[Mrluvaluva]

From www.metro.co.uk

Twenty-five years ago today saw comedian Bernard Manning perform the honours at the grand opening of a new nightclub, which would later become synonymous with the music scene of the late 80s.

Larger-than-life Bernard was used to certain niceties in his usual haunts of working men's clubs and was perturbed about the sound system in Manchester's Fac 51 nightspot.

He was so unimpressed that he didn't even stay to collect his appearance fee.

On face value it doesn't appear to be a significant anniversary.

However, the club - more commonly known as The Hacienda - rose from such humble beginnings to achieve iconic status and become the world's coolest club for a spell in the late 80s.

A number of exhibitions are planned in the city this year to mark the anniversary of the club which finally closed in 1997.

Archive material exploring the origins, life and legacy of the club will go display at both the Museum of Science & Industry and Urbis.

The idea for The Hacienda was hatched by Tony Wilson, the boss of Manchester-based Factory Records, fellow director Rob Gretton and the label's star act, New Order.

They took a lease on an old yacht showroom in a rundown industrial area in Whitworth Street West and used the existing structure of steel girders and vast interior space to form a unique nightlife experience.

The club was given its own Factory Record catalogue number, Fac 51, and its name is a reference to the Situationist manifesto, "the hacienda must be built" - the hacienda being an idealised co-operative community.

It was certainly no Ritzys or New York New York. The crowds didn't exactly come flocking in the early years and the club was kept alive thanks to the chart successes of New Order.

The band's guitarist Peter Hook was said to have remarked that New Order would have been better off if they had handed £10 to everyone who came to the club and turned them away at the door.

However, Madonna did make her first UK appearance at the club in January 1984 on an edition of Channel 4 music programme The Tube.

Echo and the Bunnymen, The Smiths, James, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and The Stone Roses also performed live.

The in-crowd of the era will tell you it all went pear-shaped from late 1986 onwards when dance music began to reverberate in the delightfully-named Kim Philby and Gay Traitor cocktail bars of The Hacienda.

That was when the club began its rise to prominence which reached its peak in the so-called "Second Summer of Love" in 1988 - arguably the last fully-fledged youth culture movement in Britain.

DJs Mike Pickering and Graeme Park imported the hypnotic trance-like Chicago house music tunes at their influential Nude nights, which led to queues around the block from Wednesday through to Saturday.

In 1988 "Madchester" was born and the country could not get enough of bands like the Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets and The Stone Roses.

More significantly it was also the year that the drug Ecstasy came to these shores. It transformed the club scene and eventually contributed to the death knell sounding for The Hacienda.

A thriving drug culture in a nightclub inevitably attracts gangs who battle for control of its doors and the supply of drugs inside.

Fac 51 was no different as guns also found their way into the club.

In July 1989, 16-year-old Claire Leighton, from Cannock in Staffordshire became the first known Ecstasy victim in Britain. She suffered internal bleeding after taking a tablet in the club.

A year later police applied for its closure until it could prove it could curb the drug-taking and violence.

The management closed the doors voluntarily at the beginning of 1991, but reopened shortly afterwards with new security arrangements.

It never really recaptured its glory days and it finally closed in 1997 - 15 years after it first opened.

The history of the club was captured on screen in Michael Winterbottom's film 24 Hour Party People starring Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson.

Today, nothing remains of The Hacienda which was demolished to make way for a block of loft apartments.

Its spirit lives on though and will remembered in the form of two exhibitions this year.

Fans of The Hacienda will gather at its former Factory bar, Dry, in Oldham Street, tonight to share their memories.




Those were the days...........drifts off into reminisceing mode...........