Happy Mondays

The passion Tony Wilson poured into supporting Happy Mondays is matched only by what he'd shown years earlier for Joy Division. The Factory Records founder was convinced that Shaun Ryder was one of the greatest lyricists in the history of pop, regarding him as a sort of latter-day Yeats.

Manchester was, at the time, one of the capitals of music, especially when in 1989 the debut album by the Stone Roses and the first singles by Inspiral Carpets and Charlatans got people talking about the scene as a new movement, far removed from post-punk and pointed toward a future in which rock and dance would have no borders left between them. Within a few months Manchester became Madchester, and England was swept by a wave of synthetic drugs like nothing seen before. That scene was as musically fertile as it was rotten on a human level, as quick to deflate commercially as it was influential both in the short and long term, at least as far as the underbelly of British music is concerned.

Manchester became the city of all-night parties, of getting wasted and of house music. House was everywhere and everyone loved it; after all, England had absorbed it even before the United States, the country that had invented it. It was in England that house first hit the charts, it was in England that Farley Jackmaster Funk appeared on television in 1986 to sing "Love Can't Turn Around", it was in England that house began infecting other genres like an unstoppable germ.

The lower and middle strata of the population had suddenly found in Manchester an El Dorado of fun: oceans of people poured into the city's clubs every night from all over the Midlands, fleeing the greyness of the provinces and the suburbs. Naturally, that crowd also included plenty of addicts and criminals. Some venues became strategic hubs for dealing the most potent hallucinogens around, and soon gangs started fighting over territory like packs of wolves in the forest. Shootings became commonplace, as did overdose deaths, accidents at raves, beatings and arrests. Few moments in music history — at least in democratic countries — carry more scars than that season.

Fun at a steep price, though nobody seemed to notice. Madchester was a perfect illusion. Thatcher claimed to have modernised the British economy, the West had defeated communism, and music had gone back to celebrating life after a decade of dread (the nuclear threat that had suffocated new wave) and moaning (the Smiths' broadsides against dance music). Stone Roses titles like "I Am The Resurrection" and "I Wanna Be Adored" were emblematic of the mood in the air. That urban sprawl was the spearhead of a nation that had rediscovered faith in the future.

When in reality there was no security whatsoever. Unemployment had reached disarming levels, youth crime had spiked, piracy saw a genuine boom, plenty of people ended up in jail, lost their lives, or lost touch with the world through pills. Yet every night the lights and the rhythm reaffirmed the feeling that everything was fine and that the fun could go on forever. When the bubble burst a few years later, many found themselves with nothing to hold onto. It was a traumatic awakening — and how could it have been otherwise?

And yet out of such wreckage came some of the most avant-garde sounds pop music had produced up to that point. Some of the most profound lyrics. Some of the most ecstatic atmospheres. And above all, a deep sense of belonging to something. If you were a loser, at least you were one together with everyone else. If you were broke, the right connections could easily fix that. If you'd always been excluded, now you no longer were (it's no coincidence the gay community played an active part in that season). Madchester meant, first and foremost, redemption — it was the new music from the bottom, for the bottom. And whether or not it sat well with Morrissey, it served an unrepeatable social function, brought people together, opened minds — at least for those lucky enough to survive — and, most relevant to us here, allowed for a great cross-pollination of musical genres and their renewal.

A long introduction, but an absolutely necessary one, because no record represents that precise historical moment better than "Pills 'N' Thrills And Bellyaches". The music it contains is so immediate that it could stand on its own for the casual listener, but knowing the backstory, understanding why it sounds the way it does and how it was experienced by those who lived it firsthand, can bring out a whole further layer of nuance in its content.

Happy Mondays were the most prolific act of that scene: they had already released two albums by the time the Stone Roses debuted, records produced by heavyweights like John Cale and Martin Hannett. Yet for the third record they chose to bring in a pair of young house producers, Steve Osborne and Paul Oakenfold, who had been hanging around the clubs for years without ever having been involved in any major projects. It was a leap into the unknown, but the results proved them right: both would go on to work with major names in British pop-rock.

The breakthrough single came out in April '90, titled "Step On", a reworking of a 1971 hit, "He's Gonna Step On You Again", by South African John Kongos. The original was a little pop gem of distorted boogie guitars, soulful group vocals and a pulsing percussive bed built from pre-recorded tape loops. The Happy Mondays version is a dancefloor bomb with house piano and a syncopated drum sound polished to a shine, the kind that would soon turn up on hundreds of electronically-tinged records. But there are rock elements too, especially the guitar bursts and Ryder's vocals, which flaunt his Mancunian accent with pride, bark, roughen, and at times struggle to hit the intended note. His scrappy style is surprisingly effective and seems to give the track an extra rhythmic push. You could call it a descendant of Mark E. Smith's ranting delivery with the Fall, but smoothed out and made palatable for a mass audience.

The track made the band suddenly famous, climbing to number five on the charts and lodging the phrase "You're twisting my melon man" (slang for "You're confusing me", "You're doing my head in") into the popular imagination — a line absent from the original lyrics.

A few months went by, time for Happy Mondays to dominate the summer festivals across Britain, and in October it was the turn of a new single, "Kinky Afro". This time it's an original, born out of a jam between drummer Gary Whelan and bassist Paul, Shaun's younger brother. With Paul Davies's celestial keyboards and Mark Day's cutting riff added on top, the track seems to give indie pop an ultra-technological body, blending classic rock touches (the sustained guitar notes held after the chorus) with completely decontextualised disco quotations (the bassline unmistakably indebted to Hot Chocolate, the backing vocal lifted from Labelle's "Lady Marmalade"). Alongside this rollercoaster sits one of the harshest lyrics in British pop, about the relationship between a father who doesn't feel fit for his role and a son who won't accept him. Ryder's street language makes the scene even rawer, and the opening line alone is breathtaking: "Son, I'm 30, I only went with your mother 'cause she's dirty". Many people close to Shaun believe part of those lines were autobiographical.

Whether for its infectious musicality or its emotionally raw lyrics, "Kinky Afro" again cracked the British top 5, and when the album hit shops a month later, the music press seemed to lose its mind. Both NME and Melody Maker named it album of the year, calling it a historic event for English music. Sales were flattering too, debuting at number 4 in its release week and going platinum by March '91.

The tracklist is made up of the two anthems mentioned above plus eight new songs, all equally strong. Ryder's sour yet poetic ramblings colour music that's fresh and bubbling over, a mix of sophistication and exoticism, decadence and rhythm: the movement known as Madchester finds its definitive sound.

Built on garage-rock guitar, funk rhythm and sci-fi dance keyboards, "God's Cop" mocks, right from its title, Chief Constable James Anderton, who tried to get The Haçienda — the club run by Tony Wilson, around which the Factory artists orbited — shut down. "Donovan" is a stream of consciousness that, after a nod to the usual magic pills, fires off a string of random images. The music has no fixed structure and seems to follow the words: it opens as a chill-out track, all atmospheric sounds and a delicate accordion line, before lurching halfway through into a muscular electric jam.

"Loose Fit" describes the feelings of those living that scene ("Don't know what you saw, but you know it's against the law, and you know that you want some more"), set over a hypnotic bed of jangle-pop guitar and female soul vocals courtesy of Rowetta, who would go on to become their permanent backing singer for live shows. "Dennis And Lois" is perhaps more formulaic, but its brazen house arrangement makes it irresistible, while "Holiday" flaunts funky guitar counterpoints and sudden keyboard stabs that dissolve amid seagull cries and filtered backing vocals.

"Bob's Yer Uncle" is perhaps the moment where everyone involved in the project converges at the peak of their powers. The muffled beat, the tropical percussion, the recurring sax-and-flute duet, the dub stagger of the bass, Rowetta's sensual moans, the acoustic guitar marking out the rhythm, Shaun's low and unusually soft voice as he describes a sexual act. Stitched together by Osborne and Oakenfold's cut-and-paste production, the track tears down every boundary. It's funk, it's rock, it's pop, it's mood music, it's dancefloor, it's cocktail-lounge background music, it's a lysergic soundtrack.

There's also a figure, though, who sums up the Happy Mondays aesthetic with remarkable effectiveness. A figure who, to this day, represents the band just as much as Shaun does. You can spot him in the album credits, which read, verbatim:

Shaun Ryder – Lyrics and vocals

Bez – Bez.

Known to everyone by that brief nickname, Mark Berry doesn't play an instrument or sing a single note on the record. But with his unmistakable look, gaunt face, improbable hoodies and baggy trousers, he's a fixture dancing on stage at every one of the band's gigs, occasionally shaking a pair of maracas. Bez is something of a symbol of that era and of the make-do-and-mend spirit of the down-and-out kids who were so struck by the Happy Mondays' music. He couldn't sing or play, but he was there with them, contributing his dancing, giving his body to the cause and, naturally, getting wrecked on illegal substances. In short, he was the embodiment of that mix of self-destruction and redemption that characterised the whole circus.

After this album, the Happy Mondays' career would sadly not last much longer, though it lasted long enough to nearly bankrupt Factory thanks to the insane production costs of "Yes Please!", released in 1992 and gone from the charts within a couple of weeks. Shaun would nonetheless resurface in great form – more artistically than physically – in 1995 at the helm of Black Grape.

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21/12/2014