Peter Hook: Haçienda almost tore me apart

Oct 4 2009 by Michael Kelly, Sunday Sun

DURING its 15 year existence the Haçienda in Manchester was named the best club in the world . . . and was also one of the most notorious. From ground-breaking music to gangsters, drug dealing and death, it experienced it all. Co-owner Peter “Hooky” Hook, of Joy Division and New Order fame, has written a book about its tempestuous history and has spoken to Mike Kelly about it.

IT’S more than a decade since the Haçienda closed, and with many of those connected to it now dead, Peter Hook is more philosophical about the club that almost ruined him.

He’s done his sums and worked out that if he’d given everyone who passed through its doors £10 each and told them to “bugger off” rather than let them go in, he would have been much better off financially.

The name of the club came from a line in a book written by Ivan Chtcheglov, a member of the obscure art and political movement Situationist International, which said: “The hacienda must be built”.

The hacienda in the book represented a form of paradise, but the paradise attained with the club in Manchester was a little less cerebral. As Hooky put it: “What we built was our own super youth club to indulge our every whim. It was our own adult playground where there was everything we wanted . . . drugs, women and booze.”

At the time Hooky and his band - the hugely influential New Order - were achieving massive success. Meanwhile, his previous group Joy Division, despite, or rather because of, the death of lead singer Ian Curtis, was equally acclaimed.

The cash was rolling in, but Tony Wilson, head of Factory Records to which both groups were signed, decided to invest the money in royalties, which the band was unaware it was earning, to help fund the Haçienda project.

A 25-year lease was signed on a former yacht builders shop in Whitworth Street West, and architect Ben Kelly brought in, on the recommendation of Peter Saville, the in-house Factory records designer, to recreate the New York club look which New Order and their manager Rob Gretton had come to love on tour.

From the outset, their naivety and habit of employing “mates” instead of anyone who’d worked in a club, cost them dear. The budget spiralled out of control, eventually ending up at a colossal £350,000. To make up the shortfall they borrowed money from brewers Whitbread, for which they had to sign an exclusive deal selling their products. The contract meant they made no money on the beer. Finally, the lease was signed at a ruinous rate.

The club was unique in its industrial-style design. The structural elements of the building were accentuated while the iron girders boasted black and yellow safety stripes, giving it the “wow” factor.

Unfortunately, it also had the “doh” factor as it was completed without a booth for the DJ, or even a cloakroom. These oversights were put right but they’d also been ripped off for the sound system, ending up with a glorified PA tannoy.

With the paint still drying, foul-mouthed Manc comedian Bernard Manning was hired to cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony on May 21, 1982. Normally hard-hearted, Manning was so struck by the chaos around him and so convinced it was going to fail, he waived his fee.