Armed with Factory Records’ album profits and with the desire to give something back to Manchester, namely the greatest club venue in the world, Rob Gretton’s and then Tony Wilsons’s idea of opening a Factory sponsored venue was to them was two fold. Not only would the club be a great investment for the label but it would also give the Factory crowd somewhere to go. Even so, sometime early in 1981, with New Order’s assent, Factory Records had decided to open a nightclub, “FAC51 The Haçienda”.
The initial team recruited around the project saw Howard “Ginger” Jones as general manager, Mike Pickering returning from Rotterdam at Gretton’s persuasion to book bands and DJ’s and Factory designer Peter Saville finding architect Ben Kelly to design the venue, which Kelly envisaged as reflecting New Order and Factory’s design ethics, a three dimensional cathedral for the label and for Manchester. Without Kelly ever being given any proper budget or brief, the building of the club began in October 1981 and following innumerable rows with Wilson, Kelly’s “real life stage set” took shape with his ground breaking design continues to shape clubs world-wide today. Airy yet surprisingly intimate, The Haçienda’s theatricality and space recalled the best New York clubs which inspired it and packed in a cafe / restaurant, the dancefloor, stage and three bars into its Whitworth Street West venue.
A week before opening Wilson was asked whom he was building the club for, he replied “the kids” to which the journalist retorted “have you seen the kids lately Tony?” Nevertheless Factory’s futuristic and some might say ahead of its time night-spot opened on May 21st 1982, the date having been decided some six months previously by Wilson, Gretton and Ginger. With the paint still wet and the sound system yet to be overhauled and improved, Bernard Manning famously compered the opening but refused his fee, advising Tony and Rob to “stick to their day jobs” while New York post punkers ESG headlined in a nod to the NY clubs who’d. Resident DJ was Hewan Clarke, who’d come to Wilson’s attention as a friend of and DJing for A Certain Ratio, and Hewan crafted a soundtrack of jazz-funk, soul and commercial tunes of the day from the DJ booth bunker from beneath the stage.
With the club open 6 nights a week, and as a cafe / art space during the day, for its first years The Haçienda’s license forced it to be members only and this was to affect numbers at the club. Although it would attract full houses for many of the gigs booked by Mike Pickering for then breakthrough acts such as Thompson Twins, Simple Minds, and for New Order’s first gig at the club in June 1982, attendance at nights earlier in the week were scarce although the weekend nights pulled crowds of roughly 1000 according to Howard “Ginger” Jones.