More about: Black Grape

As far as legends of the music industry go, Shaun Ryder is up there thanks to his involvement with The Mondays.

This band he fronts were the first to introduce the feel of Acid House to guitar music, and were at the forefront of the Madchester scene - a cultural phenomena that swept the nation. The Charlatans dropped their leather jackets started dressing like The Mondays, The Stone Roses stopped being a goth band, Primal Scream made Screamadelica using the same principle of applying a dance producer to an indie record and shedding the 70s retro guitar vibes. The Happy Mondays deserve godlike genius award for paving the way.

Before meeting Ryder, I meet Phil Saxe, legendary Northern Soul pioneer who managed the band before going on to A&R for Factory Records. He gives his impression of how Happy Mondays managed to make this hybrid music: “If you listen to the very early Monday’s stuff it’s not that different to the sort of indie music that’s around at the time but they developed that. Part of that was when they go their confidence to express themselves as they wanted to. It becomes party music but telling a story. Then of course The Mondays were always smoking a bit of draw and when people started doing E’s they were at the forefront of that and all the rest of it.”

This shift toward a party tunes flowered properly on their second album, Bummed, recorded by the late great Martin Hannett, who made the seminal Joy Division album Unknown Pleasures. “Martin was great. He was a chemist. He made ecstasy,” confides Ryder.

Their sound brought unity between disparate tribes. A collective spirit like nothing that had ever happened before emerged and it was just the lift Greater Manchester needed. “Salford where the Mondays were from was more depressed than other parts of the country,” says Saxe. Ryder, who grew up there, echoes this: “I come from Little Hulton, in Salford which is basically an estate. You don't know any different. Having to fight by the time you’re seven is just a way of life. When I was eight I’d walk to school on my own and on my way there I go through our local park where somebody had stuck fucking razor blades on a kids slide with chewing gum.”

Being from this background and having to avoid getting into fights from a young age was a blessing and a curse. In a way, like lots of rock stars, being from a working class background with little money led him to be resourceful. “When you come from an area like that that’s how you make it you either become a footballer or a rockstar.”

Ryder’s first foray into music was sparked as a child with the “wonderful Tony Blackburn who played The Doors. By the time I’m 13 we've got Bowie and everything else. You wouldn’t mind Slade or Sweet, but when you stuck out your chest it was Bowie and T-Rex.

So what made him start to grow a fondness of electronic music? “That would have been Human League which we got into at the arse end of ’70s,” he says remembering the first thing that made him into synths.

But as their career progressed they were able to make a more wholehearted co-opting of electronica. Being on Factory Records gave the creative freedom they needed to flourish: “If we signed to Universal and said ‘There’s this DJ who’s big in Ibiza DJ and we want him to produce the album,’ they wouldn’t have let us,” says Ryder, referring to the expert decision Factory made in facilitating having Paul Oakenfold who produce their third album, Pills, Thrill and Bellyaches for its 1990 release. “Tony had faith in what was going on the street level,” he adds.

It’s said 1990 album and hit single, ‘Step On’, that made the band make that leap from hot indie to huge pop band. “Pop’s not a dirty word to us. If you come from now money you want to be massive,” he affirms. Detailing the precise actions that caused them to blow up he says: “We signed to Elektra Records with The Mondays in America. They were celebrating 25 years and handed us a tape and said: ‘We need you to pick a track from one of ’60 and ’70 artists as we’re getting in covers of old artists by the new signees.’ We didn’t want to do it at the time, we weren’t interested in covers. But the third track on it was ‘He's Gonna Step on You Again’ by John Kongos. We stopped it there said, ‘We could do something with this’. We stuck in ‘Twisting my melon man’, ‘Call the cops’, put a bass line on it, sent it to Paul Oakenfold who put soul 2 soul drum beat on it, or something like that. He sent it back to us we went: ‘Yeah, we like it!’ It was our first hit, it was on to Top Of The Pops. We don't get a penny from that record even though John Kongos originally thought we wrote that tune.

But they wouldn’t give an inch on royalties or publishing. I’m not bitter about, though. It launched our pop career and you couldn’t buy that.”

With success came “problems that didn’t matter at the beginning. We were a bunch of young kids and me and Bez became really well known as the faces of the band and that affected the rest them.” Ego? “Absolutely.” So moaning about it broke up the band? “Yeah. It also ruined my relationship with my Dad because you just become one of the boys,” he says. But you and Bez were fine? “Yeah Bez is Bez…. you know…. he’s Bez.”

Another huge factor that led to the break-up of the Happy Mondays was their last album in their first incarnation, Yes Please!

“The first Black Grape album should have been the last Monday's album. The last Mondays album was supposed to have Oakenfold producing it and it didn't happen so we made a mess of it which split the band up. I'm still not a big fan of it,” says in a very matter-of-fact way.

Upon the break-up of the first incarnation of the Mondays, Shaun Ryder did something that those close to him doubted instantly. “I got Kermit, I mean Paul (I can’t call a bloke in his 50s Kermit), Paul was part of the heroin scene in Manchester, we were smack buddies. I had people like Tony Wilson Peter Hook, our old band all ringing the door bell, saying, ‘That fucking bloke, mate, you've blown this!’ Meanwhile, you know that you’ve got a record deal going on in the States straight away. Kermit, Bez and I keep our mouths shut. We let these people carry on ringing the door telling us what wankers we are. Then when it came out and went straight to number on; that was a bigger fuck off than anything.”

What was the days like around making the record? Listening to it, it sounds like a carnival of sound and like you’re having the best time. “I had a huge drug habit to support so the music wasn’t at the forefront of what we were doing,” admits Ryder. “It was me with Kermit with the producer, rest of it was session guys came into play live. Brilliant professionals. We handed in 40 songs, we were trying to pull out songs out of our backside. All the tracks are what Gary Kurfirst of Radioactive Records picked. He made it seem like we‘ve got this God complex as these religious themes seem to run through it.

Conceding that they relinquished a lot of the creative direction, he says: “Lots wasn’t planned. It was totally different world then we there was no Eminem we were doing hip-hop pop rock music. But the label needed a rock track to sell to the American public so we get best known for ‘Kelly’s Heroes’ which he de-hip-hop’d and turned it into Spinal Tap-ish rock music. At the end of the day, we dealt with it. Gary wanted to sell something to the American audience, he really wanted a hit.”

It’s now 21 years since that album came out and it’s now been remastered as part of a boxset with more companion discs, including a gig in Brixton Academy in 1996. How does the singer remember said show? “I can’t remember it at all,” he laughs.

Given that drugs have played such a prominent role in his life, the question begs what role drugs in his life? “Now I’m 54 I’m completely happy with what’s going on up here. As an 18 year old, to deal with everything drugs was a great escape. Heroin was my drug of choice, it made me chatty and eat whereas coke I didn’t like, it made me quiet. Luckily I earned enough to smoke my gear or I’d probably be dead.”

And did they help him write? “Absolutely, fucking hell. Now I can write stuff without drugs although I had writers block for ten years. Certainly as a young man it was great writing on drugs, it was great living on drugs.”

His most recent sessions in Black Grape are like he says drug free. “The sex and drugs have gone now it’s just the rock ‘n’ roll. I have a couple of Guinness’ and a whiskey before I go on stage and that does me now,” he says sipping from his craft Porter in the basement of The Heavenly Social, in Oxford Circus.

Fortunately, being clean hasn’t hampered his output and he doesn’t seem to have lost his sparky energy lost any energy. “I’ve just been making the new Black Grape album. We wrote, recorded, and mixed an album in two weeks at Youth’s residential studio in the Sierra Nevada n Spain. We worked on it 24 hours a day there was no fucking about. Fortunately Kermit and I are still teenagers, so it was loads of fun.”

So what’s the plan going forward? “We’re going to tour the new Black Grape album in 2017 and by the time 2018 comes McGee wants a new Mondays album.”

Will it be the original line up? Yeah apart from Paul Davies, the keyboard player. You’ve got all these fans who are like, ‘Well he’s original member get him in. But he can’t fucking play keyboards!

“See what we had to do with Paul, we had to programme what he did so when he pressed an a that triggered something when he pressed b that triggered something.”

If you went to court with Paul Davis and the judge said, ‘Well you’re a keyboard player, here’s a piano play us ‘Stranger In The Night’, he wouldn’t be able to. You can ask Andy Rowe from The Smiths. When we originally split up I get a call from form Andy who says, “I’ve got Paul your old keys player, you don’t think I’m robbing him do you? I said, ‘Andy take him, he can’t fucking play.’ He comes back to me, ‘Shaun, you weren’t fucking joking.’”

The only reason he was in the band is because he was persistent. In the early days he went up to me in the street, ‘You’ve got that band back together haven’t ya. That Wheelan’s in yer band, he’s a cunt, err, let me in yer band and fuck him off.

So I went to Gaz Wheelan and said, ‘Do you know Paul Davies?’ he went, ‘Yeah, he’s me best mate’. ‘Well this kid says, ‘Fuck Gaz Wheelan off let me be in the band’. Then because he kept following us about we went, ‘Right get a keyboard, we haven’t got a keyboard player’. I don’t want to be a keyboard player I want to be a bass player. Can you play the bass, no but I’ll get one. We were like fucking hell this kid’s hard work.

After hearing how worked up Ryder gets in talking about Davis, it becomes clear how he earned himself the nickname Knobhead among his mates. Regardless of their situation with Paul Davies, a reunion with The Happy Mondays for 2018 will be lapped up. And the Black Grape shows coming up will be unmissable. Shaun seems on sharp form and altohugh he claim sto being knacked form being out doing interviews since 7am he’s sharp and has a restless youthful attitude that will translate to stage well, and make what’s coming up a thrill even without the pills and bellyaches. 

To celebrate the 21st anniversary reissue of It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah, Black Grape will take to the road in November for a 13-date UK tour.

NOVEMBER
11TH NORWICH – WATERFRONT
12TH CAMBRIDGE – JUNCTION
13TH MINEHEAD - SHIIINE FESTIVAL – BUTLINS
17TH LIVERPOOL – O2 ACADEMY
18TH HULL – WELLY
22ND NEWCASTLE - RIVERSIDE
23RD GLASGOW – O2 ABC
24TH EDINBURGH – LIQUID ROOMS
25TH ABERDEEN – BEACH BALLROOM
26TH CARLISLE – OLD FIRE STATION

DECEMBER
7TH LONDON – ELECTRIC BALLROOM
8TH NOTTINGHAM – ROCK CITY
9TH WAKEFIELD – WAREHOUSE 23
10TH NORTHAMPTON - ROADMENDER 

More about: Black Grape