If The Stone Roses were Madchester’s elegant side – the studied cool of Spike Island, the guitar that could have been Hendrix – Happy Mondays were the chaos. Shaun Ryder from Little Hulton in Salford, Bez shaking maracas and dancing in the way that suggested either severe intoxication or genuine physical freedom (the answer being both simultaneously), the band that Factory Records signed on the strength of their shambling energy rather than technical accomplishment.
Little Hulton and Salford
Shaun Ryder and most of the original Happy Mondays came from Little Hulton in the north of Salford – social housing estates a long way from the media-friendly mythology of Madchester. The lyrics Ryder wrote are a direct product of this environment: surreal, confrontational, drug-referencing in a way that wasn’t poetic allusion but literal description. The Mondays occupied a social world that the city’s music mythology rarely acknowledged honestly.
The Factory Years
Factory Records’ relationship with Happy Mondays was financially catastrophic and musically brilliant in roughly equal measure. Bummed (1988) and Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches (1990) are extraordinary records. The recording of Yes Please! (1992) in Barbados – funded by Factory at enormous cost while Shaun Ryder and Bez consumed most of the budget – contributed directly to Factory’s bankruptcy. Tony Wilson later called signing Happy Mondays the best and worst decision he ever made.
The Hacienda Connection
Happy Mondays were the house band of the Madchester moment at the Hacienda. Their appearance on Top of the Pops performing Step On in 1990 – Ryder in a bucket hat, Bez dancing with complete commitment to some internal rhythm only he could hear – is one of British pop television’s stranger moments. It communicated something real about what was happening in Manchester to an audience that had no reference point for it. Worth finding on YouTube.
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