Twisting My Melon (12 page)

If I was interviewed back then, depending on what mood I was in, I might say a song was about something more specific, about this or that, when it wasn’t really. Sometimes the songs were a little more abstract or surreal, just words that sounded good and created a good visual image in my brain when I was stringing them together. Half the time I was more concerned with how the words sounded than with what they actually meant.

‘’Enery’ is a little more specific, as it’s pretty much about sexually transmitted diseases – ‘Pass your germ, pass your bug’. At the time I wrote that, Bez and Our Paul were crashing at my flat and there were a lot of sexually transmitted diseases passed on, so it would have been at the forefront of my mind. There were a number of girls we hung about with at this time. They weren’t necessarily groupies, they were just part of your extended social group, and at that age almost everyone ends up shagging each other. The worst STD I picked up was a few
months
after we recorded the album, when I got this huge genital wart that was almost the size of a throat lozenge and I ended up having to go to the clap clinic in town to have it seen to.

There was one song that I didn’t have lyrics or a title for when we went in to record. A lot of the time when the band were jamming at rehearsals I just used to make up words to go along with the tune, and then later I’d work them out in my head and eventually write them down and arrange them, and possibly find similar words or phrases that fitted the song better to make sense of it. When we were in the studio I was reading a book about horoscopes by Russell Grant which someone had lent me, and when we were recording this one particular song I didn’t have lyrics for, I just picked up the book and started singing what was written on the back cover: ‘Hold on to your hats, this is the book that you’ve been waiting for, the book that tells you everything you need to know to help you understand, not only the one you love, but yourself too …’ I just read it word for word off the back cover, and managed to make it fit with the tune. I thought about changing some of the words, but it actually fitted so well, I thought, ‘Fuck, why do I need to write words? We’ll just have that and call it “Russell”.’ Which is what we did. I don’t think Russell Grant knows he was the inspiration for an early Mondays song. Ironically, I think that was the only time I didn’t get any abuse from Our Paul, who would sometimes have a bit of a downer on my lyrics when we finished a song.

I never used to read anyone else’s lyrics for inspiration. I would listen out for lyrics in songs, but, you know how it is, no matter how much you think you’ve heard the words correctly, when you see them written down you realize you’ve been singing the wrong fucking words for twenty-five years. I do have a bit of attention deficit disorder as well, so I have to try
really
hard to concentrate and focus if I’m listening to lyrics. Otherwise I’ll find myself drifting off and following the bass line instead.

‘Olive Oil’ is named after Gaz Whelan’s girlfriend at the time. Again, it’s not about her; it’s just named after her. Just before we wrote it, we had all been away to Rhyl for a few days, taking acid, and while we were there Olive Oil just came straight out with it and asked, ‘Will you write a song about me?’ I don’t really write songs like that, so I said, ‘No, but I’ll name one after you if you want.’

That was a mad few days in Rhyl. There was a whole bunch of us who drove down, boys and girls, and stayed in a caravan for a few days. In those early days of the band we did all knock about together – or at least me, Our Kid, Gaz Whelan, Paul Davis and Bez did. Not Mark Day so much. But the other five of us were all really good pals and hung about together as well as being in the band. In Rhyl there was me, Our Kid, Paul Davis, Gaz Whelan and Tall Minny (I knew two Minnys – so one was Short Minny and one was Tall Minny), plus the birds. Bez wasn’t with us for some reason. We all stayed in one caravan, and we took a load of acid down with us. I’m pretty sure everyone was tripping, although maybe not every single one of the girls was.

I can remember, really clearly, tripping on acid when we were driving down to Rhyl, and I could see myself on the bonnet of the car. We took turns in driving, so I was either in the driving seat or the passenger seat, and I kept seeing myself stuck to the windscreen, with my face up against the glass, peering back into the car. I knew it was a trip, so I didn’t freak out, but it was quite fucking weird seeing myself out there looking back at me.

I never did really freak out on acid. Some people are better at handling it than others. There was a space and time, around then, when me and Bez spent every day on acid for a good
year
.
Every day
. It got to the stage where we were eating black microdots, which are quite strong acid, and they didn’t even phase us any more. That was probably our drug of choice at the time, before the E arrived. We had been dropping acid since about 1980, but during that period, around 1986, we must have taken it daily.

I never had a really bad trip. I think you can bring bad trips on yourself, depending on how you react to the acid. I’ve got a pretty strong mind, so even when it was incredibly powerful acid and my whole world was completely taken over, when the real world disappeared and I was absolutely submerged in a complete cartoon existence, I was always able to say to myself, ‘This is a trip.’ I always,
always
had a strong enough mind to know what was happening. Even when the whole planet was one big cartoon and I looked up at the clouds and they had turned into great big Greek gods, who were climbing down out of the sky and talking to me – even then, I always had a strong enough mind, as did Bez, to say, ‘No, this is just a trip, don’t freak out.’

Me and Bez would trip together all the time, talking each other through it and walking all day and all night. We would walk everywhere. We would walk round town; we would go and sit in fields with horses and cows and sheep. We would even purposefully drop trips at eleven o’clock at night so that we could go out and explore throughout the dark night and still be out at the crack of the dawn. You would develop this nighttime vision with weird trails and then BANG! it’s daylight, and you’re soaked in glorious technicolour. As dawn approached, we would be waiting for the sunrise, waiting for those colours to just overwhelm us.

We carried on doing that up until just before our second album,
Bummed
, really, until the E came in and took over. We weren’t acid purists, though; we were garbageheads, as I said.
We
’d do anything. If someone came along with some speed or heroin or whatever, we’d do it.

So ‘Olive Oil’ certainly wasn’t about Gaz’s girlfriend; it wasn’t about anything in particular, although there are elements of the band in there – ‘Everybody on this stagecoach likes robbin’ and bashin’ … big blags abroad and smoking large amounts of hash, that’s sweet … the bigger the dream, the better the time.’ In those early days, I was often just observing things that were going on around me and stringing bits together to make a song, which is why there are lots of in-jokes and references to people we knew. If something struck me, or if I was somewhere or with someone and something happened which I thought would translate well into lyrics, I would try and remember it through word association if I could. But if not, I would scribble it down on whatever was at hand – scraps of paper, beer mats or cigarette packets. Then when we were rehearsing and writing new songs at the Boardwalk, I would get all those scraps of paper and start piecing them together, and maybe try different snippets with different songs. Then when a song had started to form, I would write out the lyrics on a blank sheet of paper, and arrange those various scribbles and snippets into something more structured.

The original album had a track called ‘Desmond’ on it, which we had to take off after the initial pressings because someone at Factory got nervous that it was too close to ‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’ by the Beatles. I had ripped it a bit, nicked a bit of the melody, and the lyrics started ‘Desmond did a tour in the market place’, but apart from that it wasn’t
that
similar. That’s what I would call ‘ripping’ a record – that slight magpie approach which I had on some songs, where I might nick a bit of a vocal melody from one song, or reference a lyric from another. But they were never direct lifts or straight plagiarism; we always made the songs our own. I’m not sure if
anyone
even seriously complained about ‘Desmond’ to Factory; they were just being overly cautious. If it was a smash-hit single that topped the charts, then I’m sure someone would have taken issue with it, but it was just a vocal melody, almost in homage, on a record that was only going to sell a handful of copies in the bigger scheme of things. But certain people, usually lawyers, are overly cautious and paranoid. The same thing happened again with ‘Lazyitis’ on the second album, although we kept that on the record, but we credited Lennon/McCartney because the vocal melody and lyrics are ripped from ‘Ticket to Ride’.

So after the initial pressings of the album, we replaced ‘Desmond’ with ‘24 Hour Party People’. That was another bit of a step up for us, songwriting-wise. Along with ‘Tart Tart’, it’s one of the first signature songs to really capture the essence of Mondays. In particular, ‘24 Hour Party People’ captured that dance side of the band that a lot of people had missed before then. We recorded it quite quickly at Suite Sixteen studios in Rochdale, with Dave Young, who had engineered the album sessions. I was happy with the lyrics, but I was never completely happy with the production. There were some really good elements to it, but there were some bits that I just couldn’t stomach. We didn’t quite nail it.

The full title of the album was
Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out)
, which I pieced together from a few different sources. ‘Squirrel and G-Man’ are PD’s parents. His mum was called Squirrel, because she looked like a squirrel, and she chewed and ate like a squirrel, and his dad was G-Man because he was a high-ranking police officer. ‘Twenty Four Hour Party People’ was me and Bez and a few others. A lad we knew called Short Minny used to call us the Twenty Four Hour Party People, which is self-explanatory really. Then one day he came down to
see
us and we’d all done too much Charlie or whizz, and he said, ‘Fucking hell, what’s wrong with you lot? Plastic face, can’t smile, white out!’ I just pieced the whole thing together.

I was as happy as I could be with the album when we finished it, although I am always pretty hard on myself when it comes to songwriting, and I pick holes in any recording once it’s finished.
Squirrel and G-Man
was definitely a big step up from our previous recordings, though. I think I only ever listened to it once. I was given a finished copy, I played it through, and I don’t think I’ve ever listened to it again. I’ve never been one to sit at home and listen to our old albums. Back then I would always rather move on and think about the next thing. I was sent copies of
Bummed
and
Pills ’n’ Thrills
when they were both reissued and repackaged in 2006. I don’t think I had heard
Bummed
since it was released nearly twenty years previously. But I sat down and listened to it and thought, ‘Fucking hell, this is all right, this album!’

‘Tart Tart’ was our first single, and we made our first promo video to go with it. It was directed by a Mancunian duo of filmmakers, Keith Jobling and Phil Shotton, who called themselves the Bailey Brothers, and they went on to direct almost all of the Happy Mondays’ videos. I really got on with them. I thought they were great, and I still see them from time to time. Keith now designs websites, and did a Mondays site for us a couple of years ago, after we re-formed. Phil is still involved in film and was working on something recently with Saltz, who used to be in the Jazz Defektors.

We shot the video at Strawberry Studios in Stockport. I had never really mimed before and I didn’t want to mime in the video because I felt ridiculous. A lot of artists wouldn’t mime back then, because they felt that real bands should sing live. Like miming was cheating. Bands like the Clash would refuse to do
Top of the Pops
because they
would
have to mime, so I got swept along in that kind of mood.

Anyway, I was uncomfortable miming because I felt I looked ridiculous, so I decided I would purposely mime out of time, which I thought would look cool. So that’s what I did on the shoot and I was thinking to myself, ‘Yeah, fuck that, I’m not miming. This will look
great
.’ But when the video was finished and edited and I saw the final version, I thought, ‘Fucking hell, that just looks shit. It’s just unprofessional and crap.’ It doesn’t look like I’m doing it on purpose; it looks like I can’t mime in time. I just look a bit of a goon. But I only made that mistake once. After seeing it I realized that I was wrong and by the time we had to film the video for ‘24 Hour Party People’, which was the next single, I was into the idea.

‘Tart Tart’ was the first time we ever got on
The Chart Show
, which was a big thing for us.
The Chart Show
was on ITV on Saturday mornings and it was the only show on television at the time that showed the indie charts. That was our first experience of being on one of those shows. Nowadays there are hundreds of these chart-type shows and any two-bit band that’s starting up can get their video on. But back then there was only
The Chart Show
, and to get on there on a Saturday morning as an indie band was brilliant. I remember being sat at home watching the indie chart run-down and there we were, Happy Mondays, which was great. That really did seem a big step for us.

The reviews we got for the album were all pretty positive. I don’t think the Mondays ever got bad album reviews, or hardly ever, until the last album,
Yes Please
! When
Squirrel and G-Man
came out we also got our first front cover, from
Melody Maker
. That was a really big deal. It was only me and Bez on the cover, wearing anoraks with our hoods up, biting empty Budweiser cans. I remember going down to my local paper shop to buy
Melody Maker
that week and they didn’t recognize
me
from the cover when I bought it, because you can’t tell who it is, really, because we’ve got our hoods up. That was the photographer Tom Sheehan’s idea. Halfway through the shoot he just said, ‘Put your hoods up’ and that’s the shot they ended up using on the cover. It was the first hoodie cover as well, I suppose, because no one else was wearing their hoods up at the time. Factory actually framed the shot and had it hanging in the office for quite a while.