I WAS THERE | FAC51 The Haçienda

A regular from day one, Angela “Ang” Matthews was, as much as anyone immersed in the Haçienda, witnessing the development of the club through the 80s into the explosion of acid house and the DJ culture of the late 80s and early 90s. Ang became assistant manager of the Haçienda in 1989 and manager and licensee in 1991.

Q: Like a lot of people in the Factory/Haçienda story, you moved to Manchester to do a degree. What attracted you to the city?

Well basically Factory Records had started about 18 months prior to me coming down or I’d just heard of them then. I was really into that sort of scene. I was going to Erics in Liverpool at the time and really into the whole thing so I came to Manchester to do my degree. I couldn’t believe what Manchester was like at the time I came.

Q: Manchester is nowadays regarded as a modern European city, was it very different back then?

There was nothing here and I didn’t know anyone and it was quite strange cos it didn’t stop raining, for the first twenty days. I remember going to Expose and the first person I ever spoke to was Johnny Marr and that was quite strange cos he was a shop assistant then and he invited me down to some practise rehearsal they were doing.....and the rest is history I suppose they say. It was quite weird, there was nothing going on, just gigs every so often and some discos but I never went to any of the discos.

Q: You became involved in promoting at the Manchester Students Union, working with Elliot Rashman, what sort of grounding in promoting did that give you, prior to coming to the Haçienda?

I worked with Elliot Rashman cos he was trying to get a deal for Mick at the time so I sort of covered for his job he was the entz officer and I was still a student so I actually got to do every job going, sometime I’d do the cloakroom, sometimes the dressing room and sometimes I had to pretend I was the entertainments officer for him. Over 18 months I just learnt everything there was about promoting gigs and then I wanted to become an agent but there were no female agents back then and I didn’t get a job doing it. I just started working with bands in Manchester, including being a driver if anyone needed one, and then The Boardwalk opened and I started putting on gigs. Then they needed someone to take Leroy’s place when Dry first opened.

Q: How do you become involved initially with the Haçienda?

As soon as it opened I was a customer there and I was also on the guest list all the time. I had a free card and would go in every night, like sometimes there would only be about 6 of us. In 1983 I got a job behind the bar when I was still a student and I was bar person for about 18 months there 'til my exams started and then I went back as assistant manager about four years later.

Q: Where else was there to go out in Manchester apart from the Haç?

No. There wasn’t anywhere else to go.

Q: The management reshuffle with Leroy going to run Dry in 1989 saw Rob Gretton offer you the assistant manager’s job in 1989? How did you feel about being offered the job?

I was assistant manager. Leroy had been the assistant manager and then I got his job. Then what happened about a year later there was all the trouble with the drugs and everything and they shut us down for 5 months. During that time the police said I had to become the manager and the licensee as well so that’s when I became the general manager and licensee.

Q: Did the fact it was New Order's and Factory’s club lend it a cachet in your eyes?

Oh I really wanted to be there, I loved the place and it was exiting and also when I got the promotion. At that time I was the first woman to hold a licence for that amount of people. I think we were 1500 capacity then and I was the first woman in the UK who’d held a licence for that size of building so that made it quite special yeah.

Q: Factory’s sometimes referred to as a “boys club”. How was it being a woman, although not the only one, amongst this?

They were only a boys club in terms of what they were into, they were into football, drinking a bit, some of the younger ones, drugs, but no I never found there was any problem with them at all. I’d gone through doing a degree, being really left wing and going on feminist marches and everything so I was and still am a staunch feminist and I never had a problem with anyone at Factory Records.

Q: What was the atmosphere like when you first took the job and how did it begin to change?

When I first started as assistant manager, it was June 19th 1989 that was my first day there. Oh it was full on, it was absolutely fantastic. But it took me a week or so to realise that you shouldn’t actually take drugs in there 'cos the management actually should be objecting to people doing them in there because no-one had ever tried to stop me doing them in there. Everything was so relaxed. And then the problems started, we were getting visits from the police and getting calls and then they said we had to close down.

When we reopened it was as exciting again and Tony did comment to me when it reopened that he didn’t think it was going to happen again like that. But it did and I’d say that lasted about two and a half years and then it went quite bad, all the gangster stuff really started getting very bad.

Q: Did you feel exposed by the nature of your job, having to handle drugs boxes, amounts of cash, and locking up the venue late at night?

No that sort of thing never worried me. I was more worried that the police would do something to me, put fake charges against me or something. I felt very protected. I had to wear a body alarm so that if I had been attacked at work I just had to press that and an alarm would go off at the police station. But I never had to press it and nobody ever threatened me, except once which you’ve probably read about in Hooky’s book.

It didn’t worry me at all that sort of thing. I think had I been male it would have felt threatened. I thought nobody’s going to hit me because they would look so bad hitting a girl.

Tony’s concern for me was like when I was dealing with all the money on my own in the building; he was worried that something would happen in terms of a robbery. That at the end of the night before the money had been put in the safe and he said that it that ever happened to just give anything and everything to them and just say “There’s more where that came from if you just leave me alone".

Q: It’s often said that the police and the Haçienda had a very us and them attitude? How difficult did this make it to run the club?

Well it made it very difficult when drum and bass came out Rob Gretton really wanted to have what he called black nights and he really wanted to put them on. And we did a couple of them and they were very successful but the police just stopped us doing them. They said we couldn’t do any more. So there was always that feeling that they could do anything they wanted or they’d appear and they’d ruin the whole atmosphere of the club as they were walked around the club by the door staff.

Q: Even though you and Tony actively solicited support and went for grants with the council and the like, nothing was ever forthcoming, nowadays the powers that be seem to look more fondly on it all.

Yes it absolutely totally changed It sometimes annoys me really that the straighter organisations like the council or like the police are looking back almost with fondness about it and how good it was. Well they didn’t at the time, well the council started to help us but the police were positively unhelpful.

Q: What are your favourite nights from your time at the Haçienda?

Well the 10th Birthday was a great night but you were just so busy, you couldn’t do anything, it was just so busy. I think my favourite nights on a regular basis were Mike Pickering’s Shine nights. They were the first nights I promoted there after Paul Cons had gone and the music was always harder edged than the Saturday which I liked. I thought Mike always used to keep the faith from Northern Soul which was what I used to be into as well. So they were my favourites and also the Ibiza nights I did in the summer of 95 when I used to fly the DJs over from Ibiza.

Q: You also used to book the tours for the Haçienda?

I did the Cream Of Manchester tour which Boddingtons gave me a ton of money for and they also let us redesign a can of Boddingtons for the posters and we started that in Cream in Liverpool so that used to bring in quite a lot of money. Rob was really into that because we did need a lot of cash at that point it was just filtering out so fast. So that always added income.

Q: Did you realise at the time the influence of the club and how it would ultimately pass into history?

I realised at the time because I was treated a little bit differently, I don’t mean famous but there was obviously, you could tell that other people thought it was fantastic and special. Tony did realise all that 'cos I remember me and him looking down on it and he said “we are actually making history here.” And yes it did feel like that.

Q: Right towards the end of The Haçienda, you swapped jobs with Leroy at Dry, what was your thinking behind this?

It was just the last six months, and you couldn’t do anything about it, the violence had just escalated, All of a sudden there was a lot of physical fighting in the club and also all the people who had originally been our regular customers, and although I might not have known their names I knew them to say hello to, all those people seemed to have gone. I don’t know whether it was the age 'cos we were coming up for ten years, we were moving into the next generation but I don’t know whether they’d stopped coming 'cos the atmosphere was so aggressive.

I also sometimes wonder whether it happened because cocaine became the drug of choice as opposed of ecstasy. I often wonder about that.

I did actually resign from the club because of it all at a directors meeting and then Anton also resigned with me. They just asked me to go out of the meeting and wait and they called an emergency meeting where Hooky had to come in and Tony was brought in and they said they didn’t want me to go 'cos I was the last person who knew the full history of the Haçienda really. 'Cos Factory had gone, Paul Mason, Paul Cons had gone and just did the work there cos they were saying that Dry might have to be sold if anything happened with the Haçienda so I said “Yes, I’d be happy to do that” and moved over to Dry. Six months later Dry was sold.

Q: It was the end of the Empire, the Haç went after the 15th birthday, Dry was sold in a very quick but messy manner to Hale Leisure, Hooky mentions you cried handing over the keys, how difficult was this time for you personally?

I think it was the first time that anyone connected with Factory Records or The Haç saw me do a girly thing and saw me crying. We were downstairs in the office and we were with Becks who I’m mates with as well and Hooky just said “Right I need the keys love” so I said okay and I was the last employee, I’d been the last employee for about two weeks. I started crying and he goes “what the fucking hell are you crying about” and Becks said “what do you think she’s crying about” so yeah that was it then, it was over.

Q: Hooky’s also said that it’s taken years for him to confront it, was this same for you?

Yes I think so, I think I didn’t realise the effect it had, it was quite stressful. Every Sunday there’d be the grief about the video cameras who was on it, who’d been there when they shouldn’t have been there, and how we would get them covered up because the video’s were supposed to be handed over to the police as well. So that was a constant worry, in fact it was constant all the time, when at the end of the day I was just a girl doing my job who was really into the music, all that gangster stuff was just nonsense.

Q: What do think of The Haçienda Apartments?

The flats, there’s an irony with those apartments cos I had never heard of like apartment blocks, y'know people living in old warehouses and in 1989 we went over to New York because of the United States Of Haçienda tour, and before I went Tony said I want you to have a look at the apartment blocks over there because I’m thinking we could build Haçienda apartments and then I never heard him mention it again, or at any other time. So it’s quite strange that the Haçienda did ultimately become apartments. And also his joke about it was instead of us always going down south and staying in hotels, the Southerners would have to come here and stay at the apartments here.

Q: Do you feel that another use could have been found for the building?

I had hoped that the council would have kept it, I remember the first time I walked into the Haçienda and I just couldn’t believe it/ I like that sort of art work. I find Ben’s work, Peter Saville quite moving, I am quite arty farty, and I am stunned that the council didn’t keep it on, especially because of the glass roof as some sort of gallery space. It should have been an art gallery for modern art, it was there, it was big enough. Ben could have just redone it up and kept it like that. I think Tony would disagree with that, I don’t know what Rob would have thought but with Tony I think he was glad it was all finished.

Q: Is there anything you know about the Haçienda that no-one else does?

Yes but then I might do my book. Put it this way I have it in writing off Tony and in it he says “Jesus Christ Ang, only you know the truth.” He’s signed it so there’s probably a couple of things I might know. Ask me in a couple of years.

Q: What did you do after the Haçienda?

I DJ'd for a while and then I went to work for a company in London, The Slug And Lettuce Company and absolutely detested it. I’m at Vivienne Westwood now and I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before. Now I travel Europe in a VW campervan in the summer, me and Eastie and work at Vivienne Westwood in the winter.

Q: If you could go back and do anything differently, would you?

No, not at all.

Q: Any regrets or is life too short?

No I don’t regret anything. Not a thing.

Designer of The Haçienda who was then to design Dry 201, Tony Wilson’s apartment and most recently new Manchester club The Factory, Ben Kelly has an unparalled reputation for innovation and stylistic excellence across all his work. Arguably the greatest influence on The Haçienda in establishing its theatrical impact and virtuosity of design which characterised the club, encapsulated Factory’s values and enraptured a generation, here Ben discusses the influences that shaped his work on the club and how it all, kind of, came together.

Q: How did the contact with Factory come about?

Through Peter Saville. I met Peter Saville on drunken nights in the Zanzibar. His girlfriend was working in Lynne Franks' office. Peter had moved to London, OMD had moved from Factory to an offshoot of Virgin called Dindisc, and Peter was agonising over their first album sleeve. He said to me he wanted to do an album sleeve using the least amount of cardboard, and I told him he'd better go down to Lynne Franks' office, there was a door there with some perforated steel panels. So he went and looked and we had meetings and we designed that thing together. Lo and behold it won all sorts of D&AD awards, which was truly amazing to me. We carried on doing things together. I did some things for Factory and did a single sleeve for a band called Section 25.

Peter started mumbling about Factory wanting to open some sort of club, and dropped all sorts of hints to me, half suggested that he was going to design it, and maybe I could help. Then they got serious about the premises that they took, and it became a real project, Peter suggested me to Factory, cos he'd seen the Howie shop I did, and I found myself on the train to Manchester, being met by Howard Jones in some sports car and whizzed off to Whittle Street West, where we walked around this empty ex-yachting showroom. I think Rob Gretton and Alan Erasmus were here. I'm not sure whether Tony was there. I distinctly remember the guided tour, and they said, “Well, that's it, do you want the job?” And I reeled backwards and said “Of course I want the bloody job!” And it was, well, clear off and do it.

It transpired that at that point they had an architect on board who was dealing with planning and means of escape and they also had some lighting design/sound type person involved. The architect was a nice enough fellow but he was steering things in a certain direction and I reckon Factory thought I might just go up and choose a few colours. Who knows? I understood quite quickly what was going on, and said “well either the architect goes or I go”

Eventually the architect did go, and we got hold of the bits and pieces he'd been dealing with, and started to manipulate them in a different direction... We proposed a much simpler, more theatrical type lighting installation, a system of fly-bars on pulleys, on centres, they go the width of the place, and you can do anything with them.

Q: What did you think of the site when you first saw it?

I thought it was absolutely fantastic. The problems were different opinions as to what should go where. The big bone of contention was, where should the stage go, and where should the bar go? Certain key people had certain ideas about that. There was a very rickety old balcony there originally, which Factory thought they would keep, but there was no way it would meet regulations, it had to go. So when we started developing a new balcony, which is a fairly serious structural installation, you start to look at sight lines, and discover that things are flexible, they can change.

I think that Rob Gretton thought the stage should be at the far end, where the bar is, and the bar where the stage is. I disagreed with that, because I felt that then the focus of the whole place would have been venue, and not club. The most important thing is that it was club first and venue second. I know there are inherent problems with it being a venue, the height of the stage isn't good, some of the sight lines aren't good, but I suspect that if the stage had been at one end, it would never have become the place that it did.

Q: Did you have to do any major structural alterations to the building?

Specifically where the stage is, some pretty major foundations had to go in, and structure to support the offices above. I think we took out a column, and I remember massive holes in the floor, huge new foundations going in. The entire new balcony has got a lot of new steel work in it.

Q: Were the pillars on the dancefloor already there?

They were the key to the whole thing, in terms of the language of it. The Haçienda's iconography is to do with stripes on columns, isn't it? They were structural, industrial, they were fantastic, and let's make something of them, and in the same way you would have any such hazards in a factory producing goods, well, let's put the hazard marks on the columns.

Q: Was the ethos of Factory something you had in mind when you were designing it?

Having got involved with Peter Saville, and having some understanding of Factory, I had perhaps the arrogance to think I could interpret what I thought Factory was about from a two dimensional point of view, in record sleeves, and also attitude of the personnel involved into a three dimensional environment.

Q: What did you think that attitude was?

It was just an attitude. It has an original, unique and regional quality to it. It was like-minded people from different disciplines homing in on a common cause. It's hard to put a name on it.

Q: I think the Haçienda is modern rather than post-modern?

Absolutely. Hopefully it has its own integrity. The best thing for us is that the clients have had no reason to want to change it. That's the biggest compliment ever. We painted a few new colours after it re-opened after the court case, but that was to try and give it a lift. When Paul Mason took over, one of the first things he did was make an appointment to come and ask for the original specifications for every finish, everything, and set on this mission to take it back to what it was when it opened. Employing people full-time to keep it that way. We set out to do something people wouldn't become bored with after two years. Nightclubs come and go, they get taken over and re-vamped, but its ten years now. If you did want to change the Haçienda you'd have to rip it all out and start again.

I'd like to think it was more like interior architecture. There was a period of time when communications more or less shut down between Manchester and our office, and the DJ booth appeared as if by magic like some Arabian tent. I hate the bloody thing, it's horrible and ugly, and shouldn't be like that. There was sudden silence. The original one was a mistake but we worked to a brief with the people who were running the place at the time and it worked. Yet it ended up on the balcony. It would have been nice to have controlled what that thing looked like. On the other balcony, where they have the Hicks bar, the entrance to that was full of slot machines and god knows what else. That was all separated off by horrible green canvas or something, and we were instrumental in having that removed, to open it back up.

I've never understood about its success, and I've always thought the scale of it was one of the biggest factors. People can feel free in there. It's a vast, cavernous space. One of the reasons behind the slabs as you came in was to inform people about the verticality of the space, to build something that would physically compete with the space, so there's a dialogue.

Q: Do you have a favourite night that you've been to the club?

It would have to be when I went to see William Burroughs. I'm a big Burroughs fan, and I was able to stand in the dressing room next to him.

The opening night was pretty mind-blowing to me, cos there it was, finished, complete. The rush to get it finished was terrible, wet paint everywhere. But it was the biggest project we'd ever done and it was a fantastic project to be involved with, fantastic people to be involved with.

Q: Who do you think was really the driving force behind the whole thing?

I think it was Rob. He's the one who called me a poncey southern git.

A card carrying Haçienda member since day one, Dave Rofe’s involvement with Factory saw him climb the slippery music industry ladder from being ACR’s drum tech, to DJing at the club, working with Rob’s records and being resident at Pleasure, one of the club nights towards the end of the club. Nowadays Dave manages Doves and Cherry Ghost and is the secretary of the well respected Manchester District Music Archive. Here he discusses the development of the club from his perspective and the various changes he saw at the venue up until 1992.

Q: So when did you start going down the Haçienda?

'82, when it opened. I've got my original membership card somewhere. I started going and got more involved, started the label and all that.

Q: What did you think of it when you first went?

We just treated it like a new pub, ‘cos it was open six nights a week, and the beer was the same price as it was in the pubs, which it wasn't in most of the clubs. If you went into town, you'd have to pay town prices, but this was a place where you could go and sit, in pretty freaky surroundings, and hear good music. I was going down every week and banging on the deejay box asking what this or that record was. It opened me up to so many things, like Grace Jones at first.

Q: When did they move the DJ booth up onto the gantry?

I remember being in there in '85 on a Saturday night with two others and we were the clientele, Chad Jackson was DJing upstairs, so it must have been '84, '85 they moved it upstairs. And they lagged some of the walls. Some people from Salford Tech. The sound is still sort of weird, but it’s down to the deejays as well. I can go and hear some deejays and bizarrely enough, the sound is terrible, but Graham Park especially seems to get a remarkable sound in there. I don't know how, because there's only a graphic EQ, there's no quick kill-the-bass. Perhaps Graham's got his head around graphic equalisers, or something. You can't hear upstairs, it’s hard to hear what the top and bottom ends are doing in that little box.

Q: Hi-NRG was very gay-identified music, and electro I suppose in the early days, the Haçienda was conceived as a rock venue rather than a dance venue.

I always thought of it as a dance venue myself, with the people I was knocking around with then.’Nightclubbing' was de rigeur at the time, and it was geared to dance. I never saw it much as a rock venue, I was surprised when they put certain things on there.

Q: The pure dance nights weren't pushed for quite a while, were they?

No, I don't think people really had their heads around going out just to dance, hence the mixture of music that was played there, which was a good thing for the time. It would have fallen flat on its face anyway, ‘cos people didn't know how to dance all night until seven o'clock in the morning.

Q: When did it start to pick up?

About '87 is when Mike Pickering got his head around playing house music, and making house music nights. There was still a few hip-hop tracks being played in there, and James Brown Sex Machine still being played then, and suddenly Pickering started doing these sessions of all night house music which at the time people were saying it was gay music, and they weren't interested, then a lot of freakier tracks started it to appear, harder tracks, and radio stations started playing it. It wasn't just one deejay playing music. Radio people like Stuart Allen, and clubs like the Gallery, it was getting away from the Hi-NRG thing like the Number One Club or Cloud Nine or whatever, and moving into the house hour after the hip-hop hour on the radio, so people were getting to hear it.

Q: Did they start playing house in '86 when it first came over?

They were straight on it, in 1986. There was a different thing, everyone used to jack. House music isn't like it was; it’s as different as hip-hop is from house now. People used to do a funny sort of fast dance called jacking, which was almost like a jazz style of dancing, people like Foot Patrol would come down and do house dancing, and people would stand and watch, it was like the electro, breakin' thing. There was the jazz dance thing, like Kalima, and Working Week, then the house thing came along, there was the jacking thing, which we couldn't do, and then when the drugs thing came along eighteen months later, everybody's doing a weird sort of Bez influenced dance.

Q: So the E dancing came in at the end of '87, early '88. How did you see the drugs coming in?

It just seemed to appear. I've not got my head on the grapevine. It was a rumour, and then it appeared. It became noticeable to me during '88, but someone more clued into the drug scene might say '86 or something. There was a feature in the Face about Ecstasy, but that was a feature about it being an American designer drug.

Q: When would you say the club really started to kick?

I'd put it at March '88. I used to work for A Certain Ratio, and we went down, we were doing a gig at the Astoria, and the Trip was on later that night. So we went down, and it was the arms in the air scenario. The difference with the Haçienda was, there was this big wooden slab called the dance floor, and you went and stood on the dance floor and danced. You didn't dance in the aisles or on the chairs. We went in this club, the Trip, and the whole club was dancing, from the bar to the dance floor, onto the stage. Complete, hundred percent club euphoria, where you felt like the dick if you weren't dancing. Whereas before it was, oh, look at him dancing on the dance floor. So now, being cool was dancing. So we went back to Manchester saying, wow, down in London, they're just going off their heads. And two weeks later, the Haçienda had podiums. Someone else had been down there, obviously, and seen it. Get the podiums in, get the strobes in, go crazy. And the drugs came at the same time. It just went off, bang.

Q: Which were the really good years?

'88, '89, and after that it starts to get more popular, and you start thinking, it’s not as good as it was. It might still be as good, but you don't think it’s as good yourself.

Q: Did it become very heavy when it was popular?

Yeah, it’s the market. It created this massive market for drugs. And not only the drugs, but the scene. A lot of people wanted to control the Scene. The Gallery and the Reno closed down in the late 80s, which gave that crowd no to control the Gallery, in a gang sense, was quite a feat, and to have a grip on the Reno was, Moss Side had the Reno, Salford and [indistinct] had the Gallery, something like that, and that's gone, so where do they go? The biggest night in town.

Q: So all the gangs had their own clubs they could go to?

I wouldn't make it a rule, but that's the way it seemed, looking back on it, it was an additive to the situation. There were times when you had to stand aside and let twenty lads sort of pour through the door.

Q: In 1990 it started getting a bit frenetic; you had drugs, the media attention, the gangs after the hot night in town. When did it peak, and when did it start fading, if it did.

I'd say there were some good nights every year, but I think '89 was the year to be knocking around there. This term, the Summer of Love came about in 1988, then when Summer of Love II came along it was an ambitious think to do. Would it be as good as last year? Yes, it was. Summer of Love III? It's getting like an American film series. But it was okay. Then last year, I don't think they even bothered, it was in decline. There's nothing to beat a good night out when you're not expecting anything, and that's how it seemed in '88, and '89, it just popped out of nowhere. By the time it was established, it was expected.

Q: And by then you'd had the closure.

Yeah, it was a real mess. Then it re-opened but it doesn't seem to have it’s a hard thing to change, you're at the whim of so many factors, for a good scene to come together.

Q: But the Haçienda has one thing going for it, which is the building.

It's looking a bit tatty and dusty now, it needs a good spring clean.

Q: Do you think they should spend money on it, revamp it a bit?

It would depend on how much money they've got. I suppose it would take an awful lot before it looked different. It's a victim of the fact that it’s such a good looking club, you don't really want to mess with it.

Q: If it stays there, a successive generation will come in and re-invent it, like if younger kids come in and start something of their own.

Well, hopefully if they let them in, but the Haçienda policy for letting younger people start things in there isn't that good. They've always kept their eye on the fashion magazines, and if it’s cool to do something, they'll do it, but they don't actually instigate things.

Q: What did you think of the bands that came up through the club?

It was more relevant to the Boardwalk than the Haçienda, it really was. You'd go down on a Friday night and see Inspiral Carpets supporting the Happy Mondays, then you'd go to the Haçienda and you'd have a few draws, and maybe an E in the Haçienda. I think it’s from those days, in '86, '87, when I was DJing at the Boardwalk. I DJ’d there for a few years.

Q: So everything got really simplified in the media, and everybody thought the Haçienda was the focus of it, and that in a way was Tony Wilson's flair for publicity.

It’s the pub that everyone goes to. It’s the local. So everybody was probably in there after a gig some night when a journalist walks in and sees who's there, and decides, this must be where it’s kicking.

Q: Did the Mondays seem really different when they started, or did they get gradually better?

I hate indie music, and they were the first band that I saw as a DJ. I used to love DJing in the Boardwalk ‘cos I'd play all this weird hip-hop, and old soul records to indie heads, real C86-ers, they'd all be in there, in their anoraks, looking glum, and I'd be playing Soul City Walk or something like that. The best thing was when one of them asked me if I had something less rhythmical, mate. The Mondays were band first band that I saw where I thought, great, there's a bit of a Sly & the Family Stone groove under that, and they had this nutter onstage with maracas, being completely un-indie. Obviously wired off his head, maracas, mooching about.

Q: So what’s the future now for the Haçienda?

Just plod on, I think. They can't control anything. If I was them, I'd invest in this new wave of techno bods that are coming out, and start to build their new Mike Pickerings, but that will bring the kids, and that will bring the drugs and the dealers, and then you bring the market back to the Haçienda. They don't want that again, they just dealt with it when they closed the club. Someone died, you know what I mean? I've been warned away from playing hip-hop in there. Modern, aggressive style hip-hop. I don't take any notice of them like.

Q: Maybe they can let it back in a couple of years?

They should definitely do it now, because it probably won't be going in two years.

A member of the early management team at the Haçienda, Ellie Gray saw first hand the opening years of the club, with the management of Howard “Ginger” Jones and as part of the infamous management committees that took over after Ginger left. Ellie herself was to leave the club just on the cusp of the acid house phenomenon to work with the Jazz Defectors but here provides her insight on the Haçienda’s early days. She now works as director of fundraising for MENCAP, having previously worked as arts development manager for Granada Television and for The Prince’s Trust.

Q: How did you get involved with the Haçienda?

I worked for Alan Wise, and at the Russell Club. Before that I’d worked at Rafters for a while. I met him at a Magazine gig, through Dave Tomlinson, and I met Tony through him. I just heard on the grapevine that they were opening the Haçienda, went down there, talked to Ginger and Penny Henry and everyone, and got a job on the reception desk from the first night.

Q: What was it like in the early days?

Good fun, but there was nobody there half the time.

Q: What sort of people were you getting in then?

It was your arts and music cognoscenti. Hip and trendy people. City Fun, and all that crowd. People who turned into yuppies a few years later, more than your coachloads of scallies, who didn't arrive until much later, until we were desperate for money. There were a few models, and always the core of Manchester musos, they all had free memberships, and all their girlfriends got in for nothing. I had one night when more people got in for nothing than paid.

Q: What was the attitude of the staff in the early days?

I wasn't running the club, Ginger was, and we were aware that he wasn't doing what was expected of him, and everyone was aware of the wrangles between him and Tony and Rob. I think he had a lot of support from Rob. He fell out with Tony quite a bit. Mainly policy decisions. We were all aware of the problems, and we weren't getting people through the door. Ginger was harassed, and you could see that his days were numbered. We used to have these staff meetings, before the club opened, that was supposed to be minuted, and basically just telling lies to all the staff. I wasn't really involved in the day to day management, I just knew that a lot of debtors were trying to get hold of Ginger, and he was never available to them, so I knew that things were bad. I was in the club the night when the shit hit the fan, and he resigned. His back was to the wall.

After Ginger left was when the management committee came into being. Penny Henry, who was running the bar, Louise, Mike, a girl called Janet who was working for Ginger, they were running it between them, and then they asked me to become a member of the management committee. Leroy was working on the bars at that time, but he wasn't involved in any great capacity. He was head oppo, if you like.

Q: How did the management committee work?

That was me, Mike, Louise and Penny, basically doing what Rob and Tony told us to do, after they'd had a fight about it. Lots of meetings. It worked quite well up to a point, but no-one really knew what they were doing, there was no real direction, so you had people making a brave attempt, but not having the direction or the support. It was quite frightening. I remember taking on all the book-keeping side of it, banking and all of that, doing an adequate job, but not really knowing what I was doing, and keeping bailiffs away, and it was quite a lot to take on when you're not really sure. The hours were very demanding.

Q: How long did the management committee last for?

It broke down in terms of numbers, cos Penny and Louise left. So there was just me and Mike. Leroy was more involved in running the bars, but Mike was more involved in the entertainment side of it, and actually doing the DJing on a Friday. My role was more of a special events type person, and hiring the club out to TV companies, video companies. People like the Alternative Hair Show had their show there, Smirnoff, TSB, saying, “this facility exists, why don't you come and do something?

Q: Is that when you brought in Paul Cons?

I did a hair fashion show, inspired by Performing Clothes, and go together with Sassoons, and Paul Cons came in at that point as one of the models. He'd be saying to me, that's sexist, you can't do that! I got on well with him, and we then did a lesbian and gay thing that was really good, and we did a benefit that was very successful, got lots of people in, and involved New Order deejaying, things like that. We tried to get a lesbian and gay night off the ground, which didn't work. It's working now for him, with Flesh.

Q: Why didn't it work then?

It was too soon. Lesbians and gays together didn't work at that time, but Tony and Rob supported us on that, let it run for a lot longer than they should have done. It was losing money. There was resistance to the idea of Paul working. I think that wasn't that he was gay, they needed convincing of his capabilities. I think they thought he was a bit of a ligger at first, my pet that I'd brought in, but then it became obvious that he was good at marketing the Haçienda, which hadn't been done up till then, being creative, supporting me when I wanted to do something like fashion PAs, getting those off the ground, making friends with everybody around Manchester, researching what the other clubs were doing, looking for ideas we could transfer here, he was bloody good.

Q: What was happening musically in the club then?

There was a latin jazz thing which was when I met the Jazz Defectors. I never really got into that, but they used to love it, with all their high waisted trousers and braces, and jazz dancing. Just before Paul Mason was brought in, I decided I wanted to work with Jazz Defectors, cos we were offered trips to Japan and everything, and Tony and everybody had been very good about giving me time off to do gigs and everything, but I couldn't do both, and five years at the club by that point, and as they'd decided to bring Paul in. I worked with Paul when he first arrived, and we got on well, but I felt, is there anything for me to do here anymore? There was the attraction of working for the Jazz Defectors. I don't think Tony was too happy about me leaving, he wanted me to get involved in the summer of love and all that, but I got bogged down with the Jazz Defectors, I thought we were going to make some money and have some fun, make some records, and it didn't work like that. We had a good time for a year or so, we travelled a lot.

I left just before the fifth birthday party in 1987. It was changing again, and I felt uncomfortable, it felt more aggressive, there were a lot more smoking and dealing going on, that sort of thing. Also a lot of the people I'd grown up with, there were a lot of casualties, and there were just the dregs left, and I began to feel like one. I liked Paul Mason, I wanted to work with him, but I decided for various reasons, not just because he was there, that I didn't want to stay. I was tired, working all those years for all those nights. I began to feel that period was over.

Q: What do you think the club has meant to the city over the years?

A lot. For people of a certain age and a certain inclination, it's meant everything.

The legendary Scots musical marvel, Graeme Park has been one of the longest mainstays with the Haçienda since joining Mike Pickering at the decks at Nude when he famously took a holiday. Considered one of the best garage DJs and mixers in the world, his involvement with the Haçienda brought him international fame, travel and a successful radio career. Still playing with Haçienda tour events throughout the world and much in demand, Parky as he is known to his pals and a generation of Haç clubbers still upholds the musical style and class for which he became renowned. Here he discusses his background, how he became involved with FAC 51 and his views on his heady early days at the club.

Q: How did you get started out?

Really I fell into DJing by accident. I worked in a record shop in Nottingham called Selectadisc, I was the singles manager. Brian Selby, the owner, bought a reggae club called the Adlib, he wanted to turn it into a trendy nightclub. In the afternoon of the opening night, he had everything sorted except the deejay, so I ended up doing it. That was seven or eight years ago. He called the club the Garage. I was going to do it until he found someone else to do it full-time, but a year later I was still doing it, literally just playing what people asked me to play.

Q: Rap, electro?

Yeah, but also funky pop stuff in the charts, like Orange Juice, Aztec Camera, Talking Heads. I'd go through my old records and play old Motown stuff, I was into northern soul in my mid-teens. Also the disco stuff, Sister Sledge, Chic. After a year I was fed up of playing the same records. Back then, the type of deejay I am now didn't exist. So I started playing what I wanted to play. I was still at the record shop, so I had access to these imports. They weren't selling in great quantities, but I was really into it. So I started playing what I wanted to play, and overnight lost my entire audience. Almost got the sack, but I got him to give me three weeks to get them back, and three weeks later here were three times as many people as we'd ever had.

Q: What were you playing then?

Planet Rock, Jonzun Crew, all the early electro things, which after about eighteen months gave way to the early Chicago house stuff. JM Silk. Two years later, London took it up. Much to my surprise, I was asked in 1987 to deejay at a warehouse party in London organised by Ashley who works at Black Market. He'd seen house music working in the states, so he asked me to this event, and there I was, doing exactly what I was doing in Nottingham, only everyone was standing around in their flared trousers, all the rare groove gear, arms folded, not into it at all. Six months later, Nicky Holloway asked me to deejay the Trip at The Astoria, playing pretty much the same thing, and everyone was going wild for it.

Q: Why do you think that was?

I really don't know. London club-goers can be quite fickle, and if they hear someone up north is playing a different kind of music, they aren't interested. They had their deejays playing what at the time was hip-hop and rare groove, but when Paul Oakenfold and Nick Holloway and all them came back from Spain and incorporated house music into what they were doing, suddenly, check this out.

Q: Do you think the difference is northern soul, the fast, 4/4 stuff with female soul vocals, that you don't get down in London?

I think that's absolutely right. People coming up from London were saying, you ought to get some of this rare groove into it, and at the time I thought, maybe I should. Outside of the midlands, then, nobody knew who I was. So I tried some of it, but to be honest, it just didn't work. Some hip-hop, the more up-tempo hip-hop worked, but I think up north there is that tradition of slightly faster music. Up until the mid-80s Scotland was just into hi-nrg. Every club you went to.

Q: When did you get the call from the Haçienda?

Just before the summer of '88, when it all happened. I'd met Mike at a photo session in London for I-D, of deejays into record labels and making music. Me and him were the only non-London DJs, and the only ones who were into house music. We'd read about each other, but we'd never met. We got on really well, and he rang me a few weeks later, he was having a two-week holiday, and said, it seems we're always getting compared and written about in the same sentences in the same articles, would you do my Friday night? I said I'd love to, but I'd like to come up and check it out first. So I came up to Manchester and he was playing pretty much the same stuff as I was playing, although in a different way, ‘cos I've always been a mixing DJ, I've always mixed, from day one. Before I saw other deejays I naively thought that if you're going to be a successful deejay you have to be technically good. Of course when I started hearing other deejays I realised you didn't have to be technically good, I was appalled, but anyway, Mike went away and I did the two Fridays on my own, it was a huge success, cos I had all the records that were big there, but I was mixing them as well, and it was wild. When he came back, I can't remember if it was the Haçienda or Mike that asked me to do it together, but whichever, I said yes.

Q: Why did it take off in 1988?

I think it would have taken off anyway. The time was ripe, the music was really exciting, and there was his wonderful drug called Ecstasy which people in Manchester really took to. I think that had a very big part in the whole thing. I remember the first Friday I went up before Mike went on holiday that time, it was, good to see you up here, this is what the night is like, and by the way, have you had one of these before? Well, I hadn't, and I ummed and ahhed for a bit, thought I ought to keep a clear head, but in the end I had it, and thought, wow, what is this stuff?

Q: What records would you have been playing that first summer?

All the big house tunes that had been around for the past eighteen months, two years were still being played. Not so much Jack Your Body that had been a pop hit, but Fingers Inc., lots of DJ International, and Trax. I think The Party by Kraze was '88.

Q: How did the trajectory of that period go?

I think that the '88/89 period peaked in the summer of '89. But all the time you're getting new people joining into it with new ideas, and you can't expect it to stay the same. You've got so many different kinds of house music now. The rave scene, which was born out of what we were doing, is now a completely separate thing; off at a tangent with people who never went to clubs in '88, but it's their thing. It's completely mad. Eighteen months ago I got booked for an event, and you could see how it was becoming more and more hardcore. I said; don't book me again, cos next by time, the kind of thing I play isn't going to go down at all well. When the Haçienda closed I wasn't going to go back, but they offered me Saturday on my own. I still try to keep abreast of hip-hop. They plundered James Brown and the r&b era so much, they had to move on, and they're now sampling seventies disco records, which I find quite exciting. It's taking the tempo back up again. De La Soul were the first people to sample the disco stuff. You still have people like Public Enemy that haven't moved in that direction, they're still in the r&b thing. They send me all the Public Enemy releases, and I listen to them and appreciate them, but I don't play them out, because it's aggressive. I like to think I'd play anything and everything, but there's so much stuff around. It's a full-time job. I'm still buying about thirty or forty import twelve inchers a week, its hard work.

Q: Are you into the technical side of DJing?

Yes I am, because if somebody comes along to hear me on the strength of a reputation, I want them to go away feeling that the reputation fits. So it's important that the sound system sounds the best that it can. We use three decks there, no-one else uses three decks, but there always have been three decks at the Haçienda. Mike went to the states, came back and said, right, three decks. But Mike won't use three decks, except just to have a record cued up and ready. But I can have three records on the go; I'll play around with the graphic. If I lived in Manchester I'd probably take a keyboard or a sampler to the Haçienda, but I don't, I'll fly up or get the train, and I don't want to be bogged down with equipment.

The sound in the Haçienda now is quite good, but before the re-opening, you'd have some weekends it sounded terrible. It's only recently they've employed a full-time sound man, who will check the sound and the equipment the day after it’s, been used. It's a very big open space, and it's hard to make it sound good for everyone in the club. If you're on the dancefloor it sounds good but in the bars or the balcony it sounded horrible, echoey. They used to have those banks of speakers on the arch, and it took me a year to get them to put some of those speakers on the dancefloor, as an experiment. What a difference. Since they've had this sound guy there, I can turn up on a Saturday and they sound will be good, I don't have any complaints.

Q: What do you think is the future of the club?

As long as they carry on employing DJs who are keen enough to want to progress, I'm sure the club will progress. I'm still keen to do a good job, and at the moment, we're selling out by half past ten, the shutters are down. Its years since that have happened.

Greg Wilson is an honorary Manc born in Liverpool who is generally acknowledged as the godfather of the early eighties Manc electro scene. He is one of the first British DJs to have used three turntables and is remembered for his nights at Legend and the Haçienda.

Way back in 1983, when I’d been brought into the club in order to introduce their audience (then very much regarded as ‘alternative’) to the kind of music I was playing to a predominantly black crowd across town at Legend, nobody would have foreseen that the Haçienda would eventually be revered, on a global scale, as something of a Temple of Dance. The initial reaction to the music I was playing, mainly on import from New York, was hardly encouraging, with numerous regulars berating me for playing this ‘dance shit’ when bands like Bauhaus and Siouxsie & The Banshees were much more to their taste. The club’s biggest dancefloor tune of ’83, ‘Native Boy’ by Animal Nightlife, wasn’t the type of record I was carrying in my box back then.

Although the Haçienda reacted to, rather than instigated, the Manchester dance era, it was much to the club’s credit that they’d noted what was happening at Legend and decided that this was a direction they wished to pursue. Broken Glass, the Manchester breakdance crew, played a big part in helping acclimatise their clientele to the Electro sounds I was playing (especially during my hour long Saturday night spots, when they took to the Haçienda stage). At this point breakdancing was regarded as extremely cutting-edge (still some months before the media overkill destroyed its cool) and even if a sizable section of the club’s regular punters weren’t yet prepared to dance to Electro, they were more than happy to stand back and admire the energy and athleticism of Broken Glass (including a young Kermit, who, a decade on, would hook up with Shaun Ryder to form the band Black Grape).

When I stopped DJing at the end of ’83, Mike Pickering, then the clubs promotions manager, continued the dance direction, taking to the decks himself and eventually achieving the breakthrough with his ‘Nude’ night, which, like my own specialist dance night at the club, took place on a Friday. As both Mike Pickering and Laurent Garnier (another pre-rave Haçienda resident) have pointed out, the original House crowd in Manchester were mainly black kids, but somehow this fact has never been properly acknowledged, with many young people (as the manager of a well known record shop recently pointed out to me) under the illusion that a group of DJ’s went to Ibiza and discovered dance music!

By the end of the decade the underground club scene had become a nationwide phenomenon and things would never be the same again as legions of white boys, aided by a little pill, finally lost their inhibitions and learnt how to dance! Before we knew it Manchester was Madchester and the Haçienda was destined to become (with the exception of Liverpool’s Cavern Club of the 60’s) arguably the best-known British nightspot of all.

My abiding memory of the Haçienda in those ‘rave on’ days was the overwhelming response to the track ‘Rich In Paradise’ by the FPI Project (an instrumental version of the classic ‘Going Back To My Roots’), which I witnessed during a visit from London, where I lived at the time. I was stood chatting to Kermit (then of the Ruthless Rap Assassins) in one of the alcoves when, while continuing the conversation, he raised his hand in the air as the track’s piano breakdown filled the room. In my heightened state I then noticed that all the people stood near us were giving the same type of salute. As I looked around it became apparent that everyone in the club was sharing this outpouring of togetherness, hands held high in the air! It was the most unifying moment I’ve ever experienced in a club and, although I witnessed similar sights subsequently, everything that followed seemed to be just chasing shadows, trying to re-capture something that was no longer there, at least not in its purest form.

To have truly ‘been to’ a club like the Haçienda, or Legend, you would have had to have been there at a certain point in time, when they were pushing back the musical boundaries and providing a unique experience for those who attended. Only a rare breed of clubs fall into this category, and only at a time of change, for it’s the changes that deepen the experience, the knowing that you’re part of something that is only happening in this building, now. Real changes only come along once in a while and many people never get the chance to be there at the cusp of a youth revolution.

The original resident DJ at The Hacienda, specially chosen by Tony Wilson, Hewan Clarke created a soundtrack for the club where one never existed in the early 80’s, mixing his staple soul and jazz funk classics with the more commercial sounds of the time.

Still DJing and ever passionate about music today, Hewan remains in Manchester and here discusses the pre Hacienda Manchester club scene along with his role at the club playing some 6 nights a week when it first opened.

Q: When did you start going out to clubs?

When I started sneaking out the house to go to the blues. I started off in reggae, illegal blues in Moss Side, and then I got into jazz. I'm still into jazz, but the soul and dance music I play to make money. At home, I listen to jazz.

I used to go to the Reno quite a lot, and cos I was in there so much, I ended up DJing there. That was the late Seventies. The Nile was on top of the Reno, in the same block. I was in the Nile first, which was the reggae club, and then I got into jazz and went down to the Reno.

Q: So when did you start DJing?

In the Reno. It was very easy, I didn't have to compromise. The people used to smoke a lot of weed, get out of their heads and dance. I had total musical freedom. We played whatever we wanted to, as long as it was good. The Reno was open until five or six in the morning, and it would still be packed then.

Q: When did it close down?

Only a couple of years ago, sadly. A lot of people miss it. I think the building was a health hazard. Whenever it rained outside, it would rain inside the club. The Nile was bad, you'd have rain dripping off the single light bulb that provided the light in the place, a puddle in the middle of the floor, but the place was still full, people dancing around the puddle. It was so unique. And there were no emergency exits, or any of that kind of stuff. If there'd ever been a fire in the Reno, it would have been disastrous. Five or six hundred people crammed into that little space, religiously every night.

Q: Where did you go after the Reno?

The old Rufus club re-opened as Fevers. I used to do the Hard Rock at Stretford, which is now a B&Q supermarket. I saw Bob Marley there, and some of the early punk bands. It was more of a venue, like the early Haçienda. The DJ there was Andy Peebles, before he went onto the radio. We moved to Rafters, and that was where I met Colin Curtis, one of the DJs I followed. Wednesday night Colin was doing this jazz night in Fevers, people who went there were the early jazz dancers, people from Leeds and Birmingham who went on to form their own companies. It was just a dance club, people used to just get sweaty, and it was very elitist.

Q: How did the music change?

It didn't really. The jazz funk thing was like when the five-minute jazz break came up, all the ordinary punters would leave the dance floor and the jazz dancers would get up and show off for five minutes, then the soul would come back on. When the scene started to change, there was a lot of us still very into jazz dancing, and we kind of broke off into our own scene and went up to Berlin, and that's what Fevers was. There were only 60-80 people in Fevers. Never made any money, but we had a good time.

There was a group of what we would call weirdos, at the time, they didn't look like us. Two polite, white kids who used to come, and sit in the corner. I used to warm up for Colin, and one night one of them came over. Martin and Simon. We're in a band called ACR and we really love this music. Whenever I played any Brazilian percussion tracks, they'd come over and ask who it was, and that was my stepping stone into the Haçienda. That was the music they wanted to take their influence from at the time. Very Latin. Heavy Brazilian stuff, samba, Ray Barretto, obscure jazz Latin vocal stuff.

Q: So how were you asked to join the Haçienda?

They made themselves known that they were A Certain Ratio; I'd never heard of them, I wondered what they were. They said they were doing a tour of Britain, and would I like to accompany them, and play the music before they came on, ‘cos they didn't want a support band, they wanted a DJ. I started doing that. At the time, Tony Wilson was their manager. They had one of those big Citroens, and that was their tour bus. We travelled around England in that. It worked really well, it took a while for people to get into the music, but a couple of them got up and danced. I learned a lot, I saw things I wouldn't normally have seen.

Tony Wilson said I was his second favourite DJ in the world, after Frankie Crocker, who was also my favourite DJ. He worked on WBLS in New York. I remember thinking, how does this guy know about Frankie Crocker? He said, in two years time I'm going to open a club in Manchester and I want you to deejay there. I thought it was one of those hollow promises, and two years later, the Haçienda opened.

Q: What was the mood in the Manchester clubs just before the Haçienda started?

It was mixed, very good actually, everyone just there for the music. In Moss Side it was more black, cos a lot of white people wouldn't travel into Moss Side. They wanted to go to the Reno, but they heard so many rumours about it. But it opened my eyes when I came and saw the soul clubs in town, the colours mixing so well.

Q: What was the agreement when you started at the Haçienda? Were you doing just one night a week?

I was doing practically every night, actually. Tony Wilson was very ahead of his time, saying that black music was going to be the next commercial dance music. I never thought like that in those days, I just got on with playing the music. He said, it's going to influence the charts and all that. I had my doubts about that. The strange thing to me was, prior to the Haçienda, he had the Factory at the PSV, which was a punk club. On the opening night all the celebrities were there, and the following week when they opened properly, they were all punks in there, mohicans and everything. I got really paranoid. I'd be playing your normal funky black tune, which if I'd played in a black club, I knew it would pack the floor, but in the Haçienda, nobody used to dance. I used to feel really paranoid. He'd come into the DJ box saying, wonderful, keep it up, and I'm thinking, but nobody's dancing! It was doing my head in.

Q: How long were you at the Haçienda?

It might have been three years.

Q: Why did you leave?

One of the reasons I became a DJ was I'd go out to all these clubs in Manchester to listen. Apart from Mike Shaft, there weren't any other black DJs in Manchester playing black music. It used to freak me out listening to all these white DJs playing black music, and I just thought they're playing it wrong. Good black music to me wasn't just rhythms and beats, it’s also like a feeling you can get from a good band. I believed in trying to capture that feeling and making it stretch out through the night. I'd listen to these DJs and the music was very choppy. You'd go from one rhythm to another, you'd want to dance to one record and you wouldn't want to dance to the next. There was no flow, and I thought I could do that better. The thing with the Haçienda, the way they wanted me to play wasn't compatible with the way I'd taught myself to play. I'd infuse it with the commercial stuff, Culture Club and the Thompson Twins. This was the first time I'd got into this music, Thompson Twins, and industrial music. I'd top it off by playing stupid things, like Lulu's Shout, or the Thunderbirds theme at the end of the night so they'd go home with a bit of a buzz on their heads. Obviously somebody in the Factory Empire thought I wasn't being as hardcore as they wanted me to be, and they sacked me.

Q: Who sacked you?

Mike Pickering! I was shocked, actually. I was wandering around in a daze for a couple of months, wondering what to do. And the numbers at the Haçienda went down drastically. I can't remember how long later it was, but they asked me to come back.

Q: You said no?

I said yes! They had an advertising campaign: Big 'H' returns to the big 'H', and everyone was happy, and it was working. I don't know why Mike did that. He probably thought I wasn't progressing, but I'm a very progressive DJ. I believe there's a time and a place for everything. It's no good just slamming a track in someone's face cos it's going to be big in a couple of months. I'd rather wait in certain cases, if I think its ahead of its time. This was just at the time when black music had come to a stalemate. Electro had finished, they were trying to get into the rap thing, and it was a bit too topical for them. We had the jazz period, that went down well, but the people making the music were looking for something new, and that's when the house thing started.

Q: You liked that?

Oh yeah, I loved it. The way the scene worked, the DJs were in the record shop every Saturday morning, buying whatever came off the van from America. Spin Inn was the place. These were the up-front DJs, then there were the DJs who waited for us to break something, and they'd come in and buy it and make their living in the commercial handbag clubs. But amongst all the soul and hip-hop that was coming in, I remember Colin coming up to me in 42nd Street and saying, we've got this record here and it's like nothing we've ever played before. It was a Frankie Knuckles track.

Q: Where did you go after the Haçienda?

Back on the black scene, I went back underground. I never actively tried to pull that crowd into the Haçienda. They wouldn't have come anyway; they had their own places they went to. To this day I don't think the Haçienda has ever provided anything for them, especially now it’s so well known, they could do something. No, actually, they did try; they had an attempt at an all dayer, it was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen, the looks on people's faces as they walked in the door. They'd never seen anything like it. Prior to that, they were used to low roofed nightclubs. Normally at an all dayer its pitch black, and cos of the skylights it was really bright and it freaked everybody out, nobody danced at all. It was a total failure. Then they had a northern soul night, and that worked a little bit better.

Q: When did they change the Haçienda’s DJ booth?

When they realised people didn't know where it was, I suppose. I worked there after it changed, but I liked the older one, being trapped in there with you and Claude Bessey. Claude stitched me up, I really miss him. Except when he farted. He was injecting everything into his poor body he could get his hands on, he was a character. I've never met anybody so totally decadent.

Intro copy to follow.

Q: How did you come to be in Manchester?

I came to Manchester in 1976, cos I met a girl who wanted to live in Manchester and I knew Manchester was cool. I liked the people. Then of course the whole punk thing happening which I saw from the point of view of bands like Cabaret Voltaire, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Manicured Noise. It was a great thing to be involved in. It was nothing to do with the music business. I started to promote Rafters, I did Orange Juice, Durutti Column. DC were a major musical force in Manchester at that time. People took them very seriously.

Q: You began work with Alan Wise didn't you?

Alan invited me to work with him, and I always respected Alan for the musical end of the things he did. I was very naive, running purely on enthusiasm. The financial realities of running a club were a lot further down the line. I was very successful, I was making money at a time when people weren't making money. I started the Wednesday club at Rafters, which people like Morrissey were coming to, it was a hip night. I tied up with Factory very early on by doing Durutti Column on the opening night. I met Tony and Alan and Rob, then the fifth promotion that I did was New Order at the Comanche Students Union. I had to move out of Rafters ‘cos it was a bigger gig. New Order would pull two thousand people, so it sold out immediately it was announced. During the process of that show, Rob said he liked the way I worked, and asked me what I was doing, ‘cos they were doing this thing called Factory Records. I said “what I really want to do is open a club that's catering not to the Manchester raincoat crowd but the dance crowd. The crowd I felt more naturally drawn to from my own experience with Northern Soul over the years.

Q: But that's not the crowd that the Haçienda got originally?

No, because when we were talking about it, I was basing it on the idea of a Northern Soul club. We had a meeting in the dressing room, and I explained it to Rob, and he said,” stay here, I'm going to fetch Tony”. Tony came in and said “we're talking about opening a club. It was more than just putting on shows and making money out of discos, we were talking about Saturday Night Fever in Manchester at that point, there was nothing else happening other than promoters. Alan had been promoting quite extensively, without much success. I'd been making money, so Rob and Tony must have thought, this guy know what he's doing.

Q: Rob and Tony were using Alan to promote Joy Division back then weren’t they?

I went to a lot of the Factory nights, I saw Iggy Pop at the Russell Club, Human league, Link Wray and Suicide, wild promotions, so I understood where they were coming from. They just convinced me that night that if we channelled the two directions into one, we would come up with the best club the North West had ever produced, and that was the objective. We were looking at London, but we weren't taking London very seriously, cos we were having more fun in Manchester, as you know.

Q: How did the Haçienda come together?

I decided that the place I wanted to build the club was Dry Bar, but the people that owned it were asking an extortionate amount of money. It was a carpet warehouse that was very successful in the carpet boom, but the carpet boom disappeared and it became available. That was the first meeting we had, and I remember that day buying a typewriter for Factory Records. Alan Erasmus managed to con me into buying an electronic typewriter for Factory which they did pay me back for, subsequently. Then on the way home, Rob Gretton said “I've seen this yacht showroom that's coming empty” and along we went to where the Factory now is. We walked in that day, and I knew the Haçienda was going to be there. I just knew. It was already there, for me.

Q: How long was it between seeing that yacht warehouse and the club opening?

I've got a feeling it was March when the New Order gig took place, and we decided to get a club together but then I spent at least a year finding premises, getting the capital together, finding the designer, Ben Kelly. Peter Savile was the obvious choice because of the Factory connection, but then Ben Kelly became the obvious choice, cos Ben was also from the North West and had the same kind of feel as we did. Peter was gravitating towards suburban London, he was famous in his own right and was too difficult to get hold of. I used to enjoy going to London to see Peter, just for the lifestyle.

Q: Where did you feel that the real impetus for the club came from, amongst the Factory people?

Without any disrespect to Tony, it came from Rob Gretton, didn't it? Rob had said to me “Tony is one of the most crazed people you're ever going to meet but he worries. Tony worries”. Tony's answer to that was “Somebody should have, with the kind of money that was throwing about” but I knew it was going to happen. I've done other things since, and known that the thing was going to happen.

Q: What was New Order's role in it?

With the day to day running, the design and all those kind of things, nothing at all. But with actively supporting the club, taking their friends there, playing gigs at the club, not giving me a hard time because their money was tied up in it and they weren't seeing the return on their money, I never had any bad vibes. Occasionally Hooky would ask me what was happening, and I'd explain what was happening, and he'd say “well, keep going, get through it, this club deserves to stay in business”. It's a big struggle, the first year of any night club, it's not an easy thing.

Q: Who did you hire to run the club?

The first person that came in after we'd set up the club was Mike Pickering, who was living in Holland, and Rob Gretton said he knew this fantastic deejay, booker, cum all round style guru called Mike Pickering. I said “well, get him over and we'll talk to him”. So Mike came over, we had a meal, I liked him instantly. I'd talked to a few other people about booking bands for the club, but after I met Mike I thought he was the guy. Tony introduced me to Claude Bessy, who'd done a soundtrack for the video, who'd worked on various things, and said, “we're going to use video as a medium”. I'd been interested in video and decided with Ben Kelly that video was going to play a part in the design. Video was a very new format then. There was nothing like the Haçienda when we opened. Nowadays its commonplace, but then it was unique. So we asked Claude over and said “we're going to invent this job called a VJ”. If Mike was going to choose the deejays and was going to be heavily involved in booking the club, he's got to be absolutely aware of the whole feel of the place. He needed to know who was coming through the door, cos they were the people he was booking the shows for. People know him as a deejay now, but during the first year of the Haçienda he was the best booker in the country as well. The first year's policy made the club what it is today.

Q: When did the club start making money?

I'd be very surprised if the club has ever made money through continual refurbishments but it has made money indirectly for Factory, and for Manchester as a centre. The whole Manchester scene thing could and would not have happened without the Haçienda, and anyone who says different is either a fool or has something against Factory as an organisation.

Q: Tell me about the arch on the way into the dancefloor.

Ben and Sandra wanted a design with a feature in it. That was just their own thing. They wanted to put a signature on the building, is the simplest way of saying it. Maintain the design but put something in there that formed their idea. The arch was a really expensive feature. That was the only part of the club that wasn't changing an existing format. That was put there for no reason whatsoever. They always felt it was significant, ‘cos when money was really tight, the arch stayed.

I've not said much about the spirit of the club, the immense good will that was going down amongst all the creative people involved. They did actually go into the opening of the club with tremendous enthusiasm, and Factory as an organisation was fuelled on the enthusiasm of the people involved. What I loved about it was that somebody had enough faith in my abilities to see through an idea in to a reality, and were willing to fund it to such a great extent. A quarter of a million pounds was a lot of money.

Q: When did you leave?

Halloween Night, eighteen months after the opening. We were talking about what we were going to do at Christmas, and I had this horrible feeling when I was going into work that day, that I was doing something again. This wasn't new. This feels old, I just wondered why I was still doing it. I'd also heard the Stone Roses by his time, and thought maybe a career in music business management might be more exciting. I was very young, I was still not thirty.

Q: So you didn't have any rows?

I had rows with everybody, but that wasn't why I left. I didn't feel disillusioned with Factory or the Haçienda, just disillusioned with my approach. I told Mike Pickering first, I thought that was most appropriate, cos I saw Mike every day. I told him I was going to hand my notice in. He said no, you're just having a bad day. But I needed a change. It was Halloween Night, I walked into the club, and Theresa had done an amazing job decorating the club. It was funny, cos as manager of the club, which I was still, I was really impressed and proud of what she'd done. I told he I thought it was great, then I went into the cocktail bar with Tony, and it was full of witches and occult signs, and everything. Before I'd told anybody at the club that I was going to quit, a friend of Tony's who happened to be there, suddenly said out of the blue, "Who is the Judas among you?", and it really shocked me.

I gave my notice in that night. Rob asked me to think about it, take a month off, but I said no. I was at that stage in my life where it was important that I progressed.

Q: What were the really wonderful nights?

My personal night that made the Haçienda scene was the night we put William Burroughs on, cos it was such an unusual thing for a nightclub to do. It was a literary event that was a coup in its own right. Grandmaster Flash, when White Lines was the track of the moment. We managed to get acts into the clubs, which could hold 1400 when the acts new they could pull three thousand in another hall, but they actually wanted to play the Haçienda. For Grandmaster Flash, we must have exceeded two thousand people, we weren't supposed to have that many in there. Obviously the New Order nights, because it was great to see New Order at such a small gig.

Q : Have you been back to the Haçienda since?

I go very rarely these days, not because I've got anything against the Haçienda but because I'm becoming less and less of a club person. I have more work that involves going to rehearsals, seeing bands live, that kind of thing. I'm going to a concert after we've finished this interview.

Manchester born and bred, and initially trained as an engineer, Leroy Richardson has become one of the longest serving and longest lasting stalwarts and devotees of the Factory Records and Haçienda family. Starting out at the club soon after it opened as a glass collector, he was to become bar manager and then licensee of the venue in the mid 80s, as the club was transformed from an art-house music venue into the dance music cathedral that became so renowned throughout the world.

When Factory opened Dry 201 in 1989, Leroy left the Hac to oversee the Northern Quarter’s first designer bar, although as he points out the two were so intertwined, it scarcely affected his proximity to FAC51. He then supervised Dry for some seven years, returning to manage the Haç in its final year before closure in 1997.

Since then, Leroy has remained well known and respected in the bar trade in Manchester with such venues as Cheerleaders, One Central Street, and presently has returned to Oldham Street working in music venue Gullivers.

Q: Leroy, you’re one of the longest running survivors of the Haçienda, Dry and Factory records, how did you first become involved with it all?

I first became involved with it all when I was around 16, 17. I used to the flyposting for Tosh Ryan’s record label, which was one of the independent record labels back then and we used to put posters up for gigs at a club where Rob used to put on most of his band nights. I couldnt tell you what type of bands were on, I think most of them were Ska Bands and stuff like that. Because Rob lived in the area and knew the work we were doing we had always got on really well.

Q: Hooky always said that the Haçienda was built to give you all somewhere to go. Where did you go before the Haçienda?

Well myself and friends, the guys who used to do the postering with, we were able to get into a lot of the clubs in Manchester but generally a lot of clubs in Manchester were names like Cloisters, Genevieves, The Piccadilly Club and musically these were like funk and soul places but the problem was if you had an afro haircut you found it very hard to get in. We always used to ask the taxi to wait ‘cos we never knew whether we were going to get in or not.

Q: What were your first impressions of the club when you saw it?

Oh it was a very different club to anywhere anyone else had ever seen. Not just how it looked or the design, but the whole mentality behind it as well. For me to go in there on the first night and see punks, goths, trendies, well dressed people for the time and no hassle to get in, no issues, no nothing I just thought this is fantastic.

When I walked in, the size, I still knew it as the yacht showroom but it was the size and the colours, the theatrics of it. It looked like a film set of a club, not a club per se and I just thought it was absolutely fantastic. All the other clubs at the time were smaller, low ceiling places, velvet seated, carpeted floor and this place, having worked in the engineering industry I knew what factory’s ought to look like and this was the funkiest factory I’d ever seen.

Q: You were living in Spain but began working at the club as a glass collector when back in Manchester. How did this come about?

I’d obviously known what was going on with The Hacienda through Donald Johnson who was the drummer with A Certain Ratio, ‘cos we were good friends and I used to go round with him to Tony Wilson’s house and Tony had the plans there for The Hac and we were all looking at them. I went over to Spain for a while and worked out there and came back the month that the Hacienda was opening but then had to go back to Spain again. I was only back in Spain for a few months but then came over for a quick holiday, went in one night with Donald Johnson and was offered a job that night collecting glasses.

Q: Then sometime in 1984, Rob Gretton offered you a full time position, how did you feel when that happened?

Rob managed through Donald to get hold of me in Spain and say there was a full tiume position, ‘cos while I had been working over here at The Hac I hadnt just been doing the glasses I’d basically been doing everything that anybody needed to be done ‘cos I loved the place and wanted to do it. And I think, and what I got told was that Rob noticed the difference as to when I was there and when I wasn’t so he got in touch with me. It was perfect timing as I was wondering what I was going to do as I wanted to leave Spain.

Q: According to legend, initially the club was empty and hampered by poor management decisions, such as two people taking the drinks orders and the mountain of unaccounted free drinks that went out, so how badly was it being run at first?

Well I wouldnt say it was being run badly, it was being run, I presumed at the time that the people involved had done this business before. It seemed that people weren’t really concerned with the bar and how it was running. It always struck me that as I’d done engineering, a lot of things are done logically, according to time and motion and I thought it looks really good and there’s logistical reasons why one person was serving and one was taking money and that was simply becuase of where the tills were placed. I put a stop to that right aways so instead of having six people where only three are doing anything, we can have six people where six people are doing it. It seemed to that for some people working there it was kind of a fashion statement to work there, it seemed that for some people they liked other people to be doing part of their job, and I just thought if it needs doing do it, and that’s what I think Rob noticed.

Q: The club began to sort out the management problems and you became licensee until Paul Mason arrived, how did you pull together the situation at the club?

It was obvious that people were needed, like I was winging it most of the time and asking people what should be done. My mum had worked in the licensed trade so I asked how certain things were done in the industry and then sought to adapt them to the Hacienda which was an entirely different place. Obviously the drinks thing, it wasnt free drinks to customers. There was a lot of people and riders, like if any of the bands needed drinks or if anyone from Factory was in there, obviously they weren’t going to be paying for drinks but it didn’t seem to be recorded, it was just like “That’s theirs. There you go.” I just thought it made sense to record what had actually gone in and gone out and what you’d actually received money for.

We knew what had come in and if you didnt know what had been given away for nothing, anybody could do anything. I must say though that never seemed to be the situation. I bet the odd drink was given away to friends but nobody ever seemed to be taking the mickey wholesale ‘cos I think a lot of people needed to work there, not for the money but for the lifestyle it gave them. The way they dressed to go to work, they couldn’t dress like that to work anywhere else and the way their friends were there. It gave them a kudos to work there so I think they had a lot to lose but no doubt if there was a party at the end of the night, a bottle or two went missing.

If anything it was grand accounting errors and just not having control over the stock so when that changed, that in itself breeds a discipline in the people who are serving or involved in the taking of cash, because they themselves will begin to behave in a certain manner because it filters all the way down to what they are doing.

Q: Tell us about the development of the Gay Traitor and how important the cocktail bar became in the early to mid 80’s in the Haç.

As far as I remember The Gay Traitor was open at the start ‘cos Big Jerry and Brendan and Bren who worked there, although I knew gay people, it was the first time I’d been in a bar that was called the Gay Traitor, was staffed by three gay guys and everyone preferred to go down there or work down there ‘‘cos they were a scream. They put on a show as well.

The Gay Traitor became a social club and there was a whole little scene that went on downstairs. If it wasnt busy upstairs you could guarantee that there’d be a decent turn out downstairs in the Gay Traitor. If the Gay Traitor wasnt busy then the club wasnt busy at all. It was down to the guys who worked down there, they chose the music for downstairs, it wasnt from upstairs at all and it kind of became like a club within a club.

Q: What do you remember about the change in the club when house music came in, initially with Mike in about 86, and then with acid house in 88?

Musically there didnt seem to be that much of a change because everyone seems to forget we’d gone through go-go with Troublefunk and stuff like that which was kind of a stepping stone to what we did but it was more like the acid side of house, the montone side of house which seemed to cross the Kraftwerk type of thing with the Troublefunk type of thing which became this mesh that came together. You’d notice the kind of subtle differences going into that but once you noticed certain other outside influences coming into it, it all seemed to be going somewhere you’d never been before.

Q: What are your favourite memories of this period? What were the special events such as Wet at Hathersage Baths?

The whole concept of having a mad club night surrounded by water with alcohol and other stimulants is absolutely sucidal. It was a fantastic idea, it was a great night, I’m just sorry that more people didnt go to it though the ones that did, it was really good vibe. I suppose it’s something that if it were to be done now, it would be one of the events of the year but for me it was perfect. I love alcohol, I love water, I love other things and to be there with a swimming pool and being able to just float away and listen to really good music with friends was sublime. You couldnt get a drink into the bath without it sinking so that was the only downer.

Also when the Haçienda went abroad to Amsterdam for the 7th Birthday and for the Temperance Club trips to Paris, these were special events as well.

The Temperance Club events in Paris did really well and we used to go over once a month. I always really enjoyed that, being able to see the bands and not being in a full on work mode and I had some really good memories of travelling over but the most amazing event has to be the seventh birthday at the Roxy in Amsterdam. To actually get two, three coach loads of people over there and come back minus one person that was an achievement but there were more than that who made their way over themselves. We took about 150 on the coaches but there must have been around five, six hundred of our lot there which was fantastic.

Q: When Acid House came in, is it a bit of a fallacy that it affected the bar takings? Less alcohol was being sold but you certainly cleaned up on the soft drinks?

I dont believe that it affected things that much because there was never great amounts of drink being sold anyway. It was only when it kicked in, it had been different on gig nights but it was only when the house thing kicked in that we started getting the numbers in. We used to do very well, we might not have sold much draught beer but we sold lots of spirits and obviously when the water thing kicked off, who would have thought you could have charged people to drink water in a club? Who would have thought that people would have asked for water in a club? Also so many variants came out and so many companies got into it, they knew there was a lot of money to be made on these soft drinks. We could make just as much GP if not more on those drinks than we would on anything that was alcoholic.

Q: The flip side of the acid house scene is that it eventually affected safety in the club and led to the growth of gangs and drugs culture in the club. As licensee how did you address it?

One of the problems was that the co-operation from the police was virtually nil. The licensing were okay, they knew that it wasn't us that was involved in things but the general consensus was that if you close a club down you don't have the problem. We were fighting that for a start and with that attitude you cant go to them and say “we have this problem, can you help us?” because their attitude at that time was that if you can’t sort it out then you shouldn't be in the business. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with trying things like different security companies which in itself was a bag of spanners but the main thing was that we had to convince the police and the authorities that we weren’t part of anything that was going on.

The upshot was that we could deal with the situation given a free hand but we were told “obviously not, you can’t have a free hand.” On several occasions, the police were using the Haçienda as this icon to scare most of the other clubs away. What they failed to understand was that every major club in every major city was going through precisely the same thing, and the only things that the Haçienda was doing wrong was that we weren’t controlling it. I don't mean controlling the situation, I mean controlling the drugs situation.

We were persistently fighting the mentality of the police before we were able to sort out any of the problems that were going on.

Q: You left the Haçienda in May 1989 to open Dry? Was that a relief to you?

Although I left the club it was still a major part of what I was doing. At Dry I loved being involved with it at the beginning, ‘cos I’d missed the beginning of the Haçienda, the build up to it and I could also impart my knowledge that I’d gained into the physicality of running the bar. For example it had a wide bar because the doors on the fridges opened out so you needed space for two people wide, just those kinds of things then impact on how many people were allowed in the building and issues like that. But I was still heavily involved with the management side of the Haçienda by that I don't mean the running of it, I was at every hacienda management meeting because we used to discuss both Dry and the Haç there. Dry had one type of problem that was going on, like getting people in, what do we do with them afterwards and how do we get them down to the club and the Haçienda had its ongoing situation.

However I have to say I think Ang Matthews was absolutely perfect for the job. I absolutely love Ang. I think when I knew I was going to be leaving I suggested Ang who was at The Boardwalk at the time where I’d seen her working and realised that this was the person. When she came to do it I really felt a lot more comfortable in being able to walk away from that side of the Haçienda. I wasn't just there for the job, it was the people there, I wanted to do as much as I could for them and I was glad that I could still have that involvement without Ang thinking I was stepping on her toes. We worked really well together; no-one was the boss if you know what I mean.

Q: Dry foreshadowed the development of the Northern Quarter in Manchester and along with Afflecks Palace and Eastern Bloc was a pivotal part of the Madchester scene. Did you foresee the influence that it would have at the time?

Dry was a major instrument in all of it. When I say Dry I don't mean the bar per se but Tony, Rob, Alan Erasmus, Paul Mason, they talked with the council quite a lot and it was all about giving the area a focus. There was absolutely nothing there, The Northern was an old boozer, and most of the places were old shops or things like that. There wasn't a single bar in that area apart from Dry and it was going to be moving that way but it needed to be an independent style run area, they didn't want any big national chains going into it and when Tony used to have meetings with the council, it was very important that the identity that was created was one of independence. It needed to be known as something, you had the Village, Chinatown and it was so obvious, it was in the Northern part of the city, The Northern Quarter. I think it was looking on the map when that came out and the name stuck. Tony became involved in putting on street festivals in the area to give it a focus and then the council did a great job promoting it, speaking with landlords about what kind of businesses to let go in there. You can see the variety of businesses and people that run them have given the Northern Quarter its identity and the name the Northern Quarter has given them their identity.

Q: Are you disappointed that they never did the upstairs floors at Dry and that you never got your penthouse apartment?

Well, the top floor was absolutely fantastic, half the roof was glass and that was going to be my penthouse apartment. At first I was doing cartwheels, thinking great and then I began to think “Hang on, what do I do on my day off?” Have you got to leave it? When would I appreciate it? Would they all be up the stairs saying this has happened, that’s happened? The fact that we didn't even get a floorboard done on the first floor kind of sums the situation up but what they said at the time they truly believed they could do and achieve. It wasn't pie in the sky, it just never happened but it didn't mean it wasn't going to happen. They never said anything was a “maybe”, nothing was ever maybe it was always “we are” but the “we are” didn't mean “it would be”.

Q: You were then to return to managing the Haç in its dying days when Ang Matthews grew tired of it. You swapped jobs, her coming to Dry, you returning to the Haç, how had the club changed?

The club had changed, when I say the joy had gone, I don't mean it was a miserable place to be in. There was just the potential for trouble. I think most people in there would have been unlucky to have been involved in any physical trouble, they may have heard about it, or seen it, but they were unlikely to have been involved in it themselves. The fact that it could happen and also the financial situation in the industry was changing at that time.

You have to bear in mind bars were being given late licenses and doing kind of the same things. It was always “where do we go from here”, having to put bigger names on for more money and not getting as many people in. I think the press that it was getting didn't help. It wasn't bad all the time but I think people thought I can always go next week. People thought that the Haçienda would always be there and I don't think people realised how difficult it is to open somewhere and given how long it had been open, how much it ‘cost to keep it going. It wasn't a shock but it just wasn't the same vibe. It hit the right spot on some occasions but it had always used to hit the spot all the time.

Q: The incident with the licensing committee in '97, was that the end really?

That was the end and what kind of really disappointed me about that was that the people who were causing the trouble all over the place, not just with us, it was almost as if they were saying we can do what we want, when we want, where we want and the whole thing for me was where are you actually going to go when we’re not here. You just don’t have the intelligence to work things like that out for yourselves. We’re not gonna spell it out for you ‘‘cos it’s not going to make any difference. It was just an unfortunate time when this happened when the Haçienda and everybody involved weren't in the financial position to fight any problem legally we might get on that front. It was bad timing but also about time.

We would have struggled on if we had to but I think to close then was the best thing that could have happened, maybe not for the people who went there or worked there but I think for the name of the Haçienda. If it had died a horrible, slow death with nobody coming in, and us putting on “pound a drink” nights, I think it would have lost what it was really about.

Q: The Haç closed in 1997 and Dry was sold to Hale Leisure shortly afterwards. What do you think Manchester lost without these two institutions being under Factory control?

I actually think, that despite one of them still being open, albeit under different management, it was always going to be a different place, physically the same place but always gonna be different in there. A place is a sum of its contents, including the people who work there, drink there, go there, not just what it looks like. I do think it lost a sense of excitement, not that there weren’t exciting things to do but that sense of going somewhere that you were glad to be going to, where you were grateful if the queue was that big and you got recognised and let in.

That little tingle you can get, I think that’s what it lost, you can still go out and drink in places, listen to the same music, listen to the same DJs even but that little tingle that even i used to get going to work or looking out from the DJ booth and seeing it all, you don't seem to get that now. I’ve seen it at gigs now and again, just that feeling of everything between the people. Even with total strangers instantly getting in on what it’s all about and they just can’t help but become part of it. To have people in clubs, cheering, demanding one more, it set a standard that other clubs couldn't match.

Q: What have you gained personally from your involvement with Factory, the Haçienda and Dry? Hooky says in his book that you get treated like a hero when you go abroad.

I find it amazing, particularly in New York, probably because of all the Mancs who are over there bigging me up, I don't have a problem at any of the clubs. I’m always ushered into places and when I try to pay for my drink, they won’t have it and I begin to think “is this what it really meant?” If I’d realised that when I was working there, I might have capitalised on it a bit more.

Besides earning a decent living and working with some fantastic people, the Haçienda actually gave me a insight into the fact that there was a life doing things most people had to pay to be part of and the life that you could make for yourself that these guys have actually shown you. They live it themselves and they quite innocently allowed me to be part of it. I just think of people I grew up with and went to school or college with and to see how different my life has become from what I thought it would be and thank god for that.

Q: Did you realise at the time how renowned the club was and had you any idea that its fame would last for so long?

I have to say absolutely none, otherwise I would have tried to keep a better account of what was going on or what was needed. Half the time I have people telling me about things that I was there doing and I don't recount it until somewhere in the subconscious there’s a little spark that goes “oh yeah, that”. You wont be seeing any memoirs from me because I haven't got a clue about anything that people might find interesting.

However to think it would still be here and I would have 20 year old kids saying “I wish I could have gone, I never did but my mother / brother / cousins used to go” and for people still to have that respect, a whole new generation, I think it’s amazing. Looking back it’s the people who were involved, people like Hooky. After all you’re not going to meet too many people like Hooky in your lifetime but what they do sticks.

It doesn't surprise me now but if you’d asked me when the Haç closed, I would have said in a month's time nobody will be talking about it.

Q: If you could go back and do anything differently, would you?

If I could go back I think I would have tried to become more involved in the planning side of things. I got involved a bit too late with not enough time to really appreciate it. I would have liked to have been involved more in putting the actual event on, as opposed to being the one running that event and doing everything to try and make it happen. I’d have liked to have been a bit more rounded in what I did.

Q: Any regrets or is life too short?

Life is far too short. The only regret I do have is that I haven't got a better memory, even for my own personal satisfaction, to be able to remember and not stare vacantly at people when they’re telling me something I should know.

Enticed back from Amsterdam by the ever persuasive Rob Gretton when The Hacienda first opened in 1982 to head up the booking policy, Mike was an ever present at the club for its first decade and for many became synonymous with the place. In charge of the music policy from day one, it can be easily alleged it was Mike’s foresight and vision which shaped the early years of The Hacienda and with his seminal Nude night promoted the sounds of Chicago house music before anyone else.

With his band M People achieving huge success in the 90’s along with his role in foremost dance label Deconstruction, Mike was to leave the Hacienda in the early Nineties but remains solidly identified with the club. Now head of A&R at Colombia Records, bands under his tutelage include The Ting Tings, The Gossip and many other major names.

Q: How did you begin DJing?

Just playing records at parties. In punk days I was buying records all the time. The two centres for punk were London and Manchester, then again in '88, it was the same. Funny, that: '77, '88ô I don't know what happened in '66. I'm looking forward to '99.

Q: What was your brief when you started?

Rob hired me to book groups and DJs. Entertainments manager I suppose it would be called, if it was a Mecca. But at first I was working with Ben Kelly all the time, making the design a little bit more workable. I wouldn't have known what a good sound system was then, but I knew the people who were putting it in were dickheads. Not dickheads, but I was told the reason they were good was they'd done Pink Floyd's sound, or something. But this was a club. They had that to face. Ben was really good, but certain things you know under the balcony there were two steps? Well, there were no steps there. They were put in a couple of weeks before.

All that period was difficult 'cos you had to put gigs on. All the time I was looking at the club thinking, I wish this was in New York, and then you wouldn't need a band, there'd be a great sound system and everybody would be dancing. But they weren't into that then.

Q: Before it opened, who was the driving force behind it? Rob?

Yeah. Rob and the band. It was Rob's ambition. Tony didn't actually want to open a club.

Q: There seemed to be a whole rock side of Factory which didn't understand it?

Yeah. Plus no-one was making decisions. There were twenty people, and someone would decide they wanted it open seven nights a week, which was madness, really. None of us had any experience of running clubs, and at that time the only people who did were straight in a bad kind of way. Mecca and that wouldn't have worked, so it was a very expensive learning process.

Q: Who did you hire as DJs?

Hewan did nearly every night. He was the best club music deejay that I'd heard. He used to do ACR's gigs. It's the vogue now to have Ds at your gigs, but Ratio and New Order have always had them. Ewan's selection of music was outstanding.

Q: Tell me about the opening night?

It wasn't ready to open. The floors were only painted that day, and people had to walk on planks, just blue paint on the floor. Of course after years of having scientists down there trying to find which kind of floor won't lose its colour after one night. It was sticking to people's feet. The sound system sounded like six transistor radios hung from the ceiling. It was pathetic. Ewan must have played. The deejay box was downstairs, so you couldn't see anyway. ESG were on, and Bernard manning, of course. I spent most of my time trying to look after ESG who were right outside their own environment. Bernard Manning gave us our money back. He said, take a tip from me, never hire a comedian.

We had some great gigs: 23 Skidoo, cabaret Voltaire, Club Zoo, Teardrop Explodes. There was a wild LSD party the night Club Zoo played. Fucking mad, we shut the doors and stayed up all night, there was only about 150-200 people there. Do you remember the original cocktails in the cocktail bar? And the restaurant, with a menu, and Patrick, this very suave ex-army officer trying to take orders with this fucking horrible racket going on. That's what I mean about it being totally naive: none of us had thought about anyone sitting down to eat dinner with all that racket going on in a freezing cold warehouse by the side of the canal. They never had heating in until five years later.

Q: How was the DJ side of things going?

We couldn't get a club night going. I knew you could have them, cos there was always one club in Manchester that was doing well. They were all boring, but you could have big clubs. Rafters used to be rammed. They never went to see bands, it was a social event. It finally got going with quite a momentous night, we booked Culture Club to play a Saturday night: 6th June, and there was six or seven hundred people there. From then on the Saturday night never looked back, and for years it was wild, through the Hard Times period, but it was the only night that anyone went. Peech Boys, Heaven 17, ABC, Ratio, Soul Sonic Force, Dennis Edwards, New Order stuff. That was a big fashion club, more than music at the beginning.

Q: How did the Haçienda relate to the other clubs that were around?

There was nothing like it, and that's why there was such adversity to it at the beginning. I don't think it's too outrageous to say that then, it was completely beyond people.

Q: Didn't it go more into jazz in about 1984?

Yeah, on the Friday night when I started the Nude night, that was more early rap, soul, Motown, and salsa. The difference with the Nude night was that the Haçienda had always been full of trendy people, and the Friday night got perry boys, scallies, about sixty percent black.

Q: And that was the first time you really got a working class audience?

Yeah. It was packed for years, and everyone except Rob had a downer on the night. None of the people like Ellie would come in and work on a Friday night. There was never any trouble; there was more trouble on a Saturday night.

Q: Was there another big change with Ginger going?

Yeah, but it’s easy to look back on all the different managements and say they were good and they weren't, but you've got to look at it in the context of what's happening in the youth culture, and in the history of the Haçienda, Ginger was unfortunate, the Haçienda was ahead of its time. Then there was the ridiculous management co-operative: me, Ellie, Rob, Penny, and Louise. Rob and I had different ideas to some of the others. For Rob to be on it was quite weird, cos he owned the club. But Rob and I were into what was happening on a Friday night. I saw that as New Order's wish coming to fruition, that they built the Haçienda for their friends and for Manchester and you couldn't get a more Manchester night than that. When it first opened it was Face readers and sharper students. There was a couple who came, Tim Chambers who is still around, and Tony Martin, who came to university in Manchester because of the old Factory club, which closed in the August before they got here. But yeah, it was the first time that Mancunians used the club.

Q: Did bringing Paul Mason in stabilise things?

Yeah, it was the first time there was one person who was the boss, and that's what it had always needed; someone who didn't mind being disliked, knew it was part of his job. In fact when he first came, was a complete professional. He made one or two cock-ups, mis-read Manchester for a start, the people, but he was good at sorting out the running of the club. He was fortunate as well, cos that was the point when things started to take off. He could delegate. People could do the jobs that they were good at, whereas before, you did a bit of everything, and for me it was hard, I'm probably the world's worst business man, and I was having to book bands was difficult, not finding the bands but doing the deals was a nightmare. Luckily I was living at Rob's so I could ask him. I didn't even know what a percentage was!

Q: How did the music change? When did the club nights become more important than the bands?

Saturday from the night Culture Club played, and the Friday from the first Nude Night. The Saturday tailed off a bit, but Friday was always packed. I played salsa, and the Jazz Defectors used to come down then. I knew them very well, and they were jazz dancers, but they were also clubbers, who would dance to any good music, so they were a very integral part of that stage of the Haçienda. They were Hulme lads, and they were as much at home on a Friday as on a Saturday night, which a lot of people weren't at the time.

Q: What were the early records?

JM Silk, and Adonis, No Way Back, Marshall Jefferson, Rhythm, then of course Love Can't Turn Around, and Steve Silk Hurley, Jack Your Body. They were massive hits, but they were only being played in clubs. We'd built it out of the street thing, the scallies.

Q: Were you playing deep soul at that time as well?

Not then, no. Towards the end of the night, but not soft stuff. Played Dennis Edwards, Projection.

Q: What difference did the house stuff make?

People loved it immediately. There was a real underground house scene here. Stu Ellen had the Piccadilly Radio thing on a Sunday night, we made T-Coy, Carina.

Q: What happened through '86 and '87, before the E thing?

It changed almost overnight. As soon as the baldricks, who were called Pure Boys at that time, could get hold of E, the whole place just went berserk. The noticeable thing was that it went a lot whiter, immediately. You could see the black kids who were dancers were getting moved over a bit, cos of all the trance dancing and stuff. People were going fucking mad, so there wasn't as much floor space. I can't remember exactly when it was, being in such a sad state myself! I was the best scene I've ever been involved in, there were people from all backgrounds and walks of life, all getting on, and it was so creative when it first started. Everyone had names: Jeff the Chef, some real characters. Some of the things people got up to would make great films. It was new to everybody.

One of the things that made it so special was it was going on in the ignorance of the authorities. They just thought everyone was in a good mood. It was only when the usual seedy southerners let News at Ten in, overnight, it just died. Suddenly it got sleazy cos of the coppers, and the hoods.

Q: But you had at least one good year before all that happened?

A year and towards the end of the second summer of love. Little Martin's original Tuesday night was called the Summer of Love. '85, '86. Graham Park joined us at the beginning of the E thing. I can't remember who did Saturday then, to be honest.

Q: How did Graham get involved?

Graham and I were the only two guys who were playing house, and we got in touch, we'd started Deconstruction and T-Coy, and he'd started his own label, Submission, and he put out Submit to the Beat by Groove. We did a northern house revue, and there was T-Coy, Hotline, another band, and Groove, and Graham and I DJ'd. That was February '86, a really big night. There was a big thing in Record Mirror about us, the first press that it ever got. So I asked him if he wanted to do Friday.

London was going through rare groove but Manchester had had all that, we always played that kind of music. I played the Astoria, Simon Gough had a night called Fever in '86, playing things like Mayday, Strings of Life, all the house stuff, and everybody stood and folded their hands on the dancefloor. I go booed off. Then in June of '88 about a year later, I played the opening night of the Trip, as it was called, we played T-Coy, I DJ’d and I couldn't believe it. I was playing more or less the same records and they were all going fucking mad. Completely mad.

Q: What happened in the mean time in London? Shoom?

No, Spectrum. Well, E. They all went to Ibiza.

Q: Did the Ibiza thing impinge on Manchester at all?

People went over there, but it wasn't Balearic here. That just meant they could get away with murder, play whatever they wanted.

Q: Why didn't you do Deconstruction with Factory? I couldn't believe that Factory passed up the chance to be involved. They had the club there, you DJing; they could have started a dance label at Factory?

Rob wanted to start a dance label at Factory in 1985 or 84 and some of the other directors said no, they didn't think dance music was happening, or would happen. I think that's still the same today. They don't put out dance records. No disrespect to their A&R man, he's an old friend, but he's not a clubber. What they haven't realised was that the K Klass and the N-Jois, they are the new groups. The new gig is a rave, and they've not realised that. People don't want to go and listen to some band playing low-grade music, when they can be in a pumping place with everybody having a great time.

Q: By the summer of '89 it was getting silly. When did it start to get silly in the club?

The police became aware of the drugs at the end of the second summer, when the papers got hold of it. The license was a big worry, then obviously because of all the money, the gangs started coming in. That happened all over the place, not just in Manchester. Wherever there's a lot of black market money actually most of the violent incidents, the shootings, none of them happened in town, it was all completely overblown. It got hairy, though, it wasn't a great atmosphere to go out in. It seems alright now. It's a violent city, but it’s got worse. Through the 80s they ghetto-ised certain areas, and in Manchester the areas they ghetto-ised hugged the city centre. Salford, Moss Side, Cheetham Hill. In the early 80s, when we had people visit, we'd take them to the Reno club. It was very integrated. Then they ghetto-ised everywhere. Then there was more of a lawless attitude. You've got to ask questions about the police, really, they don't seem to have any control over it. Ten years ago, if you'd ram-raided the front of a club, that would be it, you wouldn't dream of doing it. I think its crack. It's been here a while. There's a lot of people freebasing coke in those areas. They certainly weren't on Ecstasy.

Q: When did the bloom go off the club, you had these fantastic two years

The Friday had become a legendary thing like northern soul nights, that would have just kept going and going, but the Wednesday, I wanted to change Hot when it was still big, but they changed things when they died off. The Haçienda always pushed, and we'd just got it in sync, and that stopped, if they hit the right note, they held it till it went flat. By the end of the second summer, the Wednesday was going. The Friday was still massive; Saturday was still big, but more poppy house. There was nothing else happening, there were no gigs, they just kept the money rolling in, which was fair enough.

Q: What do you think is the future for the Haçienda now?

Build on the gay nights and at some stage try and integrate them. It's always got to be quality. More things should be done to enhance the club atmosphere. Characters should be encouraged to come in. There's a lack of characters now. It's all a bit straight, not creative like it used to be. That thing that you've got to be on an E to go to these clubs, "get right on one matey" has dulled it all a bit. It's also a bit anti-social, believe it or not. We used to have people busking the queue. Now all they get is shouted at, it’s like going to the football, or a stadium.

Super White Assassin's 'Dark Teenage Fantasy' EP now released

06.02.12

Haçienda Records’ first release of 2012 sees the debut EP 'Dark Teenage Fantasy' from quirky,...

More on this story
Richie G's 'But Her Fly' and 'Eterna' now released on Bedrock Records

23.01.12

Following up his acclaimed debut 'Baum' EP released last Autumn, Montreal’s boy wonder Richie G...

More on this story

Haçienda Xmas P...

by K-Klass

02:27
Haçienda Xmas P...

by Allister Whitehead

02:47