2. Movement

March 1983. New Order take to the stage on Top of the Pops to
perform their new single, Blue Monday. The machines misfire, the
sequencer slips and Bernard Sumner glances upwards as if waiting
for help that never comes. On national television, it looks like
chaos. Within weeks, Blue Monday becomes the biggest selling 12
inch single in British history. Inside the Haçienda, the early
nights are sparse and uncertain. The building is vast, expensive
and half empty. Almost nobody dances. But beyond Manchester, in
the clubs of Chicago and New York, a new sound is transforming
dance floors into places of collective release. That pulse begins
travelling across the Atlantic, carried by DJs, white labels and
restless curiosity.


As house music seeps into Hulme community centres and Moss Side
blues parties before reaching the city centre, the rules begin to
change. Door policies loosen. Guitars make room for groove.


Episode 2 of The Rise and Fall of Madchester charts the moment
Manchester finds its rhythm. From the uneasy birth of Blue Monday
to the early reinvention of the Haçienda, this is the story of
how a city that had stood still began, tentatively at first, to
move.


Featuring archive interviews from Bernard Sumner, Gillian
Gilbert, Peter Hook, Shaun Ryder, Ian Brown and Tony Wilson
alongside new interviews with Mike Pickering, Angela Matthews and
Steve Atherton.


A BBC Audio Production.