But before we get too deep into the Hacienda’s history perhaps it’s worth remembering that there have been dozens of other great clubs and venues that have contributed to the city’s peerless nightlife scene.
Time, though, is merciless. Other great venues in Manchester’s recent club history have suffered a similar fate to the Hacienda’s; on the site of The Gallery on Peter Street there’s a particularly depressing example of a Bar 38; the site of The Reno in Moss Side is wasteground; The Boardwalk is an empty building.

Despite all this, interest in the Hacienda has never been greater. In the late 1980s, the Hacienda was unique. Without the club there would have been no Cream in Liverpool, and perhaps no Ministry of Sound.
Visits to the Hacienda inspired DJs like Sasha, the Chemical Brothers, Laurent Garnier, and Justin Robertson.

The recent release of the film (and DVD) ‘Twenty Four Hour Party People’ is keeping interest in the Hacienda alive, even though it tells an idiosyncratic version of the history, mostly based around the story of Tony Wilson (played by Steve Coogan). You’d have to talk to some of the longest serving staff members; Leroy Richardson, Andrew Berry, Angela Matthews or Suzanne Robinson. And the regulars; everyone has a different version of what went on at the club. You’d have to collect all those individual memories to make the complete picture, like getting back those auctioned bricks from their thousand different homes.

Financed by Factory Records and New Order, the Hacienda was open for fifteen years. Most nights it opened, money was lost. Peter Hook once claimed that New Order would have been better off if they’d given ten pounds to everyone who ever came to the Hacienda, sent them home, and not bothered with the club at all.

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There were at least a couple of years when it all came together, though; the end of the 1980s, the Madchester years, the birth of the rave era. I DJ-ed at the Hacienda nearly five hundred times, mostly back in the 1980s, and we had some amazing nights there, but back then, although we knew things were good, I don’t think anyone would have predicted that over a dozen years later there would be a film about those years; it was just a matter of getting out there and enjoying the weekend. Cameras were rare in the club, although there had been one character, Malcolm, who had a company called Ikon. He filmed New Order, Mantronix, Grandmaster Flash, The Smiths and all the other acts who ever played there but then he disappeared into the Pennines and no-one has heard from him since.

In the absence of any major archive or much TV footage, the makers of ‘Twenty Four Hour Party People’ built a stunning replica of the building in a warehouse in Ancoats and opened the doors to a thousand clubbers one Friday night in March 2001 for one of the most talked-about nights out in Manchester for years. Mike Pickering, Graeme Park, Jon Da Silva and I DJed, and the night exploded. It was a farewell party, a celebration, a reunion. Within a couple of days the replica version had been taken down, demolished like the original building, but the film-makers had got some great footage and everyoned had a ball.

Justin Robertson has plotted a successful career as a DJ, remixer, and producer (the latter under his own name as well as Lionrock). Aloof from the limelight and popular almost despite himself, Robertson took an almost laughably conventional route to a level of success reached by probably less then one percent of dance music producers. A native of Manchester, Robertson earned a degree in philosophy before taking a job as (what else) a record clerk in the Eastern Bloc record shop, where he began collecting the funkier side of progressive house and DJing on a regular basis. After remixing a track for Mad Jack on in-house label Creed (his mix of "Feel the Hit" became something of an underground smash), Robertson was subsequently flagged down by the likes of the Shamen, Candyflip, the Sugarcubes, and Erasure to lend his evolving signature to their material.

As his style matured, he became associated with the burgeoning Balearic scene (a hodgepodge subcategory of house encompassing a range of influences, from rock and R&B to disco and garage). Robertson released his solo debut, "Roots and Culture"/"Lionrock," on his own Most Excellent label in 1992. After raising a few brows and spawning another round of remix work, Robertson was courted by pop/dance label Deconstruction, with whom he signed in 1993. Robertson released an additional EP, Packet of Peace, on Deconstruction in April of 1993 before settling in to record his full-length debut. Released late the following year as Lionrock, An Instinct for Detection was an ambitious effort to say the least, featuring scads of instrumentation resolutely untraditional by U.K. dance music standards, mixed and matched with dirty house breaks and aggressive but accessible arrangements. Although the record was met warmly, its subtle abuse of pop (in the Beach Boys- not the Mariah Carey -- sense) was lost on many, and it remains something of a cult favorite. Robertson embarked on an elaborate tour following the albums release, and the presence of guitars, percussion, and drum kit on the stage of a Lionrock show became standard from word go. In 1996, the popular mix CD series Journeys by DJ contracted a mixed set from Robertson, resulting in a massive two-disc set spanning the range not only of Lionrocks influences, but of the last two decades of electronic dance music as a whole. Robertson continued to be a popular remixer, and Lionrock releases -- including 1998s City Delirious -- appeared on a sporadic basis until he ditched the designation for his first production album under his own name, 2001s Revtone.