The Death of Clubbing

Before there was Ministry of Sound and Ibiza and superstar DJ's, there was Manchester. It was the place to be in the 1980's, it had the best girls, the best music, the best drugs and the best club. The one club that that will be in everyone's mind, is the Hacienda. By the early 1990's, a small city in the north of England had become the clubbing capital of the world and if you were a manc everyone wanted a piece of you. "Madchester" had truly arrived. Yet throughout its 15 years existence, the club and its management never went through  financial stability. The Hacienda was ultimately a failure and this blog will examine why one of the best clubs of all time crashed and burned, leaving Manchester with a bunch of overrated pretentious nightclubs filled with mediocre footballers playing mediocre sounds.

The Hacienda was opened in 1982 and closed in 1992, the building no longer stands.

In May 1982 a consortium opened a nightclub in Manchester, mainly funded by the Anthony Wilson owned Factory Records and rock band New Order. Tony Wilson's dream was to create an environment that played great new wave music not dance music. Peter Hook of New Order describes the Hacienda as "very nice to look at" which was a good job as for several years no one was in it. Acts such as the Smiths and Madonna played in the Hacienda , but apart from premium nights the club was failing. It was empty and would remain that way until America decided to export house music to the UK. Through DJ's such as Frankie Knuckles, Adonis and Marshall Jefferson the underground was creeping into the overground and the Hacienda was built for it. With its wide gaping surroundings and hard interior the eclectic repetitive beats of House worked perfectly. Fellow DJ's such as Mike Pickering were correct by ripping the microphone out and getting rid of all bands.

There had been a musical revolution taking place around this period House music was coming out Chicago from 1983 and Detroit Techno would follow a year later, but the UK and especially the Hacienda would make it global. As this new dance phenomena grew the Hacienda became pivotal in Manchester's music scene and inspired new acts such as the Chemical Brothers. Stu Ellen had the Piccadilly Radio on a Sunday night and people were loving Acid House, the Hacienda was the best place to be, it was a club that was beyond people's ideas and imaginations.

Listed below are two of my favourite tracks that would have been 'tunes' regularly dropped in Manchester at the time;

Here we have a great combination, the best club playing the best music and being visited by thousands of ravers each week, what exactly went wrong? New Order lost around £10 million on the club which never made a profit  but somehow stayed open for 15 years. It never made a profit because it never met its alcohol quota, (clubs made their profits selling alcohol) as the clubbers of the Hacienda were being fueled by one thing. Extacy. As the club could not sell this illicit drug over the counter (though Tony Wilson did think about it), the only people getting rich out of the Hacienda were Manchester's gangsters.

People were going to the Hacienda on 'E' and having the time of their lives, but gangs were slowly putting a stop to this. Shootings were taking place both in and outside the club, so the management made the decision to hand the door over the very same people causing all the trouble, the gangsters. (the very well known and feared Noonan family) Now the management lost control of both the club and now the door and as the gangster population of the Hacienda increased the clubbing population literally decreased as Manchester was ripped apart by gang violence. After debts spiraled out of control and the treasure chest lay bare the club closed its doors, sadly for the last time with Spiritualized in June 1997. The club reportedly lost £18 million during its brief existence, it was calculated that for every one person that came through the door the Hacienda lost £10.

However, this club will always be remembered for its legacy and not that it eventually failed, as it sits aside the likes of Chicago’s Music Box and Berlin’s Tresor as clubbing extravaganzas. It changed the way we as a nation club and what we listen to. There was no VIP room at the Hacienda on one side of you could be Shaun Ryder or Ian Brown, that was the beauty of the place everyone was in it together, dancing as one. Dance music was now venerated throughout the UK and had become a chart phenomena. Drugs would now replace alcohol as the main choice for the English clubber and this spanned across the world to Ibiza and then to America in the form of EDM.

If the Hacienda was erected today it would never have worked, maybe because it should have never worked in the first place, but it hung on to life. It was a game changer and a trend setter it changed clubbing forever and left its own legacy not only on Manchester but the entire world. House music is now here to stay and it was the Hacienda that made it so, it created a frenzy which has not yet died and an addiction to living in the moment, for the now. YOLO

The well known 'smiley' was popularized in the acid house movement 

The building where the club sat now houses luxury apartments, but graffiti on its side shows the cities true feelings. "Rewind" is scrawled on the side of the building and maybe we should look backgrounds at the original super-club, the glory of the Hacienda.

Good luck in exams for those of us taking.