August 3, 2023 • 32 mins
The Haçienda, a nightclub run by the record label behind Joy Division and New Order, was a once-in-a-generation club that came to define British northern youth culture. It belonged to the young people of Manchester and during the rise of ecstasy, it pioneered acid-house music and inspired a generation of musicians, designers and artists in the midst of The Second Summer Of Love.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You don't realize you're stepping into a new era until
you're already in it, until you look up and realize
that everyone is dressed differently, the faces on magazine covers
have changed, and the headlines are clinging on to something else.
But when a new sound arrives, you can feel it.
You can feel it in the way it moves the
(00:22):
pulsing bodies on the dance floor and fills your brain
with unexpected new rhythms and melodies. And when acid house
started to take over the Manchester music scene, Sasha Lord
definitely felt it.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Once you'd walked into that nightclub and you heard it
on the sound system and I was talking about house music.
It blew at one's mind's way.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Sasha grew up in the British town of Manchester during
the eighties. He was a curious kid who was always
looking outside his window and there was one thing that
always caught his eye, a rounded, red brick building in
the center of the city.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
I remember being taken to school by my dad in
the mornings and I was used to look at that building.
Room were at the traffic lights because it used to
sell yachts and boats.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
But the yachts and boats didn't quite fit in in
Manchester because while Manchester was home to a beautiful canal,
it wasn't an affluent city. When Sasha was a teenager,
Manchester was going through one of its toughest times in
the eighties. Unemployment was soaring and there was a wave
of protests and riots pushing back against the cuts to
(01:32):
government spending.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
At that period, Manchester was known as Madchester.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yep, Manchester. Manchester took that energy and put it into
its music. At first, it was a scene dominated by
local indie rock bands like The Stone Roses and even
acts that I love like Happy Mondays and New Order
music that made up the soundtrack of Sasha's early teens.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
It was all about guitar music. At the age of seventeen,
I was going to, you know, indie clubs in Manchester,
but the cool kids were talking about this thing called
the Hassienda.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Things were about to change, and.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I remember saying to one of my friends, Lord, you
know we need to go.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Remember that yacht shop that Sasha used to look at
on his way to school, Well it wasn't a shop
for wealthy people looking to buy yachts anymore. It had
become an abandoned warehouse, and then a club, a safe haven,
the kind of club that's name spread in whispers until
all of a sudden everyone wanted to get in because
(02:52):
something new was happening at the Hacienda. Something was shifting
in Manchester, and Sasha wanted to be at the heart
of it. So, in a classic teenage coming of age moment,
he and his friends traveled into the city to catch
a glimpse of what was happening inside. But things didn't
quite go according to plan.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
So the two weeks leading up to it were getting
really excited, and the first night, like an idiot, like
such naive idiots, a que for an hour, turned up
on the front door there wearing my dad's suits with
his shirt and his tie, thinking, you know, this is
like the cool club to get into, and security just
looked at me and laughed at me and said, you know,
it's not a chance. And we looked at the que
(03:32):
and everyone's just in jeans and T shirts.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
But Sasha was determined to get a taste of what
was happening at the Hacienda, so we.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Went back the full week, but this time we were
wearing jeans t shirts, you know, just like normal people,
and I remember we saw something that we'd never ever
experienced before in our entire lives.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
There was a lot of erratic arm movement and this
pumping and jumping around, which was a sharp contrast to
the laid back head nodding of early eighties indie rock.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
We now know it is acid house dancing. And we
both walked at each other and was like, what is
going on here? And you know, we're not going to
do this dance, But within half an hour we were
both on the dance floor doing that ridiculous dance. And
it was the energy, the power within that space that
made us do that.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
It was the music that pulled Sasha completely in.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Once you'd walked into that nightclub and you heard it
on the sound system and I'm talking about house music,
it blew everyone's minds With.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
That night, Sasha stepped into the Hacienda and into a
new era. The music felt richer, the colors burned brighter,
and the people around him danced to the new sound
in a state of your euphoria.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
It was the first time we've seen the audience. The
crowd praised the DJ, honor the DJ. You know, the
DJ was raised MASSI under and literally everyone was looking
up at this one. It was like almost a god.
That DJ was a god.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
From London Audio iHeartRadio and executive producer Paris Hilton. This
is the History of the World's Greatest Nightclubs, a twelve
part podcast about the iconic venues and people that revolutionized
how we party. Some of the world's most legendary nightclubs
were known for the unique community they welcomed, others for
(05:47):
the cultural movements they started, and some for the musicians
and DJs they introduced to the world. The best nightclubs
champion new music, transform lives, and provide an escape from
life's pressures. One more thing. This is the history of
some of the world's greatest nightclubs. Not a ranking of
(06:07):
every club in the world. It's an exploration of the spaces,
people and club nights that made a lasting impact on
nightlife and music. Today. I'm your host, Altrinate. I'm a singer, songwriter,
musician and I found my purpose in club culture. This
is Episode five. The Hacienda in Manchester, UK. The Hacienda
(06:31):
was a club that belonged to Manchester's youth. It became
a sort of cathedral where they could belong and feel
connected to a higher power. A place where house music
transformed into UK acid house during the Rise of Ecstasy.
It inspired a generation of indie rock and house musicians,
and influenced fashion design and culture. Before Manchester bev came
(07:00):
the Manchester of today. A city known for its legendary
bands and world class soccer teams, it was known for
its thriving cotton industry. Manchester was filled with mills and
factories that exported the fluff all around the world. In fact,
during its golden age, the city was given the nickname Cottonopolis.
But when de industrialization happened in the twentieth century, mills,
(07:24):
mines and factories shut down and within a few decades
dozens of northern communities had lost their livelihoods.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
It was dark. Time's truthfully really quite dark. That's unemployment.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
That's aniefe Akinola. He lived in Manchester in the eighties.
There had always been a separation between the North and
South of England, but de industrialization made things worse. The
country became divided in two, the affluent South and what
felt like the dark, gloomy, forgotten North.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Well, there was still a positivity within the state, which
is our industrial working class thing.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
You know, despite everything they'd gone through, there was a
certain resilience in the North of England and Mancunians. People
from Manchester had a different attitude than their southern cousins.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I think in Manchester, when you speak on something and
you love it, it has to have super credibility. I
would say in London it can be superficial. You have
a lot of yes people driving an industry that has
to entertain, so a lot of people feel better than
the actual And that's one thing about Mancunians. We say something.
(08:34):
We don't blag, we don't lie, we don't do the
hype stuff, we don't do the self gratification, we don't
do the ego thing.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Part of that nobs no ego approach came from the
city's working class culture, but part of it also came
from the rain.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Rains humbling though in it no one looks good in
the rain, so it does humbles, you know what I mean,
your dreads, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
It's humbling and that shoulder shrugging. No one looks good
in the rain. Attitude led into the music Factory. Records,
a dominant record label, was paving the way culturally. It
was founded by Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus. Tony Wilson
was larger than life. He could do it all. He
(09:16):
was a journalist and then went on to manage a
number of local bands and musicians, and his innate vision
helped him to spot potential.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Tony Wilson and He's infit of wisdom somehow saw what
we all now see.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Tony and Allen's vision helped Factory Records become home to
some of the most important indie and rock bands of
its time, including Joy Division and New Order, who I'm
also a huge fan of. By the early eighties, Factory
Records had established a name for itself and Tony was
ready for a new challenge, so he decided to tap
(09:51):
into the night life scene and create a club that
would become the epicenter of Manchester youth culture. By that point,
Manchester was made up of old rundown warehouses and mills,
abandoned reminders of what the city had lost. So in
a seat of empty buildings, Factory Records went searching for
(10:12):
a glimmer of hope until they found the venue. Here's
the architect Ben Kelly on that space on Witweth.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Street, Western Manchester, big big, old rundown kind of warehouse
space that had been used as a yachting showroom and
a repair workshop for yachts.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
So they set out to transform the old yacht showroom
into a place where people could party. And Ben was
the perfect designer for the job because Tony wanted to
work with an architect who understood the Manchester way. Together,
they wanted to create something that felt like the city
they loved. They didn't care about flashy clubs. Here's Tony
(10:58):
Wilson back in nineteen eighty three, if you.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
Drive through Manchester, if you walked into a space that
was anything else that had velveteen sort of sofas, sort
of the renovated staircase approach of the Camden Palace, saying, oh,
you're not in Manchester anymore, but here you're still in Manchester.
But the industrial shapes, the angular lines, the steel is
and can be beautiful.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
So Ben Kelly redesigned the venue to highlight its industrial beauty.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Well, the first thing that I decided was there would
be no big sign on the front of the building.
It would be almost anonymous and the only thing that
announced its presence to the street was this little granite
handletter calf plat, which was about twelve inches long.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
He preserved the structure of the warehouse but brought it
to life with color. Inside the walls were blue. Scattered
throughout the club were structural columns covered in black and
yellow stripes. He wanted people to feel like they were
going on a journey when they walked inside, like they
were stepping into an experience they'd never had before.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
You go down some steps. I had these, but I
called tall monolithic slabs set at the threshold between the
lower height space and the taller made space, which for
me was a kind of reference to Stellic Kubrick filed
two thousand and one, A space ouditive where there is
this weird monolithic slab that the apes congregate around. And
(12:26):
it was as if all knowledge and a power comes
from this monolithic slab.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
There was something special in the slabs and stripes and
wide empty spaces. When night fell and the dance floor
began to fill up, you could feel the whisper of
something intangible in the atmosphere. As people sang, danced and partied.
They looked up. The DJ stood on an elevated stage
and the sounds coming from the speakers felt spiritual. At
(12:54):
the Hacienda. That higher power was the music. Here's Anief again.
He was originally an MC at the club before becoming
a DJ.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
There's two Hacienders, This Hassiender Free nineteen eighty eight and
then it hassi Under eighty eight onwards. Right. If you're
talking about the Haciender from eighty three up to eighty eight,
that was exposing lots of art, lots of culture.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Before eighty eight, the Hacienda was known for playing indie rock.
They attracted crowds with performances from bands like The Smith's,
Happy Mondays and Primal Scream. But the Hacienda was also
a home for creatives. They let artists and students use
the space to make art, and it became a place
where people could show off their latest creations.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
You'd find cars were chopped into on the dance floor,
or the be a crucifix because someone had done a
play there.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
You never knew what unique piece of art, stylish new
outfit you might find in the Hacienda. And as the
club approached the late eighties, the music they played became
more unpredictable too. A shift was taking place in the
UK music.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Scene, so you had all these new genres coming through musically,
it was a really fertile time in this club.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
American rap music, hip hop and R and B were
making their way to the UK and changing club culture.
But there was one genre that really made a mark,
and that was house music.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
The first house records arrived in Manchester December nineteen eighty four,
out shot cost Spinning Records.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
The new sound was pioneered by house DJs in Chicago
like Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy, and that sound slowly
started to make its way across the UK. Britain was
becoming increasingly diverse, with more and more black communities in
the cities like London and Birmingham, but in Manchester the
clubs were mainly playing rock and mainstream pop music. At
(15:05):
the time. There wasn't really a home for house music
or any kind of music made by black people like Anife.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
It was crazy because we were going to clubs. I've
been going club since seventy nine and you got to
remember Manchester that black music wasn't played Thursday, Friday, Saturday night.
No chance, you weren't going out in Manchester's way of
black music.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
There were many reasons why Manchester clubs weren't really playing
Black pioneered music on the weekends, like racism, but Anieves
said that it was also because young black British people
didn't party in the same way that their white peers did.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Black kids didn't drink. We were economically viable. When you know,
if you're selling beer for that many a pie and
you make a lot of profit on it, it wasn't
you know, most of the black kids didn't drink beer.
So the pubs that owned the clubs says, right, we'll
give them the early week think, So we had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
So while the pubs gave house music the early week slot,
the founders of the Hacienda decided to respond differently.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Tony Wilson says he viewed that black music would be
the kind of mainstay of UK mainstream music. We have
mainstream pop music day and day out, and he said
this black music doesn't get a fair wat. I'm going
to give it a space and a window for it
to do its thing.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
So the Hacienda became one of the early British clubs
to champion the genre, with black DJs like Hugh and
Clark spinning the latest house tracks from the raised stage
in the clubs decorated with black and yellow lines. The
DJs at the Hacienda made it their sworn duty to
drive people to the dance floor to play songs that
would keep people on their feet, channel the energy of
(16:48):
the moment, and create an atmosphere that was almost spiritual
in nature.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
I remember, and this was pre drugs. I think you're
just so happy. A woman took all a closer and
just started dancing around the club, and I'm going, wow,
you know what I mean. If you can make people
feel that elated to music, that's powerful. Music tells stories,
and music helps to capture emotions and music and moments
(17:14):
in people's life, and you hope that you know you
are part of that mix.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
The energy in the room felt transcendental. Here's Ben again.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
And I remember standing on the balcony with Tony Wilson
and this head of steam was coming off the bodies
of people, maybe fifteen hundred people dancing down below, and
it's like a cloud, a cloud of steam above their
head and it was the most amazing sight. And they
were all the happiest people you could ever see. And
it was quite beautiful. Tony Wilson's described it as a cathedral.
(17:47):
He said that every city needs this cathedral.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
And Ma Hacienda became exactly that for young people across
the city. A cathedral, a place to feel part of
something much bigger than themselves, to experience a higher power.
But the higher power wasn't actually God, and the other
worldly Hayes bouncing off everyone's body wasn't a heavenly cloud.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
It was a steam coming off the bodies because they've
all been drinking water, because they're all taking ecstasy.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
By the early eighties, ecstasy had already become a common
party drug in America. It started to replace LSD, the
psychedelia of the seventies, and quickly rose to prominence in
the clubs and raves across the country. When the Hacienda
founders went to America, they saw a music opportunity.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Tony Wilson and Mike Pickrin had been over to La
they had seen this wonderful drug which I've never taken
a eco, ecstasy working, and they then came back and
then decided we're going to do acid house.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Ecstasy was making its way to the UK party scene,
and so Tony Wilson and the Hosenda decided to play
music that corresponded with the cultural shift. A new genre
of club music called acid house. Acid house came to
the UK in the late eighties and ushered in the
second Summer of Love. Here's a clip from a BBC
(19:17):
documentary called Summer of Rave nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
That summer is an amazing experience.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
It's an amazing year.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
It's a time to challenge convention, cast out the old
and bringing the meu and it's summertime.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
It's party time.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
The scorching summer of nineteen eighty nine was one long
party from beginning to end.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
It was a season of hedonism. Illegal underground raves popped
up across the country in wide open fields and old
abandoned warehouses. Young people stayed out all night, dancing, falling
in love and taking the newest drugs. And the soundtrack
to that summer was the pulsing sound of acid house.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
It's almost like nineteen sixties again, the hippie movement.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
The ecstasy distorted the dancer's senses and perception of space
and time. Some say the hit of dopamine made them
feel more energetic, and that the serotonin elevated them to
new emotional heights. The elation, they say was triggered by
the ecstasy, combined with the exuberance of house music, created
an otherworldly kind of atmosphere. The hacienda became a place
(20:28):
where people could escape, and it was filled with people
from all sorts of backgrounds.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
The crowd was completely mixed. It was probably fifty to
fifty male female. You know, it didn't matter whether you
were a student, where you're unemployed, whether you were a lawyer,
an architects, a postman, No one cared.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
And Manchester's ascid, how seen, came with its own unique
sense of style.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
At that time, it was baggy pants, so in the
old fifty shirt, baggy trousers, pair of robes and all
the When the acid came, it was stripped down to
a T shirt and bleached jeans and all salt.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
They were wearing brightly colored T shirts, blair jeans, and
baggy clothing that was easier to dance in, which was
particularly convenient for people dancing in the heat of ecstasy.
There's a video that Anife remembers watching from the late eighties.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
September twenty sixth, nineteen eighty six is the first footage
of black kids dancing to forty minutes of acid House. Right.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Remember, in the eighties, most of the pubs and clubs
in Manchester didn't cater to black people on the weekends.
The Hacienda had in part started playing house music to
give young black people a space to dance on the weekends,
and in turn, the black clubbers had given the Hacienda
a certain kind of credibility. It drew other young people
(21:49):
in and helped the club become popular.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
These kids were needed for three months to be kind
of what we call eye candy for those who were
milling around in them.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
But when acid House arrived, the Hacienda stopped feeling like
the safe space for young black people that it had
once been.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Then all of a sudden, you saw, like the blink
of an either, drugs arrived. Then week after week it
just went off. You know what I mean. This way
you can come into ecstasy, you hear this music and
you have a fantastic time, you know what I mean.
It's well documented when the drugs came, the black kids
left a hassiender. Now that's not to say black kids
didn't still go, but not in the numbers that they
(22:29):
used to you know what I mean. And then you've
got to remember Manchester is the biggest population of students,
so a minute the word got out that we had
this super club going on, the proliferation of students wanted
to come and party in Mansiter just went through the roof.
So the two kind of drove one another, as you know,
as a bit of a party capital.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Illegal raves and drug filled parties had been taking place
across the country in the late eighties and early nineties,
so it was only a matter of time before or
the police tried to get involved. But at first the
raivers were able to keep them at bay. Here's Sasha
Lord again.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I do remember actually a really fun moment when the
police did not really understand about the music or what's
going on, but they knew something was happening. In n Asienda.
They used to turn up on convoy with the big
fluorescent jackets and they'd walk through the line through the crowd,
and they hated it because everybody would stand behind him
(23:29):
and do the conga, and that's what we used to
do to get them out quick. It was just like
one massive congruer of two thousand people following the police.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
But eventually the drugs caught up with them. There were
several shootings inside and outside of the club. In nineteen
eighty nine, the Second Summer of Love, a sixteen year
old girl, Clear Layton, was one of the first people
in the UK to die from an adverse reaction to ecstasy,
(23:58):
which she had taken at the Hassea. The club was
beginning to attract more negative attention, and their relationship with
the police and licensing authorities became increasingly tense.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Its success was its downfall in terms of the culture
that it brought in. You know, people wanted to a
parasitic existence of all if people wanted in drugs and such.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
But the thing that really took the Hacienda down wasn't
crime or the physical effects that ecstasy had on its ravers.
It was the effect that drugs had on the Hacienda's profits.
The acid house they played created a culture where people
took drugs instead of drinking alcohol, and because people weren't
buying alcohol, the Hacienda wasn't breaking. Even the thing that
(24:45):
had made the club what it was became its demise.
In nineteen ninety seven, they lost their license and held
their very last party on June twenty eighth. Here's Tony
Wilson doing his closing speech inside the Hacienda on that
final night.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
The Hacienda is closing its doors as of today. It
is with the greatest reluctance that for the moment we're
turning the lights out on what.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Is for us a most important place.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
The Hacienda has been closed for twenty five years now,
but its legacy lives on. I need credits a lot
of his success to the nights he spent there.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Music's just kind of magical and is these captive moments.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
He went on to become a DJ, producer and rapper
with successful songs in the UK.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Yeah a Guy Calldro, which is one of the records
I ended up producing in nineteen eighty eight that went
on to be huge, massive house anthem.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
But the Hacienda didn't just influence music. Its unique industrial
design made of mark too. It's black colors, warehouse esthetic
and yellow and black stripes will go on to inspire
a generation of artists and designers.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
That project has resonated down the years, down the decades,
to many many people from different walks of life, I guess,
and it's found its way into popular culture into the
history of the modern world in a funny kind of
a way.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
That's Ben Kelly again, the man who designed the Hacienda.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
It's eats its way into my into my very being
in a kind of way. And it defined some kind
of a language, a design language, or a way of working,
a way of thinking about design. Other people have recognized
it in my work, and they've come to me at
different points in time asking me to do something or
(26:43):
wanted to reference something to do with the Hacienda.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And one of those people was Virgil Ablo, the designer
who found it Off White, and up until his untimely death,
was the artistic director of Louis Vautan.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
Virgil affected me maybe seven or eight years ago when
he started his Off White label and was keen to
collaborate one way or another. And I noticed the work
that Off White was producing and I had just lots
of stripes on garments. He made it clear to me
(27:20):
that the influence had come from the design of the
Haciender and the label off White. You know, it was massive,
influenced by the language that I developed for the Haciender.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
And so the two of them started working together.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
What came out of that was a fantastic series of
collaborations between myself and Virgil which grew and grew.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
They collaborated on projects like Offset, a mobile installation that
debuted at Miami's Art Basel. It became a runway fashion
show set and a home for DJs, live events and
art installations.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
That was an amazing opportunity. Those opportunities would not have
come along had it not been for that piece of work.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
In Manchester, in November of two thousand, bulldozers drove into
the old yacht showroom that once housed the Hacienda and
in a tail as old as time, it was replaced
(28:25):
by high end apartments. But even though the building is gone,
for Sasha, the club had a lifelong impact.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
What is so interesting now when you look back is
a lot of those key people that work for the
Hassienda have gone on to create some pretty spectacular careers.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
The club was at the forefront of youth culture and
helped kickstart Manchester's regeneration. The night Sasha arrived at the
club wearing one of his dad's suits altered the trajectory
of his life.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
I don't know what happened that night, but it is
a night as I'll never forget and it most definitely
changed the course of my lifetime.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
He started hosting his own party events at the Hacienda
for students and became a promoter in the Manchester club scene.
Sasha went on to start Park Life, one of the
biggest musical festivals in the UK, which attracts eighty thousand
people every year with recent headliners like Tyler the Creator
and Megan B. Stallion. You can tell Sasha is proud
(29:26):
when I talk to him over a zoom. You could
feel it and you can definitely see it.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
You know, if you look behind me now, there's a
lot of life post of there. If I hadn't gone
through those doors and the Christinas PARSI would happen, probably
not so, you know, the Hassienda owes a lot Today.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Sasha is Manchester's first ever nighttime economy advisor. He works
with the government to advocate for clubs and venues across
the city. The Hacienda still inspires him today.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
We need to really celebrate the forty years of Basien.
I think for the first time possibly in the UK.
You know, the local authorities realize actually how much tourism
and night cook can bring in because people were traveling
from all over the world to want to experience this.
It wasn't just a Manchester think and I think that's
(30:16):
why we get to everything's like warehouse projects and part life.
It was eighty hours to part of where's project clust
is ten thousand a night. Because the council really understands
the tourism and the money that it brings in in
terms of hotels, transports, restaurants, new outfits. There's a whole
of cology around and they've got that and we're really
(30:37):
lucky in Manchester we've got that support.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
When the Hacienda opened its doors in nineteen eighty two,
it was the start of a new era. The Rundown
Yacht Showroom became the center of the city's nightlife and
one of the most important landmarks in the UK acid
house scene. It wasn't just a club during its peak,
felt like a cathedral for young people of the city,
(31:03):
a home for those who felt like they'd been left behind.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
I think he gave people the sense of nothing as impossible.
You know, we almost the forgotten, the forgotten generation, the
forgotten people, but actually there is opportunity there and it
gave us that belief and it pushed us further.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
In the next episode, we're heading over to the City
of Lights, Paris to go and party with some of
the most iconic musicians, actors and models in the world
as we spend the night at the star studied Parisian
club Levanduche. The History of the World's Greatest Nightclubs is
produced by Neon Hummedia for London Audio and iHeartRadio for
(31:51):
London Audio. Our executive producers are Paris Hilton, Bruce Robertson
and Bruce gersh The executive producer for Neon Humm is Jonathan.
Our producer is Rufeiro, Faith Masarua. Navani Otero and Liz
Sanchez are our associate producers. Our series producer is Crystal
Genesis and our editor is Stephanie Serrano. Samantha Allison is
(32:16):
our production manager and Alexis Martinez is our production coordinator.
This episode was written by Rufiro, Faith Masarua and fact
checked by Sarah Avery. Theme and original music by Asha Avanovich.
Our sound design engineers are Sam There and Josh Han.
I'm your host, Ultrinate and we'll see you next time
(32:38):
on the History of the World's Greatest nightclubs,
You don't realize you're stepping into a new era until
you're already in it, until you look up and realize
that everyone is dressed differently, the faces on magazine covers
have changed, and the headlines are clinging on to something else.
But when a new sound arrives, you can feel it.
You can feel it in the way it moves the
(00:22):
pulsing bodies on the dance floor and fills your brain
with unexpected new rhythms and melodies. And when acid house
started to take over the Manchester music scene, Sasha Lord
definitely felt it.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Once you'd walked into that nightclub and you heard it
on the sound system and I was talking about house music.
It blew at one's mind's way.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Sasha grew up in the British town of Manchester during
the eighties. He was a curious kid who was always
looking outside his window and there was one thing that
always caught his eye, a rounded, red brick building in
the center of the city.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
I remember being taken to school by my dad in
the mornings and I was used to look at that building.
Room were at the traffic lights because it used to
sell yachts and boats.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
But the yachts and boats didn't quite fit in in
Manchester because while Manchester was home to a beautiful canal,
it wasn't an affluent city. When Sasha was a teenager,
Manchester was going through one of its toughest times in
the eighties. Unemployment was soaring and there was a wave
of protests and riots pushing back against the cuts to
(01:32):
government spending.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
At that period, Manchester was known as Madchester.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yep, Manchester. Manchester took that energy and put it into
its music. At first, it was a scene dominated by
local indie rock bands like The Stone Roses and even
acts that I love like Happy Mondays and New Order
music that made up the soundtrack of Sasha's early teens.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
It was all about guitar music. At the age of seventeen,
I was going to, you know, indie clubs in Manchester,
but the cool kids were talking about this thing called
the Hassienda.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Things were about to change, and.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I remember saying to one of my friends, Lord, you
know we need to go.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Remember that yacht shop that Sasha used to look at
on his way to school, Well it wasn't a shop
for wealthy people looking to buy yachts anymore. It had
become an abandoned warehouse, and then a club, a safe haven,
the kind of club that's name spread in whispers until
all of a sudden everyone wanted to get in because
(02:52):
something new was happening at the Hacienda. Something was shifting
in Manchester, and Sasha wanted to be at the heart
of it. So, in a classic teenage coming of age moment,
he and his friends traveled into the city to catch
a glimpse of what was happening inside. But things didn't
quite go according to plan.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
So the two weeks leading up to it were getting
really excited, and the first night, like an idiot, like
such naive idiots, a que for an hour, turned up
on the front door there wearing my dad's suits with
his shirt and his tie, thinking, you know, this is
like the cool club to get into, and security just
looked at me and laughed at me and said, you know,
it's not a chance. And we looked at the que
(03:32):
and everyone's just in jeans and T shirts.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
But Sasha was determined to get a taste of what
was happening at the Hacienda, so we.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Went back the full week, but this time we were
wearing jeans t shirts, you know, just like normal people,
and I remember we saw something that we'd never ever
experienced before in our entire lives.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
There was a lot of erratic arm movement and this
pumping and jumping around, which was a sharp contrast to
the laid back head nodding of early eighties indie rock.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
We now know it is acid house dancing. And we
both walked at each other and was like, what is
going on here? And you know, we're not going to
do this dance, But within half an hour we were
both on the dance floor doing that ridiculous dance. And
it was the energy, the power within that space that
made us do that.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
It was the music that pulled Sasha completely in.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Once you'd walked into that nightclub and you heard it
on the sound system and I'm talking about house music,
it blew everyone's minds With.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
That night, Sasha stepped into the Hacienda and into a
new era. The music felt richer, the colors burned brighter,
and the people around him danced to the new sound
in a state of your euphoria.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
It was the first time we've seen the audience. The
crowd praised the DJ, honor the DJ. You know, the
DJ was raised MASSI under and literally everyone was looking
up at this one. It was like almost a god.
That DJ was a god.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
From London Audio iHeartRadio and executive producer Paris Hilton. This
is the History of the World's Greatest Nightclubs, a twelve
part podcast about the iconic venues and people that revolutionized
how we party. Some of the world's most legendary nightclubs
were known for the unique community they welcomed, others for
(05:47):
the cultural movements they started, and some for the musicians
and DJs they introduced to the world. The best nightclubs
champion new music, transform lives, and provide an escape from
life's pressures. One more thing. This is the history of
some of the world's greatest nightclubs. Not a ranking of
(06:07):
every club in the world. It's an exploration of the spaces,
people and club nights that made a lasting impact on
nightlife and music. Today. I'm your host, Altrinate. I'm a singer, songwriter,
musician and I found my purpose in club culture. This
is Episode five. The Hacienda in Manchester, UK. The Hacienda
(06:31):
was a club that belonged to Manchester's youth. It became
a sort of cathedral where they could belong and feel
connected to a higher power. A place where house music
transformed into UK acid house during the Rise of Ecstasy.
It inspired a generation of indie rock and house musicians,
and influenced fashion design and culture. Before Manchester bev came
(07:00):
the Manchester of today. A city known for its legendary
bands and world class soccer teams, it was known for
its thriving cotton industry. Manchester was filled with mills and
factories that exported the fluff all around the world. In fact,
during its golden age, the city was given the nickname Cottonopolis.
But when de industrialization happened in the twentieth century, mills,
(07:24):
mines and factories shut down and within a few decades
dozens of northern communities had lost their livelihoods.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
It was dark. Time's truthfully really quite dark. That's unemployment.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
That's aniefe Akinola. He lived in Manchester in the eighties.
There had always been a separation between the North and
South of England, but de industrialization made things worse. The
country became divided in two, the affluent South and what
felt like the dark, gloomy, forgotten North.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Well, there was still a positivity within the state, which
is our industrial working class thing.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
You know, despite everything they'd gone through, there was a
certain resilience in the North of England and Mancunians. People
from Manchester had a different attitude than their southern cousins.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I think in Manchester, when you speak on something and
you love it, it has to have super credibility. I
would say in London it can be superficial. You have
a lot of yes people driving an industry that has
to entertain, so a lot of people feel better than
the actual And that's one thing about Mancunians. We say something.
(08:34):
We don't blag, we don't lie, we don't do the
hype stuff, we don't do the self gratification, we don't
do the ego thing.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Part of that nobs no ego approach came from the
city's working class culture, but part of it also came
from the rain.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Rains humbling though in it no one looks good in
the rain, so it does humbles, you know what I mean,
your dreads, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
It's humbling and that shoulder shrugging. No one looks good
in the rain. Attitude led into the music Factory. Records,
a dominant record label, was paving the way culturally. It
was founded by Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus. Tony Wilson
was larger than life. He could do it all. He
(09:16):
was a journalist and then went on to manage a
number of local bands and musicians, and his innate vision
helped him to spot potential.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Tony Wilson and He's infit of wisdom somehow saw what
we all now see.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Tony and Allen's vision helped Factory Records become home to
some of the most important indie and rock bands of
its time, including Joy Division and New Order, who I'm
also a huge fan of. By the early eighties, Factory
Records had established a name for itself and Tony was
ready for a new challenge, so he decided to tap
(09:51):
into the night life scene and create a club that
would become the epicenter of Manchester youth culture. By that point,
Manchester was made up of old rundown warehouses and mills,
abandoned reminders of what the city had lost. So in
a seat of empty buildings, Factory Records went searching for
(10:12):
a glimmer of hope until they found the venue. Here's
the architect Ben Kelly on that space on Witweth.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Street, Western Manchester, big big, old rundown kind of warehouse
space that had been used as a yachting showroom and
a repair workshop for yachts.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
So they set out to transform the old yacht showroom
into a place where people could party. And Ben was
the perfect designer for the job because Tony wanted to
work with an architect who understood the Manchester way. Together,
they wanted to create something that felt like the city
they loved. They didn't care about flashy clubs. Here's Tony
(10:58):
Wilson back in nineteen eighty three, if you.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
Drive through Manchester, if you walked into a space that
was anything else that had velveteen sort of sofas, sort
of the renovated staircase approach of the Camden Palace, saying, oh,
you're not in Manchester anymore, but here you're still in Manchester.
But the industrial shapes, the angular lines, the steel is
and can be beautiful.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
So Ben Kelly redesigned the venue to highlight its industrial beauty.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Well, the first thing that I decided was there would
be no big sign on the front of the building.
It would be almost anonymous and the only thing that
announced its presence to the street was this little granite
handletter calf plat, which was about twelve inches long.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
He preserved the structure of the warehouse but brought it
to life with color. Inside the walls were blue. Scattered
throughout the club were structural columns covered in black and
yellow stripes. He wanted people to feel like they were
going on a journey when they walked inside, like they
were stepping into an experience they'd never had before.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
You go down some steps. I had these, but I
called tall monolithic slabs set at the threshold between the
lower height space and the taller made space, which for
me was a kind of reference to Stellic Kubrick filed
two thousand and one, A space ouditive where there is
this weird monolithic slab that the apes congregate around. And
(12:26):
it was as if all knowledge and a power comes
from this monolithic slab.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
There was something special in the slabs and stripes and
wide empty spaces. When night fell and the dance floor
began to fill up, you could feel the whisper of
something intangible in the atmosphere. As people sang, danced and partied.
They looked up. The DJ stood on an elevated stage
and the sounds coming from the speakers felt spiritual. At
(12:54):
the Hacienda. That higher power was the music. Here's Anief again.
He was originally an MC at the club before becoming
a DJ.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
There's two Hacienders, This Hassiender Free nineteen eighty eight and
then it hassi Under eighty eight onwards. Right. If you're
talking about the Haciender from eighty three up to eighty eight,
that was exposing lots of art, lots of culture.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Before eighty eight, the Hacienda was known for playing indie rock.
They attracted crowds with performances from bands like The Smith's,
Happy Mondays and Primal Scream. But the Hacienda was also
a home for creatives. They let artists and students use
the space to make art, and it became a place
where people could show off their latest creations.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
You'd find cars were chopped into on the dance floor,
or the be a crucifix because someone had done a
play there.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
You never knew what unique piece of art, stylish new
outfit you might find in the Hacienda. And as the
club approached the late eighties, the music they played became
more unpredictable too. A shift was taking place in the
UK music.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Scene, so you had all these new genres coming through musically,
it was a really fertile time in this club.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
American rap music, hip hop and R and B were
making their way to the UK and changing club culture.
But there was one genre that really made a mark,
and that was house music.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
The first house records arrived in Manchester December nineteen eighty four,
out shot cost Spinning Records.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
The new sound was pioneered by house DJs in Chicago
like Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy, and that sound slowly
started to make its way across the UK. Britain was
becoming increasingly diverse, with more and more black communities in
the cities like London and Birmingham, but in Manchester the
clubs were mainly playing rock and mainstream pop music. At
(15:05):
the time. There wasn't really a home for house music
or any kind of music made by black people like Anife.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
It was crazy because we were going to clubs. I've
been going club since seventy nine and you got to
remember Manchester that black music wasn't played Thursday, Friday, Saturday night.
No chance, you weren't going out in Manchester's way of
black music.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
There were many reasons why Manchester clubs weren't really playing
Black pioneered music on the weekends, like racism, but Anieves
said that it was also because young black British people
didn't party in the same way that their white peers did.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Black kids didn't drink. We were economically viable. When you know,
if you're selling beer for that many a pie and
you make a lot of profit on it, it wasn't
you know, most of the black kids didn't drink beer.
So the pubs that owned the clubs says, right, we'll
give them the early week think, So we had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
So while the pubs gave house music the early week slot,
the founders of the Hacienda decided to respond differently.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Tony Wilson says he viewed that black music would be
the kind of mainstay of UK mainstream music. We have
mainstream pop music day and day out, and he said
this black music doesn't get a fair wat. I'm going
to give it a space and a window for it
to do its thing.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
So the Hacienda became one of the early British clubs
to champion the genre, with black DJs like Hugh and
Clark spinning the latest house tracks from the raised stage
in the clubs decorated with black and yellow lines. The
DJs at the Hacienda made it their sworn duty to
drive people to the dance floor to play songs that
would keep people on their feet, channel the energy of
(16:48):
the moment, and create an atmosphere that was almost spiritual
in nature.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
I remember, and this was pre drugs. I think you're
just so happy. A woman took all a closer and
just started dancing around the club, and I'm going, wow,
you know what I mean. If you can make people
feel that elated to music, that's powerful. Music tells stories,
and music helps to capture emotions and music and moments
(17:14):
in people's life, and you hope that you know you
are part of that mix.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
The energy in the room felt transcendental. Here's Ben again.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
And I remember standing on the balcony with Tony Wilson
and this head of steam was coming off the bodies
of people, maybe fifteen hundred people dancing down below, and
it's like a cloud, a cloud of steam above their
head and it was the most amazing sight. And they
were all the happiest people you could ever see. And
it was quite beautiful. Tony Wilson's described it as a cathedral.
(17:47):
He said that every city needs this cathedral.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
And Ma Hacienda became exactly that for young people across
the city. A cathedral, a place to feel part of
something much bigger than themselves, to experience a higher power.
But the higher power wasn't actually God, and the other
worldly Hayes bouncing off everyone's body wasn't a heavenly cloud.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
It was a steam coming off the bodies because they've
all been drinking water, because they're all taking ecstasy.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
By the early eighties, ecstasy had already become a common
party drug in America. It started to replace LSD, the
psychedelia of the seventies, and quickly rose to prominence in
the clubs and raves across the country. When the Hacienda
founders went to America, they saw a music opportunity.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Tony Wilson and Mike Pickrin had been over to La
they had seen this wonderful drug which I've never taken
a eco, ecstasy working, and they then came back and
then decided we're going to do acid house.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Ecstasy was making its way to the UK party scene,
and so Tony Wilson and the Hosenda decided to play
music that corresponded with the cultural shift. A new genre
of club music called acid house. Acid house came to
the UK in the late eighties and ushered in the
second Summer of Love. Here's a clip from a BBC
(19:17):
documentary called Summer of Rave nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
That summer is an amazing experience.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
It's an amazing year.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
It's a time to challenge convention, cast out the old
and bringing the meu and it's summertime.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
It's party time.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
The scorching summer of nineteen eighty nine was one long
party from beginning to end.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
It was a season of hedonism. Illegal underground raves popped
up across the country in wide open fields and old
abandoned warehouses. Young people stayed out all night, dancing, falling
in love and taking the newest drugs. And the soundtrack
to that summer was the pulsing sound of acid house.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
It's almost like nineteen sixties again, the hippie movement.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
The ecstasy distorted the dancer's senses and perception of space
and time. Some say the hit of dopamine made them
feel more energetic, and that the serotonin elevated them to
new emotional heights. The elation, they say was triggered by
the ecstasy, combined with the exuberance of house music, created
an otherworldly kind of atmosphere. The hacienda became a place
(20:28):
where people could escape, and it was filled with people
from all sorts of backgrounds.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
The crowd was completely mixed. It was probably fifty to
fifty male female. You know, it didn't matter whether you
were a student, where you're unemployed, whether you were a lawyer,
an architects, a postman, No one cared.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
And Manchester's ascid, how seen, came with its own unique
sense of style.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
At that time, it was baggy pants, so in the
old fifty shirt, baggy trousers, pair of robes and all
the When the acid came, it was stripped down to
a T shirt and bleached jeans and all salt.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
They were wearing brightly colored T shirts, blair jeans, and
baggy clothing that was easier to dance in, which was
particularly convenient for people dancing in the heat of ecstasy.
There's a video that Anife remembers watching from the late eighties.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
September twenty sixth, nineteen eighty six is the first footage
of black kids dancing to forty minutes of acid House. Right.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Remember, in the eighties, most of the pubs and clubs
in Manchester didn't cater to black people on the weekends.
The Hacienda had in part started playing house music to
give young black people a space to dance on the weekends,
and in turn, the black clubbers had given the Hacienda
a certain kind of credibility. It drew other young people
(21:49):
in and helped the club become popular.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
These kids were needed for three months to be kind
of what we call eye candy for those who were
milling around in them.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
But when acid House arrived, the Hacienda stopped feeling like
the safe space for young black people that it had
once been.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Then all of a sudden, you saw, like the blink
of an either, drugs arrived. Then week after week it
just went off. You know what I mean. This way
you can come into ecstasy, you hear this music and
you have a fantastic time, you know what I mean.
It's well documented when the drugs came, the black kids
left a hassiender. Now that's not to say black kids
didn't still go, but not in the numbers that they
(22:29):
used to you know what I mean. And then you've
got to remember Manchester is the biggest population of students,
so a minute the word got out that we had
this super club going on, the proliferation of students wanted
to come and party in Mansiter just went through the roof.
So the two kind of drove one another, as you know,
as a bit of a party capital.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Illegal raves and drug filled parties had been taking place
across the country in the late eighties and early nineties,
so it was only a matter of time before or
the police tried to get involved. But at first the
raivers were able to keep them at bay. Here's Sasha
Lord again.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I do remember actually a really fun moment when the
police did not really understand about the music or what's
going on, but they knew something was happening. In n Asienda.
They used to turn up on convoy with the big
fluorescent jackets and they'd walk through the line through the crowd,
and they hated it because everybody would stand behind him
(23:29):
and do the conga, and that's what we used to
do to get them out quick. It was just like
one massive congruer of two thousand people following the police.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
But eventually the drugs caught up with them. There were
several shootings inside and outside of the club. In nineteen
eighty nine, the Second Summer of Love, a sixteen year
old girl, Clear Layton, was one of the first people
in the UK to die from an adverse reaction to ecstasy,
(23:58):
which she had taken at the Hassea. The club was
beginning to attract more negative attention, and their relationship with
the police and licensing authorities became increasingly tense.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Its success was its downfall in terms of the culture
that it brought in. You know, people wanted to a
parasitic existence of all if people wanted in drugs and such.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
But the thing that really took the Hacienda down wasn't
crime or the physical effects that ecstasy had on its ravers.
It was the effect that drugs had on the Hacienda's profits.
The acid house they played created a culture where people
took drugs instead of drinking alcohol, and because people weren't
buying alcohol, the Hacienda wasn't breaking. Even the thing that
(24:45):
had made the club what it was became its demise.
In nineteen ninety seven, they lost their license and held
their very last party on June twenty eighth. Here's Tony
Wilson doing his closing speech inside the Hacienda on that
final night.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
The Hacienda is closing its doors as of today. It
is with the greatest reluctance that for the moment we're
turning the lights out on what.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Is for us a most important place.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
The Hacienda has been closed for twenty five years now,
but its legacy lives on. I need credits a lot
of his success to the nights he spent there.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Music's just kind of magical and is these captive moments.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
He went on to become a DJ, producer and rapper
with successful songs in the UK.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Yeah a Guy Calldro, which is one of the records
I ended up producing in nineteen eighty eight that went
on to be huge, massive house anthem.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
But the Hacienda didn't just influence music. Its unique industrial
design made of mark too. It's black colors, warehouse esthetic
and yellow and black stripes will go on to inspire
a generation of artists and designers.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
That project has resonated down the years, down the decades,
to many many people from different walks of life, I guess,
and it's found its way into popular culture into the
history of the modern world in a funny kind of
a way.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
That's Ben Kelly again, the man who designed the Hacienda.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
It's eats its way into my into my very being
in a kind of way. And it defined some kind
of a language, a design language, or a way of working,
a way of thinking about design. Other people have recognized
it in my work, and they've come to me at
different points in time asking me to do something or
(26:43):
wanted to reference something to do with the Hacienda.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And one of those people was Virgil Ablo, the designer
who found it Off White, and up until his untimely death,
was the artistic director of Louis Vautan.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
Virgil affected me maybe seven or eight years ago when
he started his Off White label and was keen to
collaborate one way or another. And I noticed the work
that Off White was producing and I had just lots
of stripes on garments. He made it clear to me
(27:20):
that the influence had come from the design of the
Haciender and the label off White. You know, it was massive,
influenced by the language that I developed for the Haciender.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
And so the two of them started working together.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
What came out of that was a fantastic series of
collaborations between myself and Virgil which grew and grew.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
They collaborated on projects like Offset, a mobile installation that
debuted at Miami's Art Basel. It became a runway fashion
show set and a home for DJs, live events and
art installations.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
That was an amazing opportunity. Those opportunities would not have
come along had it not been for that piece of work.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
In Manchester, in November of two thousand, bulldozers drove into
the old yacht showroom that once housed the Hacienda and
in a tail as old as time, it was replaced
(28:25):
by high end apartments. But even though the building is gone,
for Sasha, the club had a lifelong impact.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
What is so interesting now when you look back is
a lot of those key people that work for the
Hassienda have gone on to create some pretty spectacular careers.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
The club was at the forefront of youth culture and
helped kickstart Manchester's regeneration. The night Sasha arrived at the
club wearing one of his dad's suits altered the trajectory
of his life.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
I don't know what happened that night, but it is
a night as I'll never forget and it most definitely
changed the course of my lifetime.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
He started hosting his own party events at the Hacienda
for students and became a promoter in the Manchester club scene.
Sasha went on to start Park Life, one of the
biggest musical festivals in the UK, which attracts eighty thousand
people every year with recent headliners like Tyler the Creator
and Megan B. Stallion. You can tell Sasha is proud
(29:26):
when I talk to him over a zoom. You could
feel it and you can definitely see it.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
You know, if you look behind me now, there's a
lot of life post of there. If I hadn't gone
through those doors and the Christinas PARSI would happen, probably
not so, you know, the Hassienda owes a lot Today.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Sasha is Manchester's first ever nighttime economy advisor. He works
with the government to advocate for clubs and venues across
the city. The Hacienda still inspires him today.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
We need to really celebrate the forty years of Basien.
I think for the first time possibly in the UK.
You know, the local authorities realize actually how much tourism
and night cook can bring in because people were traveling
from all over the world to want to experience this.
It wasn't just a Manchester think and I think that's
(30:16):
why we get to everything's like warehouse projects and part life.
It was eighty hours to part of where's project clust
is ten thousand a night. Because the council really understands
the tourism and the money that it brings in in
terms of hotels, transports, restaurants, new outfits. There's a whole
of cology around and they've got that and we're really
(30:37):
lucky in Manchester we've got that support.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
When the Hacienda opened its doors in nineteen eighty two,
it was the start of a new era. The Rundown
Yacht Showroom became the center of the city's nightlife and
one of the most important landmarks in the UK acid
house scene. It wasn't just a club during its peak,
felt like a cathedral for young people of the city,
(31:03):
a home for those who felt like they'd been left behind.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
I think he gave people the sense of nothing as impossible.
You know, we almost the forgotten, the forgotten generation, the
forgotten people, but actually there is opportunity there and it
gave us that belief and it pushed us further.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
In the next episode, we're heading over to the City
of Lights, Paris to go and party with some of
the most iconic musicians, actors and models in the world
as we spend the night at the star studied Parisian
club Levanduche. The History of the World's Greatest Nightclubs is
produced by Neon Hummedia for London Audio and iHeartRadio for
(31:51):
London Audio. Our executive producers are Paris Hilton, Bruce Robertson
and Bruce gersh The executive producer for Neon Humm is Jonathan.
Our producer is Rufeiro, Faith Masarua. Navani Otero and Liz
Sanchez are our associate producers. Our series producer is Crystal
Genesis and our editor is Stephanie Serrano. Samantha Allison is
(32:16):
our production manager and Alexis Martinez is our production coordinator.
This episode was written by Rufiro, Faith Masarua and fact
checked by Sarah Avery. Theme and original music by Asha Avanovich.
Our sound design engineers are Sam There and Josh Han.
I'm your host, Ultrinate and we'll see you next time
(32:38):
on the History of the World's Greatest nightclubs,
Host
Ultra Naté
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