The Haçienda by Hook Peter

Author:Hook, Peter [Hook, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2009-09-30T23:00:00+00:00

The closest we came to exporting the Haçienda experience was by hosting theme nights around Europe and America. Rob saw them as a way of promoting the brand further, which now is a very common thing to do but was difficult then. For a while, Ang co-ordinated them. She booked the talent, the idea being that that the promoters subsidized the tour. But the events all lost money, so what we hoped might be a source of revenue turned into a burden and had to be underwritten by us.You’ve got to be very,very clever to book a tour,because of the expenses. They proved to be demanding, and as soon as anything or anyone became demanding, Rob would always mutter, ‘Oh, fucking pay them off.’ He hated arguing about details. If a promoter argued about the hundred dollars it cost to take the DJs from an airport to a hotel, Rob would say, ‘Oh, fuck it. Don’t argue, we’ll just pay it.’ And that was it for the tours. However revolutionary the concept may have been, we never broke even.

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.

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