TJ Chambers
In a slight variation from the usual focus on the business of live entertainment and ticketing, this post is more concerned with something that occurred some forty-four years ago, specifically 21st May 1982.
On the corner of Whitworth Street West and Albion Street, an otherwise unremarkable area of Manchester, a night club opened.
The space was formerly a yacht builder’s workshop with a glass roof, exposed girders and brickwork, and was converted for its new use via Ben Kelly utilising an industrial aesthetic: ’The space was painted in cool blue and grey tones with brightly clad balcony supports and diagonal stripes painted on columns. The urban theme continued with bold directional and warning markings, neon bar signs, bollards and cats-eyes which mapped out the dance-floor.’ – https://benkellydesign.com/hacienda/
© Ben Kelly Design
‘They (Factory) had never commissioned a nightclub, and I’d never designed one before. There was an awful lot of naivety’ – Ben Kelly (The Oral History of Haçienda, One of History’s Most Notorious Nightclubs, Daniel Dylan Wray, 31st December 2020 – https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-oral-history-of-hacienda-nightclub-manchester/)
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The Opening Night: 21.05.82
Free to members (annual membership £5.25p), the Haçienda’s opening night included Bernard Manning (‘I’ve played some fucking shitholes in my time, but this beats the lot of them’, who then walked off stage, handed back his fee and stated ‘You fucking idiots should quit while you’re ahead’), the wonderful ESG (‘You’re No Good’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmkVTqqzffYwith camerawork by Malcolm Whitehead and Linda Dutton) and Tony Wilson who joined Vini Reily on a white grand piano.
Tony Wilson + Vini Reilly, FAC 51 – The Haçienda 21.05.82. © Ben Kelly / The Vinyl Factory
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After gaining access, marvelling at the architectural space, and checking out ESG, it was time for the girlfriend (‘S’) and I to move to the Gay Traitor bar located in the basement – complete with an A0 framed photograph of Anthony Blunt, a British art historian who had been a spy for the Soviet Union. The two first floor bars were also named after Blunt’s fellow spies, Kim Philby and Guy Burgess, whose cover name was Hicks.
S., was at the time a (very) recent Manchester Poly graduate like myself, and we enoyed several cocktails, including numerous Brandy Alexanders, not the most obvious choice for the callow unsophisticated youth that we were, but we were defintely led astray by the bar staff (honest!).
Like many of those who worked at the Haçienda virtually everyone supplemented their day-job (if employed) with a night time gig. So Glenn and Gerry mixed photography/graphic design and fashion retail with the nocturnal dispensation of alcholic drinks, and these genial hosts quickly developed their own loyal clientele, operating a sort-of democratic VIP bar.
S. herself eventually left Manchester for London and then Japan, and is now a cultural historian of some note, and author of several books. So not too shabby.
The opening night finished, and off we staggered to my apartment in the ill-named Robert Adam Crescent, Hulme. Gloriously drunk, and somewhat inspired by the evening.
The Haçienda membership application form had stated ‘INTENTION: To restore a sense of place’. We believed that it had certainly done that.
The evening also felt like something new. Something like the future had landed amongst us and shown an alternative way of being.
But we were just drunk, very drunk.
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In a weird alt-reality, simultaneous to the opening of the Haçienda, Royal Marines and Paratroopers from the British Task Force landed at San Carlos Bay on the Falkland Islands. That conflict cost 255 British lives, whilst over 650 Argentines died.
And Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister (‘no such thing as society’), one of the most divisive figures in British political history, with over two million manufacturing jobs lost in the 1979-81 recession and swathes of industry decimated, never to recover.
By 1982, over three million were unemployed in the UK, the highest since the 1930’s, with inflation (Consumer Price Index) over 10%, a forty-year high.
Over four million households still used black and white televisions to watch the three terrestrial channels, with ‘Coronation Street’ regularly attracting an audience of 17 million.
And locally, James Anderton was the chief constable, a devout Christian with abhorrent views on crime, policing and morals – he referred to victims of HIV/Aids as ‘swirling about in a human cesspit of their own making’.
So, life wasn’t all about escapist nightclubs.
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Academia 1979-82
Whilst ‘studying’ for my degree I had attended various concerts at Manchester Poly SU (Cavendish Building), Factory/Russell Club, Manchester Musicians Collective, Rafters, Beach Club @ Oozits, The Squat etc., and had met, socialised and/or worked with a number of people: Liz N., Cath C., Pat N. + Bob D. at ‘City Fun’; Richard B. (New Homones / Buzzcocks); Tony W. (Granada TV / Factory), Bruce M. (Durutti Column), ‘Ginger’ (FAC 51), and others. So by the time the Haçienda opened I was scheduled to start working at the venue with a ‘job’ (loosest definition possible) that eventually involved editing the Members newsletter, club MC to introduce bands and outline forthcoming events, and to support Malcolm Whitehead with Claude Bessy into making IKON FCL into something more than documenting (Low Band U-Matic) live performances at the venue into a video label which would eventually incorporate Factory Record artists, plus Birthday Party, The Fall, John Dowie, Virgin Prunes, William S. Burroughs, and many more.
For further Mancunian memories about IKON see: #FFWDxLDN25, Dub Sex, IKON … And in other news (17.01.25)- https://tjchambers.blog/2025/01/17/ffwdxldn25-dub-sex-ikon-and-in-other-news-17-01-25/; and also Dave Haslam / Sonic Youth at the New Ardri Ballroom: Sentimentality and a fondness for things in the past: Nostalgia Part #1 – https://tjchambers.blog/2025/06/06/sentimentality-and-a-fondness-for-things-in-the-past-nostalgia-part-1/).
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The Second Night: 22.05.82
After that opening night I never paid to go to the Haçienda – albeit that’s not such a unique claim – but I was so hungover from the night before that whilst physically present for Cabaret Voltaire, with Eric Random as support, who performed on the second night, I have an ill-defined memory of their show.
I do however recall that the stage was atmospherically dark, and their electronic drum-machine meets tape loops meets disjointed cut-up vocals soundtrack was performed to only 50-70 souls despite the relative indie-success of The Voice of America and Red Mecca, 2 x 45 released around the same time.
They did however play several more times at The Haçienda, with two fine performances from 1983 and 1986 released on CD / DVD by Cherry Red.
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FAC 51 Circa 1982 © MEN
The rise, and then fall …
As reported in The Face: ‘This is a pretty desperate city so far as money goes, and silly reports which moan that we get only 200 people in here some nights forget that that’s 200 more than anywhere else’ – Howard Jones (Clubbing at The Haçienda, David Johnson, The Face #33, January 1983)
The club was initially dependent upon the success of its live music programming and some weekend events, with booker and DJ Mike Pickering and host DJ Hewan Clarke.
But as is well known and oft-repeated was a loss-making venture until the programming of house music in 1986 which transformed the club’s fortunes.
You all know this story. When it was good, it was very, very good. Ecstatic even.
And then it wasn’t. And the club closed in 1991.
Then reopened. And then closed again, permanently in 1997.
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You’ll never see the hacienda. It doesn’t exist. The hacienda must be built ‘Formulaire pour un urbanisme nouveau’ (Formulary for a New Urbanism), ‘Gilles Ivain’ / Ivan Vladimirovitch Chtcheglov, 1953
The well behaved seldom make history, and the myth of the Haçienda with its outrageous combination of drugs, fashion, sex – especially the positive promotion of gay subculture, and then drug-gangs and violence, continues to feed the myth of the venue, the city and of those times.
But really, enough already.
Remembering what took place all that time ago – forty-four-f*****-years – and using those memories and ghosts as some kind of standard to compare/contrast contemporary cultural accomplishment is just wrong.
In 1982 we didn’t hanker after the hit tunes, dress sense and politic of 1938 i.e. 44 years before then.
So why after all these years is Manchester circa 1982 i.e. The Haçienda & Madchester etc. still exerting such an influence.
It’s gone. Get over it. Do your own thing.
And maybe I should take my own advice and just shut up.
Alternate cover of the ‘novelisation’ ’24 Hour Party People – What the Sleeve Notes Never Tell You’of the screenplay to the Michael Winterbottom film ’24 Hour Party People’.Photograph of Tony Wilson was taken 2002 in the demolished site of FAC 51 – The Haçienda before the building of the apartments. The cover was never used, in favour of the FAC-2 ‘homage’ but appeared briefly on the Amazon and Pan Macmillan websites before the book was actually published. Source: https://factoryrecords.org/cerysmatic/fac424_24_hour_party_people.php
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Until the next time.
TJ_Chambers 