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The Haçienda was so much more than just a nightclub and music venue in Manchester, it was the cultural epicentre and spiritual home of the Madchester movement of the 1980s and early 1990s.
Opening in 1982, in a former warehouse, at 11-13 Whitworth Street West, the club's interior was designed by Ben Kelly. Persistently dogged by financial troubles, it was kept alive through the continued life support it received from Factory Records and the band New Order (through record sales). The Haçienda will forever be associated with the rise of acid house and rave music.
It is a strange thing to think that a group like New Order subsidised a meeting place for the biggest f-ing lunatics in Manchester. That's the oddest thing. No other group will ever do that.
On 27th January 1984, Madonna made her first UK performance at the venue. The last night of the club was on 28th June 1997. In 2010, Peter Hook (Bass player with New Order) had six bass guitars made using wood from the Haçienda's dance floor, complete with stiletto marks and cigarette burns.
Peter Hook has gone on the record of saying...
We once worked out, from the time it opened in 1982 to when it closed in 1997, each punter through the door cost us £10, adding up to somewhere between four and six million that we knew about.
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