Twisting My Melon
The Happy Mondays will go down in history for not only being one of the wildest bands to grace Britain but in some people’s eyes, they will be the seen as the creators of the Madchester music scene.
The Mondays rose to success in the late 1980s. Songs such as Step On and 24 Hour Party People made the Mondays immediate favourites within the rave community, but it wasn’t all pills, thrills and bellyaches for the Salford-born boys though as their prolific drug use would catch up with them when they made their fourth studio album, Yes Please!.
It’s not often that one band can have complete control over their record company. But The Mondays certainly had a tight grasp of Factory Records in 1992 when they made Yes Please!.
Although it wasn’t one of the most successful albums The Happy Mondays produced it will surely be remembered for having one of the most bizarre stories attached to it in music history.
The Happy Mondays’ Shaun Ryder and his brother Paul were well documented to be heavily involved with heroin use during the early 90s, so Factory Records, to combat this, thought that sending the band to the idyllic island of Barbados, where heroin didn’t exist would be a perfect place for the gang to record their fourth studio album. Unluckily for factory, Barbados did have a plentiful supply of crack cocaine…
After four weeks the band had run out of money and had even started selling furniture from Eddy Grant's studio - where the band were supposed to be writing and recording - to fund their prolific drug use.
Bez, the bands maraca player had broken an arm after overturning a hire car, whilst Shaun Ryder had written no lyrics at all.
On their return to the UK, Shaun Ryder, armed with the master tapes from what little the band did do, threatened to destroy them unless Factory coughed up money for them. After much deliberation all Ryder needed was £50 for his next hit and the tapes were safely in the hands of Factory Records co-owner, Tony Wilson.
Unfortunately for Tony, the album was a massive flop. This spelled the end for Factory which was declared bankrupt shortly after the album’s release.
The Happy Mondays career pretty much petered out from here on in, yet it was this crazy attitude towards life that made them the band they were in the first place. Bez acquired his position in the band just because he lost himself in the music one night at The Hacienda, so much so he decided to get on stage and dance. Two weeks later he was armed with a pair of maracas and told he’d be facing the audience not getting involved in it.
The reason for writing this feature is due to the recent outcries of some musicians explaining how music is dead in the water nowadays. Most recently Patrick Carney of the Black Keys stated that “Rock ‘n’ roll is dying because people became OK with Nickelback being the biggest band in the world”. I can’t remember Nickleback ever doing a Keith Moon and throwing a TV out of a hotel room window, ‘just for the crack’.
Tom Clarke, frontman from Coventry rockers The Enemy said that music is “f***ing appalling at the moment” and believes it’s up to him and his band to save it.
Is this maybe not because of one reason that can be easily identified with the above story? Have the record companies of this generation got too much power? Whatever happened to great stories such as this one?
All questions that are frightening to look at…but ones that need to be confronted, head on on, Bez style.
2 Comments – Post a comment
CLICryan
Commented 4 months ago - 17th January 2012 - 15:44pm
I'm reading a really good book about Factory Records at the moment, called Shadowplayers by James Nice. Highly recommend it if you want to go really deep into the scene as it's a right donkey-choker!
garethCLIC
Commented 4 months ago - 18th January 2012 - 17:11pm
great article - takes me back to my Manchester days
i had the privilage of meeting the late Tony Wilson on quite a few occassions - he was an absolute gentleman and a sad loss