What Manchester learned from The Haçienda – 20 years on from its closure Factory Records – the legendary independent record label responsible for the Madchester scene – ceased trading 25 years ago. Two […]

Factory Records – the legendary independent record label responsible for the Madchester scene – ceased trading 25 years ago.

Two decades ago this year, the iconic Haçienda nightclub shut its doors for the last time.

Jon Savage, historian and author of ‘The Haçienda Must Be Built’, describes it as “a grand experiment”.

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“It wasn’t about success, fame and money. It was about having an idea and doing it,” says Savage. “And if the idea was interesting and it wasn’t a complete disaster, then that was enough.”

“Never open a nightclub with your mates.” Peter Hook, Haçienda co-founder

While their inception in 1970s Manchester tells us volumes about the music, culture and ethos of the city at the time, their enduring, interlinked legacy can still be felt today.

Through four decades of music and mayhem, Factory, the Haçienda and the bands involved – from Joy Division to the Happy Mondays – have become interwoven with Manchester’s cultural history, and continue to shape its future.

The birth of Factory

In 1978, Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus organised a Friday night event at The Russell Club in Hulme, Manchester, which they named The Factory.

The night was similar in spirit to punk clubs Wilson had visited, a music scene spurred on by the now legendary 1976 Sex Pistols gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall.

Peter Saville’s poster for the Russell Club event was the start of the famous Factory artwork and cataloguing system, and became catalogue number FAC 1. Saville later became a director of Factory, as did music producer Martin Hannett.

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The successful club night led to the January 1979 release of 500 Factory Sampler double 7 inch EPs (FAC 2), featuring bands such as The Durutti Column, Cabaret Voltaire and Joy Division, and marking the beginning of Factory as a record label.

In June 1979, Factory released its first major recording – Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album. The band’s manager, Rob Gretton, became the company’s fifth partner shortly afterwards.

A small operation at first, the label was initially run from an office in Alan Erasmus’ apartment on Palatine Road in Didsbury, where it remained until it was relocated to an expensive office in Manchester city centre in 1990.

‘The Haçienda must be built’

In 1981, ideas for a Factory venue emerged.

In typical Factory style, the cost escalated to around £344,000 as the opening date of 21 May 1981 approached.

Taking the name from a Situationist quote by Ivan Chtcheglov, which stated “the hacienda must be built”, the new venue was given the Factory catalogue number FAC 51.

A large former steel warehouse on the corner of Whitworth Street West, the initial cost of the venue was estimated at £70,000, half of which would be paid by the label, and half by New Order.

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However, in typical Factory style, the cost escalated to around £344,000 as the opening date of 21 May 1981 approached (and continued to rise after this date), with New Order asked to sign personal guarantees along with Wilson, Gretton and Erasmus.

“It wasn’t about success, fame and money. It was about having an idea and doing it.” Jon Savage

In his book ‘How Not To Run A Club’, Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter Hook said the band “didn’t get too involved” with the worrying financial aspects to begin with.

“It would have been a bit mind-blowing to watch someone squander that much money when each of us lived on £20 a week,” writes Hook.

New Order’s Play at Home (a short film made in 1984) gives an amusing insight into the company’s unconventional ethos, complete with Tony Wilson being interviewed in the bath by New Order’s Gillian Gilbert.

“Tony Wilson once referred to Factory as a laboratory experiment in popular culture, which is substantially correct – and endlessly fascinating,” says James Nice, author of ‘Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records’.

“But I think he was more influenced by ‘Situationism’ and radical chic than some nebulous Mancunian attitude or ideal.”

‘Who’d remember the Titanic if it hadn’t struck an iceberg?’

Despite (and also as a result of) its owners’ anti-corporate, anarchic managerial approach, the venue had many notable successes, including Madonna’s first British TV appearance, the growth of dance music, the era of the DJ, and the explosion of Madchester.

“Without The Haçienda and the various disasters and tragedies, the story would be far less dramatic.” James Nice

In November 1989, the Happy Mondays, Stones Roses and Inspiral Carpets appeared on Top of the Pops, a defining moment of the Madchester phenomenon.

“All eyes were on Manchester,” notes Hook in his memoir, “and at the centre of it was the Haçienda.”

But the club also experienced huge financial losses due to running costs and tax issues, poor management decisions, the growing drug culture (people taking ecstasy didn’t spend money at the bar), and violent altercations between Manchester and Salford gangs leading to conflicts with the authorities.

Savage, a writer who arrived in Manchester in 1979 and DJ-ed at the club in the early days, believes things couldn’t have been done differently, however, because “the way that the decisions were made was one of the reasons it did so well.”

“If they hadn’t invested so heavily in property, Factory might have lasted longer, and with far less interpersonal friction,” says Nice.

“New Order might have stayed with the label.

“But without The Haçienda and the various disasters and tragedies, the story – and, thus, the legend – would be far less dramatic. Who’d remember the Titanic if it hadn’t struck an iceberg?”

Urban myths and Factory legends

Factory and the Haçienda have been the focus of many unreliable tales, but, as Nice points out, “the facts were always stranger than fiction anyway”.

“I suppose everyone’s favourite war story is the one that Factory lost money on each and every copy of Blue Monday sold,” says Nice.

“In truth, that only applied to the first pressing with the die-cut sleeve.”

Peter Hook’s memoir details another rather more unsavoury anecdote – that of ‘Haçienda trousers’, and nothing to do with the ‘baggy’ fashions of the time.

“Nobody had considered that for a club licensed to hold 1,200 people we’d need more than four toilets for the men and eight for the girls,” writes Hook.

“We let in 2,000 people, so the bogs overflowed all the time and everyone in the basement walked round ankle-deep in piss and shit.”

“Quite horrible, but it became a standing joke. ‘Haçienda trousers’, we called it. Everyone had to have them – or you weren’t a fully paid-up member of the Experience.”

A lasting legacy

Facing insurmountable debts, the Haçienda went into voluntary administration in May 1997, and finally closed the following month.

“In the end it wasn’t the gangs, the drugs or the violence that brought down the Haçienda,” writes Hook. “It was a bunch of people doing sums.”

Hook says the one thing readers should learn from his memoir is “never open a nightclub with your mates”.

The club was demolished in 2002, and the site is now home to the Haçienda Apartments.

Its musical and cultural legacy has had a lasting impact, however, and can been seen in subsequent bands and clubs over the years, as well as films such as 24 Hour Party People, Control and Grant Gee’s documentary Joy Division, written by Savage.

Speaking at a recent screening of his film at HOME, Gee discussed how Joy Division, New Order and Factory became bound up with Manchester and its regeneration.

“When the film was released in 2008, I thought Manchester would suffer during the financial crash,” says Gee.

“But coming here today and seeing the new buildings, the Haçienda Apartments and the new Factory arts centre coming, it’s actually gone up a gear, not down.

“The ‘Factoryisation’ of the city.”

The original companies, bands, people and buildings may no longer all be with us, but as Peter Hook observed, “the music and the spirit live on”.