’24 Hour Party People’: Where did The Haçienda get its name from?
No discussion on the musical history of Britain is complete without mentioning the colossal impact of The Haçienda. The Manchester nightclub typified the age of acid house and rave culture, in addition to fostering some of the region’s biggest musical exports in the form of groups like Happy Mondays, New Order, and A Certain Ratio. Although the venue has long since been demolished and replaced with trendy studio flats, its legend still looms large over the cultural sector of Manchester. But why was a distinctly northern nightclub given such an exotic name?
To truly understand the story of The Haçienda, you must first get to grips with Factory Records and the weird and wonderful mind of Tony Wilson. Back in the 1970s, at the height of the punk rock explosion, Granada journalist Tony Wilson became infatuated with the revolutionary sounds of groups like Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks. In order to foster this blossoming scene in Manchester, Wilson organised gigs at a venue called The Russell Club in Manchester, calling them ‘Factory’ nights and featuring groups like Joy Division, The Durutti Column, and Cabaret Voltaire.
The success of these nights soon led Wilson to establish an entire record label, Factory Records, to release music by these groups. Built upon a strong DIY ethos, giving ultimate power to the artists and pursuing artistic excellence over profit, Factory released some of the most iconic records of the 20th century, including Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division. Pretty soon, the success of the record label led Tony Wilson to purchase his own venue, The Haçienda, in order to showcase the best of the local music scene and the various acts on his label.
Opening its doors in 1982, the nightclub and venue was initially a failure for a multitude of reasons. Low bar prices, low attendance, and a lack of widespread interest in Factory meant that the club was costing the label thousands of pounds per month, but, as Wilson famously said, “You either make money, or you make history.” So, the club remained open, and when rave culture and the acid house scene began to infiltrate Britain’s youth, The Haçienda was naturally suited to accommodate thousands of young people eager to dance through the night while off their faces on ecstasy.
Factory rarely made decisions that made sense to anybody who wasn’t Tony Wilson. It was his label, and he often made bizarre choices – like spending £30,000 on a table for the Factory offices – in the name of being on the cutting edge of culture. As such, it is difficult to explain, for instance, why The Haçienda was named as such. Reportedly, the name comes from the slogan “The Hacienda Must Be Built”, originally written by French philosopher Ivan Chtcheglov in Formulary for a New Urbanism.
But where did ‘Hacienda’ come from?
This slogan was first adopted by the radical avant-garde art collective Situationist International, which had been around on mainland Europe from the 1950s until the early 1970s, taking heavy inspiration from surrealism as well as Marxist politics. It seems likely that their staunch artistic manifesto and political slant endeared them towards Tony Wilson, who always operated by strong artistic principles.
The more educated among you will have already noticed that ‘hacienda’ is a Spanish word, meaning a large ranch house in an area of Spanish colonial influence, but it seems unlikely that this meaning had any relation to the nightclub other than the fact that the building itself was quite large. Wilson also chose to add a cedilla to the name so that the ‘çi’ in Haçienda would visually resemble the number 51. Everything in the world of Factory Records was given a catalogue number, and The Haçienda was FAC51.
After decades of operating at colossal losses and with rising gang trouble and police presence, The Haçienda closed its doors for the final time in June 1997. In the years that followed, the club was demolished, and an apartment block was built on Whitworth Street West in its absence – offensively called The Haçienda apartments. Although the club is long gone, its influence still permeates through the music scene of Manchester and the wider area, with regular club nights and events still featuring DJs and musicians who were once regulars at The Haçienda.
