The Haçienda (18 page)

Not far behind Paul Mason came Paul Cons, whose official title at the club was PR. Together they would turn the club’s fortunes around.

In May, Boardwalk DJ,
Debris
fanzine editor and Haçienda regular
Dave Haslam came on board to launch the Temperance Club on a Thursday night. Now the Haçienda had the two nights that would cement its reputation. Nude on Fridays, where house music was being tentatively explored, and the Temperance Club, where lies the roots of the Madchester phenomenon.

Temperance would play the funky end of hip hop and electro – Eric B and Rakim, Mantronix, the indie up-and-comers such as James and the Railway Children – alongside alternative favourites. On the one hand, Mark E. Smith once bought Haslam a pint for playing ‘Little Doll’ by the Stooges; on the other, Morrissey sat in his booth turning his nose up when he played Man Parrish.

For his part, Haslam, an ex-
NME
writer, was pleased to finally exercise a musical impulse he felt was stifled by the music press – a Londoncentric body that still tended to pit alternative music against dance music as two mutually excusive entities – yet was finding a voice in the club nights around the city. Thanks to Nude, and the groundwork of the DJs before him, he was able to reach an audience – a mainly student crowd — whose ears were already open to a mix of musical styles. Thursday nights did so well for the club that Haslam was asked to host a Saturday-night slot too, where he partnered Dean Johnson, who specialized in northern soul. The night was called Wide, and it began on Saturday 19 July during the Festival of the Tenth Summer.

If 1986 was a pivotal year for the Haçienda, and for the explosion of dance music and Madchester mayhem that was to follow and engulf the UK, then one event in that year can be said to mark its flashpoint: the Festival of the Tenth Summer. Aimed at marking ten years of punk – it being a decade since the Pistols played at the Lesser Free Trade Hall – the Festival of the Tenth Summer was a week of musical events helmed by Factory that ended with a gig at G-Mex. On the bill were the Fall, the Smiths and New Order, the latter of whom headlined, and it was followed by the launch of Wide at the Haçienda.

‘At G-Mex I played “Stoned Out of My mind” by the Chi-Lites and then struggled round the corner to the Haçienda with my records in a cardboard box and my £40 wage in my pocket,’ says Haslam. ‘It was the dawn of a new era.’

At last things were falling into place for the club. Until August that year, the Haçienda had only ever been full for bands. This changed one Friday night when the club enjoyed a packed night. At the time, Wilson had been
in China brooding over the future of the club. While the Festival of the Tenth Summer would in retrospect be seen as a watershed moment, it hadn’t had any financial effect on the club at the time. Exhausted from promoting the festival and downcast at not seeing the rewards through the door, Wilson was considering throwing in the towel. Then he put in a phone call to Paul Mason only to be told the good news. Times were changing.

FACT 51 Limited
Trading as: the Haçienda

FAC 51 Limited
Trading as: the Haçienda