How I Turned a Derelict Brothel into an Iconic Ibiza Club

This is an extract from The Motel: High Times in 90s Ibiza, a memoir from iconic party promoter Claire Manumission. She created the legendary club Manumission with her partner, Mike – which culminated in the notorious Manumission Motel venue and the cult rave film Manumission the Movie.

June 1998… two weeks before we were due to open the doors at Manumission to 10,000 expectant revellers, Mike and I returned to Ibiza. The stakes, as ever, were high, but we felt our concept for the year was our strongest yet. It was our most ambitious – Murder at the Manumission Motel; during the winter months we had plotted an intricate storyline that would play out over the course of the summer. 

The trip had been an international recruiting mission: it was the last piece of the puzzle, cherry-picking people to work with us that summer and also promote Manumission the Movie. 

We had been in Cannes with Kris Needs and Irvine Welsh and then to Brighton to secure DJs from the record labels Skint and Wall of Sound. In West London we shot the Motel campaign at the house of friend and collaborator Jade Jagger. And, of course, we had the Motel itself. An abandoned brothel on the outskirts of Ibiza Town that we planned to turn into a 24-hour party destination – a non-stop manifestation of everything that Manumission stood for. It was the cornerstone on which the success of the season was built. Everything had been going along perfectly when we received the bad news. There would be no Motel. The finance had been pulled. In a series of unlikely events our business partner had fallen out with the building’s owner, Eric the Viking, reneged on the agreement and refused to contribute any of the funds required for us to rent and restore the place. 

The previous year Mike and I had personally recruited and financed 14 different film directors and their crews to come to Ibiza. We had used the deposit for our house and sunk all our personal funds into making and editing the film. We had flown in an Avid editing machine from Madrid and an editor from Soho. Each cost a grand a week, not to mention the villa and the slabs of Moroccan hashish – the size of those kilo bars of Cadbury – that we were fuelling him with. We had no money left. If the summer wasn’t a success, we would lose the house. Plus we had Carl Cox, Jacques Lu Cont, Derek Dahlarge, Richard Norris and Kris Needs booked to stay, and the American contingent in transit! DJ Jerome and five of New York’s finest were flying over the Atlantic, and worse still, Otter had just landed with two smuggled pink chihuahuas. Jade Jagger had designed my rose gold engagement ring, and Mike was due to officially propose on opening night. The whole island was coming. Everything we had done that led to this point now hung in the balance… 

We scheduled dinner that night with the building’s owner Eric. During the meal much red wine was consumed but there seemed to be no solution. Exhausted and deflated we still had to go out promoting. I was in danger of falling asleep in my vintage heels when the Viking offered us a temporary solution: it came in the form of a little blue pill and went by the name Valium, which he assured would make us feel much better. Eric went home and we made our way through the marshmallow wasteland to Pacha.

When we arrived at the Funky Room, our friend Vaughan glided across the dance floor, robes flowing, hand on his exaggerated top hat, and led us to the bar. 

“Young Michael, Claire-y, you two look absolutely fucked!”

Mike attempted to speak.

“Eric the Viking, wed wine, Vawium.” He grimaced, one eye closed like Popeye without a pipe but everything was OK now. “Spaghetti-Brothers… lines!”

Unconvinced, Vaughan administered some wisdom of his own.

“Well, you need more. But first, let’s have a joint and then Claire-y’s dancing with me.”

At this stage, I was not sure I could even walk across the dance floor let alone dance on it, and dancing with Vaughan was something I usually did well. It was a complex affair – glides, slides, hips swinging, low jazz moves. Well, maybe later. And so, the morning drew on. 

Nick the Greek, owner of the Rock Bar, was the next one to fix us with more generous offerings washed down with a shot of vodka, a bump from Ralf, then Swerve burst onto the scene. “Cheeky half!?” Without an ounce of common sense left in us we accepted. Swerve was on hyper drive. Diagnosed at a young age with MS, he knew he didn’t have long to live and could never have children – so he thought. So, he lived life on quick time, gloriously happy, taking as many drugs as he could sniff or swallow. If you asked him how he was, he would say, “Fabulous!” He simply couldn’t believe his luck that he was alive – and on it!

The music kicked in, James Brown melted into the chemicals and Vaughan got his dance. At 8AM, the sound was cut but no one wanted to go home and I had the idea to bring our friends along to the curious pink building, full of promise, on el cruce de Jesus…

Let’s break into the Motel and show everyone just how cool it is inside. My loyal accomplice, who had now partially recovered the faculty of his jaw, agreed. We had no qualms about breaking in and showing the Motel to our friends, so confident were we that morning it would be ours. We felt as if we were guided by some magic force, it was all supposed to happen. The money was just a detail. Against all odds we were willing it to happen. Everything we did, we did for Manumission. Fuelled with the great optimism that only youth grants you, it felt like our good fortune could never end.

The troops gathered outside the abandoned brothel as Mike swung up into the tree overhanging the front door and in through the slip of window on the stairwell. Within seconds the front door was wide open and the 20 or so revellers piled in. The previous Madame had kept possession of the place but refused to pay rent and left it stale and lifeless for some time. The night’s excesses had waned. We were pleasantly drunk, stoned and excited as we tumbled up the stairs. 

The Motel’s renovation was inspired by the Titty Twister, the vampire-ridden strip club in From Dusk till Dawn; the Chelsea Hotel; and 1950s pulp novels I had collected from British charity shops – Catkillers out for Kicks, Murder in the Cathouse. They inspired the outline of the thoroughly impossible sexual thriller that I was writing for the artwork. Every week there would be a murder at the Manumission Motel. A male guest disappearing, ingested through the vagina of his killer, the only clue left behind a bloody paw print on the victim’s discarded underpants. The bloody paw print would be the trademark of the Pink Pussies – our elite squad of dancers recruited from NYC, Jackie 60 and Juicy.

Mike sat rolling a joint on the edge of the waterbed in room number 10. “This will be our room, lady. The party room.” Two double beds, giant sunken bath. We could feel just how good that place was going to be. The Motel stood on el cruce de Jesus – wow, what an address. The cross of Jesus. It should have been a warning, but at the time it felt like a miracle. It was a pink triangular building surrounded on all three sides by highways. A rose-tinted slice of Americana, its candy-coloured neon signs flirted shamelessly with the passing trade: BAR, BED, BREAKFAST. 

“This place is fuckin wicked, mate, fuckin wicked!” Swerve enthused. 

The Motel was undeniably cool. 

“We’ve got to have it,” purred Jade in her bored Bohemian drawl. 

As we sat down in the dust and decay, Vaughan stepped up. “Mike, talk to Ralf…” Ralf was one of the posse; he had grown up in a brothel in Germany and lost his virginity to a prostitute. You cannot imagine the enormity of the fuck I do not give. Always laughing, smiling, shrugging, he really was someone who didn’t give a fuck. Vaughan repeated: “Talk to Ralf, he has got the money.” In Ibiza, there was one important rule: if it wasn’t clear what someone’s job was, you didn’t ask. Our friend Ralf had one of those jobs.

A week until opening and we were still waiting for the money. Eric shook his head. “You are never going to make it!” In an act of faith he handed us the keys. “Go, make your dream!”

It felt biblical: we had seven days and seven nights to transform the rickety ex-brothel on the wrong side of town into the Manumission Motel. It had stood empty for years. The downstairs was unattractive, a typical Ibicenco bar that didn’t fit with the Americana of the exterior. It would have to be ripped out. There was, however, a nice continuous tube of pink neon running along the corridor ceiling – the same light used on a butcher’s counter – installed when the place was run as a Puticlub to make the flesh have that certain glow. It would provide the perfect lighting for the art. We were big lovers of classic New York graffiti, and that was what the walls needed – art, street art, to tell the story. Colours subdued, sexy; words descriptive, suggestive – graffiti artists Elk and Petro travelled through the night from the UK and arrived with bags full of classic spray paint. The bedroom doors had lead-lined exteriors to deaden the sounds, with padded white vinyl interiors that coordinated with the built-in waterbeds – pure 70s pimp. 

Ralf came through with the money – the equivalent of £56,000 on a joint and a handshake. We would start by enhancing certain elements, pump some life and a fresh touch of style into it, and we would take away others – starting with the used condoms still stuck on the green rubber of the waterbeds. A narrow, winding corridor led to the rooftop wasteland of leaking air-conditioning outlets, with a dangerously low balustrade and spectacular view of the mountains, the distant sea, and D’alt Villa, the ancient old walled town of Ibiza. Below, traffic flowed on all sides of the triangular-based building, which was scheduled for demolition. If it were hit by a truck, permission would not be given to fix it. But until that time, it was ours to play with. And we loved it.

We wanted a rooftop shantytown with green Astroturf, swinging hammocks for smoking joints and reclining under the stars, and bespoke bamboo huts for friends and lovers, with straw blinds which could be pulled down or miniature doors that could be closed for a bit of privacy. The white square Ibicenco bar would be dismantled and the whole room transformed to make you feel like you had slipped inside a beautiful, curved and very pink vulva.

Our friend the Architect was grinning. His main responsibility was the realisation of this grand design – the Pink Pussy Strip Joint. He ran around the room with a spray can drawing out the folds of the vagina, which his builders would construct. The shapes, kind of undulating bank seating which would curve its way along the walls.

Slow-Paul, the carpenter, oversaw sculpturing the laminated wood, sanding it to look like it was dripping over the deep red surfaces of the bar and the stage – on to which strode a lean and confident woman in towering stilettos, a tattoo of the Virgin Mary on her well-toned calf, long legs, bikini bottoms low on her hips and a wife-beater vest rolled up, revealing the curve of her pert breasts. Otter threw her head back and rolled her Bette Davis eyes at the Architect. She was the most famous sex performer in the world – the S&M, the drag, the club scene had all come to her naturally. There was no coming out; she always hung out with gays and lesbians. By the time she was shaving her legs, she was hanging out with drag queens. 

Pink hair thrown up, cigarette hanging from her lips as she demonstrated for the Architect just how far her legs would reach when working the strip pole that he was installing for her on the stage. For a brief moment, time stood still, building work suspended. He had grown up on the island next door to the Time Lord himself – Dr Who actor Jon Pertwee and his kids, including his son Sean. The Architect – with golden skin, weathered beyond its years, and wild golden hair – took charge of Otter, her requirements and the entire situation. His crew of artists – long-haired, sun-drenched children of the hippies – would normally be happy with a joint and a beer.

But the creation of the Pink Pussy would require something of a different character than hash and hops. Was there anything he needed? “Yes,” he replied. There was about a month’s work required to make the transformation. He could imagine possibly doing it in two weeks, flat out. But they only had seven days and seven nights. “A big bag of coke,” he said without flinching, “a very big bag.”

It was around this same time that a group of nuns were arrested in Formentera, caught smuggling cocaine in their habits. Running up to the opening there was so little time that sleep was practically cut out. The nuns’ misfortune did not affect the requirements of the building crew – nor would it affect the habits of the Motel’s residents that summer, who would constantly remove the small sliding mirrored doors to cut their lines on, much to the confusion of Toni, the one-eyed cleaning lady. The crew were fuelled and working day and night. The building was buzzing with workmen, involved in superhuman, bare-chested activity. The impossible was coming together…

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