Off The Hook

IT takes a brave man to admit his mistakes, and an even tougher man to laugh at them.

But Peter Hook has never been shy.

As co-founder of Joy Division and then New Order, he was one of the UK’s best-known musicians throughout the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s – and remains today one of indie rock’s biggest heroes.

But despite commercial success and the cult status of New Order and the band’s Factory records label, ‘Hooky’ had a millstone round his neck – a money losing “hole” in the shape of the world’s coolest nightclub.

The club was called The Haçienda and for 15 years became a byword for cool, being home to Factory and the birth of acid house, rave and the ‘baggy’ scene which spawned the likes of Stone Roses and Happy Mondays.

However, it also very nearly ruined him.

The idea for the club, he explains, came from the band’s manager Rob Gretton, and impresario and journalist turned Factory supremo, Tony Wilson.

“We wanted somewhere we could go,” says Hooky, catching up with The Guide after a morning spent with one of his many designer friends. “If you didn’t want to dress up back then, there was nowhere to go. So we agreed to fund our own club.”

They moved into a Manchester yacht showroom and named the club as a reference to obscure situationist writer Ivan Chtcheglov, who believed in solving society’s ills by combining art and architecture.

Financially speaking, the club was a disaster. So much so, that Hooky – whose uniquely high bass lines helped drive classics like Love Will Tear us Apart, Thieves Like Us, Regret, Crystal and the biggest selling 12” ever, Blue Monday – was driven into penury, being paid as little as £20 a week while the band’s royalties went into propping up the ailing club.

Things went wrong from the start in 1981, he recalls, with the original budget soaring from £70,000 to £340,000. “That’s equivalent to about £3m these days,” he gasps. “If you spent £3m on a club now, people would think you’re potty! But it felt like someone else’s money.”

The saga is documented by Hooky in a new book, called appropriately The Haçienda – How Not To Run a Club.

It’s a heady work which recalls the epic scale of the whole high-minded, if naïve, venture – with its emphasis on cutting-edge design and new music. It also charts the unfolding nightmare which followed as the dream started to fall apart – riven by drugs, gun wielding gangsters and mounting debts which drove Hooky to the brink of bankruptcy.

“We got ripped off by everyone that came through the door,” he cringes. “They must have thought we were mugs, but we weren’t businessmen.”

So why did Hooky decide to write a book about the venture? And, why now... more than a decade after the ‘Hac’ closed?

“These things take a while,” he explains. “The idea came about when I decided to do a Haçienda Acid House Classics compilation CD. I started doing the sleeve notes with a mate Claude Flowers, and he said ‘this would make a great book’.

“It was hard work though; and it has taken me a long time to come to terms with it. It’s still painful, even now. But I do feel better for writing the book. I’m nervous to see what reception it gets.”

So does he regret it? “No! It’s easy to forget how special the thing we helped created was. Like Factory, Joy Division and New Order, I took it for granted. But it’s amazing how people hold it in such high regard for what it achieved. If someone said ‘I’ll give you £6m instead of opening the Haçienda’, I’d say no.”

“If we’d given everyone who came through the doors £10 instead of keeping it open, we’d have been better off financially – but not spiritually. It really was wild.”

Hooky’s story is indeed the stuff of legend, and he has featured in two films charting the story of New Order and Joy Division – being played by Ralf Little in Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People, and Joe Anderson in Anton Corbin’s Control.

So what’s Hooky doing now? “Well New Order broke up in 1997,” he says, “But I’m very lucky I’ve got Freebass on the go,” he adds, referring to his project with bass players Mani of the Stone Roses and Primal Scream, and Andy Rourke of The Smiths.

“As a musician I believe that your most important record is your next one – so I’m always searching for the next thing that’s going to turn people on!”

The Haçienda: How Not to Run a Club (Simon & Schuster) is out this week. Peter will be signing copies at Borders bookshop in Magdalen Street, on Wednesday, at 7pm.