![\"Cover](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/3d8d9f3a-b24b-467c-82c3-bc2e4ec48fb4.jpg\")
<\/p>\nHas anyone had a better time than Mike Pickering did at the end of the Eighties? As the resident DJ at the Ha\u00e7ienda in Manchester during the \u201csecond summer of love\u201d, Pickering was the chief conductor of the euphoria of acid house. <\/p>\n
In his rollicking new book, Manchester Must Dance, he remembers playing the 1989 launch party for Technique, the album by New Order that reflected the mood of the time. The refreshed Ha\u00e7ienda faithful had trooped down to Real World Studios, Peter Gabriel\u2019s bucolic hideaway near Bath, where the album had been recorded. Gabriel, thankfully, was away. A biblical knees-up ensued, with Pickering at the controls. A few minutes later, or so it seemed, his fellow DJ Graeme Park came to take over. \u201cF*** off \u2014 I\u2019ve only just started,\u201d Pickering shouted. \u201cMike,\u201d Park said, \u201cyou\u2019ve been playing for six hours.\u201d <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Pickering, 72, may not be as celebrated as Ian Brown, Shaun Ryder or Tony Wilson, his flamboyant boss at Factory Records, but this working-class son of Blackley was quietly crucial to Manchester\u2019s musical boom. Starting out as the booker at the Ha\u00e7ienda, he secured early gigs for the Smiths, Culture Club and an unknown singer called Madonna. <\/p>\n
For Factory he signed two quintessential Manchester bands in James and the Happy Mondays. He co-founded Deconstruction Records, which released such global club smashes as Black Box\u2019s Ride on Time, and formed M People, who brought dance music to the charts and snatched the Mercury prize from under the noses of Blur and Pulp in 1994. Then, as an A&R man in the Noughties, Pickering discovered Kasabian, Gossip and the superstar DJ Calvin Harris.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Books newsletter<\/p>\n
News, reviews, author interviews and suggested reads from our literary editors.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tSign up with one click<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes I think, \u2018F***ing hell, you\u2019re lucky,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cAll the times you got to places at the right time.\u201d He is as synonymous with Manchester as Strangeways, Boddingtons and lashing rain, so it feels sacrilegious to find him living in a pretty mews house in a well-heeled corner of \u201cthat London\u201d. Rob Gretton, his friend and the manager of New Order, would definitely have called him a southern ponce. <\/p>\n
Pickering\u2019s Mancunian vowels haven\u2019t faded, at least, and he is happy in Camden, where he has lived for more than 20 years. He shares the house with his wife, Kate, a documentary maker, and their teenage daughter, and has two grown-up children from a previous marriage. <\/p>\n
![\"Heather](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/c8d856c5-6031-4041-bd9a-806f96fa08af.jpg\")
Pickering on stage with Heather Small of M PeopleStuart Mostyn\/Getty images<\/p>\n
With Wilson and Gretton dead, Pickering is one of the last of Factory\u2019s inner circle left. The list of people who penned chapters for the book gives an idea of the breadth of his career and the reverence in which he is held: Martin Fry of ABC, Johnny Marr, Noel Gallagher and Harris. <\/p>\n
\u201cMike always seemed to be around when things were happening,\u201d Marr writes, while Fry, who met Pickering in Manchester during the punk era, reveals how little his modest friend would give away about his stellar career when they spoke on the phone. \u201cIt will be nice to read the book,\u201d Fry writes, \u201cto find out what you\u2019ve been doing all these years.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
After writing the book with the august Manchester music writer Paul Morley, Pickering narrated the audio version himself (\u201cFour days. Hardest thing I\u2019ve ever done\u201d) \u2014 and his guest writers had to do the same. \u201cIt can\u2019t be that f***ing hard,\u201d Gallagher told him, but afterwards he said: \u201cI\u2019m never doing that again.\u201d Gallagher was among those leaping around at the Ha\u00e7ienda and says it was an unlikely inspiration for Oasis. The house music Pickering played \u201cwas all about what it made you feel, not what it was about\u201d, Gallagher writes, and he tried to recreate that joy in Live Forever et al. \u201cNot the rhythmic side of it, or the electronic side, but the memory it left you with.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Ha\u00e7ienda, which had bars named after Russian spies including Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess and Kim Philby, was a temple to Mancunian contrariness and Pickering says he could be \u201ca bit of a c*** sometimes, because once I was on the journey I knew what I wanted\u201d. <\/p>\n
He is often frank on the page, describing how he thought Madonna\u2019s ambition led to her \u201cjumping from one [human] resource to another\u201d. Today he is even blunter: \u201cShe\u2019s a bitch. Really not nice.\u201d\u00a0She played the Ha\u00e7ienda in 1984, miming and \u201cdancing with her brother to four songs\u201d, Pickering writes in the book. \u201cWe didn\u2019t rate her chances much.\u201d They said hello afterwards but she \u201chad no interest in looking me in the eye\u201d. A mutual friend referred to remixing a song by Quando Quango, the electronic band Pickering formed in the Eighties. Her response, he writes, was: \u201c\u2018Oh, that dross.\u201d <\/p>\n
Other encounters with legends were warmer. Quincy Jones was a delight when Pickering and Gretton had lunch with him at a pub in Knutsford \u2014 Pickering memorably describes him wrestling with a mustard sachet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in the book he remembers walking around the mocked-up Ha\u00e7ienda built for the film 24 Hour Party People, in which he briefly played himself. It was so realistic that he forgot it was a set, opening a door and finding nothing behind it. A few veterans cried when they saw the faux-Ha\u00e7ienda.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people couldn\u2019t let go,\u201d he says. But not him. \u201cI get bored of things really easily.\u201d Including drugs. He writes about the importance of Ecstasy to acid house and how he would DJ under the influence and know \u201cwhat record to play, three, four ahead\u201d. But he soon tired of that buzz. It\u2019s only his beloved Manchester City and cycling \u2014 he takes his campervan and bike to follow the Tour de France \u2014 that he isn\u2019t sick of. \u201cAnd music, obviously.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The pop mogul Pete Waterman once told Pickering that he had \u201cWoolworth\u2019s ears\u201d, an instinct for what the masses want to hear. M People have sold more than 11 million records, including such mega-hits as Moving on Up. That contrasted with Factory, when he \u201cnever heard the word profit. We just wanted to put records out and have great sleeves on the records and play gigs and have a good time.\u201d That mixture of high-mindedness and hedonism led to the label going bust, after Wilson turned down the chance to sign more commercial fare such as Ride on Time. <\/p>\n
With the Heather Small-fronted M People, however, Pickering was rich for the first time. \u201cAt the bank they used to look at me a bit funny in my rave clothes and then all of a sudden I\u2019d come in with a cheque for 250 grand.\u201d He still lives on the royalties, he says. Such success offended some purists.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we were coming up through the Ha\u00e7ienda, people loved us. As soon as we were popular, they f***ing hated us.\u201d A music journalist referred to M People shows as being \u201cfull of women in white high heels dancing around handbags\u201d. That, he says, \u201cis complete and utter snobbery against the working class\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wilson, too, saw dance music as a lesser genre \u2014 his mantra was, \u201cDance albums don\u2019t sell, darling.\u201d Was it sweet to prove him wrong? \u201cIt kind of was,\u201d Pickering says. \u201cBut I was dead sad because when they went bust, if they\u2019d have signed those records \u2014 even Black Box on its own \u2014 it would have saved them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, Pickering can empathise with Wilson when it comes to cultural snobbery. Booker, DJ, label boss, A&R man\u00a0\u2014 his jobs have revolved around taste, deciding what\u2019s good and what\u2019s not. Songs are paramount, he says. \u201cA lot of the great bands, their singers are ugly. Mick Jagger\u2019s ugly, Ian [Curtis of Joy Division] wasn\u2019t great-looking. But they sing fantastic songs and they\u2019re great frontmen.\u201d Even in the TikTok age, that hasn\u2019t changed. \u201cIt\u2019ll never change.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
What next? Pickering has been offered guest lecture opportunities at universities and still plays the odd DJ gig, especially when it\u2019s one of the new day-raves so he can get to bed at a decent time. His wife is developing a documentary about the Manchester music scene, he says. \u201cShe keeps saying, \u2018Who shall I speak to?\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Oof, it\u2019s not that easy, because they\u2019ve all passed away.\u2019\u201d She should start with the man who lives with her. <\/p>\n