Remembering 'Legends': The underground nightclub 'second only to Hacienda'

Discerning clubbers will know that some of the best nights out happen just before the weekend officially starts.

Before the typical crowds flock to the clubs and bars on a Friday and Saturday, Thursdays can be when the weekend really begins, when venues can be playful and cater to those with less conventional tastes.

One place that held a legendary Thursday night out in the 1980s was the appropriately named Legend nightclub. Located on Princess Street in Manchester city centre, it would later go on to become home to another iconic nightclub, Fifth Avenue.

Prior to becoming Fifth Avenue, the subterranean space was the precursor to the Hacienda, featuring state-of-the-art sound and lighting rigs. The site was also the location that the Happy Mondays chose to film the video for their track Wrote For Luck in 1988.

Celebrated DJ Greg Wilson, who was the club's resident mid-week jazz-funk DJ from 1981 to 1983, said it was "undoubtedly the greatest club I have ever worked in". The venue later played host to the likes of Mike Pickering, A Guy Called Gerald and Paul Oakenfold in the nascent rave era.

A brochure for the club, which opened in 1980, boasts the venue's "circular sprung dance area raised above the general floor level peppered with 2000 Tivoli lights" and describes itself as a "new futuristic disco club."

As the decade wore on, a completely different crowd made Legend nightclub their home. And like all good churches, this place of worship to the early rave culture also had bats in its belfry.

Thursday nights at Legend became a mecca for Manchester's alternative crowd. Goths, glams, rockers and everything in between arrived for one of the city's most lauded alternative nights.

While we often associate this era in