The Haçienda (45 page)

He ripped the whole place apart,destroyed it.

I was absolutely delighted.

The Haçienda remains a part of the lives of everyone who went or worked there. Some of the employees still benefit from their connection to it to this day. Leroy can go to New York or Amsterdam and be treated like a king because he’s the ex-manager.

Tony Wilson always said that Factory was more about art than money. I wonder whether we’d still have gone in with him if he’d told us that at the start? I’ll never know, but I can’t say that I regret one moment of the whole mad mess.

Tony contracted kidney cancer. When the National Health Service refused to cover the costs of the medicine he wanted, friends banded together to collect the money for him; he was inundated.

We remained great friends to the end. We’d been so entwined in each other’s lives, I felt very close to him. He died in 2007. It was so sudden. In February he introduced us on stage and he was perfectly well. By August he was dead.

I miss him.

Ang has ended up in Salford. She works managing the Vivienne Westwood store in Manchester. She’s a great fan, so it’s her dream come true.

Suzanne ended up living in Salford too. She’s a mate of Twinny’s so I see her a lot. She was married to Tim, one of the guys who filmed
bands at the Haçienda for us, and is a mother of twins. Those kids are the maddest pair of little fuckers I’ve ever met in my life – wonder where they get that from? Suzanne went into outside catering and landscape gardening, and now works for Salford Reds.

Twinny is still my best mate – him and his brother Paul. In fact all of the Bellinghams have been a huge part of my life.

Paul Carroll disappeared.

Damien and Dessie Noonan are dead – and a few other doormen are too, I’m afraid. I still see a few of the lads who worked for us. I went to the opening of a new club in Cheshire last week and was welcomed in by one of them. Lovely.

Slim, always a big character around Manchester, works at the Academy and the Apollo. He’s a mainstay in our city, just like Sarge.

Cormac became a barber,after serving time in prison.I also bumped into Gordon the Chef for the first time in years during the summer of 2007. He’s still around. Works at the Trafford Centre.

Debbie and Bowser still cook. They own Little Red Courgette and provided catering for the crew making
24 Hour Party People
. Tommo also stuck with cooking.He served up food for Amy Winehouse until she entered rehab.

Jasmine, who worked the door, found God and became something of a religious fanatic.

Jack moved to Sheffield. He now does re-enactments of the Cromwell war. He plays one of the Roundheads.

Anton Rozak left Manchester,entirely out of touch with everybody but Ang. He now runs a baby-clothes shop in Leeds.

Hindsight being 20/20, I now see that the invulnerability we felt during those years was stupidity. Some people – myself included – became
alcoholics and drug addicts. When I eventually entered rehab, a kid came up to me right away and said, ‘Hello, remember me?’

‘No, who are you?’

‘Don’t you remember? I used to serve you up with Es in the Haçienda.’

Turns out he would be my rehab counsellor. I met loads of people like that. Another guy I spent time with in rehab had been a big friend of Bowser’s. He formerly ran a hotel in Withington where people would come for a few days to sniff coke around the pool in the basement. There’s no telling how many of us crashed and burned, but I don’t know anybody who’s doing drugs the way we used to.

Now that I’m straight I suspect that a lot of the employees survived the acid-house era unscathed because they stayed straight. When you’re wasted you automatically assume everyone else is off their heads, too. Now I know differently. I’d been suckered into thinking we needed drugs for the scene; that we couldn’t live without them. That’s the primary component of an addictive personality: you mistake the things that cause trouble for the things that cure them.

Clichés build up around rock ’n’ roll. The drug aspect to the Happy Mondays, New Order and other bands have been built up beyond reality. The truth is that most people in the Haçienda were not on drugs. They just loved it as meeting place in which they could get pissed, listen to great songs and have a good time.

Would I run a club again? No. Too much responsibility – plus the wife would kill me.

Other clubs and bars picked up on aspects of the Haçienda, its tendency to place art above common sense.

You come across places sporting brass doors, candle chandeliers and pink marble that you only even notice if someone smacks your head against it. Interior designers like Bernard Carroll, who worked on the Manchester restaurants Reform and Panacea, make a living from creating places that offer customers that same sort of visual experience. Ultimately, though, you incorporate things like that to please yourself. I remember Ross McKenzie, who opened One Central Street in 2002 with Leroy Richardson, talking to me about the kind of slate he installed. I told him, ‘No one’s going to fucking notice. Just paint it black, mate.’

No one cares. They only come to get off their heads. Did anybody notice the projections on the walls of the Haçienda? Or the spear jutting out of Dry towards Spear Street? Those elements were so subtle they were overlooked by most people. Whenever Barney sees Ben Kelly he rips into him for overdoing things. Rightly so.

Manchester’s a difficult city to run a club in. I look through my membership cards and am reminded of how many failed. The fact that the Haçienda lasted from 1982 to 1997 is quite an achievement. To my knowledge, no other place succeeded so well for so long.

It’s taken years for me to come to terms with the club, what it cost me and what it meant to me. Whenever I’d get drunk or off it, I’d complain to anyone about how pissed off I was. It consumed me for a long time: I suppose I became something of a Haçienda bore.

As for my own work as a musician, Revenge and Monaco – my bands with Pottsy – proved to be successful on their own terms. We released three albums,which I’m very proud of.

After the Haçienda closed New Order reunited and recorded two more albums (
Get Ready
in 2001 and
Waiting for the Siren’s Call
in 2005) but the fun of it only lasted a short time.

I don’t blame my band-mates for New Order’s demise. I’m adult enough to realize that the problem was mine. I’d had enough of the bullshit.

Although my first love is playing music live, I love DJing. Travelling and playing is still something I enjoy.

The Urbis Centre, a museum in Manchester, had a Haçienda Twenty-Fifth Anniversary exhibition in the summer of 2007, which simultaneously pleased me and lodged a bone in my craw because when I looked at the collections of memorabilia that people donated, I thought, ‘Where did they get that from?’

Opening night was great because of all the old familiar faces. Ben Kelly and Peter Saville turned up. I’d not seen Ben for ages. I don’t hold a grudge – in fairness, he’d been handed the reins and allowed to run off in any direction, which pleased him – but I love taking the piss.

My favourite moment occurred while Sasha DJed and his computer crashed. The music immediately stopped.

After about two minutes of silence, which confused everybody, I walked up to him to ask, ‘Are you all right, mate?’

‘Oh, fuck no, Hooky,’ he panicked. ‘No. All my stuff’s on the computer.’

‘Haven’t you got any CDs?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to go on.’

My dream come true! I went on instead of Sasha. Fuck me. The weirdness of the whole thing just made me laugh. I’d come to the rescue of the world’s top DJ. In the right place at the right time. Because, let’s face it, after all is said and done, anybody can play records.

I heard that Sasha later walked around the exhibition and cried because of all the memories it conjured up.

It felt like a family reunion. I took my son and daughters and it felt nice to walk around the exhibition with them. I enjoyed it. I said, ‘There’s your inheritance, kids. Rob spent it.’

A cottage industry has sprung up around the Haçienda legend. The twenty-fifth anniversary in 2007 opened the floodgates as people reflected on what it all meant to them. Adidas produced a limited-edition pair of Haçienda trainers, designed by Yohji Yamamoto (Saville has worked with Yohji since the late 1980s, creating his catalogues and advertisements).

They retailed for £345 but people queued up from midnight just to be first through the doors to buy a pair. The shoes disappeared in twenty minutes – all soled out.

The Haçienda doesn’t exist physically any more but it will always be with me, coming up in conversations and in my dreams and nightmares. The public and media interest in it means I’ll be asked about it forever.

The people and the nights will always stay with me too. The fans will make sure I’m reminded about it always.

Bernard always takes the piss out of me, saying I’m melancholy. ‘You like to live in the past,’ he told me, and it’s true. I dwell on it. I can’t just forget it and move on. I’ve seen
24 Hour Party People
three or four times. It’s bollocks, but it’s enjoyable bollocks. You couldn’t make a boring film about the Haçienda if you tried.

Tony Wilson’s son Oliver is mystified by how we fucked it up. He can’t believe that anyone could have
wasted the opportunity.

Wasted the opportunity? I suppose we did. There was more than one. We were pretty good at it. But if you’re going to waste an opportunity,there are a few important things to remember.Do it in style.Do it in public. And, above all, do it in Manchester.

One of the most popular questions on my Unknown Pleasures speaking tour was something along the lines of: ‘You have just published a book called
How Not to Run a Club
, detailing the stress, angst, frustration, danger and the risks involved, financial and otherwise, in running a club in Manchester. Why the hell have you opened another?’

Answer: ‘Phew! Well, believe me, it was as much of a shock to me as it is to you!’ But to do the question justice we’re going to have to take a trip back in time, so cue falling calendar dates and the swirling mists of time to a summer’s day six years ago …

RING RING!

‘Hello?’

‘Hooky! I need yah!’

‘Oh, hello, Mani – how’s it going?’

‘Never mind that! I need you! So-an’-so’s let me down and I need a celebrity DJ for a gig at Razzamatazz in Barca, Espana!’

Now, I had resisted valiantly all efforts by anyone to get me to DJ.A lot of people had tried, especially in the early nineties; they would always say how easy it was. I always said no. I thought DJs were egotistical, self-obsessed, talentless, bigmouthed arseholes, with a hugely overblown sense of their own importance. This is probably why I fitted in so well when I did become one, but for the moment I wasn’t yet involved, so … When I’d recovered from the shock and gleaned a few more details, it seemed we’d be getting 500 Euros each, return flights and two nights, all meals and drinks included, in a five-star hotel in Barcelona.

‘What do I have to do, though, Mani? You know I can’t DJ.’

‘Just stand there, look pretty, and tell them why New Order won’t tour!’ he cackled. ‘It’s the best way to get pissed and off your head for nothing in the world! Let’s have it!’

So fast-forward to the night in Barcelona. Mani and Imelda, Becky and I, suitably refreshed, inhabiting Razzamatazz’s DJ booth in the big room no less, watching 800 to 1000 people, I reckon, all grooving away. Over dinner, with the help of a couple of bottles of wine, Mani had been explaining the role of the ‘celebrity DJ’ to me.

‘No one expects too much – they just come to see the old bastard who used to be in a band!’

Well, so far I’d been having a great time, completely off it, signing a few autographs, explaining why New Order won’t gig, etc., etc. At one point I’d felt so
UP!
I’d demanded a microphone so I could rap like Bez: ‘MANCHESTER IN YOUR AREA!’ Luckily by the time it turned up the moment was gone – as was I! But a little later I’m dancing on a podium (carefully, because Imelda had already fallen off one and been rescued by the bouncers) and I look down and see Mani scratching away on a record but it’s not switched on. No scratching noise, you see, so I slap him, screaming over the noise …

‘That record’s not switched on!’

Mani is confused. He screams something back at me, trying to get what’s going on. Unfortunately, while he’s screaming at me the other record finishes, leaving the dance floor in complete silence. It isn’t long before the crowd start making some noise – a resounding bunch of cat-calls and booings, with plastic glasses, empty and full, being flung at the DJ booth.

Mani yells, ‘You garlic-crunching fuckers!’

Wrong country, surely,
I think. Then he reaches down, picks the records carefully off the decks and throws them at the crowd, Frisbee-style. Next he starts emptying his record box. It’s mayhem! The crowd are all screaming, ducking and running for their lives (no one wants to get decapitated by an ‘I Am the Resurrection’ 12-inch, do they?), but I look at him with love in my eyes and have a ‘Eureka!’ moment …