After Hours – The music and cultural impact of the Manchester super club
Words by Leanne Cloudsdale
The Hacienda dance floor is long gone, but its cultural legacy remains. Music, graphic design, interior architecture – it was always streets ahead of the zeitgeist. Four decades after those iconic doors first opened, the legend of Manchester’s most celebrated nightclub continues to fascinate the masses.
As a brand with its eyes in both the future and the past, Cutler and Gross hasn’t been impervious to its prestigious position in the hearts and minds of many – with elements of this after-dark utopia inspiring the Spring Summer 2023 collection. So, in a bid to unravel the myth, methodology and magic of this northern powerhouse it made sense to speak to people within the Hacienda’s wide-reaching Venn diagram.
First up, are Glenn Kitson and Luke [Unabomber] Cowdrey, who I took out for lunch in exchange for their 'insider intel' on the influence of the venue that was credited with kickstarting the regeneration of Manchester.
We met at the Ducie Street Warehouse – a colossal listed building a quick stroll from Manchester’s Piccadilly railway station. Originally built in 1867, its vast, imposing structure is now home to a restaurant, coffee shop, bar, hotel rooms, fitness suites and its own mini cinema. We hung up our (big) coats and sat down to order.
In recent years, the pair have developed a strong (understatement of the year) online presence. Glenn makes light of his professional capacity as a film director with his Covid-lockdown famous ‘look-alikes' posts. Luke delivers daily Beckett-esque Generation X monologues to iPhone camera in between his illustrious career DJing for radio, festivals and clubs worldwide. Hailing from Bolton and Sheffield respectively, both were active members of the rave scene – albeit during slightly different timeframes.
Luke’s regular attendance at the Hacienda was captured by photographer Peter J Walsh, who spent years documenting the late-night shenanigans of this Whitworth Street institution. Walsh’s book, 'Rave One' features a late 1980s Luke in full flow, unselfconsciously dancing to house music – sunglasses in situ. Glenn, a few years younger, laments at how (like me) he somehow missed the sweet spot in the Hacienda’s glory years. An early 90s clubber myself, I never made it to the Hacienda. I frequented other so-called ‘big nights’ in Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham and Derby, but somehow always passed up the space in the back seat of a mate’s car when they were heading over the M62 to Manchester. Obviously, I regret that now.
Conversation begins with a round the table reverie session, with each of us talking about how and when our obsession with music started. Glenn mentioned how, “I was late to the whole Hacienda thing, but I saw what it did to the city of Manchester. Bolton (where I’m from) is only 15 mins away on the train, but we always felt like outsiders – not that it bothered me, I liked it! Back then I wasn’t really buying records, I was mainly listening to mixtapes instead. You’d borrow them from people whose taste you really trusted; but also, you could buy them, make a copy and then swap them with your mates. I’d listen to recordings of pirate radio stations or sets from house DJs. I had shoeboxes and shoeboxes, all of them stacked full of tapes!”. Luke was buying records from Spin It (Manchester) from 1985 onwards. American electrofunk, disco-jazz and early house. The 12inch was his vinyl of choice – mainly for the extended drum workouts. He remembered, “I suppose it was the shock of the new. You’d be on the dance floor getting high to drums; a sound that felt so militant, so accentuated. At home I was listening to Italio proto house records, which sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before.”
With the advent of apps like Spotify, the way music is consumed has changed. We have free music at our fingertips (literally) and algorithms analysing our taste. Flicking through albums down your local record shop is a pastime that’s slowly coming back into vogue, but for the majority of people, there’s a disconnect these days between music and the medium. For Glenn, the artwork on albums or 7 inch singles wasn’t just a way to recognise the band, it was an educational tool. He said, “I learned about art and design from record covers. Central Station Design, who did all the [Happy] Mondays ones meant so much to me. In the same way as looking through your dad’s records and understanding who the Moody Blues were etc. Music, film and books felt more tangible. They had a framework I could understand. Nowadays, if the only place you hear new clips of music is on Tiktok, I wonder if you can still have a strong connection to it, if you don't have the material object?”
Musical tastes weren’t just developed on the dance floor. Luke waxed lyrical about the importance of tunes that were being played post-club and pointed out that, “When the Hacienda closed, you’d head round to someone’s house afterwards. This was how you’d experience music you’d never heard before; you’d have someone saying, ‘check out this weird jazz record I found’, or ‘have you ever heard this weird Bowie track? What we sat down and listened to after dancing to acid house all night was, in some ways, even more important. It’s where we shared things we were obsessed with and talked for hours about all the details and the layers, the nuance of a record, the strings, the arrangements – it was what I call squidgy black twos-up unity. Those sessions of after-hours music is where the doors really opened.” He laughed and added, “No wonder I’ve spent the last forty years staying up late!”
The Hacienda closed its doors for good in June 1997. I ask them both why we’re still talking about the Hacienda 27 years after it closed down. Books about it continue to be released. Documentaries are being filmed. Glenn is quick to answer and commented, “Maybe it’s that Manchester myth-making thing? The city has a core crew of people who were there, who are still talking about the positive effects of its existence.” Luke is more philosophical. “I think it’s the metaphorical lay lines. For some reason, at the right time, things came together in a certain space. Of course, there were other clubs post Wigan Casino era that were as popular, like Paradise Garage, The Sound Factory or The Loft, but the Hacienda was a magnet – a big club with a massive capacity. People travelled from all over the country to be there. The whole was stronger than its parts. The people, the clothing, the dance, the sound, the machines, the soul, the revolution – the corners of the room disappeared, and the roof came off. Nowhere else could replicate those moments inside the Hacienda. It was magical.”