The Haçienda

Despite closing 25 years ago, The Haçienda still holds an almighty – almost reverential – pull over those who swayed upon the club’s fabled dancefloor. In the year of its 40th anniversary, John Burgess speaks to two DJ stalwarts, Dave Haslam and Jon Dasilva, about the club’s halcyon days, and its ever-evolving legacy, before unsheathing his Haçienda bollard for them to sign…

In the early hours of Sunday 29 June 1997, The Haçienda nightclub closed its doors for the final time. Not long after this sudden end my fellow Jockey Slut co-founder, Paul Benney, and I met Anthony Wilson to discuss that year’s In The City music conference.

At the end of the meeting he asked us if we’d like to exit through the venue as they were going to change hands with the buyer soon and there were set pieces from club nights that he knew we’d be interested in. I spotted one of the club’s distinctive bollards that signposted the dancefloor, held it aloft and asked if I could keep it. Wilson hesitated – eBay didn’t exist then so he wouldn’t be thinking I was going to make a quick buck – but said yes.

It’s not the only piece of Haçienda memorabilia I own, though it is my most prized. In 2000 (see Archive section), at a charity auction, I acquired a 4 sq ft piece of the dancefloor which cost £200, a couple of random planks and two bricks (the building had been demolished and turned into flats and apartments named Haçienda Apartments). The following year I declined an offer from the DJ Sasha who, feeling refreshed after a gig in Ibiza, offered me a grand for the dancefloor. I may have devalued it by scraping off the club crud as it smelt pretty bad, mainly of tobacco, and varnishing it for use as a coffee table. It’s currently in storage awaiting its next incarnation. I’d like to believe I have the 4 sq ft that Madonna danced upon when she played the club in 1983, but the dancefloor had been replaced at some point, so the wood in the auction – and in fact the exterior bricks – had not been part of the fixtures and fittings from 1982.

The Haçienda, Factory Records, acid house, Madchester… all that’s now history of course. But it’s a history that is continually being rewritten, edited – remixed you might say.

Earlier this summer, however, on 17 August, another part of Manchester’s rich musical history was in danger of being permanently erased. One of the city’s cultural landmarks had been painted over with an advert. A wall on Port Street that had started as a canvas for street artists, before settling on a painting of Ian Curtis, had been replaced with an advert for a new album by rapper Aitch. The image of the Joy Division frontman was based on a famous photograph taken by Phillipe Carly a week before he committed suicide. The mural, by artist Akse P19, had been unveiled on World Mental Health Day 2020 in support of Manchester Mind.

Ironically, the advert was for a musician who respects and mines Manchester’s musical heritage. The track ‘1989’ on his album even samples the Stone Roses. “This is the first time I’ve heard of this,” Aitch quickly tweeted. “Me and my team are getting this fixed pronto.” Joy Division’s Peter Hook replied with a: “Thank you”.

A fortnight before this debacle I had coaxed erstwhile Haçienda DJs Dave Haslam and Jon Dasilva to the mural to have their photograph taken. In the year of its 40th anniversary we had been discussing The Haçienda’s legacy. Haslam opined: “The club is bigger than ever.”

When I say coaxed, we had just left our spot outside Eastern Bloc, another Manchester institution that shares The Haçienda’s late-80s, early-90s imperial phase and which is now a cafe bar that still sells vinyl. Both DJs had just signed my bollard, taken a trip through the past and now I wanted them to stand in front of a mural of Ian Curtis. It could have been a nostalgia trip too far for one afternoon but it was nearby, it was over 30 degrees that day and you never know if you’ll get the chance again…168_DISCO_POGO

Mr Discos: Former Haçienda residents Dave Haslam (left) and Jon Dasilva stood in front of the Ian Curtis mural on Manchester’s Port Street.

Dave Haslam, who ran Thursday’s weekly residency Temperance in the club’s heyday, certainly didn’t know when The Haçienda was going to close. It had been saddled with debt and licensing problems, mainly related to gangs, for an eternity but it had existed for so long and seemed beleaguered for a generation that no one expected it to fold when it did. It was, in fact, doing OK at the time so Haslam was surprised.

“I’d been doing every Saturday in the Fifth Man for about eight months and I loved it. The night was called Freak and Paul Cons had come back to run it and it was going really well.” But after that fateful night at the end of June it was all over. “During that Saturday night It had all kicked off in front of a minibus full of councillors on a fact-finding mission. It wasn’t like in the film where Steve Coogan (playing Wilson) announced: ‘It’s all over, loot the offices.’”

Jon Dasilva who helmed Wednesday’s Hot nights in 1988 and Saturday’s Wide says of the closing with a laugh: “I was nowhere near the place; it was nothing to do with me.”

Anthony Wilson subsequently went on Northwest Tonight to confirm the closure. Dave remembers the moment well. “When it was clear it was not going to reopen I remember the interviewer said there was talk of turning it into a museum. Tony said: ‘No way should it be a museum, it’s had its moment, it’s had its time, it’s made a difference.’”

But it wasn’t over. The Haçienda must be re-built (to twist a Situationist phrase its name was derived from), though not on a corner of Whitworth Street West. There was a legacy to keep alive. Haslam: “I feel like I can understand Tony’s point – it had its moment; let’s all try and move on. But it’s not quite how it’s turned out. The club is more well-known now than it was when it was open.”

Since the club’s closure the club’s mythology has been furthered in film with 2002’s ‘24 Hour Party People’, Peter Hook’s book ‘How Not to Run a Club’ and documented in ‘Do You Own the Dancefloor?’. Hook – who owns the name and trademark – has steered the club’s brand via the much-copied Haçienda Classical events, and staging huge nights at Manchester’s Warehouse Project and London’s Tobacco Dock.

Jon: “Those were the halcyon days of The Haçienda, absolutely, I’d actually say to ‘91 because I left then (laughs).

Dave: “For the first few years it was open (from 1982) it felt more like a musical, cultural project. There’s something lovely about those early days when the programming was based on a few people’s whims. There was an innocence about it which I liked. It was great to be around in ’86 and ’87 because nothing was defined. It wasn’t like The Haçienda is ‘this kind of a club’. It was random, daft and creative. Obviously once ’88, ’89 started kicking in then it became more defined.” Jon: “I absolutely agree, there was also a loss of diversity. It became less diverse in terms of gender to an extent and sexual orientation – it became whiteified. In 1987 Friday was Black kids from Moss Side doing jazz funk dancing to T-Coy’s ‘Cariño’.”

Jon: “I failed to get to it because I was too hungover in Stoke. (Mike) Pickering and (Graeme) Park rang me: ‘Where the fuck are you?’. I ended up going for dinner with New Order and Rob (Gretton) afterwards.”

Jon: “I did but I don’t think I was in a position to buy anything at the time. I was freshly divorced and going through a whole load of financial nightmares.”

Jon: “I can’t believe I didn’t steal one of the bollards when I could have, because there was a pile of them. It was just like my loyalty to Rob, I thought: ‘Best not’, you know?” Dave: “I bought four bricks, three of which I gave away as Christmas presents. I wrapped them up and put them under somebody’s tree.” Jon: “Oh, I had a brick, I was given a brick. I gave that away. The bricks were only a couple of years old after a refurb anyway.” Dave: “When you think of all the memorabilia we could’ve laid our hands on over the years. I mean, when I talk about innocence, the idea at the end of the 80s that anyone would go in to video or photograph the club or keep the flyers… Jon: “I had posters for New Year’s Eve one particular year, I used them for wrapping paper for Christmas presents. Now they sell for £300 each.” Dave: “What I liked about the auction and the film ‘Do You Own the Dancefloor?’ [the 2015 film documenting the auction] is that idea that everybody takes a piece of their favourite club to wherever they feel and really cherishes it. That’s how it should be, it becomes part of their life. It’s a representation that The Haçienda never belonged to any one person, it belonged to those thousands of people. Nobody really owns The Haçienda now and everybody has their own idea of what it is.”

Jon: “He’s got it flat packed. I think someone else paid for it in the end not Bobby. He was living in my apartment at the time.”

Jon: “I did by accident. Me and Dave were supposed to play together (in a club scene) and then Graeme and Mike muscled in. But then when Steve Coogan makes that announcement that the club is closing I’m right next to him. So, I’m in it for a microsecond but I’m there because Mike was at the bar and he said: ‘Can you go and DJ for me using my records?’ So I went up there and – bang! – they all walked in and started filming.” Dave: “I think Mike was the one who missed out the most because there was somebody playing Mike. There was an actor who was cast as Mike. And he was very un-Mike. He was mis-cast. Mike was really not that impressed.” Jon: “I think there was a scene where he met with Rob. They were all going to a Manchester City match and they were running down the street and both dived over a hedge and that’s where they met.” Dave: “But the Pickering character got taken out.”

Dave: “Well, I was lucky enough to get involved a little bit in the run up to it. I had quite a lot of meetings with [the director] Michael Winterbottom and the team about the music for the whole film. Martin Moscrop [A Certain Ratio] and I had a little bit of say in that, just to get it as authentic as we could but they were stuck with the budget so they weren’t able to get the tracks they wanted. Which is why there is one ACR track in there. So, I kind of knew how it was going to look and so I put them in touch with the original lighting guy so that we could have some of the original lighting. Mike confessed to feeling the wobbliest when he walked in.” Jon: “I burst into tears. I walked into the set and, it wasn’t quite right but it was just… clearly I obviously knew this view, so, so well from years of playing there or being a punter or whatever and it was just… I just burst into tears. It was our night of closure.” Dave: “It felt like the last night that we never had. I helped get all the extras in and I had to send them all a letter saying don’t dress like a cliché and just be aware that it will stop and start while they film. But Michael and his people loved it so much that they just let it roll.” Jon: “There was unfortunately rather a lot of beanie hats which we never really saw in The Haçienda. The fishermen around here went hatless for months afterwards.” Dave: “At least it was a fairly young audience, not just all our mates.”

Dave: “The film felt right, though it wasn’t historically accurate.” Jon: “I spoke to Tony about it because I didn’t really enjoy it. He said: ‘Well you’re too close to me, Jon, to enjoy it’. I get the humour, but I thought it was quite rough on Tony. I’ve only seen it a couple of times since then.” Dave: If you Google image Haçienda nightclub, a lot of the first 50 images are actually stills from the film.”

Jon: “I refused to. I told Peter at the time. I said I’ve had enough and I’d lived it, so no I haven’t read it.” Dave: “I went into Waterstones and looked myself up in the Index. And there was a paragraph about me and my history with The Haçienda. I resigned once and got sacked once and reinstated three times. A paragraph about me resigning was so far from the truth, I just thought well if that’s a mark of what the rest of the book is like then I’ll leave it. I remember somebody sending me a link to the book when it was commercially successful and it was riding high in the fiction charts. That is about right.”

Jon: “There was a bit of a debacle with the 40th birthday in the car park this year and the vitriol that was spewed. That was an issue with the Council and I don’t really think it falls at The Haçienda’s door. But this idea that it was continuing this notion that the club was chaotic. We put on great Order thing. In the years since Hooky has run the Haçienda brand I’ve done lots of stuff with New Order and unfortunately I think in that relationship you are forced – certainly by Hooky – to choose. And I feel very comfortable with my choice. I always look at the line-ups, of course I do, there’s a part of me that would love to go and I’d love to play. But like I say it’s just things have conspired and events have happened and I’m not going to. I can be jaded and cynical but I can also acknowledge that it’s amazing to be a participant of something that 40 years later people find intriguing or if you’re lucky, inspiring.” Jon: “Absolutely, I’ve come across kids in their late-teens, early-20s at gigs and they’re asking me questions about the Wet party (a night in 1988 held in a swimming baths) and because that’s one of the few things you can actually watch on YouTube, they’re just absolutely obsessed. You get met at the stage by really nervous teenagers wanting to ask you all about Factory Records.”

Jon: “DJ culture really arrived during that period and The Haçienda was quite central to that. There was an excitement in the air. It was exhilarating – the collision of certain chemicals, certain music and a certain dancefloor. It was scary to walk around there, it wasn’t scary because of the violence, it was scary because you just didn’t know what was going on. People just losing their minds to the music.” Dave: “I don’t think there’s a way of describing it, you know, again because it went through so many different phases but certainly in that golden period it was absolute euphoria. I mean I remember feeling the audience’s positivity and reaction to the music almost physically as a DJ. Previously you could tell they were appreciating what we were playing, but in that era it was almost a physical thing, you were in the DJ booth feeling this positivity and it was tangible and the sweat would rise.”

nights and did fantastic birthday parties with funfairs and all this kind of stuff nobody had ever seen this before. So, I don’t understand where this comes from. I think in terms of the management, there was a lot of jobs that really could have been done by one person. A lot of money was wasted – there were rumours that they didn’t make any money even when it was absolutely rammed.” Dave: “It was always ready at 9 o’clock to open. Everything was there and I never had an issue with the sound, no one ever booked guest DJs without telling me and I got paid every week.”

Jon: “I’ve never actually watched Haçienda Classical. But apparently they do a fantastic job. You can understand it’s a big cash cow for them, I understand that and good luck to them.”

Jon: “It was in two parts (an afternoon event and a night-time one). The second part I just thought was fantastic and it was emotional. I really enjoyed it.” Dave: “I don’t get invited. I mean the other underlying issue is the whole Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner New DISCO_POGO_171

In a meta moment I took the bollard with me to a 2017 screening of ‘Do You Own the Dancefloor?’ in King’s Cross. The Haçienda’s architect Ben Kelly and DJ Graham Park were appearing after the film and I wanted them to sign my artefact. The film documents why people bought what they did at the auction and what they did with it.

One of The Haçienda poster and flyer designers, Trevor Johnson, has four bollards signposting the lettuce in his allotment. Peter Hook turned some of the dancefloor planks into bass guitars. My favourite part of this endearing documentary are the friends who purchased these hulking metal emergency exit doors. No one really mentions these when they think wistfully back to Ben Kelly’s ground breaking design, they didn’t even feature his black and yellow stripes. But to these friends – under-age at the club’s peak – they meant the world as each weekend they would bang on the doors at a certain point in the night and there was a chap on the other side who would let them in for a fiver. From there they would enter this epoch-making wonderland of tunes, sweat and beers (cans of Breaker lager, not sure anyone has drunk this since - or before for that matter).

I approached Kelly before the film in the bar and unsheathed my bollard from a black bin bag and handed him a Sharpie pen. His friend stopped him for a moment and cautioned: ‘How do you know it’s real?’ So I told him my story about Anthony Wilson guiding me and Paul through the club one last time, which he seemed to believe. He signed one of the white parts. Graham Park signed it without question after the screening and I now have Haslam and Dasilva’s inked on following this interview. Mike Pickering, the DJ I danced to the most back in 89-91 when I used to go nearly every week is next on my list.

After he had signed it, Ben Kelly asked if he could buy the bollard from me. As with Sasha 20 years previously I declined. The club still seems to have a hold over everyone, even the man who laid out its first plans 40 years ago…

Haslam and Dasilva signing the author’s bollard.