That most iconic of nightclubs, the Hacienda, has its 25th anniversary
celebrated by the Urbis exhibition centre, in Manchester, from Thursday. The
club, now knocked down and replaced by luxury flats, was the focal point of
the Manchester scene, garnering an international reputation as the first of
the “superclubs”. Its design, by Ben Kelly, changed the way both clubs and
the whole city looked – the sheer cheek of building something so modern and
big there, in 1982, was the inspirational spark that reshaped Manchester. On
the one hand, it was a folly, a total pretension; on the other, it hosted
such fantastic events that it became embedded in youth culture and,
latterly, a byword for the “Madchester” explosion of the late 1980s.
Jon Savage, the cultural commentator and author, lived in Manchester at the
time. “Clubs, by their very nature, are transient,” he says. “They flower
and they disappear. The Hacienda lasted longer than most. And, as a story,
it’s got everything. There’s celebrity, design, scandal, larger-than-life
personalities and drugs.”
The initial idea for the Hacienda came from Rob Gretton, the brusque manager
of New Order and Factory Records boss. Thinking that the label needed its
own club, he decided to build one – and, with its typical no-holds-barred
approach, Factory decided to build a huge one. “There was nowhere for the
sub-culture that grew up with punk and postpunk to go to,” Savage recalls.
“The most extraordinary thing was to have this purpose-built club. It was a
grandiose thing to do.”
Peter Saville, who designed Factory’s singular artwork, explains how the label
and club intertwined. “The Hacienda was a kind of three-dimensional
manifestation of Factory,” he says. “Architecture and spatial design can
envelop you, and the Hacienda was a brilliant realisation of our
end-of-the-20th century romance of who we were then – coming out of the
industrial cities of the north of England.”
Working to a perfunctory brief – “big bar, small bar, food, stage, dancefloor,
balcony, cocktail bar in the basement” – Kelly was given unlimited freedom
to convert the former yachting showroom into a true people’s palace. It was
a club that came with numerous theories – most of them issuing from the
mouth of Tony Wilson, Manchesters most tireless cheerleader. The name came
from a slogan of the radical group Situationist International, “The Hacienda
Must Be Built”, found in Ivan Chtcheglov’s Formulary for a New Urbanism.
Many of the key players in Manchester’s recent musical and cultural history
– DJs, writers, journalists, musicians – paid their dues at the Hacienda,
which became central to the city’s rise to prominence within British rock,
dance and pop.
The Hacienda opened on May 21, 1982, in a blaze of glory that saw a packed
club and an appearance by Bernard Manning – a very northern situationist
prank, that. Its first couple of years witnessed Madonna’s UK club debut and
brilliant gigs by the Birthday Party and Einstürzende Neubauten. On an
average night, though, it could be quite empty – and at risk of becoming a
bit of a white elephant. Paul Cons, the Hacienda’s main promoter and the man
generally credited with turning round its fortunes, recalls: “For the first
three years, it was very hit and miss. I came up with the idea of the
Temperance night, with Dave Haslam, and that was a big success. Before that,
the Hacienda had been trying too hard to be cool.”
Savage thinks the club’s eventual success was a process of evolution: “It took
a long time to find the appropriate music. It was a boomy place, and rock
music sounded crap in there. Early house, like the Chicago stuff, which was
minimal, psychedelic and spacey, turned out to suit the acoustics.”
Wilson agrees: “What made the Hacienda so special was the insane acoustics. I
remember complaining about them on the opening night, but, five years later,
when it all exploded, I realised that the nature of the building, and its
high roof, made it feel like a gothic cathedral, allowing hymns to be sent
to the gods.”
So the Hacienda slowly morphed into a superclub, with famous nights such as
Mike Pickering and Graeme Park’s Nude in 1987, and then Hot, hosted by
Pickering and Jon Da Silva, in 1988. The new generation of ravers that
poured through its doors caused this sea change. Before the rave era,
audiences were fuelled by bottled beer; now there was a new vibe in the air.
Drug-dealers skulked around in the dark corners of the club, dealing Es. The
layout of several small rooms and alcoves helped that atmosphere. When Happy
Mondays started to do their freaky dancing, everyone knew was something was
up. Where did they get this strange energy?
With the newly happy Hacienda as the epi-centre of happening Manchester,
Wilson was in his element. For Savage, however, this state of affairs was
not without its dangers. “I was concerned about having the Hacienda and
Happy Mondays promoted as a good experience. I had arguments with Tony. I
thought they were creating a rod for their own back, with the drugs.”
The Hacienda was certainly hosting the most intense party in the country. Rave
culture was everywhere, but its highest shrine was the Hacienda. The
previously vast, cold space had become a sweaty, euphoric party. Entering
the club, you felt the wave of energy and ecstasy.
Haslam, who DJed at the Hacienda more than 500 times, remembers the feeling.
“Thousands of people saw it as their special space,” he says. “It’s
culturally significant for so many reasons, yet it all evolved in an
unforced and instinctive way. For example, there was never, ever a meeting
about what music the DJs should play – we just got on with it and did what
we felt was right. Since then, I’ve become aware of how much cultural
activity isn’t like that, because it’s all marketing theories and focus
groups and corporate sponsors. So, for me, the Hacienda was an amazing
creative space that nobody controlled. The haphazardness was probably its
downfall, though – eventually, the real world took its revenge.”
The party, of course, had to end. The drug situation was spiralling out of
control. What had started as a bagful of Es, smuggled into the club by local
musicians, had now become big business. There were ugly scenes as local
gangsters jostled for their market share. Then, in 1989, a 16-year-old from
Cannock, Clare Leighton, died outside the club. A brutal wake-up call, it
was the first of a series of problems from which the Hacienda never
recovered.
Madchester approached the mid1990s with a hangover. Even the huge success of
Oasis, in 1994, seemed to belong to a different period of pop history. The
Hacienda limped on, with occasional successes such as Paul Cons’s gay night,
Flesh, but the vibe had gone. Finally, the party was over, and in 1997 the
club shut – with insurmountable debts.
The Hacienda had stumbled to its demise, but its legacy lingers on. It is so
much part of the fabric of Manchester culture that people still get
misty-eyed about it. “Being closed and demolished has helped its
reputation,” Haslam says. “It’s like James Dean dying young. He’s always
going to be legendary, and so is the Hacienda. If it was open now, as some
nostalgic Madchester theme park, or some club like every other club, would
anyone be interested?”
Few nightclubs had the Hacienda’s range of appeal. Some people talk about it
in terms of situationism; others reminisce about wild nights on ecstasy;
some complain that rave ruined the club, and fondly remember those chilly
evenings watching bands in the early 1980s; others get excited about Kelly’s
revolutionary design, pointing to its huge influence on the rebuilt city
centre; others still laugh at the downstairs bar being named the Gay
Traitor, with a huge photograph of Anthony Blunt hanging over the door. The
Hacienda may have meant many different things to many different people, but
it remains a cornerstone of Manchester’s cultural history.
Hacienda 25 at Urbis, Manchester, from Thursday until February 17
