MORE than three decades since Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches rewired British music, Shaun Ryder remains one of our most unfiltered and unexpectedly philosophical frontmen.
Speaking ahead of the Happy Mondays’ latest tour which comes to the North East in March, Ryder reflects on survival, creativity, and the beautiful madness that made his band a cultural force.
When we speak, Ryder, 63, greets me in typical fashion: with warm profanity, self‑mockery and a surprising openness.
“I’m all right — I’m breathing,” he laughs. “I never had any intention of dying - I thought I was invincible.”
That belief lasted until his early 50s, when he suffered his first panic attack. “That’s when I realised, I weren’t,” he says. “But I’m grateful to still be here.”
Ryder has been drug‑free for two decades and says his youngest children, now “17, 18… have never even met that person”.
“The older ones are in their 30s,” he adds, “but the younger ones only know this boring t*** who wants to be in bed early nowadays.”
Despite the folklore surrounding the Mondays, Ryder insists that Pills ‘n’ Thrills wasn’t the product of chaos but of ambition. “We knew we had to make a popular album,” he explains. Their earlier records, including Squirrel and G‑Man, were cult favourites but hardly chart‑toppers. “You could be number one in the indie charts and sell 15 copies of the ****ing thing,” he jokes.
Working with Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne brought a new sonic clarity that matched the club culture the band were living in.
“Oakey would put a beat down, and as quick as he had the beat up, I wrote the lyrics that quick for the ***ing album. One after the other.”
The stories behind the songs are pure Ryder. Kinky Afro, famously opening with “Son, I’m 30, I only went with your mother ’cos she’s dirty,” was stitched together from “ten things going on at once” — Ryder’s ADHD-fuelled mind pulling together one-liners, references and half‑memories. Even the iconic “Yippee‑aye‑aye” came from Die Hard. “We’d just watched it,” he shrugs.
God’s Cop, meanwhile, was a jab at James Anderton, Manchester’s fire‑and‑brimstone police chief. “He wanted all the rave parties closed down, yet his daughter was a regular at the Hacienda,” Ryder recalls.
Loose Fit, another fan favourite, blended a chilled‑out groove with TV images of The Gulf War that were everywhere at the time. “People thought I was talking about my jeans,” he says, amused. “It was just a loose, chilled attitude with war going on.”
Then there were the more surreal turns — Bob’s Yer Uncle, for instance. “We just wanted to take the p*** and turn it into a porno song,” Ryder says. He even sampled The Exorcist for good measure.
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The conversation inevitably turns to Step On, the Mondays’ defining anthem. It began life as a John Kongos cover for a celebratory Elektra Records release, but once Oakenfold’s beat and Ryder’s improvised lines (“You’re twisting my melon, man” came from a Steve McQueen documentary and a Hacienda character called Bobby Gillette was “running around… shouting ‘call the cops’.” ) locked in, the band decided to keep it for themselves. “We knew it’d probably do something,” Ryder admits, as I inform him it’s been streamed on Spotify about 50 million times.
But Ryder is candid about the financial realities of streaming (“50 million streams makes you about 25 quid… whoever did that deal wants his ***ing b**** cutting off”) and says touring is now where musicians survive.
But despite everything — the addictions, the arrests, the fallouts — he looks back without regret. “I was 18. We were just living how we wanted.”
The Happy Mondays supported by The Farm and Northside are at Newcastle, O2 City Hall on March 13. Tickets are available on their official website.
