Interview

Happy Mondays

"Fleetwood Mac probably took more drugs than us lot."

by lizzoutline 27 October 2015

The Happy Mondays need no introduction. From their early days as one of Madchester’s most vital bands, through their chaotic drug addled years right up til the Mondays’ all-new clean-living image via I’m A Celebrity and UFO’s, they’ve always been a band to exclaim over and love dearly. They’re heading out on tour to celebrate the 25th anniversary of one of their best albums Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches, and are swinging by Norwich to give us a delicious shot of pure 90’s baggy. I had the honour of talking to an ebullient Shaun Ryder as he prepares to lead the Mondays out on tour, and then make records for the whole of 2016.

You’re coming to Norwich on tour to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Pills and Thrills and the gig’s actually on the original release date! It’s your most commercial work and such an important album. Are there any tracks in particular you’re looking forward to performing?

You’re very knowledgeable! It was our top album. It was our breakthrough commercial album for sure. Well, over the years we’ve played a lot from that album, Kinky Afro and stuff, but we’ve never gone out and done the album as a whole before. There are only three tracks on it that we’ve never played live before.

Will you be playing some other choice favourites from other albums as well?

Oh yeah, we’ve got to because that album only runs 50 something minutes. I think we’re also going to stick in some songs from that rainforest thing we did (TV show Singing in the Rainforest).

Oh yeah, I’ve seen some photos of you in mud huts! How was that experience for you?

It was great, a really good experience. Apart from Rowetta, who stayed with the chief, we all shared the same hut. It was a very bonding experience! We hadn’t done that since 1985 when we all lived in one room in London when we were making our first album. We got to do some good as well because if you download the track the money goes to the tribe so they can continue with their way of life. (get it on iTunes! Ooh La La To Panama)

It must be great to get out on tour with the Mondays and play all those classic tracks...almost like a chance to do it all again. What’s life like on tour now there’s no sex or drugs - only rock n roll?

It’s great! Sex, drugs and rock n roll are great in your 20’s and 30’s, you know, but obviously you have to clam down and go in for an MOT once you’re 40. If you don’t, you end up dead by 50, and I never wanted to die, you see.

Was there a specific moment when you realised you couldn’t maintain your hedonistic lifestyle AND stay alive?

Yeah, when I hit 40, I thought, if I carry on living how I’ve lived, to me it was a bit..you know..you can get away with it in your 30’s especially if you’re a bloke as they don’t grow up really. Women have to but we don’t. I think it’s a bit sad really, when you see blokes out when I pop into Manchester who are living the same way of life as when they were 18. So I decided it sack it all off and I did really. It took me about two years but I got there.

What was your aim when started the Mondays?

Fame didn’t come into it with us; we wanted to be successful and we wanted to be rock n roll. That was one of the things..byt the time we were getting to make music it had become really boring. 1983 was like a repeat episode of 1976 TOTP. The whole business seemed to have got really stale; if Bros had been caught with a spliff their record company would have dropped them. We wanted to be rock n roll. I’d grown up with The Doors and the Stones and the Beatles and had heard about all their adventures, and the Pistols and everything and it wasn’t like that in 83. It was really crap. We wanted the whole package. That’s why when I get asked “was too much attention paid to your drug use?” I say no, we let the press into that. I didn’t want to read an interview in the NME about what amp the guitarist uses, so when we were interviewed and we’d chop out a line or roll up a spliff, the whole interview would be about that. That’s what me and Bez set out to do really. You only get one chance at this, like being a premier league football player, so you have to use everything you can to make it. Alright, I developed a habit and all that, but Fleetwood Mac probably took more drugs than us lot. Well, they had a lot more money!

Who were you guys listening to when you were first starting out back in the early 80’s?

Everything really, the Doors, the Stones, the Velvet Underground, but then there was also Northern Soul and disco and funk and punk..everything really. That was something that really bonded us together as mates, because at the time, it doesn’t seem to be as much now where tribes were the thing, You were either a mod or a rocker, a casual, whatever. You had to stick to the kind of music that matched your clothing. But for us, in the band, we all had a massively wide variety of taste in music. We’d stand up and say we liked Sinatra or The Bee Gees.

Can you remember the first time you wrote a song together?

When we started we all had a go at doing the lyrics and I ended up doing it as I was the best at it, and that was it really. I was never that interested in the production side of things. We’d sit in our little rehearsal room knocking out songs and then by the time we got into a recoding studio we’d just press record and we played. But when it came to Pills and Thrills it was a totally different production style. Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne (the producers) just threw a shitload of beats in and said “put some bass on that, put some guitar on that, now write lyrics to it”. So that was the first time we experienced that kind of production. And that was our most successful album.

How did you come to adopt your own unique style of lyrics? Are they stream of consciousness?

There has always been a subliminal message in my songs and they’ve always included some in-jokes. But basically they’re wacky stories, I Am The Walrus type stuff. The last bit of my process is getting some paper and a pen and structuring it. I could be stuck in the queue in the Co Op and see something or hear a conversation and that’ll turn into a song in my head and I’ll start playing about with it and I’ll write it down from there. I never purposefully sit down to write a song, it doesn’t work that way for me.

Is there a chance there might be some new Happy Mondays material recorded at any point?

Oh we are going to! I’ve just dropped a sneaky 12” which you can download, and I’m doing one more of them and then my solo album comes out the start of 2016. Then it’s a new Black Grape album, and then the plan is to have a new Happy Mondays album out the end of next year.

The Madchester scene was led by you and The Stone Roses and the importance of the legacy of those two bands is unquestioned. Do you feel proud of what you’ve achieved as a band in terms of your musical influence for bands that have followed you?

I’ve not been listening to new music or going out to live gigs at the moment. I’ve got a lad who’s gone off to university and he’s come back all hip hop/raved up, and for me there’s been nothing new in those genres since 20 years ago! It’s a sad thing, but the only music I hear at the moment is the music that my six and seven year old kids listen to, like Miley Cyrus, who I think is brilliant, and Taylor Swift. At the moment I just listen to old Northern Soul tracks or Dean Martin.

What did you make of This Is England 90?

Well, my missus was in the opening scene of that! She did a bit of ad lib acting as a dinner lady! But what Shane said to me was if you look at that opening scene and the Roses and the Mondays are being played, well that was all happening in ‘87 and ’88, not 1990. But what Shane said was that was when it got to them, so it was from his perspective. So when he was on ’86, that was when we were starting raving. It’s like anything really; I didn’t get punk until 1977 but Johnny Rotten was at it in 1975. It takes time to get to other places doesn’t it and become national.

You’ve been involved in several projects and worked with a variety of people that are not always what people would expect of you, like Gorillaz or an album of punk electronica or Russell Watson. Who else would you like to work with?

I get asked to do stuff all the time but I turn most of it down until something interesting comes up. I wish it was me onstage with Taylor Swift instead of Mick Jagger!!

Is it true they’re thinking of making a TV version of your autobiography Twisting My Melon?

What happened was Granada bought the rights and were trying to get it made. I wanted to do it as TV series not a movie. If a British movie is made, maybe 400 people will go and see it on a weekend if you’re lucky. Whereas television, on the right night of the week, you could get 10 million people watching. LI wanted to do something like the Cilla Black thing. But we couldn’t get it made so we got it to the people who made Nowhere Boy and Control, so they’re turning it into a movie.

Happy Mondays will be playing Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches in full at the Nick Rayns LCR at UEA on 27th November. Tickets from ueaticketbookings.co.uk.