If Shaun Ryder could go back in time to 1990 and the making of Happy Mondays’ third album, Pills ’N’ Thrills and Bellyaches, there’s one piece of advice he’d give his younger self: “Chill out, dickhead!” the band’s singer tells Apple Music Radio’s Matt Wilkinson. “You’re not a bad-looking young kid with some good ideas.” At that point, forming the Mondays had been one of his best. Two albums of vibrant chaos wrangled into indie funk had established the group as one of Manchester’s most promising and singular alternative acts during the late ’80s. By 1990, they were leading a cultural revolution.
Encouraged by the emergence of acid house, and with New Order’s Haçienda nightclub as its meeting point, a group of indie bands was coalescing into the “Madchester” scene and exploring how guitar music could be synthesised with club culture. The Mondays’ place at its vanguard alongside The Stone Roses, James and The Charlatans had been helped by Ryder lobbying his initially dubious label, Factory Records, to let superstar-DJ-in-the-making Paul Oakenfold produce the band’s next album. “Paul Oakenfold wasn’t Paul Oakenfold then,” says Ryder. “If you were outside of London and you hadn’t read DJing mags, you didn’t know who he was. But we’d been going to Ibiza and London clubs, hearing Oakenfold mixing Italian, a-million-miles-an-hour, mad tracks with The Woodentops, or something, and putting disco beats on them.”
Oakenfold and his Perfecto Records remix partner Steve Osborne were eventually allowed to rework 1988 single “Wrote for Luck” and then produce “Step On”—a cover of John Kongos’ 1971 hit “He’s Gonna Step on You Again”. When that single breached the UK top five in the spring of 1990, the pair were green-lit to produce Pills. They added cleaner grooves and bolder house influences to the Mondays, sugaring Ryder’s psychedelic invective about errant fathers, God-fearing police chiefs and physically invasive customs officers for the masses. “We were well aware of what we were doing,” says Ryder. “Cross over, you know? Get on Top of the Pops. This was our pop album.” It succeeded: Pills ’N’ Thrills and Bellyaches was a BRIT-nominated platinum-seller and within six months of its November 1990 release, the Mondays were playing football stadiums. More than that, having melted post-punk, house and funk into pop, they’d brought indie out of the underground, establishing battle plans for future guitar-led takeovers of the mainstream such as Britpop.
Shaun Ryder on Bez meeting Julia Roberts…
We’d gone to the Viper Room. Julia Roberts was in there. It was at the time when her first big hit movie had just come out, Pretty Woman. I’d seen that on the plane. Bez hadn’t seen it and he’d gone walking around the Viper Room like Tigger, and he’s come across Julia Roberts with a bodyguard who was called Evil. Bez comes back to me, “Who’s Julia fucking Roberts?” I’m saying big Hollywood actor. “She just sort of pulled me.” He’s a lot better looking than Lyle Lovett or whatever he was called. Same sort of dude. You put Lyle Lovett in a pair of baggy tracky bottoms and some trainers, he might look a bit like Bez.
Shaun Ryder on his iconic ‘Your twisting my melon’ line…
I robbed that line from a Steve McQueen documentary. Steve McQueen has always been one of my dudes, from the way he dressed and everything. When I was a little kid, he was in great movies, Great Escape and all that sort of thing. In a documentary, either a manager or one of the studio execs was telling a story where McQueen’s gone in, started an argument with the movie exec, and the movie execs give him a load of crap back, and so McQueen’s gone in, “You’re twisting my melon, man. You talk so weird.” And then walked off.
I just took that. And then there was a kid in the Hacienda called Bobby Gillette, Bobby’s dead now, God bless him. But he was a one, Bobby. He was a main Manchester character. And Bobby used to run around the Hacienda going “Call the cops.” While we was doing that rough version, I just stuck in “call the cops”, “twisting my melon” and all that lot, and then sent it off and Oakey [Paul Oakenfold] made that a real focus.
Shaun Ryder on the creation of ’Step On…
Our record label in the United States of America was Elektra Records, and Elektra were coming up to their 25th anniversary. They were getting all their new artists to record songs from the previous generations of artists. Now, when they asked us to do that, it was like, “Ugh, a cover version. We don’t want to do cover versions.” Anyway, they sent us a C90 tape and about the fourth track on it was John Kongos’ Step On, and I just went, right, couldn’t be bothered listening to the full C90 and just went, “We’ll do that one.” His stuff is brilliant, brilliant writer but he would never give us anything. Not him, his publishing company. Alan McGee went to the publishing company a couple of years ago, and said, “Just give Shaun 1%,” right? For Twisting my melon, man and call the cops. Anyway, they wouldn’t have it. The version that we did in our rehearsal rooms was pretty basic. We had a bass line, guitar and drums, then we sent that to Paul Oakenfold. Paul Oakenfold wasn’t THE Paul Oakenfold then. He was a DJ in Ibiza and, if you were outside of London and you hadn’t read DJ mags, then you didn’t know who he was.
Shaun Ryder on how America reacted to Bez…
Outside of New York and LA and Texas, a big majority of American places where we played did not get Bez. We’re all big on the underdog. We’re the underdog nation. The Americans like winners, professionalism. And so, they didn’t get him and it was like, “What’s this motherfucker doing, man? He’s not choreographed.” And it annoyed the lot of them, you know what I mean?
Shaun Ryder on ‘Kinky Afro’ and whether it was autobiographical…
It’s about a few things. I think I was 26 when I wrote that. “Son, I am 26 wouldn’t have fit in,” so I busted up. All my songs are amalgamations of all sorts of little stories, a couple second stories or whatever, and I just stick them all together and try and make one song out of it that we can get some sense out of.
Shaun Ryder on whether he was aware of the impact ‘Pills ’n’ Thrills And Bellyaches would have…
Absolutely, absolutely. All our albums have been different. From the first one we did with John Cale, can’t remember the name of it, Bummed with Martin Hannett, and then it comes along we’re doing the next one. We got Oakenfold, which made it totally different. Because the other two were really indie, but this was our pop album, crossover, get on Top of the Pops. We was well aware of what we was doing and that’s why I wanted to do the album, after Step On, with Oakenfold.
