taking on a normal scale (well, normal for us)".

If Hook doesn't quite capture the euphoria of being on the dancefloor at the Haçienda's peak, that can be excused. After all, many of those who were there have spent the last 20 years fruitlessly trying to recreate those halcyon days.

The Haçienda was, as Hook says, in many ways the perfect example of how not to run a club – if you view a nightclub as a money-making business. But if, like the baggy trousered philanthropists Factory, you see it as an altruistic gift to your hometown and a breeding ground for the next generation of youth culture, it was, accidentally, purposefully, shambolically, anarchically, thrillingly, scarily, inspirationally, perfect. Hook appreciated the need to give something back but, he jokes, he didn't realise that you had to give it all back. But then, as Wilson remarked: "Some people make money, others make history."