Peter Hook: Guitarist, DJ, club promoter, industry speaker and most recently author will be telling the tales of Madchester at Unknown Pleasures. Taking in the haze of 80s acid house to the 90s gangs, drugs and corporate greed Hooky’s personal account of the people Tony Wilson, Bernard Sumner, Shaun Ryder and the era is sadder, scarier and stranger than you could imagine.

The release of his critically acclaimed book The Hacienda: How not to run a club, is a candid expose on the club Newsweek once called the most famous club in the world but also arguably one of the most badly run. We were very happy to let other people deal with the dirty business, so we could do what we did best, bitch about each other, write a few songs, and get completely off our trolleys.

Despite the clubs reputation, Hooky is understandably proud of his achievements and has no doubts about how influential the entire Factory label and sound has become on the Manchester scene. I think at the time the club was pretty revolutionary and because of the association to Factory, New Order and Joy Division, people looked at it and went ’wow’.

The Club has become legendary for not only being the birthplace of the house music scene and its almost monthly New Order gigs, but also for the clubs well documented spiralling financial problems. A situation put down to New Order and CO’s complete lack of experience in running a club. There was never one thought of how much the club would cost to run before we opened it. Nobody said it would be a good investment, nobody said it would be a bad investment. Literally we were asked if we wanted to open a club, and we said yes.

Despite being closed for well over ten years the sound of The Hacienda still lives on. Peter regularly tours around the country DJ’ing and sharing his tales keeping the Hacienda name alive, he also believes that people’s appetites for the Hacienda and its sounds are stronger than ever. The people that come to the DJ nights are very young, surprisingly, we used to get all the old timers, but the crowd have got younger and younger and it’s quite a compliment to me musically, that I can still educate and entertain, young people.

Willing to give it another go, February sees the opening of the long awaited FAC 251, owned by Hooky and designed by original Hacienda architect Ben Kelly. An intimate 450 person capacity live venue and a 3 floored club, FAC251 sees performances from the likes of The White Lies, Twisted Wheel and The Whip, that each sold out in less than ten minutes. With such a strong opening line up, some of the best designers, club nights and reputations the industry has to offer, FAC 251 looks set to bring the uniqueness and energy of the Hacienda back for the 21st century club-goer.

Peter will be appearing at The Glee Club on April 11th glee.co.uk.

Words: Kevin Angel