Shaun Ryder – Still A Happy Monday

John Robb chews the fat with the voice of the reformed Happy Mondays

Shaun Ryder, the accidental bard of Salford and the front-man of the most off the wall idiosyncratic band to ever stumble of Manchester and come to think of it the whole of British pop is sat in the foyer of Manchester Midland Hotel holding a pint of Guinness.

He looks a lot healthier than he did a couple of years ago. 2007 sees a rejuvenated Ryder fronting a rejuvenated Mondays. The band still featuring the errant front man and his dancing buddy Bez as well as original drummer Gaz Whelan and a couple of newbie’s prepare to release their fifth album, ‘Uncle Dysfunktional’ a typically warped off the wall slice of idiosyncratic mooching from the kings of that kind of well, idiosyncratic mooching.

The Happy Mondays started off as a ramshackle gang of misfits, outsiders without a hope in hell of breaking into the mainstream. That was until in the late eighties when the music business was looking the wrong way acid house stormed the ramparts and in its wake a new drugged up generation was looking for someone to tall them what the fuck was going on. Manchester had the answers with the Stone Roses and even more specifically the Happy Mondays whose gnarled funk scoured with Ryder’s brilliantly funny lyrics saw them speak to a whole generation of kids. Not that he cares to elaborate on this.

“It’s really funny because from our background, from where we come from poetry and singing were for puffs! Its not the sort of thing that anyone did.”

Tony Wilson once famously dubbed Ryder as the Bob Dylan of his generation.

“Tony says some great things but I feel embarrassed about all that shit. Writing words was not a thing that you did, it was never a thing I did, it was rhyming off the top of your head. You had to be quick where I come from. You had to have a quick mouth- a quick mouth got you further than them f**kers (shows fists). I’ve said it before a lot of the songs have double meaning about inside stuff, a lot of it was taking the piss out of other people, you write about what you know about and for us that was what’s going on in the underworld and we can’t fucking start spitting that out- so you give it double meanings.”

The new Monday’s album, of course, breaks all the rules of pop. After a ten-year break bands usually limp back with a half arsed approximation of their old sound. However, these are wily old foxes; Ryder may give the impression that he doesn’t care but he’s sharp and got his eye on the ball. Lyrically he’s still got the smarts and the record is as dark and funny as you would expect with the new line as capable of that dirty street funk as the old crew.

“I can’t be arsed to talk about the album. It sounds great but I won’t say what the songs are about, why should I? If an album is shit and corny it would not do well but this album isn’t. It sounds really good. I’m not willing to talk about the lyrics. Anyone can make up their own mind as to what they are about. They are pop tunes as far as I’m concerned and you get on the mic and freestyle and then play them all and pick your favourites.”

Ryder is riht, the album is great, there is no way a band this fractious and this far into their career should be able to cut a great album but then the Mondays were never playing by the rules.

The band, who had spent the first five years of their existence holed up in the Boardwalk rehearsal rooms honing down their mutant Funkadelic swagger were initially ignored. They were the bastard sons of George Clinton, taking the genius funk monster of Parliament Funkadelic and twisting it with a skewed punk edge and a sardonic Salford wit.

“I first got into northern soul and then Funkadelic and Sly Stone, George Clinton. In our heads that was what was going on in the Mondays- even though we did not sound like it that and we mixed that with the punk whine, the sort of accent sort of thing, the attitude that was what was our interpretation of it. Funkadelic had brilliant words, these dudes doing stuff like that was an inspiration and doing words like that comes out naturally for me.”

The Mondays just didn’t seem to fit in anywhere. When they signed to Factory Records it was looked on as an act of madness. A crazy indulgence from a wonky label. At the time the music scene was in its mid eighties folly of prima donna pop and frilly shirted troubadours – a long way from a scuzzy crew from Salford.

“We were talking about this before. Back in 81 when we had people coming down from London it was like we be there jeans and trainer sand cagoules and whatever everybody at time everyone looked like Boy George I mean respect to Boy George great and all that. They would come and see us and they would say (dopey voice) ‘there is no image with you guys’. We didn’t look like every other band looked at the same. We dressed like we did on the street.”

The Mondays were delivering their madcap party music played to a hardcore of skulking nutters – this was classic Manchester. They dressed down in street clothes and did what the fuck they liked. They were true rock n roll operating far away from the parameters of good taste fronted by a bug eyed goon dancer and the hunched up gnome like figure of Ryder.

They were also pretty damn good at making pop music and in their pomp were casually tossing of hit after hit whilst filling up interviews with cackling drug talk and street smarts. It could all go badly wrong and of course it did. They imploded spectacularly their last tour was as leaden and bored as their triumphant 1989 tour had been top effortlessly brilliant.

Ryder and Bez split only to remerge as Black Grape who cut two albums, the first one which was a perfect pop record, that’s if perfect pop was spastic funk criss crossed with dirty raincoat pop and Wurlitzer weirdness- it was a huge hit. By the second album they had run out of steam and Ryder disappeared again. There were intermittent sightings, a sloth like drug womble staggering around TV studios, crazy stories of drug abuse and madness, most of them probably made up, there were court cases and recirmknaiution and there was a dark solo record that slipped outalmost unnoticed- Ryder at his most surreal and madcap a record a sheer brilliance.

“Bez stayed at Joe’s (Strummer) house. He went to a party there at his gaff. In the garden there were trees 1000 years old. There was like a plaque on the tree because someone had been hung from it during the civil war and Bez cut one down to start a fire didn’t he! (laughs). ‘ Joe didn’t get mad about because its Bez innit.”

The decade long delay was caused by an impossible queue of court cases, 17 in total, which has been wilted down to two.

It seemed like game over then the Mondays returned battered and bruised and with old Mondays drummer Gaz Whelan and of course the unbiatious Bez who by now was a celebrity having waltzed through ‘Big Brother’ with the sort of consummate ease that he has waltzed through life.

Shaun laughs.

“I thought it was brilliant. I was actually asked to go on it first but there is no way in the world I would do it. It’s not me. Then it went over to Bez and he was brilliant at it. He was just being himself there was no pretentiousness with him. When the old fucked up woman, Sylvester Stallone’s mother was getting picked on because some of stuff she said was wrong and she was a bit of a knobhead, the people started ganging up on here, an old woman, so Bez gets up and puts it right saying don’t gang up on her! Simple as that. I’m sure if he was in the household when Shilpa Shetti was in there he would have got up and said don’t bully her. She might be a f**king bitch but don’t f**king bully her (laughs).”

It’s the relationship between Bez and Shaun that is at the core of the band.

“Bez is not a hypocrite but then again he is a hypocrite (laughs). How can I say it with Beswick! He’s the most immoral moral person going (laughs) He’s got the standards of a staunch Tory and then he contradicts himself, mind you don’t we all do that!”

Bez’s role in the band has always been indefinable. In many ways the face of the Mondays Bez has become a national institution, an icon for a whole period of Madchester madness and one of the ultimate rock n roll survivors.

“When w e made the first album Bez spent 24 hours a day in the studio smoking weed, on the second album Bez spent 24 hours a day in the studio smoking weed. Then on the third album he came to Barbados and spent 24 hours a day in the studio with us smoking crack (laughs). On this album he said ‘I don’t feel right because I wasn’t in on this album’, I said what’s the only difference with the past apart from you being there in spirit!”

Despite this Bez is a key member of the band.

“Bez is really important. The way I always looked at it, right, is that it’s not one dimensional with the band. Bez always looked great on videos and on stage. It saves me from doing it. Me and him do it together. He saved me doing all the interviews. It was just as important he was doing the interview stuff or the videos.’

Bez was also big mates with the late and great Joe Strummer.

“Bez stayed at Joe’s house. He went to a party there at his gaff. In the garden there were trees 1000 years old. There was like a plaque on the tree because someone had been hung from it during the civil war and Bez cut one down to start a fire didn’t he! (laughs). ‘ Joe didn’t get mad about because its Bez innit.”

When they first reformed they sold out Manchester Arena a couple of times and the last month have seen them on long UK tour, the gigs have been a triumph, the band’s 20 year old sound still make sense in 2007. Everyone in the camp is buzzing apart from Ryder, who hates touring.

“I’d be a real dickhead to say going on tour is really hard work. Personally if I could go out and do a gig once a month it would be great. I just get bored singing the same f**king words night after night.

It’s a job. We do it. You try and put on a good show. A lot of bands love the live thing but I love creating more than doing shows. When we was young it was an adventure. I do it to enable me to make and create music. I do it as a living. You got to do shows and stuff like interviews. I’d rather be in the studio fucking about.”

Surely you got the stamina for all this now, after packing in the hard drugs and taking up cycling.

“When you get older you get older. You grow up when you get past 40. You can’t f**king go out and do things you did when you were younger. You would either be a sad c**t or look ridiculous. It’s natural progression innit.”

And in their own warped way the Mondays themselves have pulled off the same trick.

For more check out http://www.happymondaysonline.com