1990 08 04 NME New Order / Hacienda Feature

PILLARS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT

• THE HACIENDA - New Order-owned, endlessly filmed and world renowned - is Britain's most famous club. Now the local police want it closed, claiming it to be the focus of Manchester drug culture. Here, JAMES BROWN talks to PETER HOOK, TONY WILSON, club manager PAUL MASON and James' TIM BOOTH  about the crucible of Manc's musical might. Pics: KEVIN CUMMINS

It would make a cracking pulp best-seller. A nightclub owned by pop stars and a television celebrity fights for its licence and reputation against a police force who've fingered it as a drugs den.

Whilst the pop group record with World Cup heroes, an under-age girl takes Ecstasy at the club and later dies. Meantime the culture is leapt upon by Corporate America keen to exploit it.

Against them they have the most God-fearing and hard-hitting Chief Constable in the land, On their side they have Ken Dodd's lawyer!

It's hot. It's young. It's controversial. It's true. And it's got an excellent soundtrack.

"It's more than a club," say Northside as they pose outside the nondescript corrugated doorway to Fac 51.  "When it's happening there's no other place like it on Earth."

There's little need to qualify the role of the Hacienda in these pages. Over the years it's been the playground of the hip and trendy, Madonna danced there before she was famous, it's played host to nearly all the great bands of the last decade, and it’s done it with style. In the last two years its individual approach to nightclubbing and open-minded playlists have placed it at the forefront of music the world over. It’s an Institution, a regular goer recently calling it a cathedral.

At the end of April, the Greater Manchester Police announced they intended revoking the club's drinks licence to crack down on the alleged use of Ecstasy and cannabis on the premises.

Peter Hook called the move "a sideswipe”, and the Factory/Gainwest companies who own the club readied themselves for a turbulent court case by hiring George Carmen QC, the charismatic lawyer who recently extricated Ken Dodd from the jaws of the Inland Revenue.

The GMP's case centred around the drug use in last year's House boom and in particular referred to the death of 16-year-old Claire Leyton. Leyton collapsed at the Hacienda last summer after taking one Ecstasy tab. The drug triggered a reaction in her body, all her vital organs malfunctioned, and two days later Leyton is said to have literally boiled to death.

It was a freak example of a reaction that has been reported just three other times in the West, twice in the States and once in Halifax, Yorkshire.

Claire's death rocketed home the dangers of drug use, and under police guidance the Hacienda have now taken excessive measures in cleaning up their club. Last Monday, a Manchester judge adjourned the court case until January. In the meantime George Carmen defends Townshend Thoreson in the Zeebrugge corporate manslaughter trial. The GMP, meanwhile, are intent on pursuing the Hacienda.

In Manchester, the musical community is unanimous in its support of the club. Everyone knows how important it is to the scene but this holds no (police) truck with the boys in blue and the Hacienda are far from clear of the sticky web they find themselves in. Last week, The Dally Mail pointed out that the club has been at the forefront of the Acid House movement.

It is common knowledge that last summer's Acid House raves and the drug Ecstasy were inextricably linked, but maybe public opinion is turning. In a surprising leader column last Thursday, The Sun criticised James Anderton for his heavy-handed approach, and went on to describe the Hacienda, accurately, as the most important Northern venue since The Cavern.

FOR PETER Hook, The Hacienda has been a labour of love. A director of the club, New Order's bass player is pragmatic about the affair:

"If what the police is saying is grounded in fact - and I don't think it is, I think there's exaggeration on all sides - then the only thing you can do is confront it. You've got to have an open mind and say to the police, 'Let's look at it together'.

And that's an attitude reflected by both Tony Wilson and Hacienda manager Paul Mason. Wilson's approach is as flamboyant as ever; he more than anyone has been the Hacienda figurehead over the years.

"We believe we have almost completely eradicated drug use from the Hacienda with the assistance of the clientele. Over the next five months we're going to prove to the GMP that we're running one of the cleanest clubs in Europe. Everyone who comes to the Hacienda knows it’s not a place to do drugs but a place to dance and listen to music.”

Is that perhaps the reasons why the Happy Mondays have been dispatched to Los Angeles to record?

"The question of pop groups is a difficult one. I don’t think anyone asks Colin Southgate, Chairman of EMI, how he feels about remarketing The Beatles' ‘Sgt Pepper' album. I don't think one can legislate about the morality of musicians and certainly not the Happy Mondays.”

If the Hacienda is closed then it will be, to use the words of Hunter S Thompson, a ‘lifestyle bust', it is likely to create a tension that used to be associated with inner city rioting. The repercussions will spread further afield than the music scene for, as James’ Tim Booth puts it, "the Hacienda is Manchester's Eiffel Tower, a tourist attraction.”

In the light of the Strangeways riot, Manchester is keen to avoid any more civic disasters, especially as they are currently putting forward a keen bid to host the 1996 Olympics. Noticeably the court hearing has been postponed until long after the Olympic Committee visit the city this autumn. The GMP's action has highlighted just how important the club is to the city. The city would be clearly foolish to allow it to close.

"The Hacienda is part of the self-confidence of Manchester,” says Wilson."It's the major part of our defence that this is a vibrant city and that the Hacienda, as a symbol of its music culture, is a vital part of that.

"We have had a letter from the Leader of the Council in Manchester and one from the Lord Mayor’s office, one is a fine and senior Labour councillor, the other is a fine and senior Tory councillor. And these two-page letters from both of them say this is a great city and the Hacienda is a part of this great city.

"I was quite shocked, George Carmen was amazed to see these letters, They go on about the way we've help revitalise certain areas of the city. We go to Whitworth Street eight years ago when it was a dead end, now it’s a thriving part of Manchester. Then it talks about how we’ve done Dry (Wilson/NewOrdei /Factory's newish bar) in Oldham Street, and how the area Is starting to go up. The civic people building this city are absolutely aware that we are partners with them.

“The council are aware that many of the young people who visit the tourist office mention the Hacienda as the reason for their visit, ” agrees Hacienda licensee Mason. "The Mayor has acknowledged that whilst abroad pushing the Olympic bid, young athletes have said they know of Manchester because of the Hacienda. We make a big contribution to tourism, a lot of foreign customers during the summer, the bell buzzes continually with people asking to take pictures of the club. The applications to the University and Poly are up a quarter on last year.”

The Olympic bid committee has come to the Hacienda for help in designing fashionable T-shirts, as Tony Wilson is keen to point out:

"They want everybody to wear T-shirts in Manchester when the Olympic committee come in late August. We've got several of the groups involved, I know Northside, The Charlatans, and the Hacienda and Factory are doing it. Making specific T-shirts. The Northside T-shirt is fantastic, you know the five Olympic rings? It’s the five plums from their sleeve.

"We’ve done the artwork free of charge. The Olympic Committee know we share this commitment to presenting Manchester to the Olympic committee. It’s not as if we’re outside the law."

FOR MANCHESTER'S latest chart entrant, Tim Booth of James, the Hacienda always offered a more personal sanctuary:

"When I used to live in Hulme I used to go there every night at 9.30 when there was no one in. Because of the way I dance if I went anywhere else people reacted in a very hostile way and tried to trip me up and knock me over. This was before House music when people didn't dance, so the Hacienda was where I went to dance, it was my local, I'd leave just as everyone else was arriving.

"Nowadays everyone dances as crazily as I do anyway. I can just stand at the back of the stage and get on with it and no one really notices. I can't really go there too much though, it's a bit exposed, last time I was there a girl asked me to sign her breasts.

"If you want some criticism you must remember that for a long time the sound system was awful and nobody would play there because of it. But it was Mike Pickering who heard our demo, put us on at the Hacienda, and signed us to Factory just on the strength of it. I think they were choosing between us and The Smiths and they chose James."

In general, opinion doesn't differ about the threat of the impending court case but how to deal with it does. Wilson seemingly revels in the attention, regulars either protest or laugh about the situation. The idea that the Hacienda might cease to exist has never even occurred to most before.

Paul Mason is visibly worried about what's happening, he was particularly disturbed about Claire Leyton's death. "I'm trying to provide a place of entertainment and someone's dead, what's happening?"

The main reasons police have been called to the club in the past is to help disperse the masses of people unable to get in on the most popular nights, it's not a violent place, little aggression, but reputations win and lose clientele.

"We are at the sharp end of a problem that's endemic in young society and the spotlight has become very focused on us, particularly in view of Claire Leyton's death, which upsets us greatly, and also because the club is owned by personalities and has an international reputation," says Mason.

“We’ve got to try and work as hard as we can to make the club drug-free. When you have a revocation order slapped on you and they want to take your licence away, you’ve gat to take a very close look at what you're doing.”

THE HACIENDA employs 100 full and part-time staff. For Peter Hook its existence has created a community within itself.

“I stood in that club for four years with no one for company,” he recalls, “and you always stood by it through thick and thin, you never envisaged that something like this could take it away from you. That's why it’s so shocking.

“Hacienda was the only dub in Manchester I could get into because I wore jackboots and jeans and stuff like that and it changed Manchester for the better. We’re reaping the rewards of our hard work and endeavours, it’s so nice to be able to come to Hacienda now with the way the scene’s blossomed but that's because of a lot of people's hard work. The behind-the-scenes people like Paul Mason and our manager Rob Gretton. It's reflected Rob Gretton’s attitude more than most, it was his idea, he's been instrumental in doing the most radical things.

“Every New Order gig we've done there has always been really good, always enjoyed it because it's been so nerve-wracking. It’s been a great way of meeting so many nice people. A very enriching process, I designed the sound system. I enjoyed that.

“It was shite originally, after a while we realised it was our club and we had to get involved, everyone was always saying how crap the soundsystem was so I replaced it twice, bands play here again,"

And Steve Lock, producer of Granada TV’s Other Side Of Midnight and the recent Madchester documentary said of both shows, “We couldn't have done either of them without the Hacienda because that was where it was all happening. When we needed ideas we’d go down there and it was all there in front of you.”

For Wilson it’s the constant change within the Hacienda that has kept it ahead of other club-footed venues.

“Hot was great for us," he says of 1988’s swimming pool meets the Hacienda extravaganza. “Taking Pickering and Park’s obscure House music and putting a swimming pool in the club was an excellent idea, so timely, it was at exactly the same moment as the Balearic Beat people dropped Balearic Beats and took up this obscure music that had been played for two years in Derby and Nottingham.

"Three months ago, Thursday nights seemed to be students who'd drunk too much acting wacky, now it's moved on again, younger people dancing to Mondays, Northside, Pink Floyd. Another weird motion. Hacienda for us has to stay open to allow that to happen in this city."

ONE POSSIBLE thorn in the paw of progress is Wilson's public observation on the Ecstasy culture. Mason points out that too many people confuse Wilson's comments as a journalist with his attitude towards running a club. Despite different responsibilities the words come from the same man.

How does Wilson come to terms with presenting a clean club when he operates within a culture where artistic creativity is frequently inspired by going beyond the law?

“I've said for years that as far as running the club goes we have to exist within the law. I think people get confused. It’s very hard to sit down at three in the morning and get Bez to tell a journalist from The LA Times what this culture's about! Hardly any great artists have an idea about what's going on in their art, it’s only the second rate creative people, the journalists like me who are able to talk about it.

"I'm able to talk about the culture which is in many ways stronger than punk, that it's wonderful, it doesn't mean that I advocate drug use. If you look through all the interviews I do with my big mouth I never ever advocate things like the legalisation of marijuana and nor would I.

“I abhor alcohol, I find it unbelievable that it is the legal drug in our society, I think it’s a very damaging drug. I’m always amazed that we have to run the wonderful Hacienda on the basis of selling this drug. But I also think that two wrongs don’t make a right and I don’t believe legalising another drug is going to solve anything."

ALL THIS comes at a time when Factory, the Hacienda, and New Order are spreading their creative skills wider than ever before. Happy Mondays’ performance at the New Music Seminar in New York last month was the culmination of a year’s hard work pushing the band and their culture towards America.

The Manchester Week there saw Factory bubbling with attention and confidence. Wilson believes the Hacienda DJs are the best in the world and the world isn’t offering any difference of opinion. By Christmas the Hacienda are planning to have weekly nights in Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York.

Club nights in Moscow and Berlin are also set to follow on from the popular Hacienda Paris trips. If the club was to close down, the Hacienda as a travelling roadshow wouldn't please the locals but might be the only way to promote the talent assembled. Wilson is optimistic:

“I'm confident we’ll keep the Hacienda because I’ve seen what a clean club it is now. We’ve got video surveillance equipment, we have ten-minute bouncer swoops, we’ve got notices, we've got body searches, we've got the whole lot. Most people are intelligent enough to know the Hacienda is too important to close, everybody has appreciated that. Even the dear old Happy Mondays."

Meanwhile, British expansion for Factory and Hacienda becomes ever more likely. With Dry celebrating its first birthday, there are ongoing discussions about the possibility of a bar in Leeds and perhaps a club in London. Once the new Factory building is finished, Wilson is desperate to finish their film project under the guidance of The Bailey Brothers and Monty Python's manager Steve Abbot, and then there’s the art gallery. Is there no end to his ambitions?

Yo! Tony, as The Sunday Times called him, has expressed his desire to continue the Hacienda even without an alcohol licence, does this mean the club would start serving energy drinks and selling aerobic outfits?

“No, sex. Sex is the next thing we’re planning for the Autumn. A lot more snogging going on. Ecstasy abuse is being replaced by snogging and we think this is a trend. Love. Romance. Sex."

Peter Hook has promised to get his hair cut if the club closes - a plus I’m sure you'll agree.

“When people come here,” he says, raking his beard, “we're there, the Mondays are there, the Carpets, when they go to Devilles they're putting a lid on the world. They come to the Hacienda and realise there's something else to this great big wide world."

Over the door of the Hacienda office rests the legend 'The Hacienda must be built’ One can only wonder whether a similar plaque bearing the legend 'The Hacienda must be closed’ sits above James Anderton's desk.