The Haçienda
Authors: Peter Hook
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2009
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Copyright © Peter Hook 2009
Endpapers © Ben Kelly
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ISBN: 978-1-84737-135-5
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Dedicated, with love, to my mother, Irene Hook
Rest in Peace:
Ian Curtis, Martin Hannett, Rob Gretton, Tony Wilson and Ruth Polsky,
without whom the Haçienda would not have been built
It was always going to be a problem.
In fact, when it was suggested by Claude Flowers that I write my Haçienda memoirs in 2003, the first thing that came to mind was that famous quote about the sixties. How if you remember them then you weren’t really there. That’s how I felt about the Hac.
So, I was going to need a bit of help, and putting this book together has been a lot of a combined effort. It was Claude who got the ball rolling and prompted me to remember a lot of stuff I thought I’d forgotten, while Andrew Holmes provided those very important ‘in between bits’and sorted out all the paperwork.
Anything you like, I’ll take the credit for. Anything you don’t, blame them.
Hooky
What a fuck up we made of it.
Or did we? Sitting here now, I wonder. It’s 2009 and the Haçienda has never been more well known. Still doesn’t make any money, though; no change there then. This year we celebrate twenty-one years of acid house; we are holding Haçienda nights all across the UK and now have merchandise deals for CDs, T-shirts, shoes, postcards, posters, a bespoke bike frame, even a fine-art project with Ben Kelly, for God’s sake. Where will it end?
It looks as though our manager Rob Gretton was right about the Haçienda, just as he was at Ian Curtis’s wake when he told us, ‘Joy Division will be huge in ten years’ time.’ It wasn’t much solace at that particular moment but he was spot on: Joy Division
were
huge in ten years;also in twenty and thirty years.Still are.A great testament to the music.
Then, when the Haçienda was going bankrupt – voluntarily, I might add – he said we needed to buy all the names from the receiver.
‘Why?’ I said.
‘They’ll be worth something in the future.’
‘No chance,’ I thought. ‘Who cares?’ I was sick of it.
He cared. No one else was interested so I gave him the money to buy them. Since then it’s been a long, hard process of tying up the loose ends. A never-ending stream of registrations and legal fees. Battles with bootleggers. But we got there in the end. Now, hopefully, we can enjoy the fruit of our labours . . .
But I need to tell you the story first, don’t I? I need to tell you how the Haçienda changed the shape of clubbing in England. Where it all went wrong, and how what should have been a dream come true became a cautionary tale.
And what a story it is. Because while there’s a lot about the Haçienda that shouldn’t be glorified – the gangsters, the drugs, the violence, the cops – there’s also the stuff of legend: the fact that it was a
superclub before the term had even been invented; that it was the birthplace of acid house in the north and the home of Madchester,two musical movements that went round the world; that it was the scene of too many great nights and gigs to recall – not that you were in any state to do so.
When the Haçienda opened,Factory and New Order had no experience running a commercial enterprise; we just invested our money and trusted the staff, mostly our friends, to sort everything out. Bad idea. Your friends are your friends not because they’re good at business. But we learned that the hard way.We learned everything the hard way.
At first the band didn’t have much to do with it; in fact, for the first few years, I didn’t even use my connection with the Haçienda on a social level let alone get involved in the business side of things. I never felt involved with it, to be honest. I got free entry and that was about it (some members of the band couldn’t even manage that sometimes); so even though I had this club – this huge club costing me a fortune – I was reluctant to go, and certainly didn’t feel like it was mine any more than a punter would. None of us did. But, as the problems mounted, we had to get more and more involved, until by 1988 I was helping to run it. By that time the mess was too big for anyone to fix.
And I was into it too far to get out.
As my accountant likes to tell me, I won’t appreciate how much cash the Haçienda lost until I stop earning money.
‘Then,’ he says, ‘it’ll hit you like a juggernaut.’
We once worked out that, from the time it opened in 1982 to when it closed in 1997, each punter through the door cost us £10. We wasted
that much
through bad management and sheer stupidity. As far as we were concerned it was history we were making,not money.But if I’m ever skint I’ll walk around Manchester asking everyone to give me my tenner back.
I’ll split it with the rest of them, honest.
Beyond that, though, I’ll never truly know how much money we lost on the Haçienda because our record label,Factory,New Order’s partner in the club,never accounted to the band,ever:no one has ever told us how many records we sold in England or around the world.
So Tony Wilson,who owned Factory,wouldn’t say,‘New Order just sold 100,000 albums in China, here’s your cut of the profits.’ Instead, the way it worked was that Rob would collect royalties by walking in and
demanding cash off him. If Tony had money, he’d give it to him; if he didn’t, he’d tell Rob to fuck off. That was how they ran it. With our approval, I should add. It was chaos, punk, anarchy and we loved it.