Manchester legend Peter Hook, founding member of New Order and Joy Division, has written a tell-all book about the now legendary Hacienda nightclub that he, and his factory records cohorts, ran in Manchester in the early 80s.
The book is full of incredible stories detailing problems with drug use, problems with gangs, general problems associated with running a club and Hooky’s own problems being part of a financially disastrous cultural icon.Hook took some time to share some of his fondest memories with Undercover’s Tim Cashmere from his UK home. Here is the interview in full:
Tim Cashmere: Let’s start off talking about this book [The Hacienda: How Not To Run A Club]. It seems like there is an awful lot of people in here that could have written it. Why were you the lucky one?
Peter Hook: [Laughs]. Maybe I’m the only one that can remember anything? I don’t know really. That’s a difficult one. I got asked to do an interview the other day about the Hacienda and I said “Sorry mate, I don’t have time, you’re going to have to wait,” and he said “But Hooky, you’re the only one left!” I went “Hang on a minute, what do you mean?” and he went “Well Rob’s dead, Tony’s dead, Martin Hannett’s dead, you’re the only one left!” I thought “Fuck me, what a responsibility!” So maybe that’s the answer, because whether you like it or not, Bernard, Steve and Julian stepped back from the Hacienda and didn’t have much to do with the running of it, so I suppose because I was involved in it more, maybe I was the only one left. I suppose Ang Matthews and Leroy Richardson or Paul Mason who worked there definitely as much as me if not more could’ve written it, but I don’t know. That’s a really... strange question.
TC: Well you say right at the start of the book that it’s just like the sixties; if you can remember it, you weren’t really there. Was it hard to scrounge all these memories together?
PH: Not particularly no, because to be honest with you I’d been moaning. Every single time I had a drink or had gone a little bit loose lipped, I would regale anyone who was in earshot with these stories. Maybe in some strange way I was rehearsing for the book, but some of the stories and even the ones that didn’t get in the book are so surprising. The levels of ineptitude really scale to stellar heights. I don’t know, I think it was just through practice. Because I was going on about it, as I said in the book, literally I did become a Hacienda bore in the same way that I’m sure you’ve met people who incessantly go on about their bloody divorce or what they could have been.
TC: The Hac was so many things to so many people. When you were writing this story, were you trying to encapsulate every possible aspect, or was it just your view of it?
PH: No it was definitely my view. The strangest thing what I’ve found is that a lot of people now that the book’s out are disagreeing with me. It’s interesting because that does promote a bit of healthy debate. You may get now a few more books about it while people try and correct what I’ve done wrong or said what was wrong, but no, it was meant to be me. I could have interviewed other people, and to be honest Claude Flowers, the American guy who wrote it with me, he did suggest interviewing Paul Mason, Leroy and Ang, but I felt that it wouldn’t have been my look on it then. It was something that I couldn’t get my head around, because I read loads of books that are collections of interviews and I wanted this one to be solely my version. I really did and that was what I felt most strongly about and it should just be me. If anyone wants to contradict me, they can. The interesting thing is if you put the surviving members of New Order in a room, we agree on nothing.
TC: You actually mention in that book that the movie ’24 Hour Party People’ was nonsense, didn’t you?
PH: No... well... er... light hearted nonsense! [laughs] Give ‘em some credit! The interesting thing about ‘24 Hour Party People’ is that it literally has gone round the world extending the myths and mythology surrounding Factory and the Hacienda, so it achieved wonderfully on that, but I think I could possibly say without contradiction that every story and every happening within ‘24 Hour Party People’ was wrong - but it was wonderfully entertaining! It was great. I loved the film. I thought it was really funny! The thing that I didn’t get was that I thought that people laughed at the wrong bits. You know, the fact that ‘Blue Monday’ lost 12p or 10p on every copy and everyone burst out laughing and I was sitting there going “That’s not fucking funny!”
TC: Well, not to rub salt in the wound, but it was a little bit funny!
PH: [Laughs] You are rubbing salt in the wound! No, it’s funny. I suppose it’s naive. It’s interesting because what I loved about ‘Blue Monday’ was that Tony [Wilson] had these wonderful brass objects cast to celebrate 500,000 pressings of ‘Blue Monday’ and they were all individually named and it was a fantastic moment to get this wonderful trophy celebrating the fact that ‘Blue Monday’ was the highest selling 12” single of all time - and still is - but it was losing money on every copy! It was like not only were you losing money on every copy, but you were celebrating it as well! Which I suppose is a very Factory thing to do.
TC: The book is full of stories like that. There are things like not collecting the VAT for twelve years. How did these things go on for so long? How did no one step in and say “Let’s do this properly”?
PH: Well a lot of people did step in. We brought in a lot of consultants, but when they came and saw what a bunch of lunatics we all were, they just used to run away! They’d say literally the most boring things to you and we’d be like “Argh, I’m going out later! Don’t bore me!” It was our decision to act the way we did and it was quite anarchic. Considering that we came from anarchy and the way that Factory was run was very rebellious, you did achieve quite a lot of rebellion in running your club! It was quite an unusual way to run a business and everyone who came, every consultant that came near it said the same thing, but these things they were saying to us were so boring that your eyes would just glaze over and you would feel an irresistable urge to go to the pub! That was why. It was very simple. We were not cut out to do the business side. We never perfected the business side.
TC: Maybe if you got the accountants to talk to your audience, they would’ve drank more?
PH: [Laughs] Well I don’t think it was like that. There were many occasions when me, Shaun Ryder and Ian Brown would be downstairs getting up to some naughtiness in the corner, and then in would walk the accountants with two blonde bimbos going “Have you got any of that for me?!” [Laughs] So it was pretty obvious y’know? We were all in the same boat! What would happen is that when we used to bring these people in, you’d end up spitting them back out, but they’d lost everything! I may be exaggerating a little, but what I’m saying is that the lifestyle that we led was very attractive and very glamorous to most people, so even they would come along and say “Oh these guys are idiots, business-wise, but fuck me they know how to have a Saturday night!”
TC: Reading through the book, sometimes you seem a little disappointed, but you also seem very proud of the cultural significance of the club. Is it fair to say that it is a mix of disappointment and pride?
PH: Definitely. The strangest thing, as my accountant loves to tell me, is that you’ll never know what could have been. So the thing is that since I started the book, what I’ve been most gratified about, is that people who you talk to have such fond memories, and hold it in such high esteem and such high regard, that to be honest with you, it’s very difficult to be bitter. It’s a hell of a lot of money, and it was run very badly, and when I started the book I thought “Everyone else is to blame,” but when I finished the book I realised that I was as much to blame as anybody and that made the whole thing a lot more bearable, and also put it into perspective. Which is what the book was about really. It was about me finding perspective in something that was a very important part of my life and it worked. Now I do have a wonderful sense of pride. I realised the work that Tony and Rob and myself has created something that will last, now that we just have the good bits and we don’t have to do the bad bits, like the violence and the gangs.
TC: How different would the book have been if you had written it the day after the club closed?
PH: [Laughs] That’s a very good question. I just would’ve been blaming everybody else. I blamed Ben Kelly for years. I thought Ben Kelly, the artist, was the villain of the piece. I thought he should ride a horse called Black Betty and be running up and down highways with a musket because he was such a fucking robber, but in reality it wasn’t anything to do with Ben! Ben’s brief, by Tony, by Rob, was to do something. Do a club like there has never been before! Money is no object! And he did exactly what he was told, but if I was saying this the day after it was closed, it would’ve been him that was hanging up my scaffold.
TC: Do you have a favourite gig from the Hacienda?
PH: My favourite gigs actually, we had three over a two week period, were Bow Wow Wow, The Birthday Party and Bauhaus in 1982ish. I was amazed because they all start with B! I’ve always been a great fan of Nick Cave and Tracey Pew [The Birthday Party] is one of my all time great bass players, probably one of my heroes and a delightful gal, so when they turned up with The Birthday Party, around about the time of ‘Release The Bats’, they put on a fantastic gig. I remember those three gigs for some strange reason, I don’t know why. They always stick out for me.
TC: What about the Einsturzende Neubauten gig? That sounded pretty amazing!
PH: Ha, that sounded like standing in a factory next to a furnace actually. I mean, it did impress you. The young lady providing services was very impressive as well actually. It’s what makes the difficulty in running a club worthwhile when you have occasions like that [singer Blixa Bargeld took to a support column with a jackhammer, almost tearing down the building] when you go home to the missus and when she asks “Did you have a good night?” you say “Oh yeah, it was a bit quiet.” What a sight to behold in your own club. A band trying to bring the whole bloody building down. In many ways they could have done us a huge favour there. They could have saved us millions. Maybe they knew something we didn’t?
The Hacienda: How Not To Run A Club is available from November 1, 2009.
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