The Haçienda Sound

The seed wasn't planted in 1982, the night the Haçienda opened. It was earlier—post-punk wreckage meeting northern soul all-nighters, a city primed for ritual. By 1980, Ian Brown and John Squire were throwing warehouse parties. DJ Dave Booth spun for the Stone Roses at events like "The Flower Show" in 1985. Greg Wilson and Hewan Clarke mixed electro and funk at the Haçienda's early nights before anyone called it house. The proto-scene: Factory's art-school austerity colliding with the sweat-soaked pragmatism of black American dance music, all of it filtered through a grey industrial landscape that Thatcher had left to rot.