The Haçienda (41 page)

My friends rallied round me, God bless them, but when I went back to the Haçienda things had changed.Eighteen months away and everything was different. The atmosphere wasn’t like it used to be – gone was the heaving, sweating mass, hands in the air. Worse, I didn’t recognize anyone again. A whole new crowd had moved in . . .

The violence of Gunchester continued. In April 1995 Terry Farrimond, a doorman at the Haçienda, was shot and killed near his home in Swinton. That summer, the trend for letting guns off during drum ’n’ bass club nights reached a climax when a clubber fired a pump-action shotgun at the PSV. So many bullets were taken from the ceiling that the club flooded the next time it rained. The following month three girls were injured by ricochets, forcing the cancellation of future events.

In June, police mounted raids on the clubs Equinox, Cheerleaders and Home, during which clubbers were searched for drugs and the music stopped. Home continued to be plagued by violence and, after a skirmish between around forty Salford gang members wearing balaclavas and police that took place on the dance floor and elsewhere in the club, owner Tom Bloxham shut up shop for good in September. For the Haçienda the news was almost as grim. Stringent security measures were off-putting for the average law-abiding clubber, yet didn’t seem to prevent the violence. Attendance figures continued to fall as the club struggled to keep up with shifting musical trends. Having missed the trance boat and voluntarily opted out of drum ’n’ bass, neither was it able to capitalize on the emergence of trip hop, a musical genre not suited to the Haçienda’s cavernous space.

Rob, God bless him, always held out hope. He visited the Haçienda almost every night. Being an optimistic, glass-half-full type of person, he was always convinced that the next week would be the one to turn it around. He was always dreaming up some scheme for making it work.

He found the element of risk exciting. A true gambler, he believed that you cured a losing streak by finding enough money to take another stab at it. The Haçienda was his ultimate game of chance.

His enthusiasm was infectious. Well, I thought so, anyway. Which was why I found myself going along with a lot of what he suggested. By now, it was really just us two on the deck of this sinking ship. Tony seemed to lose interest after Factory folded;he was busy trying to get Factory Too off the ground. The other members of New Order had long since turned their backs on the club, and Alan Erasmus was being Alan Erasmus: enigmatic and difficult to pin down.

Just me and Rob, then. It felt like the future of Manchester and the Haçienda completely rested on our shoulders.

Casting about for ideas to help save the club, we began to think again about how it had benefited the city. Think about it: during that post-1989 period further education in Manchester was permanently over-subscribed, we were bringing so much money into the city – millions – yet seeing precious little recognition or support for what we were doing. In those days, of course, the idea of getting council or government support for a club was unheard of, whereas now they’re
chucking money at the Manchester International Festival, for example. But back then, if you weren’t a ballet you were fucked.

Even so, we were adamant that the club should be recognized for what it was – a vital local asset, a boost to the economy, an important tourist attraction. So we applied to the Manchester City Council for a grant to pay for renovations. Ben Kelly was brought in, this time against Tony’s wishes, submitted a design and the 100 per cent grant was finalized. And then the council changed its mind, for some reason and our £150,000 grant got cut in half. By now the deposits had been paid and materials ordered; the scaffolding had even gone up. Somehow, though, we’d made yet another mistake. Our grant, which we’d thought had gone from £150,000 to £75,000, now actually turned out to be £37,500. They weren’t giving us half the original sum – they were giving us quarter.

Guess who had to make up the shortfall?

As if that wasn’t bad enough,our attendance had been virtually cut in half as well. Legally we’d been getting 1600 in each Friday and Saturday (capacity having gone up since we built the basement club), on top of which we’d been sneaking in as many as we could get away with before the place groaned. That lasted until the week that the scaffolding went up.

After that, attendance fell to below 600 and never ever picked back up, though we tried everything to claw it back. Whether people thought we were closing down, or things were changing too much – the death of acid house, perhaps? – I don’t know. We’d spend hours, weeks,at meetings,trying to figure out what had gone wrong.

In the end it was decided that another shake-up might help. Rob was concerned that Ang had lost her edge, so brought Paul Cons back in to book the nights for us. For a while it seemed to be working – Paul got numbers up – but then we discovered that he was allowing a lot of people in for free (though they were at least buying drinks).

Ang,meanwhile,being convinced that she’d done everything possible to combat the violence and keep the club open, was so annoyed about being sidelined by Paul that she tendered her resignation. We refused to accept it.

Rob was most adamant: to him, Ang represented the most important link to the club’s past.She was the longest-serving member of staff and he valued her knowledge and experience; he liked the fact that he
was able to show her a flyer for a gig and she’d know in what year it had taken place. She was a demon at the Haçienda pub quiz, Ang was. The younger employees just didn’t have that – they knew fuck all compared to her.

‘Don’t over-react,’ Rob said. ‘If you’re fed up, what about doing days and we’ll find somebody else to work nights?’

So Ang took on the daytime shift but soon got bored. She needed more, so we reached a compromise: she’d work at Dry and Leroy would come back to run the Haçienda. She hated Dry, though. She didn’t love bars the way she did clubs. They’re two very different animals.

In the meantime the renovations continued: we added coloured bricks to the exterior, plus beautiful customized stained-glass windows. The windows were about twenty-five feet high and came in twelve sections. They cost £32,000, and they were beautiful. Trouble was, they were only visible only if you climbed down the derelict canal towpath at the back of the building and looked up; you couldn’t view them from inside the club – they weren’t even lit. Also, because they were placed above the kitchen, they soon gained a disgusting coating of fat that completely obscured them. I had them removed and put into storage by Peter Burke, the guy who installed them, when the building was sold.

When I went to the club nowadays – which was much more rarely than I did previously – I found it had changed too much. The world had moved on.

I’d go alone there alone before, knowing there’d be loads of mates there; I’d be at home as soon as I arrived. But now I felt distanced from the punters – they were strangers. It was rare to run into someone I knew. Ang, Leroy and I would stand in our corner, look around and realize that between us we didn’t know anybody. I missed the old camaraderie. We’d lost so many mates to drug overdoses, police activity or simply burnout; a fair few had wised up and were enjoying family life; the violence scared many away, too. You can’t blame them for that – we’d have legged it too if we hadn’t owned the gaff.

It was the same at Dry. Whereas I’d once loved the sense of community, really I now connected only with the older members of the staff, like Andy and Amanda, who had been there for years. I’d still be there seven nights a week, though. You can’t own a pub and not go, can you?

Many of us who’d spent the late 1980s and early 1990s off our faces now came crashing down to Earth.I’d behaved like a pig in shit,lording it up at the Haç,treating it like party central.Not any more.

Luckily I met my wife, Becky, around this time. We were introduced by a friend of mine, Francis, who ran the Brassiere Saint Pierre, and his girlfriend, Victoria. We hit it off and we’ve been together ever since.

She’d been to the Haçienda a few times herself, but we didn’t spend much time there as a couple. On the odd occasion we did go there were so many problems it was ridiculous – there was no chance of having a good time. Also, she cottoned on pretty quickly that Rob took advantage of my good nature (or stupidity, whichever you fancy).

Rob was at our wedding party,on 5 December 1996,and once he was pissed dragged me round and round the garden, trying to persuade me to give him more cash for the Haçienda, while Becky (inside the house, watching us through the window) shouted to Ang, ‘I’ve got to get out there! I’ve got to get out there before he gives all our money away.’

The missus was kicking off; I knew the end was near.

The club had tried to raise money but couldn’t. The economy was still weak and property prices were low, so we still didn’t have the equity to remortgage the place.We couldn’t borrow anything and we couldn’t earn enough to pay off all the debts.

We were at the limit of our overdraft. Not a good position to be in. I was funding the Haçienda and had been for the last two years; it was costing me seven grand a month because Rob was skint. He had tax problems, too; he’d put everything into the club. He kept moaning to me: ‘If only New Order would tour . . .’ but I was the only one who would even consider it.

It was at around this time that my accountant asked me a loaded question: ‘What are you doing the Haçienda for, your wallet or your ego?’

He’d hit the nail on the head. When I thought about it I realized it was my ego: I liked the power that having the club gave me. I’m sure everybody would have,even though it had never turned a profit since the day it opened. Heaven or hell, it was my own private playground.

We just sank deeper into debt. Although there were customers who remained loyal to the club, and many more who were drawn by its reputation, the culture had shifted. People were going to bars instead
of clubs. There was no admission charge and they had those late-night licences we had fought so hard for.

Everything special about the Haçienda was in the past,buried under years of violence.