by Shaun Ryder
I also hung out with Michael Hutchence a bit while we were there, as he had been working with Danny Saber on his new album. I’d first met him when he and Paula Yates came to see us at Brixton Academy and after the gig I went back to the place they had near London Bridge. I remember me and Hutchence being in Johnny Depp’s club, the Viper Room, on Sunset Strip one night and these two young American girls came over, ‘Hiya, Michael. Hiya, Shaun. Can we show you our tattoos?’ They lifted up their mini skirts and they had no knickers on and shamrocks tattooed on er, let’s just say a delicate part of the female anatomy. One of the girls was a senator’s daughter and the other one was part of Bill Clinton’s administration, I think. I liked Hutchence; he was a cool guy to hang out with. I even went in and did some guest vocals on one of his album tracks, but the album never came out because shortly after that he flew back to Sydney, where he died.
Having sacked the Nicholls, I was looking for a new manager, so I spoke to a couple of different people about taking me on. I wasn’t in great shape at the time as I was taking quite a lot of drugs. I remember going to see Danny Goldberg, the guy who used to manage Nirvana, and he was telling me about how he’d lost Kurt Cobain to drugs and he asked me if I was on drugs. I obviously said ‘No,’ but I was coked up to the eyeballs at the time and hadn’t been to bed for days. It must have been blatantly obvious to him that I was off my head.
I then met Richard Bishop, who managed Henry Rollins, and who I seemed to get on with. I signed a contract with him, and he managed me for the second Black Grape album, although I didn’t really have much to do with him. He liaised more with Muzzer, as Muzz and my dad had started a management company called Hot Soup and were now managing Kermit and Carl. Richard only managed me for a short while and then after the second Black Grape album we both felt it wasn’t really working, so we tore up the contract by mutual consent.
Back in the UK, I presented Top of the Pops at the end of 1996, as Junior Jimmy, with a tracksuit on. Which I really enjoyed. There’s a clip on Grape Tapes of me messing around back stage at Top of the Pops and making up a chart run-down on my favourite drugs – at No. 10, two bags of brown, and stuff like that.
I spent the first half of 1997 recording the second Black Grape album and filming the part I had landed in the Hollywood remake of The Avengers. That was to prove the start and the end of my Hollywood career. The main stars were Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman and Sean Connery; then there was me and Eddie Izzard, who wasn’t as well known back then. Ralph insists on people calling him ‘Rafe’, but I kept forgetting and just calling him ‘Ralph’, especially when I saw it written down on the call-sheet. Uma was sound, but I never really spoke to her. What have I got to say to Uma Thurman? I was actually sat in her chair one day, by accident. You know when you’re shooting a film and the main actors have their names on the back of the chair? I was sat in hers by accident, and she walked up and just looked at me. I moved.
My big mistake was saying I thought the film was shit when it was finished, which you just can’t do. In the Hollywood game, no matter how bad the movie is, you have to go out and say you think it’s great. I’m pretty much cut out of it, if you see it now. You see me briefly as a moody dude on the corner, but they’ve cut out all the close-ups I shot for my dying scene. They re-cut it slightly, and put more Eddie Izzard in, because he played the game right and when he was asked what he thought of it afterwards he said he thought it was great. Eddie went on to Hollywood, but I never really worked in films again.
I did get offered a part in The 51st State, the film they shot in Liverpool with Samuel L. Jackson, just after The Avengers, but I was too preoccupied with sorting out my situation with the Nicholls at the time. When I saw the film I was a bit pissed off I’d passed on it, because I thought it was great. Mind you, it was probably great because I stayed out of it.
Acting is a weird game. As soon as you start to act, or you start to do what is your idea of acting, it looks like a school play. The way real actors do it is they don’t really act, or feel like they’re acting; they just submerge themselves in it. They just seem to be a different breed. The Yanks are better at it, even non-actors, even musicians. Look at Eminem in 8 Mile – he was great. Pick an English kid, or musician, and stick him in a film and he looks like he’s in a school play.
Muzzer and my dad, as Hot Soup, were managing Kermit and Carl, who had a side project called Man Made. Well, I thought it was a side project, but it quickly became apparent they wanted it to be more than that. Because the first Black Grape album was a success there was interest in what they were doing, so they were offered a decent-sized publishing deal and they thought Man Made were going to be bigger than Black Grape. The American rappers Tupac and Biggie were huge at the time, and I think Kermit and Carl really wanted to be the English answer to them. That’s how it seemed to me. I felt they just wanted to get rid of the white guy. They’d been on Top of the Pops and done loads of interviews and TV with Black Grape, which is the first time they’d had that level of exposure and attention, and inevitably they got someone in their ear going, ‘You don’t need him. It’s you that people come to see,’ and they started to believe it. Same old story. I don’t know if part of it was because they saw Black Grape more as my band because I was the one who had originally signed. But that wasn’t important, really, because I was still splitting the writing credits and publishing with Kermit, and they were getting all the attention, so why did it matter?
When the time came to record the second album, it was a nightmare. We were recording down at Real World and it was impossible to get Carl and Kermit into the studio. If they were supposed to arrive on Monday, they would say they were coming Tuesday. Then they wouldn’t arrive Tuesday and say they were coming Wednesday. Then Thursday would come and go. Then Friday. They would finally turn up on Saturday and stay for a night or two nights when we were supposed to be spending a week or two weeks in the studio.
What bugged me was they were never open. I would have preferred it if they’d said, ‘We’re leaving Black Grape because we want to concentrate on Man Made,’ but they didn’t. They were sort of half-heartedly in Black Grape because that’s where they were getting their money and publicity, but really they were concentrating on getting Man Made going. So me and Danny Saber were left waiting in the studio for a week. I was pissed off at Muzzer as well, because he had a real conflict of interest managing Man Made. They were getting booked into a studio to work on Man Made tracks, when they should have been in the studio with me making the second Black Grape album.
After the success of the first album I really wanted to make another upbeat party album, but the vibe in the studio was hardly upbeat and it wasn’t what you would call a party. Half the songs are not collaborations like they were on the first album. There is none of that infectious riotous atmosphere. It’s Great When You’re Straight …Yeah! sounds like the best house party. Stupid Stupid Stupid sounds like the morning after the house party when everyone is coming down.
It wasn’t all bad; there were a couple of decent tracks. As I mentioned earlier, I loved the Marcel King track ‘Reach for Love’, which was one of the best tracks Factory had ever put out in my opinion, but it sank without trace when it was released in 1984. Me and Kermit decided to rip a bit of it for the track ‘Get Higher’, which became the single, in the hope that journalists would ask us questions about it and we could big up Marcel King and the record would end up getting re-released. Instead I got a couple of idiots complaining that I was ripping Marcel off. I said, ‘I’m paying homage to it, not ripping it off, you fucking goons!’ I’m trying to help it get recognized as a lost classic.
The mock Ronald Reagan speech sample on ‘Get Higher’ was just something that amused Danny and was for the American audience really. I also like ‘Marbles’, the second single; I thought that was one of the few tracks that had that infectious verbal sparring that the first album had. There was a bit of that on the chorus of ‘Squeaky’ as well, but generally you can tell
that the band aren’t really working together any more. It was my idea to do a cover version of Frederick Knight’s ‘I’ve Been Lonely for So Long’, which worked out okay, but as ever we tried to rip it and make it our own rather than just do a straight cover.
The album title was what Kermit substituted when we were doing TV performances of ‘Reverend Black Grape’. He couldn’t say ‘Talking bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!’ so he said, ‘stupid, stupid, stupid’.
During the recording, in the time I wasn’t in the studio, I was either off getting gear or I was in bed, particularly if I was just waiting for days on end for Kermit and Carl. It really was a fucking awful time for me. The band was splintering and the music really suffered because of it. It just felt like Yes Please! all over again. It was a nightmare. Apart from this time it was near Bath instead of Barbados.
Just before the album came out, we released The Grape Tapes video, filmed by Too Nice Tom, which tracked the progress of Black Grape right from the birth of the band during the early rehearsals at my house, right through to Stupid Stupid Stupid, including the recording of both albums, going on tour and to America. The Grape Tapes is a pretty gritty, warts and all depiction of Black Grape. I haven’t seen it for a couple of years now, but last time I watched it I couldn’t fucking believe what I was seeing. It does capture the madness, the debauchery, the highs and the lows of Black Grape, but it doesn’t always depict me in the best light.
By the time we came to tour Stupid Stupid Stupid, the mood in the band had really soured. If the Man Made publishing money had already appeared, I don’t think Kermit and Carl would have even turned up for the tour. It was a nightmare. The atmosphere was just as bad as it had been on the last Mondays tour, and the writing was on the wall. On top of that, Oriole had gone to India to see some mystic she was into, just when I needed her. She rang me up just before the tour started and said, ‘I’m going to India.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s time.’
So I just thought, ‘All right, fuck you then. I’m going on the piss with the lads, and I’m going to have loads of lager and drugs … because it’s time.’
On the second to last show in Glasgow, I had an argument with Pat Warde on the tour bus, then Pat started rowing with Muzzer. I was in a right state because I was a proper drug addict again, the second album hadn’t been as good as the first one, all sorts of things were building up. Muzzer’s conflict of interest with Man Made was also really winding me up, so I just did one. Muzzer had a suitcase with the tour float and takings in, which he used to sleep with, sometimes handcuffing it to himself. He was asleep on the couch with the briefcase, and I just sneaked it off him. It only had about two grand in it, so I just grabbed that. I knew that would piss him off more than anything, because he hated being sneaked.
It was all coming to an end anyway, because Kermit and Carl were convinced they were going off to be big rap superstars. It was like the end of the Mondays again. It was a sinking ship. I was pissed off at Muzzer because he’d been my pal for so long. He knew the Nicholls were pricks, which they were, and so maybe he thought he should have been managing Black Grape, but I don’t think he realized how powerful Gary Kurfirst was.
Man Made then made the mistake of spending a fortune on some Motown sample, which crippled them, I think. It just never happened, which I was quietly chuffed about.
In January 1998 we made an announcement that Kermit and Carl had left, but Black Grape was going to continue. I’m not sure if even I believed it. I was in a real state by this stage. After the bitterness of the Mondays’ split, and being blamed by the rest of the band, I’d made this glorious comeback with Black Grape and then it had all collapsed again. Sadly, I’d also split up with Oriole.
I really needed to get myself off the heroin and I’d heard about these new Naltrexone implants, which were supposed to be a wonder drug, and decided to give them a try. I booked myself into the clinic in London and left Ireland with a small bag and just enough clothes for a week, because I was fully intending on going back. But I never ever did. I never saw that house again.
The Naltrexone treatment was horrendous. I would not recommend it to anyone. I’ve spoken to people since who had the same implants but had only been on heroin a couple of years, and they said it wasn’t quite as bad, but it was absolutely horrific for me. It sounded great, the way they sold it to you – that they would put you to sleep for twelve or twenty-four hours and speed up your withdrawal so you go through the worst while you’re out of it. That’s not how it worked with me.
I had the operation to sew the implants in, and then they wired me up and even stuck a catheter in so I could piss while I was still knocked out, as the Naltrexone triggered this quick withdrawal thing. I don’t remember much because I was out of it, but apparently I woke up and ripped all the tubes out and started going mental. It took six or seven doctors and nurses to force me back down on the bed and sit on me. I was going berserk.
But that was just the beginning. Then I started to come round. Fuck me. It was horrific. It was terrible. It didn’t matter how much Temazepam or whatever downers they gave me to help calm me down, it didn’t make any difference. I was climbing the walls. Literally. It’s the worst experience I’ve ever had in my life. It was terrifying.
Too Nice Tom had come down to pick me up and drive me back to his house in Burnley, where he kindly said I could go to recover. He really is too nice. They discharged me at 7am and Tom was there to pick me up. They gave me a big bag of Temazepams and downers to last a fortnight, but by the time I’d got to Tom’s I’d eaten the whole supply and I was still climbing the walls. Imagine the worst come-down ever and magnify it by about a thousand. I didn’t even get a chance to think about the mental side of it because I was trying to cope with the physical side. I was shaking. Tingling all over. Sweating. Shitting myself, literally, because I’d lose control of my bowels. Tom is a strong bloke, because he’s a professional boxing trainer, but I was just picking him up and putting him out of the way. It was a living nightmare. I was so strung out I didn’t sleep for weeks. I’d go day after day and night after night without kip, awake for twenty-four hours a day, just strung out. Screaming. In so much pain, with no relief. I was on Temazis, Valium, and I had to have injections for the diarrhoea. I wasn’t drinking or smoking weed, and I couldn’t go out and score any gear because I had the implants, which just make you even sicker if you try and use gear.
No one knew I was at Tom’s. We kept it double quiet. The worst of it probably lasted about two months, but it seemed an eternity to me. Two months with pretty much no sleep, just screaming night and day, wanting Tom to knock me out. At some points I was actually begging Tom to punch me and knock me flat out, because I knew that was the only way I could get some respite from it. The only way to make the pain go away. I was screaming, ‘TOM, KNOCK ME THE FUCK OUT, PLEASE!’ Because no matter how many downers I had I couldn’t get any sleep. Temazis. Valium. Sleeping pills. Nothing. Still awake. You go mad when you can’t sleep for such a long time. I don’t mean staying up all night partying. I mean days and days and weeks without sleep. Never underestimate how much real sleep-deprivation can fuck with you.
Eventually we got through the worst of it and I started to sleep a little and eat a little, but at first all I wanted was cold, bland, fatty food. I would drink cold oxtail soup from a vase, and I would cook a tray of oven chips and then let them go cold, and eat them when they were limp. Thankfully Tom had a big house, because his wife and kids were there, and his wife was actually pregnant at the time. I can’t thank him enough for getting me through that.
Me and Tom were also supposed to be working on a script for a film called Molly’s Idle Ways while I was there, although I wasn’t in much of a fit state. We did actually film some parts of it, including a scene with Billy Graham, the boxing trainer from Champs Camp, which we shot in a hotel.
One of Tom’s friends was Tony Livesey, then editor of the Daily Sport, who’s also from Burnl
ey; they’d been at college together. Tony dropped round to Tom’s one day when I was staying there and we all got chatting, and a couple of days later he offered me a column in the paper. I didn’t have any plans to get back into music at that stage. I just needed a break from it. I hadn’t walked away from it for good, but music wasn’t on my mind and I was looking to do something different for a while. So when Tony suggested writing a column for the Daily Sport it seemed like a good idea. It wasn’t my dream job, but you never know what these things can lead to. So I agreed, and they even gave me my own Daily Sport business cards. The first column I did was in June 1998, when I reviewed the football singles that had come out for the World Cup in France. They gave me a guy called Mark Smith from the Sport to work with, who would ghost-write it for me.
Radio One then asked me out to Ibiza, as they were doing some live broadcasts from there and wanted me to go on Steve Lamacq’s show. Smithy came with me from the Sport, because the idea was we were going to do the column on the party scene in Ibiza. But as soon as we got there I was invited to the Radio One villa, and when we were in the car on the way over there he said, ‘Let’s see what shit we can get on these lot,’ which shocked me. I said, ‘What? We’ve been invited into their villa, mate. Even if you do see anything going on, you don’t say fuck all.’ What goes on tour stays on tour. I fell out with him after that, and that was pretty much the end of our working relationship. I think he might have told Tony Livesey that I beat him up, but I didn’t.
I had nothing and no one to come back to at the time. No house, no woman, no band. I met a guy out there called Nuts from Moss Side, who I got on really well with. He was a real character. He looked like a superstar and I thought he would look good in the film that me and Tom were making. So I just stayed out there and hung out with Nuts for a bit and partied hard, and before I knew it, a couple of weeks had turned into a couple of months. The Sun actually put missing posters up around Ibiza when they couldn’t find me to do the column, although that was obviously also a bit of a publicity stunt on their behalf.