Book review: The Hacienda: How Not To Run A Club by Peter Hook

Published on Saturday 3 October 2009 18:45

THE HACIENDA: HOW NOT TO RUN A CLUB Peter Hook Simon & Schuster, £18.99

MAYBE New Order should have listened to Bernard Manning. The comedian knew far more about nightclubs than the rock band and when he was invited to open the Hacienda in Manchester, he quickly sussed that, in the bass guitarist Peter Hook's words, it was being run by idiots. "Stick to your day jobs, lads, 'cause you're not cut out for clubs," Manning told them upon collection of his fee. "Give it up now while you've got the chance."

No-one in the group heeded the advice, and certainly not Hook, a self-confessed "dumbo from Salford", who virtually lived in the club, and lived it large. He counted them in and counted them out: all the musical trends the Hacienda invented or helped popularise, notably acid house. But he didn't count the money, or he hasn't until now.

Just two years after that 1982 inauguration, Hook calculates that 667,000 had been pumped into the venture from record sales, both of New Order and his previous band Joy Division, who sold more after singer Ian Curtis's death than they did when he was alive. A year after that, it dawned on the impresario Tony Wilson that, courtesy of the Hacienda, "everybody in Manchester was getting free drinks – except the owners".

Remarkably the club kept going for another 12 years, sometimes showing a profit, such as when Manchester turned into Madchester. But then Madchester turned into Gunchester and local gangsters embarked on a reign of terror in pursuit of gang supremacy and drugs loot. Hook reckons he's lucky to have survived the bullets, the booze and the ecstasy and it's our good fortune that he's written this book, a worthy addition to the archives of glorious rock follies, recounted with candour, humour and gob-smacking detail.

The Hacienda was housed on the site of an old yacht showroom. Wilson, the majordomo of Factory Records, and Rob Gretton, New Order's manager, wanted it to evoke the spirit of New York clubs like Paradise Garage and Danceteria, but also of Manchester: they were bursting with civic pride, as is Hook, still. The design brief went to Ben Kelly, a punk scene veteran whose "impress the birds" flat renovations for Sex Pistol Steve Jones had the desired effect: one night most of dance troupe Hot Gossip stayed over.

The Hacienda crew may have been idiots but they were idealistic idiots. Wilson got the name from a slogan of the radical group Situationist International: "The hacienda must be built." And built it was, with Kelly being given licence to reach for the clouds. Hook, who has subsequently become very fond of figures, estimates the club was "5,000 per cent over-designed for its audience", most of whom, once they'd discovered Es, would have had just as much fun "dancing in shitholes".

Wilson liked to assert that the Hacienda was more about art than money, which is easy to say when it's not your money propping it up. Running the venue on co-operative lines, staff would set their own wages. Humble cleaners would return from holiday with Caribbean suntans. Teardrop Explodes were paid 3,000 for a secret gig – "so secret," says Hook, "that only eight people turned up". But his funniest cash-related story concerns the New Year's Eve party which was so oversubscribed that takings had to be stashed behind the bar, only for the indoors fireworks to burn all the notes.

The co-op at least hints at good intentions. Most of those at the top viewed the Hacienda as a social institution. During the acid house boom when other clubs charged ravers for tap water, the Hacienda didn't. Promoter Paul Cons summed up the philosophy thus: "It seemed like the BBC of nightclubs. It was a subsidised, creative place that didn't have to be successful… that could explore and experiment. And it seemed like it was all courtesy of New Order."

Others in the band wised up and drifted away from the Hacienda but Hook stayed; in a recurring image he's high up in the DJ box marvelling at the baggy mayhem. He tells a lot of great stories, many against himself, such as the Christmas party where he dressed as a Nazi and how he thought being around the gangsters was "cool". But he doesn't tell many against the Hacienda and can't regret any of "the whole mad mess". Long after the auction of fixtures and fittings, he's still being offered stolen gear – "Great that I pay for it twice." v