Twisting My Melon

by Shaun Ryder

  *

  Nathan, our manager, had a girlfriend called Trish at the time, and they were always arguing. She was only sixteen years old and Nathan was two years older than me. I was always saying to Nath, ‘Get rid of her! You’re always arguing and she’s only a kid.’ She was one of them who was always moaning, ‘Why aren’t you taking me out tonight?’ when Nathan would have a gig on, or have a meeting in London or something.

  Around the same time, me and Muzz were in the Haçienda one night and I said, ‘Do you know what? I’m bit fed up of just shagging birds now. I want a serious girlfriend.’ So we set up a double date with two girls we knew from the Haçi who were best mates and both called Joanne. Muzzer ended up marrying his Joanne, but mine blew me out. Joanne was lovely but she wasn’t going to take any nonsense. The band had just started to really take off, and she knew exactly what I was like and what she would be letting herself in for, and there’s no way she would have put up with me shagging around. She was too strong a woman to put up with any shit.

  So she went off and eventually got married to someone else, and had a kid, Oliver, and then got divorced a while later. But she never really went out of my life, because we always had mutual friends, and she used to come to Happy Mondays and Black Grape gigs.

  After Joanne had blown me out, Nathan did finish with Trish, and I was still looking for a girlfriend so I jumped straight in there. She was quite tall, Trish, so you wouldn’t necessarily know she was so young. She was from Old Trafford and went to a comprehensive school and grew up in a council house, but her family, the McNamaras, came from money, back in Ireland. Trish had two sisters, Paula and Ursula, and her old bloke had died just before she arrived. His brothers had a huge construction firm and worked on the motorways. When we were on the road, I would always spot their names when there was a construction site along the way.

  I was sick of couch-surfing and living in hotels, so shortly after Trish and I got together we got a flat in Granby House. It was one of the first developments of flats in Manchester city centre. They’re everywhere now. Every old mill and warehouse has been turned into flats, but back then hardly anyone lived in town. There was India House, on Whitworth Street, which was like an indoor council estate; Cromford Court on top of the Arndale; and then Granby Row. I didn’t really get mithered, living in town, because it was only our pals who knew I was there and we were a discreet little crew.

  Granby Row was in quite a quiet part of town. There were a few trendy designers in there, including Trevor Johnson, who was a designer for Factory, a few business heads, and a few prostitutes who were making a lot of money. It was perfect for me, because I had both the Mondays’ office and Matt and Pat’s office on my doorstep.

  Shortly after I moved into Granby Row, Nathan and Factory encouraged me to go into rehab for the first time, at the Priory in Altrincham. I’d been using more and more over the past year, but I still didn’t really see as much of a problem as others did. It was pretty much a total waste of time anyway, because I didn’t really understand rehab when I first did it. As far as I was concerned, I was there to stop taking drugs, so I couldn’t understand it when they wouldn’t let me have a beer in there. Seriously. That’s where my head was at, and how naïve I was. The whole idea of rehab was just above me at that stage. I didn’t have a clue. I would make a phone call to one of our lads and say, ‘Bring us a bottle of whisky in will you?’ Or ‘Bring us some beers in will you?’, and they would bring it in for me. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t have an alcohol problem – I was just bored being in bed all day. I couldn’t even see why the Priory would think, ‘Oh God, he really is an alcoholic, he’s getting booze smuggled in here.’ In the end they said to me, ‘Look, even if you’re not an alcoholic, there are alcoholics in here and it’s bad for them to even smell alcohol. And they will smell it, even if you’ve got it stashed in your room somewhere, because they’re alcoholics. One of the first rules here is that there is no alcohol.’ So, me being a bit of a spoilt brat at the time, I just went, ‘Fuck it then, I’m out of here,’ and discharged myself.

  In September, Factory released the remixes of ‘Wrote For Luck’ after they had had such a good reaction in the clubs. It was released as ‘WFL’, because the original ‘Wrote For Luck’ had already come out as a single. Like I said earlier, I preferred Oakey’s remix, which was called the ‘Think About the Future’ mix. It sounded totally fresh and new and had that whole Balearic thing going on. But Factory wanted to go with Vince Clarke’s mix as the A-side, because he was a bigger name. It did OK, but didn’t do as well as we thought it might. I think after it came out, and the dust had settled a little bit, then Factory and Wilson came round to my way of thinking that, yeah, Vince Clarke’s mix was good, but Oakey’s and Osborne’s mix was the one that captured the new sound that was coming up and the mood of the moment. At least that meant they were more open to us working with Oakey and Osborne again in the future.

  We then went into the studio to record the next single, which was going to be ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Rave On’. We had written the songs before we went into the studio and they were probably the first songs that had been influenced right from the very start by the whole E scene. By the time we started to write them, everyone in the band had started eating the E, and was being totally taken over by the effects of the Wednesday nights at the Haçi. It’s fucking obvious if you listen to those tracks.

  We recorded at the Manor studio near Oxford, which was owned by Richard Branson and Virgin, again with Martin Hannett at the helm. Martin used to pass out a lot during recordings; he wasn’t in great shape then. We recorded four songs – ‘Hallelujah’, ‘Rave On’, ‘Clap Your Hands’ and ‘Holy Ghost’, but the recording is a bit of a blur for me, unsurprisingly, because we were all so off it. Apparently I had some of our lot in the vocal booth with us when I was doing the vocals to ‘Hallelujah’, because we were trying to get that club vibe on the record.

  Wilson was desperate for us to get a single in the charts at this stage, after ‘WFL’ hadn’t quite done it, so Factory brought Steve Lillywhite in to work on ‘Hallelujah’ as well. Steve was married to Kirsty MacColl at the time, and she was a fan of the band, so she did some backing vocals on ‘Hallelujah’. Kirsty was great. We hung out together for a bit, and she even ended up doing some gigs and Top of the Pops with us.

  At the same time we were down there recording, Branson was hosting one of his hot air balloon parties there. He was on his balloon vibe at the time, trying to break some record, and he had his garden party, which everyone right up to the Queen was at. Maybe not the Queen herself, but there were certainly elements of royalty there. It was one of those sort of parties where fucking everyone turns up. A proper circus. We were even on quite good behaviour, if I remember rightly.

  The EP was called the Madchester EP. It was the Bailey Brothers who came up with the term ‘Madchester’ as a bit of a joke, but we were like, ‘Great, yeah, go with it,’ because Manchester was at that time, it was fucking mad. No one used the term in Manchester, unless they were a prick, but it quickly became adopted by the media, who lapped it up. The NME even did a Madchester issue with me and Tony on the cover, in front of a Madchester poster outside the Factory offices.

  It had only been six weeks since the ‘WFL’ remixes had come out, but things had moved on in that short time and it finally seemed like we were beginning to make a proper breakthrough. When it came out, the Madchester EP was our first Top 20 hit.

  That autumn we went on a big UK tour, our biggest yet. The second date was Newcastle, and me and Muzzer turned up late. The band had set off without me to do the soundcheck, as I was waiting to score, so me and Muzz had to get a train up later and then get a taxi to the venue.

  We’d just made the jump to bigger venues, so we were playing some place we’d never played before. We weren’t sure where it was – we didn’t have any itinerary, and this was before mobile phones, so we just asked the taxi driver to take us to the local gig venue, and w
e pulled up and saw a queue of people outside, so we jumped out the taxi. We ran up to the door and Muzzer was giving it, ‘We’re the band, we’re the band … we’re late’ and the bouncers just let us through and we legged it in. We walked straight through the auditorium, and should have clocked then that it was quite a civilized crowd, not our usual crowd with everyone off their faces, but we didn’t. We just jumped on stage, and as I was walking across the stage I clocked the instruments and thought, ‘We haven’t got a saxophone,’ but it still didn’t click, and I just thought it was the support band’s or something. Then we saw the dressing room door and Mick Hucknall was standing there with the rest of Simply Red and I suddenly realized. ‘Fuck! Wrong fucking venue!’ We had turned up at a Simply Red gig. We were actually playing the Poly, which was just round the corner, so we did one sharpish.

  The Manchester date on that tour was at the Free Trade Hall, which we filmed and later released on video as One Louder. There was a bit of trouble at that gig, as Salford had decided they weren’t paying and rushed the door. The doormen were just overwhelmed. I don’t think they had ever seen anything like it. They probably clocked some of the heads that were coming in as well, and realized that it wasn’t wise to try and stop them or have a go at them.

  We had to cancel the Leeds date on the tour so we could do Top of the Pops for the first time. That was a real turning point for us. It was one of those moments. Once you’d done Top of the Pops back then, things changed for you. I also thought it was fucking great that it was our first Top of the Pops and the Stone Roses were on the same show, so it felt like Manchester was taking over. The Roses also had a double A-side out – ‘Fools Gold’ and ‘What the World Is Waiting For’. People still talk about that Top of the Pops to me – it’s one of the main things that people bring up, so it obviously hit a nerve. I get blokes in their forties coming up to me saying, ‘I was at college when you and the Roses first did Top of the Pops and it was fucking brilliant!’ Even Dom Joly, when we were in the jungle, was banging on about it, about being at uni and watching it with his pals.

  There was absolutely no rivalry with the Roses from my side. They did used to go round giving it, ‘We’re the best band in the world’ and all that, but I’d just think, ‘Right, okay. If they like saying that, fine.’ Personally, I would never have said something like that, but it was fine for them to say it. The Roses were a great band. Our Paul would sometimes moan to me that my songs were shit, and I should write more like Ian Brown, but that was just Our Paul. He just had a downer on my songs sometimes. I always knew, at the time, that we were getting on and making a name for ourselves because we were different, and the Roses were making a name for themselves because they were different. Our Paul contradicted himself really, because I think part of him did want to be in the Roses, but then he would turn round and say, really bullishly, ‘We’re the better band.’

  The Roses were all good lads. Reni was a top lad, Mani was a top lad, Ian I’d known for ages since we used to meet for our tea at the drive-thru McDonald’s in Fallowfield, and John Squire was another good kid. We were pretty pally with them, but you didn’t really see them out in town that much. Mani was a big party-head, and he’d go to the Haçi and The Kitchen and that, but you didn’t see the rest of them much. Ian went to the Haçi a bit, but not that often; neither did John. I always thought their great move was bringing Mani in. They were always a good band, but Mani seemed to be the final link, when it all really gelled. I didn’t see them live much, because we would be off doing our own thing, but I did go to their huge gig at Spike Island the following year, 1990, and I had a top day out, although I can’t really remember it. Like everyone else down there I was off my face. I think I watched the gig from the side of the stage, but I can’t even be sure of that.

  Because we were on the same Top of the Pops as the Roses, and the wider general public didn’t really know who we were, I wanted to mix it up a bit. I wanted Ian to front my band, me to play bass in his band, Mani to play the drums with the Mondays and so on, just all swap over and mix it up a bit. It would have been really funny, because only fans of the Mondays and Roses would have noticed and got the joke. But it was the first time we had all been on Top of the Pops, so the rest of them weren’t really up for it. Only me and Bez were up for it in the end.

  I had a bit of a run-in with the bloke who was in charge of the Top of the Pops studio that day and he told me that I would never work in that studio again, and never do Top of the Pops again. Which was funny, because by the time I went back to do it again, he was the one that had been fired. I wasn’t even really misbehaving. He was just a pompous arse, a stuck-up TV type who tried ordering me about and I just said, ‘Fuck off, knobhead!’

  He was giving it all, ‘I’m the boss, I’m in charge here!’ and I said, ‘I don’t give a fuck who you are, you silly little cunt.’

  ‘You will never work here again.’

  ‘Fuck off, you dick.’

  Nick Kent came down to Top of the Pops to do a big piece on us and the Roses for The Face. That was supposed to be a big deal, Nick Kent coming down, but I couldn’t give a fuck. All I knew about Nick Kent was that Sid Vicious had whacked him once, so I asked him about that and he told us that story and said it was a set-up by Malcolm McLaren. He seemed an all right geezer, I suppose. I think he was on smack at the time. There was a bit of kerfuffle when the piece came out because he quoted Wilson as saying, ‘I have absolutely no problem with any of these guys dying on me. Ian Curtis committing suicide is the best thing that ever happened to me. Death sells.’ I know Tony was upset, and I think the editor of The Face eventually admitted that they didn’t have him on tape saying it, but it never bothered me. He might not have said it, but even if he had – and it was the sort of thing that he would come out with – we wouldn’t have had a problem with it. If Tony denied it, then he didn’t say it. I believe Tony. But it does sound like his sort of humour. He had a similar sense of humour to us, and I know from experience that it doesn’t necessarily come across right in print. But, like I say, none of us would have had a problem with it. It was the sort of thing we would come out with ourselves.

  You could tell with certain journalists that they were desperate for some sort of controversial quote, and we’d usually give it to them, because we didn’t give a fuck. I can’t read a lot of interviews that I did back then now, because we were just off our heads and coming out with all sorts. The wackier and more outrageous the better. We didn’t care. The only thing that bothered me was when they used to write ‘fuck’ as ‘fook’. That used to wind me right up. Oh God, that really did my fucking head in. Not my fookin head in. I can see how posh southerners might read it, but to us, ‘fook’ or ‘fook-in’ looked fucking ridiculous. Knobheads. We had long discussions about that in the Mondays, and pure hated it.

  What was ridiculous was we got a slight bit of resentment from some early fans when we did Top of the Pops. You’d get the odd dick who thought you had sold out. We used to laugh at those sort of pricks. I’d seen it years before with bands like Adam and the Ants. All the cool kids and the students were all bang into Adam and the Ants, and thought they were the greatest band ever, all dressing up like them and wearing the make-up and everything. But as soon as they went on Top of the Pops, the same kids decided they didn’t like them any more. What a bunch of pretentious knobs. Bands want to make a living. They want to be successful so they can continue making music, because that’s what they love doing. It’s all right for you fucking students in your long macs, studying whatever you’re pretending to be studying, not having to work, and wanting to keep them as ‘your band’.

  Our mates, all our lot, and everyone from round our way, were made up that we were on Top of the Pops. They were like, ‘Yes! Go on lads!’ How often would you get a band from Salford on Top of the Pops?

  It was a different era then though. A lot of bands would also get offended if someone wanted to use their song on an advert. ‘What? You want to use my song to ad
vertise cheese? You want to give me £500,000 to advertise a Ford Fiesta, with my music?’ I never understood that. The Mondays wouldn’t have had any problem with it. We never had any problem speaking to any of the tabloids either. Again, that was frowned upon. You weren’t supposed to speak to the red tops because it wasn’t cool; you were just supposed to speak to the NME. People would warn us, ‘They’ll just twist what you say and spit you out.’ Bollocks. Once you get on Top of the Pops and you’re in the tabloids, then you’re actually getting somewhere. Any dick can be in the NME. Any fucking student can get their ugly mug in the NME. So we’d welcome speaking to the tabloids and people like Piers Morgan, which other bands wouldn’t do at the time.

  I think that attitude has changed over the years, partly perhaps because of the Americanization of British culture. I remember they used to say if someone saw a nice car over here they’d scratch it with a key, but if someone saw a nice car in America they’d think, ‘I’m going to make something of myself so I can get a car like that one day.’ No one is afraid to be a success in America, which they could be over here – it’s a very British thing. British kids were never schooled in that way; they weren’t encouraged to think they were going to be successful, that they could do this or that, or build a successful business. But that has changed, and kids’ expectations are probably too high now. You ask a kid nowadays ‘What do you think a decent wage is? Ninety thousand a year?’ and they’ll say ‘Ninety thousand a year?? That’s fucking shit. I can’t live off that. I want to be on at least half a million a year, because P Diddy earns this, or Man United players earn this.’