It’s all fun and games until the band gets hooked on heroin and can’t deliver a followup album to their breakthrough  hit.  Manchester, England in the early 1980’s typified the dark, depressing and bleak post-industrial society permeating the UK.  Local post-punk hero Ian Curtis had hung himself; there were no jobs, no prospects, and lots of inexpensive heroin.  And Margaret Thatcher was still in power.  It was good times for rich white people and horrible times for everyone else, especially young people from England’s decimated industrial north.  So what can a poor boy do . . . ?  Enter TV host Tony Wilson, his Hacienda Club, ecstasy, dance beats, raves . . . and hello Madchester and scores of great bands.

Able to develop apart from the London scene, the Happy Mondays epitomized the Manchester scene of the late 80’s and early 90’s - funky dance beats, groovy guitars, a tinge of psychedelia, a taste of techno, and pop hooks for days.  Critics describe the music as “baggy” - the perfect adjective for the looseness of the groove.  I don’t mean to pigeonhole all Manchester bands as sounding like this, but twenty years on, the Mondays have become the band most associated with the movement.  After all, this is the city that gave us Joy Division, The Buzzcocks, The Durutti Column, Primal Scream and New Order.  But in the early 90’s, the Madchester dance groove, raves, and Ibiza Night at the Hacienda defined the city and the movement.

Tony Wilson, a local television host, record label head, and club owner, allowed these bands to develop at his local nightclub, The Hacienda (financed in large part by New Order royalties).  At one time dubbed the most famous club in the world, artists who played the club include Madonna on her first UK tour, The Smiths, New Order, Spiritualized, and Einsturzende Neubaten, who drilled holes in the walls as part of their act.  In this atmosphere of creative chaos, the Happy Mondays were able to develop their sound, achieving international fame and ultimately imploding due to heroin addiction.  The Mondays had become so hip that Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz of the Talking Heads agreed to produce the followup to their breakthrough album, Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches.  The band was flown to Barbados (to separate them from their drug dealers) to record when Weymouth and Frantz realized their “artistes” were a bunch of foul-mouthed working class louts with severe drug addictions.  The album was eventually completed but was met with significantly less critical acclaim than their previous release.

Because of issues wlth security (or lack of it) The Hacienda closed in 1997 and was ultimately demolished.  Peter Hook of New Order owns the rights to the name “Hacienda,” and when the original building was torn down, the new structure taking its place still bears the iconic name.  The story of Tony Wilson, The Hacienda, and the great bands that came from this scene is the subject of Michael Winterbottom’s 2002 film, 24 Hour Party People.  Covering the years 1976-1992, 24 Hour Party People tells the story of how one man with an empty warehouse spawned a global pop culture phenomenon and made Manchester, a depressed northern city, synonymous with cutting edge music.

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