What Planet Am I On?

by Shaun Ryder

  Travis and me sit in Alan’s kitchen and he tells us about the two incidents he was involved in and some stuff that never made the official reports or papers. He tells us about old Zyggy and what he looked like when he found him. ‘He’d been missing for six days. We later found out he had thick, wavy hair when he’d gone missing but when he was found his hair looked like it had been cropped really roughly . . . and he had individual burn marks around his head, as if something was placed there [like a helmet or some sort of contraption, I think he meant]. Then as you turned his head over, there was also a hole in the back of Zyggy’s neck, in the nape of the neck, which was smeared with some sort of ointment, like Vaseline or something.’

  As we already knew, the ointment was sent away to the Home Office laboratories for assessment, but despite doing loads of tests, they had no idea what it was.

  ‘When we went to the post-mortem the pathologist was straightaway really taken aback by the look on his face. He suggested he had died of a heart attack, and he said to us, “You’ve heard the saying ‘Frightened to death’? Well this is a typical example of it.”’

  Alan stresses, ‘That guy didn’t die where he was found. There’s no way.’

  Although he still thinks the case is really mysterious, Alan doesn’t think UFOs were involved in Zyggy’s death. Which gives more credence to his own encounter.

  He tells us about that night and how he came across the UFO. I ask him how much time he reckons he lost, and Alan says, ‘Between about ten past five in the morning and ten to six.’ So that’s about forty minutes that he can’t account for.

  He draws me and Travis an image of what the UFO looked like – a flying saucer, with panels underneath and fairground-type lights round the outside. Travis says it’s very similar to the craft he saw. Old Alan had a framed, hand-drawn picture of a UFO on his kitchen wall as well.

  Alan describes the creatures he saw as having a head like a light bulb and a child-like body, which has become a popular image of aliens more recently but it wasn’t back then. Back in the seventies the little green man was more popular, rather than the ‘greys’ that Alan has just described.

  Alan also tells us about going into regression with a police psychiatrist. He had been pretty sceptical about it, and when he watched the tape back, it shit him up. He says it wasn’t him, by which he means it felt as if he was watching someone else going through the experience.

  Alan seems pretty credible to me. Again, I don’t want to come across like I just swallow anything UFO-related – I try to judge each case on its own merits and each person on their own merits. Obviously, when someone’s telling you a story about what happened to them, you’re judging them, both consciously and subconsciously – not just what they’re saying, but how they’re saying it, their actions and all sorts. You do that with anyone you just met, don’t you? It’s human nature. And what I see makes me believe him.

  Alan then agrees to take us to where the incident happened, by the police station. By this time it’s dark, and we can get a sense of what it must have been like that night. Although Alan was on his own when he saw the craft, there were several other spottings that night. One major detail that backs up Alan’s story is that other cops also saw something that matched Alan’s description of the UFO, and they filed reports independently.

  ‘Twelve miles away from where I was, three police officers got up on t’moor, and as they’re driving up there, they became aware of this blue pulsating light in the sky, on the horizon. They stood watching this object, and then – ssssshhhhoooommmm – it went from one side of the horizon to t’other, in a split second, it went backwards and forwards, up and down . . . and they then observed it heading in the general direction of Todmorden.’

  Two other coppers in the Todmorden area also saw a craft and submitted a report with their own drawing of it, which was very similar to Alan’s drawing.

  I do disagree with Alan on one thing though. He thinks the two incidents were unrelated, that it was just coincidence that they both happened to him but I don’t really believe in coincidence, so I’m not having that. As far as I’m concerned, if those two incidents happened to Alan, and I believe that they did, then they’re definitely connected.

  After we leave Alan, me and Travis go for a drink to have a chat. Travis reckons Alan has three things in his favour – he was a police officer, he had the corroboration of other police officers who saw the same thing, and as a police officer he had a lot at stake by coming out and being public about what had happened. Some of his superiors even advised him not to say anything and tried to shush him up. You can see why the Old Bill in some small town wouldn’t want one of their cops going round spouting off about how he’d seen a UFO. Especially in the seventies. You’ve got all the locals, who are probably a bit straight, thinking, ‘We can’t have this guy as our cop, he sounds a bit unstable’, you know what I mean? I can see why it wouldn’t look good. Alan even said he had other coppers try and plant stuff in his locker to try and discredit him.

  Travis says he was impressed by Alan’s own astonishment at his regression, and thinks that counts in his favour. Travis also knows about a case involving a cop in New Mexico that sounded pretty similar.

  It’s hard to know exactly what to make of the incidents in Todmorden but Travis and I are both in agreement that something definitely happened to Alan.

  That night we drive down south, heading for Suffolk on the next leg of our UFO road trip. We are heading to Suffolk to investigate the Rendlesham Forest incident.

  I already know a lot about this case, as I’ve seen it on various documentaries over the years. It happened just outside RAF Woodbridge and RAF Bentwaters Air Force bases in late December 1980, which at the time were both used by the US Air Force, so most of the witnesses were Yanks. Dozens of USAF personnel were involved in various incidents on the base after going into the forest to investigate mysterious lights. What happened next has been debated for over thirty years, and is still being debated today. Even those who were there can’t agree on what happened, but some of the men have since said they saw an alien spacecraft and at least one of them claimed to have touched it.

  Shaun’s X-Files

  The Rendlesham incident from 1980 has been dubbed ‘the British Roswell’ by many people. Some files released by the National Archives show that Rendlesham remains the UK’s most enduringly fascinating UFO sighting. Dr David Clarke, who analysed all the documents released by the National Archives, estimated that ‘almost half’ of all UFO correspondence directed at defence officials related to requests for information or ‘tip-offs’ about the Rendlesham incident. Dr Clarke came to the conclusion that, ‘There is no way you will be able to get to the truth of what happened because like a snowball rolling down the hill, the stories have been more and more embellished.’

  The incident started around 3 a.m. on Boxing Day 1980 when strange lights were reported descending into the forest. At first, the Air Force dudes who saw the lights thought a plane had come down, but when they went into the forest to investigate they witnessed a ‘strange, glowing object, metallic in appearance, with coloured lights’. One of the American geezers, Sgt James Penniston, later described it as a ‘craft of unknown origin’ and claimed he touched the craft and it was ‘warm’. He also described symbols on the exterior of the craft, which he copied down. The local police were called but the only light they could see was the one from Orford Ness lighthouse, which was a few miles away on the coast (well, obviously it was on the coast – where else are you going to have a lighthouse?).

  Unlike most cases, which involve a single sighting and last a matter of minutes, this incident was stretched over several days.

  The next morning after the first sighting, the same guys returned to the clearing in the forest where it had happened, and found three triangular impressions in the ground and burn marks on the trees.

  From everything I’ve seen and read before today, it seems to me that something definitely went down that night at
that military base. The other thing that is interesting is that there are theories that some bods high up in the military knew what was going on that night, almost as if it was a prearranged meeting with aliens or something. Or as if it was a set-up and they wanted to monitor reactions. I don’t quite know, but there is definitely more than meets the eye to the story, and there’s definitely some withholding of information going on. Someone, and probably quite a few people, knew more than they were letting on about what happened that night, and they still haven’t come clean, so I’m keen to try and get to the bottom of it.

  We’d arranged to meet one of the original witnesses, called Larry Warren, in a country pub near where the incident happened. It feels a bit like the three amigos with me, Larry and Travis all having had a life-changing UFO adventure. Larry and Travis had met each other a few times before at UFO conferences, which is hardly surprising since they’re two of the most in-demand dudes in the UFO world. Larry’s a character. He seems to be happy to be out with the boys – the first thing he says to me is ‘Shaun! How you doing, brother?’

  Larry acts as if me, him and Travis are old school mates who haven’t seen each other in years, finally getting the old band together. It’s quite amusing and endearing. He has a goatee beard and is going grey, and looks like he’s done his share of partying over the years. He also has a gravelly voice which sounds like it has paid the price for some of that partying. ‘It almost looks like Shaun Ryder and Travis Walton meets Willie Nelson,’ he rasps, ‘the way I’m looking right now with the beard and all.’

  Larry says to me, ‘I remember when you guys were hitting NYC in the nineties and the whole Manchester scene was kicking off, that was great. Man, it’s a weird life we lead.’

  You can say that again. The last month or so has been one of the weirdest trips of my life.

  While we’re waiting for the crew to set up, Larry asks Travis something about his movie. ‘You know my favourite part of the movie, Travis – and I know you know I’ve watched it loads and it’s one of my favourite films – my favourite part is when you’re sat in your truck in town, and the little kid comes up to you and says. “Can I have your autograph?” and you say “Why?” and the kid says, “You’ve been to space.”’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you what really happened,’ says Travis, ‘which is that I was on set during the filming of the movie, and this kid was running round getting all the autographs of all the actors and he said to me, “Hey, are you famous? Can I have your autograph?” I’m not sure he knew who I was.’

  It seems like Larry and Travis are treated like pop stars when they turn up at UFO conferences because their experiences are so famous. They talk about some of the other well-known characters that they both know on the UFO scene. It sounds a bit like when you’re in a band and you’re doing the summer festival circuit, and you end up bumping into the same bands backstage at different festivals. ‘All right, how’s it going? What time you on today? Have a good one . . .’

  ‘I’ve been back to Missouri a few times this year. I did a thing with Peter in Maine and we had to share a room,’ says Travis. ‘Never share a room with Peter, I gotta tell you he snores a whole bunch for a small guy.’

  In December 1980, Larry was a fresh-faced recruit based at RAF Bentwaters. He was dragged into the Rendlesham Forest incident on the third night and has a lot to say about it. When he was honourably discharged from the United States Air Force in 1983, he went public with his version of what happened. He’s spent the last thirty years defying the authorities to tell his story.

  Like I said, I’ve heard a lot about this story over the years, so I tell Larry I’ve always wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth. ‘Well, I’ll tell it, brother,’ he rasps.

  ‘It was a clear night. I didn’t know the area that well. We got to a clearing called Cable Green and there was a mist or a fog that was greenish yellow, on the ground, in a circular shape. The air was charged, yet movement was slow and there was no sound. Everything was void, it was like a vacuum.’

  Larry then describes a red ball of light that appeared and moved into the clearing, which is a description that has been substantiated by other accounts of that night.

  ‘By the time my eyes cleared there was a structured object, about thirty feet at its base and it went up to a point, like a pyramid. I was about twenty feet away and I saw these life forms . . . I thought they looked like kids, and I was like, ‘What is this?’ . . . it was animated and it was alive.’

  Larry admits himself that his account is a bit dreamlike. But he says that this haziness was due to some sort of force field that was coming from the structure.

  What is definite though – and Larry stills seems pissed off, rightly if you ask me – is that after he stood guard for a while, as other officers took radiation readings, he and other low-ranking officers were ordered back to base, while the mysterious objects were still there in the field. I ask him what explanation his superiors gave him.

  ‘They didn’t tell us it was from outer space but they definitely told us that this phenomenon had been visiting this planet for longer than any of us in the room could appreciate. They said they hoped we appreciated the need for secrecy and hoped they could count on our cooperation.’

  ‘Cooperation meaning don’t talk about it?’ asks Travis.

  ‘Don’t talk about it,’ says Larry, nodding. ‘They had us sign pre-prepared witness statements saying that we were off duty and saw lights in the trees.’

  He adds, ‘The real twisted part with this is . . . hey, I always say “twisting” with you, Shaun. Why is that?’ He’s a bit of a comedian, Larry.

  ‘Dunno, Larry,’ I reply. ‘Something to do with my melons?’

  I tell Larry that I actually nicked the phrase ‘twisting my melon’ off Steve McQueen for ‘Step On’. It surprises me how many people don’t know ‘Step On’ is a cover version, although the Happy Mondays version is now much more well-known than the sixties original. It all came about when we were asked to do a cover version for our American label, Elektra, for their fortieth anniversary. They wanted all their bands to cover something else on the label so they sent us a tape of Elektra songs to consider and the first or second song on there was ‘Step On’ by John Kongos. I’d never heard it before but I liked it and I could tell it would be an easy one for us to rip and make our own, which is what we did. It became almost a completely different track by the time we’d finished with it, and then Paul Oakenfold had put his stamp on it.

  As I told Larry, the ‘twisting my melon’ bit came from Steve McQueen. In a roundabout way. I’d been watching this Steve McQueen documentary called Man on the Edge because I was bang into him. In the documentary, one of the big producers from Fox or one of the other big film studios was describing how he first met McQueen and says something like, ‘This cool kid came in, and you could tell he was an actor. He looked like a cool street kid and he said to me, “You can’t tell me what’s what man! You’re twisting my melon man!”’ That’s what McQueen was like, an uncompromising little fucker. Can you imagine One Direction or someone saying something like that? This producer carried on, ‘This kid spoke so hip, he didn’t know what he was saying!’ Straightaway, while I was watching it, I thought, ‘I’ll have that, thank you very much’ – ‘You’re twisting my melon man, you know you talk so hip, you’re twisting my melon man.’ I knew that’s what was needed for ‘Step On’: a killer catchphrase.

  I always thought McQueen was a cool fucker. I actually got into him before I found out about his background. He had been an orphan as a kid and then he joined the Marines. He got into acting because he realized it was full of birds, and posh birds at that. Which was great by me. All I knew about him at first was that he had a great haircut and wore really cool clothes, and not much else matters to you at that age. It makes me laugh when people wank on about James Dean being the coolest guy that ever lived. Please. James Dean? He wasn’t even in the same league as Steve McQueen.

  The other catchphra
se in ‘Step On’ was the ‘Call the cops!’ line. That one came from a pal of ours in the Hacienda called Bobby Gillette, who was always shouting, ‘Call the cops!’ He’d stand in the Hacienda, off his nut, whistling and shouting, ‘Call the cops! . . . We’re here! The Mancs! Our firm! Our corner! . . . CALL THE COPS!’ So I just stuck those two elements together and came up with: ‘You’re twisting my melon man, you talk so hip, you know you’re twisting my melon man . . . call the cops!’ and it worked great on our version of ‘Step On’. That line has stuck with me over the years, so much so that I decided to call my autobiography Twisting My Melon when I wrote it a couple of years ago. I quite like the fact that no one knows what it means, but everyone has their own take on it.

  Anyway, getting back to old Larry and him getting his melons twisted in Rendlesham Forest. Over the years a number of men have come forward with their versions of what happened during the Rendlesham incident, and I have to say some of their accounts differ quite a lot. But there is also a radio recording of what happened that night, which seems to suggest they definitely saw a UFO. Larry says he’ll drive us out to show us the area where the incident happened.

  Larry still finds it quite traumatic being at the site, even after all these years. ‘I never wanted to come back here. I thought it was pretty evil. Not in a satanic way, but just . . . my world became totally different that night.’

  Some of the people who were with Larry that night definitely think evil was involved. I do find that is the natural reaction of some people when they’re confronted with something that they can’t comprehend or understand. They panic and think it’s the devil’s work. Rather than thinking it might be a good thing, they naturally assume the worst.