Shaun Ryder chats ahead of his Birmingham gig: Drugs are done – I’m back in control

Shaun Ryder, in one word and we’ll skip the remaining 1,986.

He’s bonkers. Utterly, utterly bonkers.

And here’s another.

Brilliant. Absolutely, gob-smackingly, mind-bendingly, eye-poppingly Brill.I.Ant.

The frontman of the Happy Mondays and Black Grape who was a runner up on ‘that Jungle programme’ is a true one-off. Druggy and debauched, poetic and surreal, the former Daily Sport columnist who identified famous 6ft 2ins, NOT Jeremy Irons, 64 – kicked heroin by riding a bike and has had a lifelong belief in UFOs. Obvs. The writer of some of the finest alt-rock tunes of the 1990s who spent £5 million avoiding bankruptcy, once turned up at a Simply Red gig because he forgot which venue he was playing and introduced a girlfriend called ‘Felicia’ as ‘Fellatio’ has more stories than the Burj Khalifa. He agreed to feature in Shameless as long as he didn’t have to say or do anything, recorded a bizarre version of Barcelona with Russell Watson and reportedly features in Channel 4’s Compliance Manual as follows: ‘Please note that the Channel 4 Board has undertaken to the ITC that Shaun Ryder will not appear live on Channel 4’.

Shaun took so much crack that he can’t remember the 1990s, called his autobiography Twisting My Melon and once recorded a solo version of Is This The Way to Amarillo?

So, ladies and gentlemen, put your feet up, pour yourself a brew and open a packet of Hob Nobs. Forget about the housework, the bills and fixing the shed. Take 20 minutes to venture into a magical place that Lewis Carroll could only have dreamt at. We’re about to go deep into the heart of darkness with Mr Shaun William George Ryder, aka X.

He’s on the road at the end of the year with The Happy Mondays for the 30th Anniversary of Twenty Four Hour Party People. It’ll be a greatest hits tour, so we do the usual shizz to promo it. Yadda yadda yadda, it’ll be great. Repeat.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” says Shaun. “We’re doing all the hits.”

And that, my friends, is that. We’d be fools to waste the gold dust that is time with Shaun Ryder by asking him inane questions that bang on about product.

Before we move on, we ought to earn out spurs by pointing out the significance of Twenty Four Hour Party People, or to give it its full title, Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out). The record was the Mondays’ first. Wild and eclectic, it featured the awful vocals of Shaun on songs like Tart Tart, Kuff Dam and Olive Oil. “I can imagine one day we’ll be out doing that first album in full,” Shaun adds. “We’ve got to have something to do.”

He loves the enduring popularity of the ‘Mondays. Though these days he flips his time between the ‘Mondays and Black Grape.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s better now. We’ve all just finished the new Black Grape album. I keep getting mixed up between what I should be talking about because I’m doing both bands at the same time. But we’re playing better than ever. When we were young it was pure partying and playing gigs came second. It’s the music now. It’s rock‘n’roll. The drugs are done.”

They are to such an extent that you almost expect the tour rider for Shaun Ryder to feature pipe and slippers, rather than Es and whizz.

“As soon as I’m off stage, I’m gone, back to the hotel. I put the news on. The first time it happened, I was f***ing around. These days, I’m gone. I like to get home so I can be dad.”

Being dad involves looking after his two young daughters, who are at primary school. He’s got six kids from three mums and having messed up the first time round is trying to put it right.

“The last time I was a kid having kids. Now I’m sort of a grown up, so we do things differently.” As a kid, his own mum and dad drummed it into him that there should be no stealing, he should go to church and he should go to school – ‘all of which I ignored’.

The miracle of Shaun is that he’s still here at all. “As a band, the ‘Mondays are all pretty much old farts. It’s easier when you’re young. There’s a lot of craic that goes on when you’re young. But I enjoy it more than ever. And I’m not just saying that to plug it. I wish I’d known how easy it could be when I was a kid. It’s so much easier doing shows when you’re compos mentis.”

What exactly does he remember of the 1980s and 1990s? Are there abiding memories, like Kinky Afro, Step On and Wrote For Luck?

“To be honest, the first time round, I can remember the 1960s better than the 90s. Obviously, I have one or two regrets, like spending years in liquidation. I was 12 years under the receiver. I couldn’t go bankrupt otherwise I’d have lost all my songs and royalties. I’d have lost everything. It took me 12 years to claw it back, that was my regret. But the rest, no. No regrets. We were young lads wanted to be in a band and be rock‘n’roll and we were.

“Don’t get me wrong. It was hard work. Now, we enjoy playing. Back in the day it was make an album then tour. Then do the press. We were just on a hamster wheel. There was no time to enjoy it that’s why we spent all our time off our faces. It was tough.”

Desolate

Shaun’s autobiography is a brilliant, five-star read. The Sunday Times best seller explains how he turned Manchester into Madchester, how he lived a life of glorious highs and desolate lows, how he combined the excesses of a true rock‘n’roll star with lyrics that led Factory Records impresario Tony Wilson to describe him as ‘the greatest poet since Keats’.

“When Tony said that, I hadn’t read or heard any Keats stuff, you know what I mean. Somebody would have had to tell me who he was. But Tony was a clever fella. If he was still alive now, he’d be in London doing some major TV stuff.

“You know, nobody knows what it’s like being in a big band. There’s so much work. You can read as many biographies as you want when you’re a kid but you don’t realise what it’s like. You know what I was off my face in the 1990s and that’s how I dealt with it. I was in the music business and making records and I survived it by being off my t-ts.”

Why did he stop?

“As soon as I hit 40 I thought I shouldn’t be living like this. It wasn’t right. It took me five years to get right. My missus put the boot in to get me clean.

“I’d done rehab but it didn’t work for me. Eventually I did it because I wanted to. I did it on my pushbike. I was out every day from 8am to 9pm on my pushbike getting off the drugs. That’s how I got straight. I was in the Peak District. I was riding all over the place.”

The rock’n’roll legend, reality TV star, drug-dealer, poet, film star, heroin addict, son, brother, father, husband, foul-mouthed anthropologist and straight-talking survivor, quit the ‘Mondays when his drug addiction was at a peak. They’d been flown out to record Yes Please in Barbados, which was in the grip of a crack cocaine epidemic. Within 48 hours, they were addicts. They sold the furniture from their studio to buy more drugs and Shaun failed to record any vocals. They then hi-jacked the master tapes and ransomed them back to Factory. Shaun also attempted to kidnap Johnny Marr. The band were doomed and Factory went under. It was difficult. We got back together in 1999 but I still had the receivers on my arse. They took 100 per cent of my income off me. It took a long time. All the time back with the Mondays until 2010 I was having everything taken off me.

“I did the Jungle (I’m A Celebrity) thanks to a great guy called Brian, who’d got George Best out of his troubles. He got me out of it. That was 2010. I went in the jungle then because the record company and the kids and the missus wanted me to go in. I didn’t . But I did it and I absolutely loved it.

“The idea was to go in there because it was the right time of my life. I was in my late 40s and I suppose it was the right thing to do. Everyone had got the mad rocker thing and the swearing-off-my-face-thing on TFI Friday. So it was time for a change. I was dragged kicking and screaming into the jungle but it worked out great.”

He’s proud of his work with the ‘Mondays. As well he might be. Though Twenty Four Hour Party People and Yes Please! were patchy, Bummed and Pills’n’Thrills and Bellyaches were great records.

“When we took the Bummed album on the road, I hadn’t actually listened to it since the day we finished it back in 1988. I had to learn it all over again. We put it on and I thought it was alright. But back then, all the time I was onto the next thing and wanted to do better. So you have to do something else. I’d never listened to it. I gave myself a hard time over it.

“Thrills and Spills was our first breakthrough pop album. I wanted the success, absolutely, that’s it. We always wanted to make a career out of it. And you can’t be half in, half out. If you want to put a roof over your head, you’ve got to live it.”

Manchester was an essential part of the ‘Mondays’ make-up. The city was integral to their attitude, sound and fashion sense.

“Manchester was great, you know. I started work in Manchester in 1978 and it was still pretty much Victorian. It was black and white. I was a messenger at the post office and I’d go into the pubs to watch strippers and have a pint at dinner time. Then we’d watch Bernard Manning at some club. It was like an episode of The Sweeney. Then the 80s came in and telecoms changed everything. The city became technicolour. At first, it was all docks. Now, it’s media city.”

And the drugs. How did they fit in?

“They were just an escape. I was a smack head, really. The crack sort of came on after the heroin. But I’d do pretty much anything. I’d just get off my head. I wanted to be clean. I tried to straighten up but if you’re not great, it’s never gonna work.”

And then he hit 40.

“I was wanting to stop it. You can get away with it in your 20 but not in your 40s. It’s a joke. You’re off your nut and you’re too old, it’s wrong. There are still people who carry it on but that’s sad.

“I love being straight and being on the road. We have people in from 12 to 70. When we were young, the majority of our fans were at university. Now they’re all dentists and solicitors. Then we’ve got The Sun readers and the beer drinkers, the normal lads.”

He hopes there’ll be a new ‘Mondays album, though a Black Grape album will precede that. “Black Grape is easy because it’s just me and Kermit. The ‘Mondays is five really individual personalities with one living in Canada, another in LA. The ‘Mondays is harder to organise.

Cultural

“But there’ll be new stuff. Universal are making an announcement soon for a Black Grape album and a ‘Mondays album will come.”

And what does he listen to now? What does the mad poet who inspired a cultural movement have on his iPhone?

“Absolute 60s or gold. If there’s something on the CD, it’s northern soul or Dean Martin. But if you ask me how’s happening now, I haven’t a clue. The girls play me their stuff, so it’s all Little Mix and Taylor Swift or that Hannah Montana, what’s her name? Miley Cyrus. That’s it. They’re brilliant. I’ve got Capital Radio on when the girls are in the car. That’s me. But when they’re 15, I’ll be taking them to watch indie bands.”

It’s great when you’re straight. Yeah.

l Oops, we almost forgot the promo bit. Happy Mondays play Birmingham’s O2 Institute on December 6 and tickets are on sale now.

Andy Richardson