The scene: On the roof of a Manchurian apartment block, Shaun and Paul Ryder feed rat poison to pigeons, their carcasses raining down on the streets below. Or so goes the introduction to 24 Hour Party People, filmmaker Michael Winterbottom’s snapshot of the Manchester music scene.
Between the film – which liberally played with the facts and exploited the myths of the band – and the Happy Mondays themselves – who liberally played with facts and exploited their own debauched mythology for the music press – it’s impossible to begin a conversation with Shaun Ryder without some sort of preconceived notion about the man.
“You sound like you’ve got your head under a bath,” Ryder jokes through the crackling phone connection. “We don’t really have a good signal here when we’re speaking to someone in Manchester so, er…,” he pauses, trailing off. “You can understand when we’re speaking to someone in Australia.”
Technical problems persist throughout the conversation, but first things first. The Happy Mondays have pushed their Australian tour dates back a month; can he explain why?
“No idea,” he offers. “I mean it might have something to do with visas? I think. I think that’s what it is, the visas [for] some certain members of the band.”
Ryder is vague and abrupt with a few of his answers, some of which feel pre-prepared. The man I’m speaking to is focussed on a single message, spruiking his latest projects and avoiding discussion of his outrageous history. (The interview even came with a caveat not to mention “past controversies”, of which there are many.)
He is, after all, as famous for his off-stage behaviour as he is for his musical output. The Happy Mondays burst into popular culture with the explosion of the Manchester music scene in the late ‘80s, spearheading ‘Madchester’ alongside acts like The Stone Roses and Inspiral Carpets. They bent genres, created rock by way of soul, hip-hop, psychedelia, and acid house beats. They were working-class hedonists, who collected drug habits like other people collect memorabilia. “Back in the days there was a lot of drama, a lot of issues, all that comes with being a young kid… We’re just old men now, there’s no drama, there’s no drugs, there’s no sex.”
Ryder himself was a proletarian poet; his stream of consciousness lyricism was innovative, part comical and surreal (“Jesus was a black man / no, Jesus was Batman / no no no – that was Bruce Wayne!”), part raw and introspective (“Man were not all born equal / You can get stuck with some fucked up people / Where the normal is just pure fuckin’ evil / There’s no difference from shit and treacle”).
“I do spend a lot of time writing lyrics,” he explains. “The new stuff I’ve just done I spent a lot more time writing and crafting the songs. It all depends where I am and what I’m at. I get ideas from the television, from what people say, from what I hear [and] I write when I’ve got the music there. I scribble little lines down, or little phrases, but I don’t start constructing ‘til I’ve got music.”
Does the new stuff include a sixth Happy Mondays record? “We haven’t been doin’ it – we’ve got Mondays shows for the next couple of years, and we’ll probably do Mondays shows for the next 20 years,” he confidently asserts. “We’ll but we’ve got the rest of our lives to do it. I’ve got a solo album that’s going to come out at the end of the year, but no Mondays album yet.”
The Happy Mondays reformed last year for the third time, although it was the first reformation to feature the band’s original line-up, who last performed together in 1993. Begging the question: How has the dynamic changed?
“We were boys when we started. We’re now all 50-year-old men. Back in the days there was a lot of drama, a lot of issues, all that comes with being a young kid,” he reasons. “We’re just old men now, there’s no drama, there’s no drugs, there’s no sex. It’s just rock and roll and it’s just a pleasure to go and play the songs.”
Ryder’s celebrity in the UK has been resurgent in recent years, and a tamer version of his former self has prevailed. He appeared on the Gorillaz track “Dare”, from 2005’s Demon Days and was a contestant on the reality television series I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here in 2010, where he was sent into the ‘jungles’ of Murwillumbah, New South Wales.
“I didn’t want to do the jungle. I fought against it, but my managers wanted me to do it. My record company wanted me to do it because I had a greatest hits album to promote. My family wanted me to do it. So I did it and I fully enjoyed it.”
Now a father of six, can he appreciate the contemporary tastes of his children? “I’ve got a five-year-old and a four-year-old at home, they listen to the Top 40 and Rihanna, all that stuff that’s in,” he says. “I’ve got a lad who’s at university, he’s got all sorts of stuff that just sounds like what was made in the ‘90s. If I have music on it’s Dean Martin, or Frank Sinatra, or James Brown. I don’t listen to new music; I should do, but I don’t.”
As a reality show survivor, what then does he think of reality singing contests, where celebrity can be manufactured for a vocalist overnight? “I didn’t come from that, when I got into it, it was just rock ’n’ roll and rock ‘n’ roll headlines,” Ryder proposes.
“There’s a place for things like that. We sit around with my family on a Saturday when I’m home and we watch The Voice. As far as The Voice goes, it’s just never been about the voice,” he elaborates. “But it’s entertainment, and we watch it. I’m not gonna start slagging it, when I was a kid we had Opportunity Knocks so it’s nothing new. There’s a place for it.”
It isn’t a stretch to suggest Ryder wouldn’t make it through the blind auditions of The Voice. Not simply because his rough, disassociated Mancunian bark is foreign to manufactured pop, but because he didn’t always enjoy performing live.
“Now it’s enjoyable [but] for a long time I was going through a lot of shit, and still had to go around doing shows, and it wasn’t enjoyable. I hated it. I had 12 years of serious,” he heavily emphasises, “serious court cases, where every penny I earned was took away from me, so it was fucking horrible. A horrible time, and obviously you’re just going out there and doing it. I’m in a totally different place in life [now]. So it all helps.”
While the Happy Mondays sound is specific to a scene and bygone era, it nonetheless has a timeless quality. As for their image, the decadence serves both as a cautionary tale for some and escapism for others.
Either way, their history is clouded by hyperbole, misinformation, and stories too bizarre to be fabricated. Is it odd to be talked about as part of a greater mythology?
“You know, it’s not at this point. I have a problem saying whether it was true or not because I can remember the 1960s better than I can remember the 1990s. You hear all sorts of shit, stuff that’s true, stuff that’s not. I don’t really care.”
The original Happy Mondays lineup tours Australia this June, dates and details below. You can also win a double pass to the dates in our Competition.
The Happy Mondays 2013 Australian Tour
Wednesday 5 June Metropolis. Fremantle, Perth.
with special guest DJ set by 808 State
www.oztix.com.au / www.heatseeker.com.au
Thursday 6 June Palace. Melbourne
with special guest DJ set by 808 State and Underground Lovers
www.ticketek.com.au / www.oztix.com.au
Friday 7 June Tivoli. Brisbane
with special guest DJ set by 808 State
www.ticketek.com.au
Monday 10 June Roundhouse. Sydney
with special guest DJ set by 808 State
www.ticketek.com.au
