The Haçienda (34 page)

FAC 51 Limited
Trading as: the Haçienda

PROFIT AND LOSS ACCOUNT (for the year ended 30 June 1991)

FAC 51 Limited
Trading as: the Haçienda

EXPENSES AND COSTS (for the year ended 30 June 1991)

Martin Hannett died of heart failure in April 1991, aged forty-two. During the last few years of his life his career had gone into freefall because of his heavy drinking and heroin abuse; his weight had doubled, to almost twenty-six stone. Ironically, however, he had cleaned up his act four years before his death, only to die moving house. He was one of Factory’s,if not the world’s,true musical geniuses.

By 1992 the whole rave scene had changed and a new generation had come on board – kids who knew acid house only from reading about it in the media – and many of the people I knew stopped going clubbing (strangely, the old-timers would return religiously for our New Year’s Eve celebrations every year). Most of the time I’d look around the club and barely recognize anybody.

By now the Haçienda’s wildest period, from 1988 to 1990, was well behind us; looking at the accounts for the years that followed, the profits came down very gradually by about 10 to 15 per cent per year.As Manchester had got hipper, more clubs had opened and investment came into the city. In some ways the Haçienda became a victim of its own success: people we’d drawn to the area opened their own places, which took our customers and made us look old-fashioned. And, because of our ongoing financial dire straits, we couldn’t afford to fully renovate the club to keep up with the times.

Furthermore,like punk before it,acid house lost something as it got older: the innocence of nobody knowing the rules, or even if there were any. That initial explosion of ecstasy – coupled with the music – had revolutionized the world.Everything that followed could only be an imitation.

Despite all this, though – despite the fights among gangsters, and trouble with the police – some nights made us forget it all. It was like London during the Blitz, or the band playing on the bridge of the
Titanic
as the ship sank.We partied to spite fate.No matter how badly some people behaved, they couldn’t completely stop the great bits.

Even so, the comedian Keith Allen always said to me that you know you’ve got a drug problem when you feel like you’re a god when you’re not on it. And that was us: we had a problem. We were still off our heads.When the Haçienda celebrated its tenth anniversary,in May
1992, we built a bridge over the canal to a purpose-built Haçienda fairground. The event cost us £10,000. We’d intended to use that money to fund a Haçienda compilation CD, but Rob spent it on this fairground and renting rides, thinking we’d get the money back on the door. My mate Jan de Koning ran the fair, and Twinny (who’d quit being a roadie for Joy Division to work on fair rides all those years ago) helped to operate it. My mate Cormac ran the dodgems and handled the announcing: ‘You want it to go faster? Put your arms up,’ etc., etc.

At one point he boomed into the microphone: ‘OK. All of you who are on an E, I want you off of these dodgems right now!’

Exodus. Nearly every car got vacated. Only Manchester’s Lord Mayor and his deputy were left, sat right in the middle of the ride in a car of their own.

I missed the whole night because some prick spiked me with ketamine. I came round only as the Haçienda closed. Apparently at one point in the evening I’d stood in front of the stage, nodding, telling anyone who’d listen, ‘The guys in this fucking band are great. They’re really, really good. You should get their name. They’re gonna be big.’

There was nobody playing.

The Haçienda staff Christmas fancy-dress party that year was no better.In fact it was the worst party of my entire life.It was just horrible. I wore a Nazi military uniform, like an idiot, complete with Luger. Ang was dressed as Minnie Mouse.We started the party at Dry,then got a coach to the Haç.

Ridiculous amounts of drugs were passed around. It all went pear-shaped after serving the cake:tons of hallucinogens had been baked into it. If you bit into a slice it dribbled down your chin. That set us all off.

One of the bouncers (who’d never before touched drugs) and his girlfriend started fighting on the floor, over by the cigarette machine. They were pulling each other’s hair and biting one another, locked together for what seemed like hours. I can still remember it, the lumps of hair flying around. All of the bar staff were freaking out, girls crying, the works. Complete pandemonium.

It did my head in. I went looking for Paul Carroll to stop the fight, walked out of the Haçienda and found him at Cheerleaders at a Cheetham Hill party. His costume was a Mexican poncho and sombrero, and he chomped down on a cigar. Kind of like Eli Wallach in
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I walked up and told him about the fighting. ‘You’re gonna have to fucking sort this out.’

Paul followed me back, separated the bouncer and the girl, then decked the guy so hard it broke his jaw and they had to take him to hospital . . . All while his girlfriend continued to attack him.

‘Happy now?’ said Paul, and fucked off again.

I went back in. That’s when the Cheetham Hill gang arrived, having followed us looking for free drinks. The doormen had all long since fucked off. The gangsters walked straight up to me and asked, ‘Why are you dressed like that, you bastard?’

They all gathered round, poking me. Thank God somebody – Ang, I think – came and saved me. I beat a hasty retreat, went home and locked the blessed deadbolt. Relief. I’ve never been so frightened in all my life – apart from all the other times in the Haçienda.

I gave Barney back his uniform the next day. Only joking.

Gang violence in the city continued. A gunfight at a Papa San gig at the International II in August 1991 had called a halt to reggae gigs at the venue.In June 1992,when members of a Salford gang were refused entry at Most Excellent held at Wiggly Worm (which was formerly the Millionaire, Peter Stringfellow’s club) they returned in a stolen car and rammed the entrances,then set fire to the car;the club was closed for good. In October CS canisters were let off at the Funhouse at the PSV and the following week a gunfight resulted in a student being wounded in the leg.

Traditionally Friday nights pulled a wilder – and more violent – crowd than Saturday nights’, which the gangsters thought of as being a bit soft. On Fridays we attracted people who loved music, wore T-shirts and baggy trousers and liked it a bit lairy.On Saturdays we got all the hairdressers, who drank brandy, took drugs occasionally and perhaps just showed up in the hope of copping off. I didn’t usually go on Saturdays – they were Barney’s territory.