With Peter Hook on the decks, it could only be an unforgettable evening.

Everyone in Manchester knows of The Haçienda. Scratch that, everyone in the UK knows of The Haçienda. Despite closing in 1997 (over 25 years ago), the Factory Records nightclub still lives on in cultural memory. Opening in 1982, the nightclub spent many years in financial and commercial disarray (much to the concern of begrudging bankrollers New Order), before finding phenomenal significance in the emergence of Acid House and 1989’s ‘Second Summer of Love’. Many remember it for the music, or, inevitably, the drugs. 

Rebecca Hook’s new book The Haçienda Threads, however, remembers it for the fashion. The style. The subcultures. The community.

A book focused on style demands a stylish launch. And that’s what is hosted at New Century Hall — a night of DJ sets, discussion and socialising, all centred around remembering Whitworth Street’s very own ‘cathedral of culture’.

After being handed a complimentary gin and tonic and a token card emblazoned with the iconic Factory stripes (not a bad start), I walk into the downstairs bar of New Century Hall. Ex-ravers sway in stupors, only just gone 7PM. They seem amazed to still be alive. Flashes of latex and leather swim around the bar. Oh, and Peter Hook is over by the DJ decks playing Underworld’s Born Slippy.

This is the welcome drinks section of the launch party, a time in which Haçienda veterans can warm up their livers, seek out old friends and chat excitedly about good times of the past. There’s a palpable hum of anticipation for whatever the night may entail. Factory associates fraternise suavely with fellow DIY enthusiasts, and fetish dancers trade leather lubrication tips — ‘come together as one’, as Primal Scream once said. This isn’t quite an ordinary Wednesday evening.

We eventually move upstairs into an auditorium somewhere between a business conference for everything Factory Records (said hypothetical conference could easily share the same name as Peter Hook’s 2009 book How Not To Run A Club), and a wake. A large banner reading FAC 51 hangs in the background, next to cartoonishly large framed photos of the late Factory label-head Tony Wilson and Joy Division/New Order manager Rob Gretton. Somehow larger-than-life both living and dead.

Then, it’s time for the roundtable discussion, featuring Peter Hook, Ang Matthews, Angela Murray, David Hoyle, Graeme Park, Greg Wilson, Ian Griffiths, Paul Cons and, last but certainly not least, Noel Gallagher of the little-known North-West outfit Oasis. The senior Gallagher brother walks over to the roundtable, right past my chair. His forehead is even bigger in person.

How can I describe a discussion concerning The Haçienda — a bizarre phenomenon in of itself — amongst some of the most influential and storied musicians, DJs and fashion gurus that Manchester has ever seen? Even the group of club veterans seem baffled by its ongoing legacy. They all share anecdotes of the club’s heyday: Peter Hook recalls New Years eves spent in a haze of ecstasy, Noel Gallagher reminisces on seeing seminal indie bands The Smiths, Happy Mondays and Primal Scream perform rip-roaring sets in the club’s early days, and ‘Haçienda boy’ Ian Griffiths claims he only started going into FAC 51 because it was marginally warmer than his flat. And, allegedly, they sold chips for 30p. 

It’s a hilarious back-and-forth from start to finish: “Hooky fucking barred me!”, scowls Gallagher. Hook retorts with “No, you’re wrong, mate. I barred you twice.” It’s like an hour-long club-land equivalent of the Spider-Man pointing meme — a tennis rally of accusations, insults and anecdotes hurled back and forth as the motley crew of cultural icons try to unpick the club’s dizzy history (or try to remember anything at all). 

But, it’s a little bit more than that. The discussion also concerns The Haçienda’s various subcultures; the way that it empowered communities and offered safe spaces for expression and cultural experimentation. The fashion gurus of the table discuss fondly the way in which the club, although opened by a bunch of heterosexual lads from Salford, paved the way for the Gay communities of Manchester to partake in musical, cultural and pharmaceutical exploration: “The so-called ‘Gay Village’ in Manchester at that time was a joke. We needed somewhere to go… to party… to feel safe. The Haçienda was that. It attracted weirdos and misfits…”, reminisces David Hoyle. The effects of this are still felt today in Manchester’s vibrant Gay scene.

So, why did The Haçienda work in the huge, resounding way that it did? I suppose most would answer ‘Acid House’… the second summer of love. Or, perhaps, they’d say Happy Mondays’ melding of predominantly-white indie music with black dance music for a new club landscape. Or, if more cynical, they’d say New Order’s paycheques. 

A large part of the discussion is centred around this question. Each figure poses a suggestion: Gallagher argues that the specific size of Manchester made it all possible; “Manchester’s just small enough, and just big enough, for genuine revolution to happen. It can’t in a bigger city like New York”. Paul Cons suggests the lack of segregation in Manchester as the prime root of the second summer of love: “In London, or Liverpool, you had clubs playing specific music… for specific crowds. You had indie nights. You had Gay nights. In Liverpool, it was all very segregated… you had Black club nights separately. Manchester didn’t have this in the same way. It allowed for the different cultures to mix.”

The table all agrees, however, in making a case for specific visionaries Wilson and Gretton — their specific determination to give something back to the city of Manchester: “They had a vision for what Manchester needed, and they went out and did it. I’m always saying this. People don’t know what they want until you go out and give it to them,” remarks the Oasis songsmith. Wilson’s knowing smile — photographed and immortalised — seems to glint in approval from the corner of the room. 

Hook, of course, finds the time to mention one more person before the discussion ends. “There’s really one reason why it was able to happen. The Haçienda only happened because Ian Curtis died. The whole thing was built from Ian. From Joy Division. It wasn’t New Order that funded it all. It was Joy Division that kept that club running when it was struggling.” He requests applause for the late Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis. 

It’s a wonderful discussion, even if the absence of Rebecca Hook seems a little strange. It’s her event, after all, and yet it seems like she has been denied a central voice. Though, perhaps her book does all the talking she needs to do: a colourful artefact of hedonism, community and, of course, style. Countless punters walk happily with their signed copy in hand, ready to display it across any coffee table within reach.

The party then erupts downstairs. Acid House veterans shuffle to the beat. Rowetta from the Happy Mondays glides onto stage, singing her lungs out over various threads of samples. She wears a glittery cape, yellow and black in typical Factory fashion. Her iconic extravagance is more than welcome. The whole Hook family is in full socialite mode, including bassist Jack Bates (now of The Smashing Pumpkins). Factory aficionados stand in the smoking area reminiscing, even in the harsh rain. People look happy. Content. It’s a wonderful blur of culture, cocktails and, as Charlie XCX would say, club classics.

At one point in the party, I queue at the bar for a pint. I look to my left: Peter Hook. The man whose book Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division taught me that you didn’t have to be any good at music to form a band, and the man whose bass sound has been the soundtrack to my life ever since I was a 14-year-old wannabe punk rocker. I eventually work up the courage to ask him for a photo, telling him that my Dad and I have seen The Light over ten times. Hook turns round, gives me a fist bump, and says in his hearty Mancunian drawl, “here’s to ten more, mate”. I leave the party still giddy.

In the Instagram ad for Rebecca Hook’s launch party for The Hacienda: Threads, it said ‘Celebrate the music. The fashion. The people’. They were all duly celebrated in New Century Hall. 

Are we any closer to uncovering just how it all came to be? How Factory built a club that changed the world? No, of course not. That’d spoil the allure.

Buy a copy of The Hacienda: Threads here.