The Haçienda (12 page)

FAC 51 Limited
Trading as: the Haçienda

REPORT OF THE DIRECTORS

The Directors submit their report and the audited accounts for the year ended 21 May 1983.

Principal activities

The principal activity of the Company is that of proprietors of a licensed club and recreation rooms.

Review of the business

In view of the fact that this is the Company’s first year of trading, the Directors feel that the loss level is as expected. High priority is being given to the strict control of the Company’s cash flow and a significant improvement in the results for 1984 is expected.

Tax losses currently available to the Company are in excess of £94,500.00 and these can be offset against future profits.

Results and dividends

The results of the Company are as shown on pages 3 to 8. No dividends are proposed or were paid.

Directors

The Directors who served during the year and their interests in the Company at the end of the year were as follows:

A.H.Wilson (held in trust for Factory Records)

R. L. Gretton (Communications) Limited

H. M. Jones

A. Erasmus

The following Directors are retiring by rotation and being eligible offer themselves for re-election:

A. Erasmus

R. L. Gretton

Taxation status

In the opinion of the Directors, the Company is a close Company within the meaning of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1970 (as amended).

Auditors

A resolution to reappoint the auditor Mr Keith Taylor FCA will be proposed, at the Annual General Meeting.

BY ORDER OF THE BOARD

[Signed by Alan Erasmus]

Secretary

FAC 51 Limited
Trading as: the Haçienda

In October 1983 a staff outing saw everybody pile on to a bus bound for Blackpool. Nathan McGough (later to become the Happy Mondays’ manager) was dressed as a scout, members of staff were refused at pubs for having colourful hair and photographer Kevin Cummins was sick on a fair ride.

In November 1983 Dave Haslam launched his
Debris
fanzine, which dealt with the indie scene in Manchester.
Debris
hosted events at the Haçienda; and Haslam, of course, would later become one of the Haçienda’s resident DJs.

‘I was always going away with New Order and Quando Quango and I was always going away to New York. “Love Tempo” by Quando Quango was really big in the Paradise Garage. We actually did a PA there,when Larry Levan was DJing.I went to the Loft,and I was gob-smacked by it all, because I was just this little scally. So I went back to the Haçienda and I was, “This is what it’s got to be like.” So I ripped out the microphone; this is the future, you know.’

Mike Pickering,on djhistory.com

‘It seemed like the BBC of nightclubs. It was like a subsidized, creative centre that didn’t have to be that successful . . . that could explore and experiment.There were no grants,it seemed like it was all courtesy of New Order.’

Promoter Paul Cons

The SOS Band – ‘Just Be Good to Me’


The B Boys – ‘Two, Three, Break’


Captain Rapp – ‘Bad Times (I Can’t Stand It)’


Cybotron – ‘Clear’


Hashim – ‘Al-Naafiysh (The Soul)’


Hot Streak – ‘Body Work’


Shannon – ‘Let the Music Pay’


Time Zone – ‘The Wildstyle’


Two Sisters – ‘High Noon’


Unique – ‘What I Got is What You Need’

A 1983 end-of-year review of Manchester’s club scene in
City Life
magazine said this of the Haçienda: ‘Greg Wilson’s faith in New York’s mind-hammering electro beat was confirmed with both growing crowds and colour supplement coverage
...
interestingly, the sound flopped in the vast chasms of the Haçienda.’

Greg Wilson didn’t hang around to bathe in the
City Life
glory, however. He retired from DJing altogether in January 1984,having decided to spend more time managing the Broken Glass Crew and maybe to try his hand at music production. (He has since come out of DJ retirement.) His departure may well have suited Pickering, who hadn’t been convinced about Wilson’s concentration on electro. Pickering liked electro; possibly he preferred it to the diet of hairdresser and Goth music played on other nights. But he wanted it as part of an overall music policy,not to the exclusion of everything else.

‘I said that same thing to Greg as I said to Hewan,’ he later told writer Tim Lawrence. ‘I said that I wanted this across-the-board mixture of music I’d heard in New York. I wanted electro as part of a night, but I didn’t want electro on its own – or any music on its own.’

Having previously been edged out, Hewan Clarke now returned to Friday nights, where the policy was a mix of electro, jazz and soul, enlivened by jazz dancing from Foot Patrol and the Jazz Defektors.

So, as 1984 began, the Haçienda had an enviable line-up of DJ talent, while still retaining its cutting-edge, stylish reputation and the enduring kudos of its association with Factory. The perfect place, then, for Channel Four to film a special episode of
The Tube
based around a rising New York-based singer, the girlfriend of famous New York DJ Mark Kamins. You know the one
...

I believe Madonna appeared as a personal favour to Mark Kamins, a friend of ours who managed her.

He asked us if we could get her a gig, and because there was an episode of the
The Tube
being broadcast from the Haçienda Rob decided to put her on. You can see it on YouTube. Jools Holland and Paula Yates presented.

She lip-synced to two songs during the afternoon’s filming. So there you go, Madonna’s first appearance on British TV was all down to us: it was an inside job. And once again we were ahead of the trends. We already knew of her through her association with Kamins, Jellybean, and Arthur; she had no profile in the UK at all. That appearance at the Haçienda changed it all for her. The first step on her journey of world domination, God forgive us.

The Factory All-Stars also performed on
The Tube
that day, a band consisting of Barney, Donald Johnson, Vini Reilly and a few other people on the label. I didn’t play – I don’t know why. I’ll play at every opportunity usually. Instead, I spent three days programming the DMX drum machine for a medley they intended to perform of New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’,A Certain Ratio’s ‘Shack Up’,and Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.

The morning of the show, I had to take the wife to a furniture shop, then rush back home to finish programming the drum machine in time to get it to the All-Stars sound-check early enough for them to practise.

I got her to the shop, tore back home, finished programming the machine then jumped in the car and raced to the Haçienda. On the way, the coppers pulled me over and gave me a ticket for speeding. Bastards. Then, when I arrived at the club, Barney told me he’d changed the songs anyway. Why that surprised me I don’t know. It was fucking typical.

Even so, the taping went well. Because this was an episode of
The Tube
, it attracted a different crowd to the one we normally drew; but by then we’d grown used to a bit of national exposure, so the historical significance of the day didn’t dawn on us until much later.

Rob and I watched Madonna and were impressed.

‘We should get her back here afterwards, to perform tonight,’ he said, so we walked to the dressing room, where we found her with her backing dancers.

Rob said, ‘Uh, hello. I’m Rob Gretton. I manage the club. Do you want to play later tonight? We’ll give you fifty quid.’

She looked at him.

‘Fuck off,’ she drawled in her whiny Noo Yawk accent before turning away. That was it for the night. But there are two other stories that came out of her appearance.

The first was that somebody went into her bag in the dressing room and when she got back to her hotel room she found it had been completely cleaned out.

The other legend goes that she and Mark Kamins were staying at Mike Pickering’s house in Chorlton, so, after they’d finished at the Haçienda, and they were both the worse for wear, they got a taxi back to Mike’s place for the night. Now, English terrace houses tend to have a porch door and a front door, each of which opens with a key.

Mike had given the keys to Mark and Madonna so they could let themselves in, and they turned up, both completely drunk. They successfully unlocked the first door, stepped into the gap, and then the door slammed behind them with the key still in the lock.

At which point they were stuck. Mike woke up the next morning to hear that his missus had opened the door, causing Mark and Madonna to tumble into the house.

I don’t know which story is true.

The other highlight of
The Tube
day was an interview with Morrissey and Rob. Now I don’t know why, but Morrissey had always hated Joy Division. Maybe Rob got it right when after a lively debate as the cameras were turned off he turned to Morrissey and said, ‘The trouble with you, Morrissey, is that you’ve never had the guts to kill yourself like Ian. You’re fucking jealous.’ You should have seen his face as he stormed off. I laughed me bollocks off.