Peter Hook - The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2009
A CBS COMPANY

Copyright Peter Hook 2009

Endpapers Ben Kelly

This book is copyright under the Berne convention.
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has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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Dedicated, with love, to my mother, Irene Hook

Rest in Peace:
Ian Curtis, Martin Hannett, Rob Gretton, Tony Wilson and Ruth Polsky,
without whom the Haienda would not have been built

It was always going to be a problem.

In fact, when it was suggested by Claude Flowers that I write my Haienda memoirs in 2003, the first thing that came to mind was that famous quote about the sixties. How if you remember them then you werent really there. Thats how I felt about the Hac.

So, I was going to need a bit of help, and putting this book together has been a lot of a combined effort. It was Claude who got the ball rolling and prompted me to remember a lot of stuff I thought Id forgotten, while Andrew Holmes provided those very important in between bitsand sorted out all the paperwork.

Anything you like, Ill take the credit for. Anything you dont, blame them.

Hooky

What a fuck up we made of it.

Or did we? Sitting here now, I wonder. Its 2009 and the Haienda has never been more well known. Still doesnt make any money, though; no change there then. This year we celebrate twenty-one years of acid house; we are holding Haienda nights all across the UK and now have merchandise deals for CDs, T-shirts, shoes, postcards, posters, a bespoke bike frame, even a fine-art project with Ben Kelly, for Gods sake. Where will it end?

It looks as though our manager Rob Gretton was right about the Haienda, just as he was at Ian Curtiss wake when he told us, Joy Division will be huge in ten years time. It wasnt much solace at that particular moment but he was spot on: Joy Division were huge in ten years;also in twenty and thirty years.Still are.A great testament to the music.

Then, when the Haienda was going bankrupt voluntarily, I might add he said we needed to buy all the names from the receiver.

Why? I said.

Theyll be worth something in the future.

No chance, I thought. Who cares? I was sick of it.

He cared. No one else was interested so I gave him the money to buy them. Since then its been a long, hard process of tying up the loose ends. A never-ending stream of registrations and legal fees. Battles with bootleggers. But we got there in the end. Now, hopefully, we can enjoy the fruit of our labours...

But I need to tell you the story first, dont I? I need to tell you how the Haienda changed the shape of clubbing in England. Where it all went wrong, and how what should have been a dream come true became a cautionary tale.

And what a story it is. Because while theres a lot about the Haienda that shouldnt be glorified the gangsters, the drugs, the violence, the cops theres also the stuff of legend: the fact that it was a superclub before the term had even been invented; that it was the birthplace of acid house in the north and the home of Madchester,two musical movements that went round the world; that it was the scene of too many great nights and gigs to recall not that you were in any state to do so.

When the Haienda opened,Factory and New Order had no experience running a commercial enterprise; we just invested our money and trusted the staff, mostly our friends, to sort everything out. Bad idea. Your friends are your friends not because theyre good at business. But we learned that the hard way.We learned everything the hard way.

At first the band didnt have much to do with it; in fact, for the first few years, I didnt even use my connection with the Haienda on a social level let alone get involved in the business side of things. I never felt involved with it, to be honest. I got free entry and that was about it (some members of the band couldnt even manage that sometimes); so even though I had this club this huge club costing me a fortune I was reluctant to go, and certainly didnt feel like it was mine any more than a punter would. None of us did. But, as the problems mounted, we had to get more and more involved, until by 1988 I was helping to run it. By that time the mess was too big for anyone to fix.

And I was into it too far to get out.

As my accountant likes to tell me, I wont appreciate how much cash the Haienda lost until I stop earning money.

Then, he says, itll hit you like a juggernaut.

We once worked out that, from the time it opened in 1982 to when it closed in 1997, each punter through the door cost us 10. We wasted that much through bad management and sheer stupidity. As far as we were concerned it was history we were making,not money.But if Im ever skint Ill walk around Manchester asking everyone to give me my tenner back.

Ill split it with the rest of them, honest.

Beyond that, though, Ill never truly know how much money we lost on the Haienda because our record label,Factory,New Orders partner in the club,never accounted to the band,ever:no one has ever told us how many records we sold in England or around the world.

So Tony Wilson,who owned Factory,wouldnt say,New Order just sold 100,000 albums in China, heres your cut of the profits. Instead, the way it worked was that Rob would collect royalties by walking in and demanding cash off him. If Tony had money, hed give it to him; if he didnt, hed tell Rob to fuck off. That was how they ran it. With our approval, I should add. It was chaos, punk, anarchy and we loved it.

Well, back then we did. Now, of course, it just seems like a good old-fashioned mess. Because not only were we never told how much wed earned, but also we werent told how much wed invested in the club, either, so we cant know for certain how much of our earnings were used to keep the Haienda afloat. It was clearly a huge fuck-up, but one well never be able to gauge the true scale of.

As my mother Irene used to say, God rest her soul, Youll never get into trouble if you tell the truth, our Peter. Lets see if shes right. This book is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

As I remember it.

Hooky, 2009