“In between ‘82 and ‘87 before it all kicked off the Hacienda was always half empty, there was hardly anyone in there at all cos I used to get the train up there to Manchester from Nottingham to go and see bands like Aztec Camera and there’s be no-one there. If it wasn’t for house music, it’d probably have shut a long time before it did.” Graeme Park
“It was wonderful, it was wonderful prior to acid house. People didn’t come in there for a while but we still had a fucking amazing time. 150 people, it was very secret society, it was great. The Nude night, my Friday night started about 85 / 86 and that was fucking packed, even from the off. My first thing was that I wasn’t having any door policy. The only door policy was that I wasn’t gonna let fucking idiots in who wore ties.” Mike Pickering
“It wasn’t a secret really, it was fucking cool. You could say that in 86 and 87 when they were trying to kick it off that was when it was a secret but it had reached fruition by 88. There was nothing underground about that, the place was packed and everyone was off their tits.” Peter Hook
“Of all the members of New Order, Peter Hook was definitely the one that was the most pro-active. He was the one that would always come down, mainly cos he used to say he wanted to work out how much money he was losing.” Graeme Park
“Well but you see the thing is The Hacienda was like going in the bookies and saying give me 50p on that horse and losing it. Then going I’ve got to get my 50p back now and putting a quid on. Ah fuck, now I’m down a quid, I better put two quid in. One minute it’s fucking 50p and the next minute it’s fucking £8 million.” Peter Hook
“I suppose New Order also influenced it by giving the club gravitas and making it cool. We filled it with a bunch of lunatics, waving their hands in the air. It made perfect sense really.” Jon Dasilva
“If New Order hadn’t gone to New York to work with Arthur Baker they’d never have gone to Studio 54 or the Paradise Garage and you could argue that if it hadn’t been for those clubs, maybe the Hacienda would never have ended up how it was. And, as for Ben Kelly and what was his bizarre design at the time, like what the fucks this, the influence of that has been immeasurable really cos most clubs and bars now have some subconscious reference to Ben Kelly’s design of the Hacienda. So maybe because of New Order the Hacienda ended up looking the way it did and also being the size it was.” Graeme Park
“I just remember it was like nowhere else, the atmosphere, the size of the place, it always looked massive when you first went into the Hacienda, when you looked down from the balcony it always looked massive with everybody dancing to everything” Rowetta
“Initially, the scene was very small. You were only talking about a few hundred people really in what is a very big city but those few hundred people it changed their lives. It wasn’t just Manchester as well. The Wednesday night, the Hot night was a national night, a national event almost. You had Slam down there from Glasgow who’ve gone on to do great things with Soma Records, James Baillie who did Venus, Daddy G from Massive Attack, loads of future promoters as well, James Barton for example. The Hacienda really was Manchester’s acid house culture at the time.” Jon Dasilva
“ The Nude night was the big night, that was always the main one. Hot was fun, like we put a swimming pool in there and it was a fun night but the Nude night on Friday was the house night.” Mike Pickering
“Hot was year zero for acid house in Manchester, it really was in terms of the scene as we know it. It was a combination of the club, the music, the crowd and certain chemicals. The whole feeling of clubbing changed. It wasn’t from the first week, it was two or three weeks in that it really kicked off. I came out of the DJ box one night, went downstairs and it was completely exhilarating. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on really at the time.” Jon Dasilva
“Nude was going for a couple of years before 88. We used to get 1600 people in but once ecstacy kicked it, the change happened over a few weeks. I likened it once to like the top end of the club, the change in the characters who were there it was like a Mexican wave coming down from the main bar, it was amazing. However there were a lot of people who stopped coming then, who were replaced by other people. The club itself became a lot whiter.” Mike Pickering
