The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club

Attention! Pas de version française! Polonais edition.

‘Founder of Joy Division, and former bassist with New Order, Peter Hook lets off some steam about music piracy’
List 24/9

‘A testosterone-scented transcript of ripping yarns, the addition of a year-by-year listings diary, company accounts and excerpts from board meetings supply valuable historical ballast...there’s much fun to be had within – much like the Hacienda itself’
‘Q’ magazine November issue

‘Chiming perfectly with the nation’s twin fears of urban violence and monetary collapse, this book should become a cautionary tale of modern times’
5 stars, Mojo magazine November issue

‘The Hacienda was, as Hook says, in many ways the perfect example of how not to run a club – if you view a night-club as a money-making business. But if, like the baggy trousered philanthropists Factory, you see it as an altruistic gift to your hometown and a breeding ground for the next generation of youth culture, it was, accidentally, purposefully, shambolically, anarchically, thrillingly, scarily, inspirationally, perfect’
Observer 27/9

‘Hook himself is revealed as a born anecdotalist, firing off quips, pithy asides and self-lacerating mea culpas like a scatter-gun. The sections that interweave his narrative – DJ playlists, club nights, minutes of board meetings, pie-in-the-sky company accounts, a roll call of artists, including Madonna, who appeared at the club – are often revealing or evocative, but it is the author’s own voice that makes the book such a compelling read’
The Sunday Times 27/9
‘Peter Hook’s memoir The Hacienda – How Not To Run A Club is a hugely candid work’
Word magazine November issue

‘Had The Haçienda not been run by a bunch of ‘madchester’ chancers, it wouldn’t have been the club it was; nor would Hook’s account be half as riveting’
Time Out 8/10

‘Hooky, as he is known by all and sundry, is 53 years old, a former addict and alcoholic (he doesn’t use the word “former”), a one-time member of not one but two of the most important bands of the last 30 years, current member of indie supergroup Freebass and latterly an author. He has written a memoir of the club which cost him and his fellow members of New Order millions’
Glasgow Herald 3/10

‘Hook reckons he’s lucky to have survived the bullets, the booze and the ecstasy and it’s our good fortune that he’s written this book, a worthy addition to the archives of glorious rock follies, recounted with candour, humour and gob-smacking detail’
Scotland on Sunday 4/10

‘Lauren Laverne uplugged’
‘This fine tome (..set in a club – THE club, in fact)’
Grazia 12/10

‘New Order’s Peter Hook tells the insider’s story, giving us a front row seat for one of the most fascinating episodes in music’s history’
News of the World 4/10

‘Hook, who split from New Order three years ago, is about to tell his version of the club’ chequered story in a book, ruefully entitled The Hacienda: How not To Run a Club. In it, he reveals just how disastrous their investment was. Its pages catalogue their collective folly: account-sheets made up of minus signs; minutes from marijuana-blurred board meetings: myriad anecdotes of fraud and theft: lashings of drugs and violence. It is a cautionary tale, not for the timid’
Daily Telegraph 3/10
‘The Joy Division co-founder has sorted through the maelstrom of stories and hearsay surrounding the now iconic club to produce a biographical account of how spectacularly bad they all were at managing the finances – but brilliant at creating a music scene’
Shortlist 15/10

‘It was the party to end all parties – 14 years of hedonism and debauchery which revolutionised nightlife in Britain forever, created acid house and the concept of clubbing as we know it. The Hacienda not only transformed Manchester but had a phenomenal impact on the UKL as a whole, an impact which continues to shape our social lives today’
Scottish Daily Record 30/9
‘More fiscal farce in Peter Hook’s The Haçienda: How Not to Run a Club. The bass player with Joy Division and New Order, Hook tells a cautionary tale of how the creative chaos that generated musical highs also led to a massive monetary hangover when he and his pals opened a nightclub in the late Eighties’
Telegraph 28/11
‘It’s to Hook’s admirable credit that he can reflect on the 15 years when The Haçienda lurched from disaster to disaster, via calamity and catastrophe, with only modest rancour and a great deal of gallows humour’
Uncut magazine, Jan issue
‘Peter Hook’s book lifts the lid on the true story behind the legendary Manchester club that brought acid-house music to the north and changed the face of UK clubbing forever. It’s not the first book to describe the exploits at the Whitworth Street club, but as a co-owner of the iconic venue, Hooky’s memoir offers a real insight into what actually happened from its conception in 1982 to when the shutters came down for good in 1997. New Order have often described the club as a millstone around their necks – here the band’s bass player reveals the true weight of that millstone in his own inimitable, down-to-earth style’
‘Gifts to take note of’, Independent 4/12

‘New Order’s bass player tells a ripping yarn of Manchester’s most famous club, a chaotic institution nominally owned by Hook’s old band. The title is unironic: in its 15-year existence from 1982 to 1997, “the Hac” lost £3m’
‘Books of the Year’, The Sunday Times 6/12

‘The Hacienda: How Not To Run A Club by Peter Hook, is a memoir by the erstwhile New Order bassist, in which he offers up a delightfully pungent, occasionally depressing, generally very funny insider’s account of the notorious venue owned by the band’
‘Books for Music fans this Christmas’, Metro 10/12
‘Along the way, there are miserable gigs, gangs and run-ins with the police. What there isn’t is anyone with any idea of how to run a business. Still, as Hook concludes, “If you’re going to waste an opportunity there are a few important things to remember. Do it in style. Do it in public. And, above all, do it in Manchester.”’
‘This year’s crop of music books’, Independent on Sunday 13/12
'There are many sharply drawn vignettes in Hook's entertaining memoir about the rise, triumph and collapse of the Hacienda club in Manchester. Hook, co-owner of the business and bass-player with Joy Division and New Order, is revealed as a born anecdotalist, firing off quips and self-lacerating mea culpas like a scatter-gun... An engaging and often hilarious character'
Sunday Times 3/10
'Saturated with gleeful hedonism, Hook's memoir includes frank admissions of eye-popping commercial ineptitude, which gives the book a restless energy'
FT, 9/10
'In the Eighties the Manchester club played host to the Smiths and the Stone Roses. But it all went terribly wrong, as Peter Hook shows'
Daily Telegraph 9/10