The Haçienda (27 page)

At least people were still pouring through the doors. We still had that. And the club only got more and more popular as the year wore on. Madchester was in full swing and it felt like
everybody
was into it. The music had changed the way people dressed. Baggy trousers, T-shirts and Kickers, a floppy, summery fashion. Funnily enough, kids still wear it today. It’s like dressing as a punk. At the time I first dressed as a punk, nobody had ever done it before – we made up our style as we went along. Now, each generation has its own punks, its Goths, its ravers,little sub-tribes that start in school.

The bands of that time sounded fantastic; it’s one of my favourite eras of music. So many rock groups absorbed acid house and the result was a wonderful combination of styles, even though the two genres were completely different. If you listen to a lot of the Mondays’ stuff, my God, they were fucking sloppy, whereas acts like James, the Stone Roses and the Farm were more mainstream. Primal Scream sounded very much like the Rolling Stones up until 1988, when their songs changed completely, becoming more like New Order’s, a mixture of rock and dance music.

Our acid-house nights drew people from all over England – and soon even the world – because we offered a unique experience. The bands that performed at the Haçienda played around the country: fans wouldn’t travel to Manchester to see them, because the groups would be coming their way – to Sheffield or Leeds – that same week.

But our club nights, such as Zumbar (where we had performers and acrobats, a real show), weren’t happening in other cities, so we’d get coach-loads of people from everywhere,dying to see what our imaginations could come up with. That was unusual and a great compliment.

With the success of the Haçienda came the excess. And with it came dark times. We had a lot of drug overdoses, to the point where we’d have a ridiculous number of ambulances arriving at the club each night. Dealing with them took up a lot of time, as we’d bring people outside to wait for medical assistance. Eventually we employed somebody from LifeLine,a drug charity,to try to handle the problems.

I wasn’t there on 14 July, the night that Claire Leighton died. Claire was a sixteen-year-old girl who took ecstasy in Stockport prior to travelling to the club. Once inside, she suffered an allergic reaction to the drug.She collapsed on the dance floor;the staff tried to help and called an ambulance. She was taken to hospital and died there after a prolonged fight for her life. Paul Mason found out when he received a call from a reporter the next day asking for a comment,then he phoned me to say that the media might contact me as well. I couldn’t have done anything – I wish I could – but he believed I should be warned.

I felt sick when I heard. When I hung up, I went and checked on my kids. As a father it felt awful. I know how precious children are. I can only imagine what her poor parents and family went through. I could-n’t understand how the scene had mutated from something so wonderful into something so hellish.

From then on, if something happened inside the Haçienda, we’d always get the nocturnal phone calls. I suppose Paul Mason felt we should know immediately.

And those panicked calls weren’t unusual. Around this time I’d be home most weekends,single-parenting,and every time the phone rang after eleven p.m. I’d flinch, knowing something awful had happened. It really wore me down.

People collapsed in the Haçienda from heat, exhaustion, drugs and drinks all the time. They turned white non-stop – throwing a whitey, we used to call it. I hate to say it, but if the bouncers found somebody even looking wobbly or throwing up, sometimes they would just open the door and throw them out. People at raves are generally off their monkey. I remember seeing a kid at a Tribal Sessions rave in the Academy stagger up to a St John’s Ambulance man and doorman who
stood nearby, talking to each other. The kid wailed, ‘Help. Help. I’ve had eight Es and I’m losing my mind.’

The bouncer and the St John’s ambulance man looked at each other, then the bouncer kicked open the exit door, grabbed the kid, threw him out and shut the door behind him. Then the two of them carried on talking like nothing had happened. In the early days nobody thought they needed to worry.Ecstasy overdoses were infrequent.People came to view them as an occupational hazard.

A death, however, was unprecedented. Nothing like that had ever happened before in England, or even the world. We all lived life to the full, but the thing about ecstasy is that it’s a bit like Russian Roulette. If you take it, you don’t know what your reaction’s going to be. If you’re allergic to E it causes severe dehydration, which can kill you by itself. On the other hand, if you drink too much water to fight it, you can die of over-hydration; you flood your body with water, which puts pressure on the brain. Runners and athletes in general have to be careful when training for the same reasons.

The drugs started to sour everything around that time.

Later that year, in September, the Halluçienda night was launched for Monday nights. Music was indie-dance and the line-ups featured a mix of bands and guest DJs. That December, Sasha played at the Haçienda for the first time.

I spent the evening hanging out in the DJ booth with Sasha the first time he played, a sell-out. One of the best nights I’ve ever spent there; he caught the crest of the ecstasy-fuelled wave. He got paid £2000 for that night – which was back then the highest fee ever paid for a DJ. Once again we were ahead of our time.

The second time I saw him it was nowhere near as good – hardly anybody came.

I look at photos of the Haçienda in the 1980s and even though the crowds are small,and everyone is dressed strangely,the club looks fantastic. Very bright colours. Yet, funnily enough, I don’t remember it being like that in the acid-house years.I remember it being dirty.Black. Dark.It’s weird.I suppose a lot of the parties were in my head.

Or maybe it was because all the lights had been stolen.