Cuttings

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

NEW ORDER formed in the aftermath of lan Curtis’ suicide and the demise of Joy Division, and went on to become the most culturally significant British band of the past 20 years. But their career was always fraught with drug excesses and internal arguments that bordered on open warfare, and they finally split in 1993. For five years, they didn’t even speak to each other. Back together at last, they look back on their years of trauma and achievement in this definitive interview with Paul Lester AND NOW, FOR THE VERY LAST TIME - JOY Division!" It is July 16, 1998, and Alan Wise local comedian and former manager of Velvet Underground chanteuse Nico - is onstage at the Manchester Apollo, having just hailed the arrival of New Order. Eighteen years, two months and two weeks after Joy Division’s last ever concert, his announcement is, all things considered, both comical and possessed of mythic significance. Would it mean as much to introduce Oasis as The Rain? Electro pioneer Arthur