Laura Snapes and Matt Grimble compere a Q&A with Peter Hook at Borders to discuss his new book.

It's easy to be sceptical about a nightclub supposedly changing the world, but the motley crew behind the Haçienda and Factory Records revolutionised DJ culture, brought Manchester out of the cultural dark ages and produced several hugely influential bands in the process. One of the men at the centre of it all was Peter Hook, most famous as the bassist in Joy Division and then New Order.

The book itself is a chronological history of the Haçienda, from its inaustere beginnings in 1982 to its demise by dint of bankruptcy and un-policed gang violence.

Told with the affable verve of Hook's Salford accent, in between meticulously compiled events listings and accounts are self-deprecatingly told anecdotes that you couldn't make up. To ward a rival gang out of the club, the Haçienda's head bouncer (himself so notorious that the police wouldn't touch him) decapitated their dog, set its head on the table and said, "next time, that'll be a human head." True to the scene's hedonistic infamy, Hook describes how on a trip to Ibiza to record a new album, New Order wrote off 11 hire cars whilst high as kites.

But before the club became the druggy, acid house behemoth that made its name, the Haçienda was born from aspects of Situationist philosophy that inspired the late Tony Wilson, founder of Factory Records - that "the Hacienda must be built", a place where like-minded people could congregate in the pursuit of cultural awakening.

"We never set out to make money, and the club was opened because we didn't have anywhere to go, which was very noble," says Hook. "And it was very noble of New Order to stump up the money that entertained a whole city for 15 years!"

The club pulled Manchester into the modern age. Images of the city at the time are rarely lit with anything but monochrome or drab tones, but the Haçienda dragged it sharply into Technicolour.

"The strangest thing about Control was that someone said to me, "it's weird that it's in black and white,' and I hadn't even noticed! That's how true it felt to me, because y'know those old black and white episodes of Coronation Street, that's how I remember Manchester."

By the time he returned in 1983 for the release of Power, Corruption and Lies, there was fresh meat on the scene, whose indulgent, romantic stylings were as far removed from the clinical electronics of New Order as was possible: The Smiths. Five years ago, Hook formed Freebass with Mani (The Stone Roses), and Andy Rourke of The Smiths, which seems odd considering the ribbing doled out to Morrissey and co in the book.

He laughs, "Well the thing about The Smiths was that they were our competition, so there's no way that I could have liked them, and Morrissey's a twat anyway! He makes Mark E Smith look popular! What I do love about him is that if you have any legal problems with him, the only person you can speak to about them is his mother! And the first thing she says is, 'our Steven wouldn't do that!'"