I often think that Happy Mondays don't get the credit they deserve. They were like nothing before or since. Unmanageable, inventive, street wise, not only at the heart of the scene, but dealing drugs for the scene and also soundtracking it. Of the time, but completely different from any other band around.
24-Hour Party People was the title of their third single and it described them perfectly. The Mondays lived and breathed the lifestyle. It seemed like they didn't stop from 1987 - 1992, releasing 4 albums and a string of singles.
The band were self confessed drug fuelled scallies and chancers. Their don't give a f**k attitude was pure punk. Happy Mondays were out for a ride and they were going to ride things until the wheels fell off.
Would anyone other than Tony Wilson and Factory Records have invested so much time, patience and money in Shaun Ryder and co? The Mondays grew and developed with the times, but there is also an element of the band being in the right place, the right city (Manchester), with access to the right club (the Hacienda), at the right time (Acid House), when the right drug came out (ecstasy) and on the perfect record label.
The Mondays had something; raw and untamed. Pure but dirty. Post punk, post funk, double double good. Wilson saw it and so did New Order, Mike Pickering and others in and around the Factory scene. The band learned to play their instruments along the way - but they always had an ear and feel for a groove. Producers helped bring some structure to their madness - John Cale, Martin Hannett, Paul Oakenfold . Listen back to those first few albums and you can see the direction of travel and how producers helped them to develop their sound.
Against all the odds, Ryder and Bez and co are still touring and will be playing 3 sold out nights at the Barrowland Ballroom next week to celebrate 35-years of their seminal Pills, Thrills & Bellyaches album.
Here, in no particular order, are 5 of my favourite Happy Mondays songs (moments and stories!).
1. Performance
The Happy Mondays drug consumption was merrily discussed in the music weeklies as much as their music, if not more. And no wonder! They revelled in the lifestyle, on stage and off. And ... they made it look fun, to the extent they turned Manchester into Madchester. Things were bright for a long, long time, before they turned decidedly darker.
The first time I heard Performance was on a Happy Mondays and Stone Roses VHS cassette bootleg that I bought from a record fair. The bootleg mashed together band interviews, performances and videos recorded from the TV. I played that video to death.
Photo by Kevin Cummins
My jaw dropped when I saw The Mondays playing Performance on Tony Wilson's Other Side Of Midnight show. Visibly off their heads, Bez dancing in a trance around the set, looking like he is attempting the breast stroke through air. Ryder just eggs him on, vibing off him. The chemistry, no pun intended, between them is incredible. At 1-minute 42 seconds into this performance, Ryder is literally playing his maracas on Bez. The energy is off the scale. I can't take my eyes off them, even all these years down the lines.The reverb on the guitar is sublime, The Mondays are completely locked in to create an infectious groove, while Ryder and Bez look like they are having the time of their lives. Bez, eyes shut, just constantly grooving. Ryder somehow loses his glasses and at 2-minutes 40 seconds, when Mark Day takes off on an inspired solo, Shaun is off to groove with Bez, squatting, vibing, his mate is lost in the groove. Utterly spellbinding.
2. Kinky Afro
Late 1990, certainly in terms of chart performance, was peak Happy Mondays. Step On, the lead single from Pills, Thrills & Bellyaches reached number 5 in the charts in spring and seemed to hang around all summer. Kinky Afro, the follow up, wasn't released until October and it also reached number 5.
The groove of the song originated from bass player Paul Ryder jamming around Hot Chocolate tunes that he had been listening to. Gaz Whelan came up with some beats and the working title of the song was Groovy Afro, changed to Kinky Afro after The Farm released their Groovy Train single. They took the groove out to LA where the band were going to work with Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osbourne.
Oakenfold and Osbourne cleaned and polished the Mondays sound. They kept the grooves that the band had displayed on the likes of Wrote For Luck and Hallelujah, but gave them a sheen that made them more radio and chart friendly. What would Pills, Thrills & Bellyaches have sounded like if Martin Hannett had continued as a producer following his work on Bummed?
However, the band had already moved on with the W.F.L single that saw Vince Clarke and Paul Oakenfold (through his Think About The Future) remix Wrote For Luck.
The change in producer certainly helped with the Mondays sound. Some would say they transformed it. However the move from recording Bummed in Stockport to Pills ... in the sunshine of Los Angeles also played a part. You can almost feel the sunshine and warmth coming out of the record. Factory also licensed the album to London Records - the Mondays were going big time.
The groove is there from the off, synth strings, Day's guitar riff, then Ryder coming in with a catchy vocal melody with self-confessional and self-reflective lyrics.
Son, I'm thirty
I only went with your mother 'cause she's dirty
And I don't have a decent bone in me
What you get, is just what you see, yeah
Ryder's hook for the chorus is a cross between Bruce Willis in Die Hard and Lady Marmalade by Labelle. The instrumental section comes back to Day's circular guitar riff. The video is like the Mondays take on Robert Palmer's classic Addicted To Love promo - more colour, street clothes for the band and Shaun's hairstyle looking like he could be in the Inspiral Carpets.
It was the first song they'd written that felt like a massive pop song. Rowetta, The Guardian, 2014
3. Stinkin' Thinkin'
Tales of the Mondays heading to Barbados to record Yes Please, their fourth album, are legendary. Factory allocated a phenomenal £150,000 budget and Barbados was suggested as a location as there was no heroin available. However, there was a bountiful supply of crack. The Mondays, by all accounts, were in complete disarray there were marriage breakdowns, copious amounts of drugs and alcohol and mere scraps of songs to take to Barbados.
Shaun Ryder reportedly spent 20-hours a day smoking crack. Bez broke his arm 3 times - crashing a car, in a speedboat accident and when his girlfriend sat on it. This resulted in some legendary photos of the dancer with an external metal brace pinning his arm together.
Ryder sold his clothes for crack, sun loungers for crack and even held the master tapes to ransom. The £150,000 that had been budgeted was now a drop in the ocean. 5-weeks in, the Mondays had only completed one song. The album eventually cost £380,000!
Despite the frazzled and fractured state and status of the band, Stinkin' Thinkin' is a gem. The groove is like Barry White and his band if they landed in Manchester and had a weekend at the Hacienda - soul funk sleaze, super cool. Ryder is half singing, half whispering;
Kiss me for old times sake
Kiss me for making you wait
Day's guitar lifts off a little, in tandem with Shaun changing the vocal melody
I've got to pick out what's in the pockets
So I can leave those pockets clean
It's a delicious groove, the Mondays just keep it going and Ryder, as he always does to the best grooves and riffs, lifts his own game too. Rowetta's vocals add extra soul and a club feel. This is a real favourite of mine.
4. W.F.L. - The Vince Clark Remix
For their 1988 Bummed LP, that Wrote For Luck featured on, the band worked with Martin Hannett, consuming ecstasy on a daily basis and taking in all kinds of influences to create sounds on whatever instruments they could get their hands on.
Hannett found an incredible guitar sound for Mark Day, one that, even through all the synths and beats, is central to Wrote For Luck. A funk punk Chic sound, scuzzed up and drenched in reverb.
Wrote For Luck starts at pace, big beats and Day's guitar over the top, Shaun then begins to sing and spout his unique poetry over the top.
You were wet, but you're getting drier
You used to speak the truth
But now you're liar
You used to speak the truth
But now you're clever
The original version of Wrote For Luck has a sense of urgency and even danger to it; a raw white boy funk groove stretched out to a little over 6-minutes, riding on Day's guitar, Shaun groaning and moaning an extra little melody to add to the feeling.
5. Hallelujah - Club Mix
It's difficult to pinpoint peak Happy Mondays. In terms of success, there is no doubt that it was the Pills, Thrills & Bellyaches album, singles, tours and festivals. Musically and in terms of being completely in the zone as a band (totally original) and with culture, I'd argue that it was in the last quarter of 1989 through the W.F.L single, which was followed by the Madchester and Hallelujah EP's, just before the whole rave/house music scene went overground.
The Mondays released their Madchester Rave On EP in November 89, with Hallelujah as the lead track. Memorably, they played Top of the Pops with fellow Mancunians The Stone Roses who brought out the phenomenal Fools Gold 9.53 the same month. Check my blog on that landmark release HERE.
Ryder and Mani discussed taking acid and mixing the bands up, but I'm glad that didn't happen. The Roses went out and smashed it out the park, looking impossibly cool. Their appearance on TotP is still discussed regularly to this day. For some reason, the Mondays isn't.
Kirsty MacColl joins them in double denim (she sang on one of the remixes) and the TotP camera doesn't really know whether it should be focusing on Ryder and Bez or not! Given the amount of times it pans away from them for extended passages, I like to imagine the producer and directors of the show screaming 'move away from the mad men, not the mad men!'
The Hallelujah Club Mix has both Andy Weatherall and Paul Oakenfold working on their magic on the Mondays sound. The result is sensational. Like a pure MDMA rush - a synth bass groove, a scream of hallelujah, chemical beats, house piano pushed to the fore ... Weatherall and Oakenfold have fun - dropping things in, taking them out, building it up, letting it fall and then lifting it higher.
Ryder is almost rapping in his own distinct Mancunian style;
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Shaun William Ryder
Will lie down beside you
Fill you full of junk
Then the Mondays go off on one, Day's piercing guitar then falls back to a dirty groove, things are stripped to the persistent house piano and a beat, Ryder returns and the Mondays, aided by Weatherall and Oakenfold, roll on. There is an energy and urgency to this song and mix that can't be replicated. Magical.
