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