Hacienda memories

Tony Daly

HERE'S a great pub quiz question for all you music lovers - who was the last band ever to play at legendary Manchester club the Hacienda?

No idea? Well it was Saturday's Angels, a long-since defunct local band fronted by Royton's own man-about-town Tony Daly.

Punk, mod and new wave influenced Daly is very well known on the north-west music scene. The Rickenbacker fanatic has played guitar and sang in bands around town for well over three decades, firstly as a reluctant front-man in mostly bedroom band No Entry, Saturday's Angels, the Micradotts for many years, and more recently the 261 Allstars.

So what about this Hacienda tale?

Demolished in 2002, it had been closed since 1997, and Daly was right there when the doors slammed shut for the final time.

He recalled: "It was a midweek 'Stone Love' night, and we finished our set about half past 12 or something like that. We weren't happy about that because we should have been on at around 10 o clock.

"As we were coming off stage, though, we were in the massive big changing room downstairs where they had showers and things like that, and in the back room there was a huge freezer that was padlocked up.

"It contained the band's rider - which incidentally was something rubbish like Tuborg I think - but these other lads came in and they weren't having that.

"They smashed hell out of it, getting the Bollinger out of there, and I said: 'what are you doing?'

"They just replied 'it's shutting down tomorrow'.

"They were like a plague of ants, picking all sorts of things up and putting them in a van outside.

"They stripped it bare, then the very next day it did shut down so that's why we were the last ever band to play there."

The Micradotts - Daly, Chris Bentley and Lee Doyle - continue to be busy playing rock 'n' roll, mod and indie covers to enthusiastic pub and club crowds, and next summer the band have a clutch of exciting dates booked in.

Daly added: "We're hoping to be doing the Isle of Man TT next year, we're just waiting for confirmation of that.

"We'll do a couple of nights, and once we get our flights sorted out we can get it booked.

"We'll be doing the Ribble Valley Mod Weekender again, we do north-west scooter rallies, and we do a lot of charity dos, particularly for Combat Stress.

"That and cancer affect a lot of people unfortunately."

The Micradotts and the 261 Allstars - Daly, Mike Greatbanks and Stuart Reid - are set to keep the former right at the heart of the scene in 2017, but where did it all start?

Daly revealed: "We had a big family who lived in the flats at Ardwick Green in Manchester, and the house was always a hive of activity.

"The Who were always on, the Small Faces, Rod Stewart later on and all that sort of stuff.

"But with us living across the road from Apollo, we used to finish school at quarter to four, run across the park and go and watch bands loading up and things like that.

"We saw many a great band being sound-checked."

No wonder Daly was sufficiently inspired back then to go on and still be making his mark on the scene all these years later.