The Haçienda (29 page)

The sheer volume of drugs we were handing over was making the cops very nosy. Ang soon realized that the more drugs she turned in, the worse it looked for the Haçienda, so she’d wash some down the sink or flush them down the toilet. That whole rigmarole became the bane of her life. Then the police said that if we found drugs on somebody we should turn their face towards the security camera, so there’d be documentation in case they wanted to press charges – not
when
they pressed charges. Please. We were just trying to run a club. Do your own bloody job.

Tony himself got very involved in taking the problems to the local
government because we felt so powerless. His biggest beef was that nobody ever helped: the police, the CID, the licensing committee, the city council, none of them. We were so accustomed to going it alone, we certainly didn’t come to count on any assistance.Tony even applied for grants from the city council to preserve the Haçienda and Factory as a vital part of Manchester’s cultural and financial heritage,drawing up a detailed economic breakdown of how the club and the record-label earnings affected the entire UK.He didn’t get very far with that one.He and Ang went so far as to petition local members of parliament on the club’s behalf, with no results there either.

He’d leave the donkey-work (like meeting four thugs with Uzis at some scummy council house in Salford) for us to sort out,whereas he and Paul Mason took care of the airy-fairy work (like meeting with the chief constable for tea in police towers) –and good luck to them; I knew where I’d rather be.

We weren’t pulling a good cop/bad cop act. More like posh cop/working-class cop. I don’t think it would have worked any other way:the Haçienda,like Factory Records,crossed generations and social classes.It was gritty,down-to-earth and edgy and at the same time was arty and intellectual.

In fact,in an attempt to cater to everyone in Manchester,we offered free admission, food and drinks to the homeless once a month. (The night was called Itch! Ha ha.) And this as we tried to project the image of a ritzy nightclub.

‘There were all kinds of undercover operations going on in the club,’ Tony Wilson told writer Mick Middles. ‘It was a bit bewildering, to say the least. We wanted very,very much to work with the police to help prevent the flow of drugs,but it seemed to be very much an us-against-them situation,which we didn’t, and still don’t, understand.’

In May 1990 the police told manager Paul Mason that they intended to oppose an upcoming licence renewal. In response the club beefed up security.

Nonetheless the authorities decided they wanted us all out of the way. Fearing any evidence of drug use that might play into their hands, we took the matter to our audience by issuing a flyer that laid out the facts:

FAC 51 The Haçienda A MESSAGE TO ALL OUR CUSTOMERS:

As you may already know, the Greater Manchester Police have told us that they will be applying to revoke the Haçienda’s licence at the next magistrates meeting on the 17th of May.

We will of course be rigorously defending the action with all our energy.

Despite our major efforts in recent months, the police feel we must do even more about removing the use of illegal drugs inside the Haçienda – this is where you come in: do not, repeat, NOT, buy or take drugs in the club – and do not bring drugs on to the premises.

The prime role of your club is a place to dance to the most important music of the day;the only way it can continue in this way is by the complete elimination of controlled substances.

It’s our club – and it’s your club – we’re going to fight to keep it alive and we expect you to be fighting with us.

PLEASE MAKE SURE EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS HOW IMPORTANT THIS MESSAGE IS. LET’S ROCK – LEGALLY.

Our licence actually came up for renewal in July 1990, and the hearing resulted in our case being adjourned until January 1991. We had the famous George Carman on our side.

George Carman QC was already a legendary barrister, having defended Ken Dodd and Jeremy Thorpe.Legend has it that,on meeting the Factory men, his first bit of advice was to ‘Shut that loudmouth up’ in reference to Tony Wilson, whose constant public proclamations Carman believed to be damaging the image of the club.

Carman was extraordinarily expensive but the money was proved to be well spent when he was able to get the licence hearing pushed back to 3 January 1991 – giving the club time to get its house in order.He did so by pledging the Haçienda’s commitment to stamping out drug use and drug dealing within the club, as well as producing letters of support for the Haçienda – in particular from the city council’s new leader, Labour’s Graham Stringer, who had pointed out that the club greatly contributed to the economy and vibrancy of the city centre (obviously having revised his opinion of rave since 1989).

Carman beat the police in their attempts to close us down by refuting the evidence brought against us.

He was very theatrical.In court he brought up what had happened when police filed charges against the club Konspiracy. The cops said they’d seen 150 acts of drug-related offences, meaning people buying, selling or using inside there.

Konspiracy had fought the charges by pointing out that the club was so full of smoke and so dark that there’d be no way for someone to witness much of anything at all, illegal or otherwise. They took the judge, jury, police and everybody associated with the case inside Konspiracy, stood 50 people on the dance floor, started the smoke machine, put some music on and said, ‘Tell me how you can spot 150 separate crimes in these conditions.’ You couldn’t.

By referring to the Konspiracy case Carman got the charges against the Haçienda thrown out. With so many people moving within the club, there was no way to see too much of what anyone was up to. Furthermore, anyone using drugs was careful about where they did them, making crime even harder to detect. The coppers had pulled a scam on us, but the legal battle cost us another £250,000 pounds. Carman charged £15,000 for his first day then £10,000 each day thereafter – for something like seventeen days in all.

The police were furious because they’d failed to shut the Haçienda. They were really pissed off and now we were all marked men.

Anyway, we put out an announcement to tell the clientele what had happened – and that they needed to behave:

GOOD NEWS:

The Haçienda licence hearing on 23rd July resulted in the case being adjourned until 3rd January 1991.

This means that the Haçienda will remain open as usual until this date. FAC 51 the Haçienda now intends to redouble its efforts to keep our club open. This must involve the complete elimination of controlled drugs on the premises.

In this we continue to rely upon your help and co-operation. Please do not, repeat, NOT, buy or take drugs in the club, and do not bring drugs on to the premises.

Please make sure everyone understands how important this message is.

Thank you for your support.

We followed this with another flyer (Tony, treating the whole thing as an art project,called this one ‘Communiqué,Winter 90/91’):

Dear Friend,
Let’s face it, 1990 has not been an easy year for the Haçienda. Our problems began in May with the threat to our licence when we had no choice but to take drastic action in order to keep the club open.

A major problem which we have also had to deal with is the increase in violence in and around Manchester’s clubs. This is an extremely worrying development to which there is no easy solution.

It must be apparent to you that both these factors have seriously affected the way in which the Haçienda is run.

We realize that things like searches on the door, video surveillance and high-profile security,while necessary,have had a damaging effect on the club’s atmosphere and we would be the first to admit that we have found it difficult to get the balance right between law enforcement and partying.

We are particularly aware that the door policy at the Haçienda has provoked much criticism. One problem has been on the occasions regular customers have been turned away. We aim to remedy this situation in the New Year with a membership scheme for Saturday nights which will ensure that regulars are guaranteed admission,at a reduced price (details will be announced shortly).

However, we feel that it is worth remembering that the much-maligned Haçienda doorstaff are under a lot of pressure and while they may not always get it right they are having to work in a difficult situation and do deserve your support.

So, our court hearing approaches and from January the 3rd we will get an indication whether the Haçienda has a future. We are confident that it does. To the pessimists, piss off.

TO ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE CONTINUED TO SUPPORT US THROUGH THESE DIFFICULT TIMES, WE WOULD LIKE TO SAY A BIG THANK YOU.

This was the era of the DJ.

I didn’t know many of the Haçienda’s DJs very well, but took a dislike to some of them because of what I saw as their prima donna demands: £1000 and more per night (we still held the record for the highest payment to a DJ for a single night’s work: Todd Terry took home £12,500), plus hotel rooms, transport, a backstage rider (i.e., booze and food) and ‘sweeties’.

It seemed excessive to me, but Saturday nights stood out as our big earners.

On some nights we’d put three of them on. It’s no wonder that we couldn’t make a profit.

It’s funny to think that the original DJ booth had been a hole in the wall. It evolved into a throne room, with locks on the door that were only unlatched to allow entry to the chosen few,friends desperate for a line, or to drug dealers dropping off their goods. Often I kicked that door for ages while those cheeky bastards just left me standing/fuming outside.

The worse case was the club’s twelfth birthday,in 1994,when to celebrate we hired twelve DJs.

There wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance of making enough money to cover the expense. In fact, there wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance of finding time for them all to play. It seemed like a death wish. The costs were astronomical, ending up with half the DJs fighting in the booth about who was going on where and for how long. That wasn’t even the first time we’d tried something like that. We’d had twelve hours’ of DJs back in 1983; and, although I wasn’t there, I’ll bet nobody else was either. Even when DJing at the Haçienda became fashionable we didn’t leverage its popularity to see if we could book people for less money. Rob continued to pay more for DJs, as he had done with bands. If a DJ asked for an extra £50, Rob would push his famous glasses up his nose and say, ‘Give him another hundred and tell him to fuck off.’

Over time my own relationships with the DJs got better. Jon DaSilva hosted the midweek nights, which I’d occasionally attend, but I’ve since gone on to know him very well and I work with him a lot.A great DJ. He tells a great story about the
Technique
tour, when he and Graeme did a support tour with us,with me on one particular night offering the pair of them out for being a pair of big-headed bastards. Doesn’t sound like me, does it?

Dave Haslam, in contrast, alienated himself from all of us. Dave hosted Temperance Club, the 1980s indie-rock nights, which became a popular evening for students. In some ways it offered the kind of music that people would expect from a club associated with us. He played a broad spectrum of styles, whereas I preferred a narrower focus on dance music.

He got into a fight with Tony, which culminated in October 1990 with him turning off the music to rant about Tony and Factory over the PA system. He slagged everyone off – hilarious – in front of the puzzled customers. Until the doormen kicked down the DJ-box door and threw him out. Tony rarely took exception to people or carried a grudge, but with Haslam he really did and literally took it to the grave.

Dave returned to the Haçienda later, much to Tony’s indignation, and has since become an author of many books about Manchester.

According to Wilson in his book
24 Hour Party People
, even in 1990 – at the height of Madchester fever – the club still wasn’t making money. ‘There were huge crowds and a great atmosphere,’ he wrote, ‘but it was all fuelled by Ecstasy, not alcohol, and they didn’t sell E at the bar.’ (Presumably, in the post-hearing era, any drugs were taken before arriving at the club.) The money was going to the drug dealers, he said, and they weren’t passing it on to the Haçienda.

Wilson, the co-owners and other club promoters in the city were at the sharp end of an inevitable side-effect of rave culture. Where there were drugs there was money. And that meant gangsters. And guns.

The trouble had begun to snowball in September 1989, when the police had closed the Gallery,a favourite haunt for Cheetham Hill gangsters.The following weekend the gangsters needed somewhere to go and arrived at the Haçienda.

It all changed forever that night. Three guys came to the door and said to the bouncers, ‘We’re coming in.’

‘Yeah! You and whose army?’

‘Us and these,’ and they opened up their coats and flashed their guns.

‘Well, of course you’re coming in.’ And our doormen stepped aside. What would you do against three guns?

These guys went inside the club and just sat in a booth, quite normal, drinking and chatting; we were watching them on the closed-circuit TV.

The bouncers told Paul Mason what had happened. He phoned the police and the CID came down. They looked at these kids on the CCTV and told Paul, ‘If they don’t cause any trouble, leave them.’ And then they left.

That was the moment.That’s when we started having regular trouble with the gangs, because they knew that the police weren’t going to do anything about it. We needed a ballsy, proactive police force and we didn’t have one. We’d repeatedly ask for police on the door and they’d just laugh at us for thinking they’d even want to confront the gangs on our behalf. (I know: it’s very easy to criticize them; and I don’t blame them for wanting to avoid the danger. You wouldn’t send someone to war without a gun, but in Manchester, England, we ask people without guns to face people with guns all the time. It’s ridiculous.)