Twisting My Melon

by Shaun Ryder

  I’ve got a good idea of how it happened. Like I said, when the Mondays split, Paul Davis and Our Paul had all gone and signed on the dole. Now this is Salford, so if anyone had seen those three of the band go and sign on, but they ain’t seen me, and don’t think I’m claiming, then they’ll get on the scam. It’s not too hard to get any info that you need – my date of birth, address, or whatever info you need when you fill in the forms. I never found out who it was. I could have done, but what’s the point? Someone was pulling a scam, it wasn’t me, but it wasn’t costing me. The dole were the mugs for paying out and believing it. The tabloids had actually got the story from the dole as well, so someone there really got themselves in the shit, because they sold the story and then it turned out it wasn’t even me.

  After we finished recording in Wales, we went to Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire to put the final touches to the record. We were a couple of tracks short, because Kurfirst had rejected one or two that he thought were too hip-hop orientated. Working with Kurfirst was the first time I found out what an executive producer does. It basically means he gets to choose what tracks go on the album.

  Chapel Studios is in a weird little place called South Thoresby, which is a proper wife-swapping village. There was only one pub there, so if we got up to any mischief in there, taking Temazis or something, the whole village would know what you’d been up to. It wasn’t far from Skegness and we went there one day for a photo shoot. That’s where the photo on the inside of the album sleeve is taken – on top of the arcade in Skegness.

  We hadn’t really been listening to much new music while we were recording; we had just been in our own little bubble. When we had finished and I got to Manchester, I called in on Cressa in Chorlton and he’d just got a copy of the first Oasis album, Definitely Maybe. He played it to me and I was like ‘Oh, okay …’ I thought it was really good, but I was a tiny bit surprised it was straight down the line rock ’n’ roll, which is not what Black Grape was about.

  I went to their gig at the Haçienda when the album came out, but I didn’t know Noel and Liam at the time. I never knew Noel back in the day, although, as I mentioned earlier, I found out years later it was him who had been sending those rude faxes back to us from the Inspirals’ office. But I didn’t meet him for years. I actually met Liam before I met Noel. Donovan was over visiting me and Oriole in Didsbury, and me and Don had popped to the Woodstock pub. Liam just happened to be in there and bowled over and introduced himself – ‘Shauuunnn! Donovan!’ I got on really well with him, but it was quite funny because no one in the pub seemed to have any idea who Liam was at the time, and me and Don were the ones that were getting recognized by people.

  In the summer of 1994 we went out to Encore Studios in Burbank, Los Angeles, to mix the album. Kurfirst brought in a guy called Tom Lord-Alge, who was a Grammy-award-winning producer and had worked with everyone from the Stones to U2 and had about ninety-six songs in the Billboard charts at the time. Tom was a mate of Kurfirst’s and he had the magic touch at the time. All the records he worked on would get radio play. He was actually working on about five different tunes at the same time as ours. The other memory I have of mixing the album is that the O. J. Simpson police chase happened then, because I remember watching it on TV when we were in the studio, this farcical low-speed car chase, with the LAPD following him down the freeway.

  The album title, It’s Great When You’re Straight …Yeah!, came from something someone said when we were mixing the album in the studio and we didn’t have any drugs. Someone just said, ironically, ‘It’s great when you’re straight, yeah?’ I thought, ‘I’ll have that.’ We had some fun with it when the time came to do all the press for the album, but it’s obviously ironic, especially with the ‘Yeah?’ at the end.

  I was pretty confident with the album when it was finished; I felt as confident as I had when we finished Pills ’n’ Thrills. We knew we had something really special and, more importantly, it was original.

  I met Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood for the first time in Los Angeles just after we finished It’s Great When You’re Straight … Yeah! Someone in the Rolling Stones camp had heard a couple of early tracks from the album – I think Kurfirst must have played it to them – and loved the production, so had put forward Danny Saber’s name to work with the Stones.

  They wanted to meet Danny, so they invited me and him to their show in LA and sent a car to pick us up for the gig. That was actually my first ever Rolling Stones gig, and I arrived in a car and with a driver that had been sent by Keef and Ronnie. It was Hollywood Bowl, I think, and the car took us in through the private back way, and it was all set up like a rock ’n’ roll circus, with pinball machines, gaming machines, huge plasma screens – it was amazing. There were huge tents set up with different themes, like Lawrence of Arabia or whatever, and this was just the backstage area. It was far out, man. It’s one of the few occasions where you could actually say, with a straight face, ‘This is far out.’ I actually watched the gig with all the band’s families, from this VIP section, and then we met them all after. Apart from Mick Jagger. He just completely disappeared, but apparently he always does that. Keef said he was probably off counting the money from the merchandise stalls: ‘That fucker’s probably off counting the merch money, man!’

  I had a copy of the album with me, so I played it to them and when it finished Keef and Ronnie were both like, ‘Put it on again, man.’ So I played it again, and when it finished for the second time they both went, ‘Put it on again, man!’ I’m not joking, we must have listened to it about six times, and I was thinking, ‘Fucking hell, this is great! Keef and Ronnie fucking Wood telling me to put my album on again and again!’

  Usually when I meet people like that I tend to keep my mouth shut, and just speak when I’m spoken to, but we were having a laugh and we had a few drinks and I was a bit off my head. Later on in the evening I had a packet of Marlboro, so I started to show Keith all the supposed hidden meanings on there, the references to the Ku Klux Klan and stuff. Keef just looked at me, sighed, and said, ‘Fucking hell, man, you must be bored shitless … that’s so boring trying to figure that stuff out.’ I just thought to myself, ‘Right, okay, it’s Keef. Shut your mouth and don’t say fuck all. Just let him take the piss.’

  I went round to the place where they were staying a few times, for drinks, and Danny ended up working with them on their next album, Bridges to Babylon. I met Ronnie’s wife, Jo, and Keef’s sons, and they were all really smart, cool people. At the time I was on the gear, and must have looked a bit of a state. But that’s not something that they won’t have come across before.

  When I got back to Manchester I moved to Hampstead, and got a flat just off Hampstead High Street. I just fancied getting away from Manchester for a bit, and I’d never actually lived in London, and it made sense with all the TV stuff. Oriole was back and forth from Ireland, because Sebastian was with her parents there. The flat underneath the one I got was also going, and Muzzer fancied doing a stint in London, so he took that.

  I’m not really a massive drinker, but I have had a few periods when I’ve been using gear and drinking at lot, usually Guinness, at the same time, and Hampstead was one of those periods. Oriole was over in Ireland a lot, so I was more or less living on my own, and if I wasn’t working I would go to the pub pretty much as soon as it opened and stay there all afternoon and into the night. I wasn’t even hanging out with anyone in particular; I would just drink with the locals in the pub.

  Central Station did all the artwork for the release again, and they came up with this bastardized image of Carlos the Jackal, and one of Michael Jackson on the inside. The Americans had a slight problem with us using Carlos the Jackal as an image, but that was just them being overly sensitive again. They thought we were glorifying a terrorist or something like that, but it wasn’t even anything to do with the band. Matt and Pat and Karen just picked it because it was a really strong image.

  ‘Reverend Black Grape’ was the obvious
choice for the first single. Kurfirst brought in Don Letts to do the video, who he knew because he had managed Big Audio Dynamite. Don made total sense because he came from that background of mixing punk and reggae, which fitted perfectly with Black Grape. The video does have quite a BAD feel to it, with the religious and cowboy imagery. We filmed it on a housing estate in Ancoats in Manchester and then the interior scenes upstairs in Dry Bar. Some little fucker nicked a lovely Comme des Garçons blazer and a Gaultier jacket I had with me while we were filming in Dry Bar.

  I had also had some clothes robbed previously in Marseilles on a Mondays tour. I lost a bag full of Stone Island gear, which was the same price then as it is now. Imagine trying to convince an insurance firm that you had a jacket that was worth £2,000 in the early 90s. We also caught someone sneaking on our tour bus to rob it in Brighton once. This lad had been through the whole bus and had stuff piled up at the door ready to get off, just as we came back. So we blindfolded him and took him into the hotel. Me, Our Kid, Muzz, Pat Warde, who used to do our security and a couple of others. We stripped him down to his jeans and held a kangaroo court, which went on for about two hours. Every now and then Pat would give him a dig, and someone would shout, ‘There will be no brutality in this court!’ We really messed with his head and he was in bits, crying and saying he had a wife and kids. But we found him guilty and his punishment was death by drowning. So we blindfolded him again and gagged him and took him down to the beach. We led him down into the sea and he really thought we were going to drown him and he was crying and pissed himself, but at the last minute we let him go. I like to think he didn’t try and rob any more tour buses.

  ‘Reverend Black Grape’ went Top 10, so we got asked to do Top of the Pops. When we got there, I was fully expecting some producer to take me aside and say to me, ‘You’ll have to change that line in the song that says “Put on your Reeboks, man, and go play fucking tennis” because we don’t have swearing on Top of the Pops,’ but no one ever did. Somehow they didn’t get on it. They must have presumed I said ‘funky tennis’ or something.

  Not only was the album really strong, but we were also helped by how dated a lot of the other new music sounded at the time. Britpop was just building to a peak, and there were so many boring guitar bands, playing their dads’ type of music, that it just made It’s Great When You’re Straight …Yeah! stand out even more. The album went to No. 1, which the Mondays have never managed, and it tasted even sweeter after I had been written off by everyone in the aftermath of the Mondays’ split. We knew the album was good and had confidence in it, but I didn’t expect it to go straight in at No. 1. Almost every review was really good, and talked about it as a great comeback. The NME gave it ten out of ten and said, ‘They’ll roast eternally in Hell for this bleeding classic, but what a lovely way to burn.’

  We then went to do the video for the second single, ‘In the Name of the Father’, in Jamaica, which was Don Letts’ idea. We were staying on the north coast, and that was actually my first time in Jamaica. Don had the idea to portray us as kind of missionaries, with Central Station’s images of Carlos the Jackal, George Best and Pablo Escobar as our sort of religious icons. They also built a raft for me, which I floated down the river on, and we were baptized in the river.

  We were there for about a week, and I just chilled out when we weren’t filming. Kermit was off scoring crack while we were there, but I didn’t partake for once; I just stuck to the Guinness and weed.

  We didn’t actually have a full Black Grape band before we needed to go on tour, because a lot of the instruments on the record were either played by Danny Saber or Steve Lironi, who both played keyboards and Hammond organ on there. Danny also played guitar and bass, and Steve had played slide guitar. Wags had played guitar on the album, Ged Lynch had played percussion and Martin Slattery, who went on to be in Joe Strummer’s band The Mescaleros, had played saxophone on ‘Little Bob’ and ‘Tramazi Parti’. So the line-up when we went on tour was me, Kermit, Bez, Wags, Martin Slattery, Ged Lynch and Danny Williams, who we brought in to play bass.

  Even though the last Mondays’ tour had been so horrific for me, I was well up for touring with Black Grape. The album had topped the charts, and it was such a feel-good party vibe that it was always going to be a great record to tour. Not that I can remember a great deal about that tour. Like I said, I was drinking quite a lot of Guinness at that stage and I’m not necessarily a massive boozer. But when you’re on drugs like heroin and cocaine you can just drink and drink and drink, and that’s when my memory gets hazy. My memory is more affected by drink than drugs. If I’m not on drugs, then I can quite happily not drink. If I’m not on drugs, I would be pissed after about four pints, I would be a mess, because I’m not a big drinker. But when I was using properly, I could drink up to twenty pints of Guinness a day. When you’re using you just can.

  After the tour ended, me and Oriole moved to County Cork in Ireland. Her mum and dad were living out there, so she was keen, and I just fancied a change. I had a bit of money in the bank and took a chunk of money from the proceeds of the tour, which was owed me, and bought a farmhouse out there for cash. At the time, the Church of England had been selling off some property it had in Ireland really cheaply. I found a farmhouse in Ballyclough, which is about a mile from Mallow in County Cork, and not far from Donovan’s place. The people I bought it from had got it at a bargain price from the church, but I still got it pretty cheap off them. I think I paid £150,000 cash, and it had six or seven bedrooms and seven or eight acres of land. It had stables, one of which they’d started converting into a recording studio. The other bonus was that at that time musicians didn’t pay tax in Ireland.

  I enjoyed chilling out in Ireland, although I sometimes wonder what tales Oriole was telling her old man. Some days poor old Donovan would turn up all red-faced and flustered, and I’d be thinking ‘What the fuck’s up with him?’ Only later did I realize she must have been telling tales about what was happening or how I was misbehaving.

  After the album had come out and been a success, the two Martins from Intastella popped up and started complaining that they had written part of the songs and weren’t credited, even though they’d only come down to the studio for half an hour or a few hours here and there, begrudgingly, when their missus would let them. Anyway, in the end we settled that out of court by giving them a few points, which they were happy with. I actually recently saw a Black Grape royalty statement for the first time in years and thought, ‘Who the fuck is that?’ when I saw their names on it, until I remembered. They have probably earned far more off those few points on Black Grape songs than they ever made off Intastella, though that’s not saying much. They were actually pretty lucky that we settled out of court, because a couple of people I knew couldn’t quite believe they’d had the audacity to take it as far as they did and wanted to take matters into their own hands. But I wouldn’t sanction it.

  We were supposed to go on tour to the States in the autumn of 1995, but I couldn’t get a visa. My passport had run out. I’d got a ten-year one in 1985, which was one of those old black ones. They didn’t have an electronic chip in them, so your criminal record didn’t automatically pop up on screen when you went through customs, so I just simply lied on all the immigration forms where they asked about convictions. But when I applied for a new passport, I got one of the new maroon EU ones that have a chip in them, and my criminal record now appeared on their screens. When we applied for visas to tour the States, I was refused one and so was Kermit. Part of the problem was my importation charge. Importation is miles worse than possession in their eyes. It didn’t matter that it was only a little bit of weed; to them, importation is importation, so I might as well have been Al Capone. They checked their records and realized I had been lying to them for ten years and I got an automatic ban from the States, although Kurfirst did manage to get round that for a little while, as I’ll explain shortly.

  At the start of November, we did Later with Jools Holland
. We did three songs and closed it with ‘Tramazi Parti’. I really like Later … and I like Jools. After Black Grape finished, he actually arranged for me to go back on my own and do a Rolling Stones cover. I much prefer singing live to miming, especially when you have to mime to an edited version, and you’ve got to get the timing right. When it’s live, as long as you come in on the right beat you’re fine, while if you’re miming and you miss your cue you just look like an idiot. Gregory Isaacs, Suggs and D’Angelo were on with us as well. I ended up having a night out with Suggs afterwards, and we finished up in Browns, I think.

  Shortly after that, I went on TFI Friday to be interviewed by Chris Evans. He said at the start of the interview, ‘If you don’t swear I’ll give you my shoes,’ and put them on his desk. I picked one up and said, ‘They’re Patrick Cox man, and Patrick’s a good fucking …’ before I could help myself. The show was live and after that performance I was told I was not allowed to be interviewed live on Channel 4 any more.

  We then had a few European dates, where Kermit fell really ill. I think we explained it away as being from drinking dirty water at the time, but it was more likely to be dirty digging. We were in Spain, playing live, and Kermit had used the water out of the tap in his hotel room when he was cooking up. I’m not sure where he got his needle from and if that was clean, but it was a dirty dig that made him ill, and it got serious very quickly. When he got back to the UK he was hospitalized in Monsall Hospital, which is a horrible place, and we went in to see him and he looked like a skeleton. He’d always been quite a lean bloke, but he literally looked like a skeleton; there was no meat on him at all. The doctors said bits of his heart and liver were flaking off him; he was in a really bad shape. I think they even brought the priest in to give him his last rites; they really thought he was going to die at one stage.