The Haçienda by Peter Hook Page B

King, were ‘a hairstyle exhibition’. ‘There can’t be too many clubs where men wear dark overcoats well into June,’ he added.
    At least they were coming in. A gig by Culture Club in 1982 had kick-started a successful Saturday night, ushering in a trendy crowd who danced to Heaven 17, ABC and Soul Sonic Force. Even so, the numbers still weren’t enough. Plus, it wasn’t quite the sort of clientele Factory had been hoping to attract.
    ‘There is nobody on Earth who loathes Simple Minds as much as me,’ moaned Tony Wilson to the writer Mick Middles following a gig by the band. ‘I’m offended by this crap, by the fact that it is taking place in our club, and that this is our fullest night to date. If this is really what the Manchester public want, then we have been completely wasting our time. Still, I’m happy to let this night subsidize a few more important evenings ... ’
    The truth was, however, that the gig had still only been half-full. Simple Minds hadn’t done much subsidizing at all.
    Which meant that not only was the club failing to deliver financially, but also that it wasn’t satisfying the aim of being more about the music than the fashion,of being somewhere for Factory and their friends to hang out, wearing what they wanted. Instead, it was a bit ‘trendy’, in inverted commas. Plus the Friday night still hadn’t sufficiently made its mark.
    All that was about to change thanks to Pickering. That year he’d visited New York with his band, Quando Quango. The DJ and then-boyfriend of Madonna Mark Kamins had remixed their ‘Love Tempo’, which had in turn been played by legendary Paradise Garage DJ Larry Levan.As a result, Quando Quango were asked to play a live PA at the Garage. Enjoying the New York nightlife, Pickering also visited Danceteria, Fun House and the Loft. Like New Order, he experienced a musical epiphany.
    At the Danceteria Pickering saw Kamins mix electro such as Man Parrish with indie records. Back home this just wasn’t done. Meanwhile, at the Paradise Garage, a place Pickering later described as ‘heaven’, Rob Gretton told him, ‘This is it. This is what we’ve got to do. This is what our club should be like.’
    Here was a club where the emphasis was very much on music and people – alcohol wasn’t even served – and in contrast to DJs back home, there was no use of the microphone. In fact, the DJs were mixing. This was just the vibe Pickering wanted. To help create it he wanted to attract the black audience who were attending Legends back home. The white trendies in long dark overcoats would just have to get used to it, he reasoned.
    To achieve his aim, he first called on DJ Greg Wilson, who was then a mainstay at Legends. There Wilson was famous for having introduced Manchester to electro.
    A New York-based movement spearheaded by Afrika Bambaataa, electro was to provide the building blocks of techno and house on which the Haçienda’s name would be made. It was inspired by the emerging hip-hop movement, by the sleek, robotic rhythms of Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk, and by the distinctive noises produced by the Roland TR-808 drum machine. A cold, yet undeniably funky sound, its Mancunian appeal was obvious.
    And it was making Greg Wilson’s name at Legends. He’d done away with DJ banter and introduced mixing, packing the club out in the process. In the same month as the Haçienda opened in 1982, he appeared on Mike Shaft’s legendary Piccadilly Radio show, TCOB, playing electro and ushering in an era of mixes that inspired a generation of the city’s musicians and DJs (not least Gerald Simpson, a.k.a. A Guy Called Gerald, who fondly remembers rushing out to buy C90 cassettes in anticipation of their broadcast).
    Wilson had also appeared on Channel Four’s The Tube that February, demonstrating this new art of mixing to presenter Jools Holland. As a result of his appearance, the traditional white Factory crowd had begun tuning into his shows on Piccadilly.