Back to the eighties: Music History, The Hacienda
Extracts from: Revolutionary Manchester
The Sex Pistols. Free Trade Hall. Manchester. 1976. That was the beginning of something huge. This explosion came in the form of New Wave. The Sex Pistols’ performance, to an audience of just 42, is the gig everyone who is anyone claims to have been at.
Organised by none other than Peter Shelly and Howard Devoto, the founders of The Buzzcocks, this perfomance was attended by a host of figures who would go on to become the elite of the Manchester’s new musical revolution.
Among them was Tony Wilson, future founder of Factory Records and the legendary Hacienda nightclub.
Wilson founded his own label – Factory Records – in January 1978. The label was home to a host of incredibly successful artists such as the seminal bands The Happy Mondays and, of course, New Order – the band that Joy Division became after the tragic suicide of Ian Curtis in 1980.
It was in May 1982 that Tony Wilson opened the Hacienda Nightclub. This followed his foray into club ownership with the Factory club, and was, in the same vain, dedicated to showcasing new bands. The Hacienda was intended to put a fresh stamp on Manchester’s club scene. It was unlike anything that had come before.
The name “The Hacienda“, came from an unheard-of book called “Formulary for a New Urbanism” written in 1953. The lines, “Sire, I am from the other country. We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun….You’ll never see the hacienda. It doesn’t exist. The hacienda must be built,” was the creative inspiration that brought names such as an unknown Madonna to Manchester in 1984. The Happy Mondays, Oasis, Blur and DJs such as Dave Haslam and Mike Pickering also graced the Hacienda’s stage.
The real heyday of the club, however, did not arrive until the mid eighties, when the venue pioneered the new house music craze.
Madonna dancing her way to fame at La Hacienda in the early eighties
Source:Student Direct