#mark coyle

A shipment of over 15,000 pills were smuggled in to the UK from Amsterdam by people close to the Happy Mondays in late 1987, and these fuelled the rise of acid house in the north of the UK, according to someone familiar with the band and the deal. These friends of the Mondays began to sell it in an alcove near the speakers in the Haçienda known as “E corner”. A third group of user-dealers from Manchester told me they bought 200 pills in from the US in 1987, which they say were handed out like a sacrament at Stuffed Olives, a gay club in Manchester. Everyone wants to claim the Ecstasy crown, but it’s perhaps more romantic to leave the central origin myth of rave culture a little mysterious. In the clubs, meanwhile, short hairstyles fell out of favour to flowing hippy locks, with baggy clothes, fezes, or silk pyjamas reported in the weirder corners of Mancunian nightlife. The soundtrack was just as weird and radical: acid house.

—Ecstasy island: How MDMA reached the UK in 1988 | MixMag 3 May 2018

The Haçienda was knocked down in 2002 and turned into apartments, however the club still remains legendary in rave culture. Through 15 years of famous DJs, drug abuse and club anthems, this club was an icon for Manchester in the 1980s and 1990s.