“Along the way, I went from a chain-smoking student living hand to mouth, always in danger of having my phone cut off, a visit from the bailiffs or threatened by a gang, to running the biggest nightclub in the world, and the largest metropolitan festival in the country.”
Greater Manchester Night Time Czar Sacha Lord and the brains behind the annual Parklife Fesival has written a book spilling the beans on his journey
Published through HarperNorth, the book reveals behind-the-scenes accounts of Sacha’s enormous contribution to nightlife in the city, from his club nights at The Haçienda, Paradise Factory and Sankeys, to the birth of Parklife and The Warehouse Project, named the world’s favourite nightclub, beating the likes of Pacha and Ushuaïa.
Speaking to Sacha on the week that the book was released he told us that they wanted to focus on the darker period of the cities history when he was starting out
“I wanted to show just far the City had moved on to where we are now” he tells us.”I started off in 1994 and it was the Wild West”
You will read in the book how he was shot at, attacked with petrol bombs and forced into the back of the car by Salford gangsters
“That simply wouldn’t have happened these days, we were labelled Gunchester”
The impetus to write the book came from a decision that he has made to take a bit of a step back “The time has come when I can’t be working til 3am in the morning and I need to hand the reins over”
It is 30 years since he put on his first event and 20 years since the first Warehouse Party and when asked by Harper Collins he jumped at the chance
Lord says he has been a bit of a hoarder and has kept much of the evidence of his career, it made the job a lot easier and the whole process he adds was very theroputic
“I wouldn’t change a thing-There have benn ups and downs ” he refers to a death of an attendee at a Warehouse party in 2013″ but he is adamant that although it has been stressful, he wouldnt change his course if given the opportunity
There were two bits of luck in his life, being born in Manchester, he firmly believes that his story couldnt have happened in any other city and secondly being born in the year he was becoase it meant that when he was in the sixth form, it coincided with the Madchester days
His relationship with his father, or lack of relationship comes across .”He was he tells us an alchoholic,a gambler and a womaniser, he ticked all the bad books”
He did when he was 52 but Sacha hadn’t spoken to him in the previous seven years.There is no doubt that not wanting to be his dad spurred him on
“He went bankrupt more than we have had hot dinners”
Lord has been Andy Burnham’s Night Time Czar since 2018, he recently joined the Labour Party and has been active in a number of political campaigns, especiallt around the lack of support given to the hospitality industry during Covid and since.
Does he have any further political ambitions? No he firmly answers.”I can do more damage from the outside”
Tales From The Dancefloor’ is co-authored with best-selling author Luke Bainbridge and has been published by HarperNorth,
