Twisting My Melon (22 page)

Northside’s first gigs were buzzing, because they had a massive local following. But then when they played London or Newcastle or something, the gigs didn’t have quite the buzz because their pals didn’t really travel. They also had to grow up in public, which isn’t easy. Paris Angels were another group who had a massive local following but never really made it. Their guitarist, Paul Wagstaff, or Wags, ended up joining up with me in Black Grape.

I did see a difference in the way we were treated after
Top of the Pops
. Before that when we were talking about taking drugs or doing this or doing that it was fine, because it was all in the music press. But once you’ve been on
Top of the Pops
and the red tops get interested in you, they go back and look at these things you’ve been saying for years without any comeback, and suddenly it’s news and it’s slapped on the front of a newspaper as some big shock-horror story. The good thing
about
us is we knew it was all part of the game; we saw all that as part of rock ’n’ roll. So when the press started saying stuff like ‘They’re all on drugs blah blah blah’ it might have ruined some bands’ careers, like fucking Duran Duran or Dollar or someone, but it wasn’t going to ruin the career of a band like us. It was only going to help push us further forward, which is exactly what it did. If I read in the papers that I was doing drugs, I’d be like ‘Dead fucking right I am!’

The sort of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll that I had been brought up on, from the Stones to the Pistols, hadn’t been around for years. I’d read the books and seen all the films, and then I’d been peering into the music business since punk, and it had just all got really safe and dull. Somebody’s career could be over because they got caught smoking a joint. I was like, ‘Fucking hell, that’s not fucking rock ’n’ roll!’ So I knew all those stories wouldn’t harm us; they could only help us, and they did. We had always been rock ’n’ roll – that’s just how we were. We were more rock ’n’ roll than most fucking bands when we were still posties. It was never an act. We truly didn’t give a fuck.

The only problem was, the press tended to focus on me and Bez, and that’s when the hatred started from the rest of the band. They saw how we were getting elevated, and they wanted it as well. Even though anything the press said about me and Bez would only help us all. If the situation had been reversed, I would have thought, ‘Go for it, nice one.’ But they just saw how attention was focused on us and it did their egos in, because they really wanted to be on the cover of this mag or that mag. Me and Bez didn’t even want to fucking do it. We were like, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, we’ve got to do this fucking interview or photo shoot.’ We would have preferred it if the focus was on the others, but people only wanted us. So we did it for the sake of the band. And making dough.

It’s a fucking game at the end of the day, and we just played along with it. We weren’t bothered about becoming caricatures of ourselves. All that side of the game only helped our career. One of the reasons we didn’t disappear overnight like lots of bands do is because we played that side of it. What it shouldn’t have done is get the rest of the band so jealous that they hated me and Bez. But it did.

The way I look at it now, if you’re not having the piss taken out of you on TV, and you’re not being caricatured, then you’re not a player, are you? When things happen like the guys from
Little Britain
taking the piss out of you, you know that it’s really happening. Stuff like that helps make the dough and pays the bills. It’s not life and death.

At the start of 1990 we were asked to do a cover version for our American label, Elektra, for their anniversary. I personally never wanted to do any straight-up cover versions, but for their fortieth anniversary they wanted all the bands on their label to cover another Elektra band’s song for a compilation. So we had to. They sent us a tape of Elektra songs to consider and the first or second song on there was ‘Step On’ by John Kongos. I’d never heard it before, but I could tell it would be easy to rip, so I just went, ‘Yep, we’ll do that one.’ I could tell we could add some different bits and catchphrases. ‘Step On’ is still a cover, but I think the new elements that we brought to the song really made it our own.

I’d been watching this Steve McQueen documentary called
Man On the Edge
, which had just come out. In the documentary, one of the big-shot producers from Fox or wherever describes when he first met McQueen and says something like, ‘This cool kid came in, and you could tell he was an actor. He looked like a cool street kid and he said to me, “You can’t tell me what’s what, man! You’re twisting my melon, man!”’ That’s
what
McQueen was like, an uncompromising little fucker. This producer carried on, ‘This kid spoke so hip, he didn’t know what he was saying!’ As I was watching it, I thought, ‘I’ll have that – “you’re twisting my melon man, you talk so hip, you know you’re twisting my melon man”.’ I knew that’s what we needed for ‘Step On’, some sort of catchphrase.

McQueen was a cool fucker. He was an orphan who had joined the Marines and then got into acting because he realized it was full of birds, and posh birds at that. I actually got into McQueen before I knew anything about his background. All I knew at first was he had a great haircut and wore really cool clothes. It makes me laugh when people wank on about James Dean. Please.
James Dean
? Fuck off. James Dean wasn’t even in the same league as Steve McQueen,
nowhere near
the same league. Steve McQueen was the original casual, the original Perry Boy. I was already into him, but then I watched this documentary and found out more about him, about him growing up in a kids’ home and lying about his age so he could sign up at fifteen. He was only about five foot eight or something, but he was a proper handy little fucker.

The other catchphrase in ‘Step On’ came from this kid in the Haçienda called Bobby Gillette, who was always shouting, ‘
Call the cops
!’ He’d stand in the Haçi with all our lot, off his nut, whistling and shouting, ‘
Call the cops! … We’re here! The Mancs! Our firm! Our corner! . . CALL THE COPS
!!’

So I just decided to stick those two elements together, and I had: ‘You’re twisting my melon man, you talk so hip, you know you’re twisting my melon man … call the cops!’ That’s exactly what I thought ‘Step On’ needed.

It was pretty simple to do. The band laid down their parts and then I went in to do my vocals and I fucked around with the phrasing of the lyrics and added all my new bits. I even guessed at some of the lyrics at first, because I didn’t have a
lyric
sheet. When I did get hold of one, I’d actually misheard some of the lyrics, so I changed a few of them back to the originals and re-recorded some of the vocals. I wish I’d just kept the earlier version now. Then Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne fucked around with it and added that big Soul II Soul sort of bass beat, that huge booming bottom end. When they gave it back to us and we played it, it just sounded mega.

We knew it needed a little something else, though – you could almost hear a gospel type of backing vocal on it. Nathan had been approached by a girl called Rowetta in the Haçienda a few weeks earlier, who said, ‘You manage Happy Mondays, don’t you? I fucking love that band.’ Turns out she was managed by Simply Red’s manager, Elliot Rashman, so Nathan put a call in and Rowetta came down the next day and added a simple backing vocal which was the final touch it needed.

Even though ‘Step On’ had started life as a project we weren’t even arsed about, when I heard the finished track I was like, ‘D’you know what? This is too good to give to that compilation … this is the tune that we need to get us back in the charts. This is the single that we’ll put out before we do the album.’ We needed a single to release to tide us over until the next album, which would be
Pills ’n’ Thrills
, and ‘Step On’ was perfect. And it ended up doing exactly what we wanted it to do.

So we went back to the tape that Elektra had sent us, and the next song on there was ‘Tokoloshe Man’, which is also by John Kongos, so we just bashed that out in pretty much the same way and gave it to Elektra to put on the compilation. Elektra didn’t really mind, because ‘Step On’ was an Elektra song and ended up being a hit single instead of just being on a compilation that only came out in America, and they owned the publishing rights and everything; plus they also got ‘Tokoloshe Man’ for the album, so it was a win-win for them. I liked our
version
of ‘Tokoloshe Man’. It was a good tune, but I didn’t want to release that ourselves as well, because I was a bit paranoid about us being known for cover versions, otherwise we might as well have just got in people like Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman from RAK records, who wrote all the hits for Mud. Most people still don’t actually know that ‘Step On’ is a cover, because we made it our own. I actually got a message from John Kongos once saying, ‘Thanks for making my song so famous.’

Bob Krasnow, who was then the main guy at Elektra Records, the president and CEO, was really sound. I got on with him, even though when me and Bez first went to meet him he said to Nathan afterwards, ‘You know, they both seem like nice guys, but that guy Shaun – I can’t understand a word he’s saying, man.’

Nathan said, ‘What, but you can understand
Bez
??’

‘Yes, I can understand Mark, is it? Bez? Yeah, I can understand him, but I can’t understand Shaun.’

I thought, ‘Fuck me, most of the English can’t understand Bez!’

I remember when me and Bez first started doing American TV they gave us subtitles. We’d be watching ourselves on MTV with subtitles. We found that piss funny. We thought, ‘Wow, we must be from the hood if they have to give us subtitles!’

Elektra gave us all a £5,000 Omega watch as a thank you for contributing to the album. They were fucking great watches and they had ‘Elektra 25’ engraved on the back. Unfortunately, I bloody lost mine a few years later in Los Angeles when we were working on the first Black Grape album. I was rushing out of the gaff where we were staying and left it there and didn’t realize until later. We’d been renting this apartment, in one of those furnished blocks. They’re weird, those sorts of places. You phone up to book it and they say, ‘Right, what do
you
want in your apartment? Do you want Variety Box A – that includes flowers, mirrors, pictures, a telephone, two beds, two settees and four televisions? Or do you want Variety Box B – that includes flowers, mirrors, pictures, a telephone, three beds, three settees, and satellite television in every room?’ Then they just ship in whichever variety you chose. If I stay in a hotel room, then my watch doesn’t come off my wrist, but if I’m staying in some gaff like that for any length of time, then jewellery will eventually come off at some stage. So I’d taken my watch and one of my rings off and I fucking left them there. The diamond in the ring alone was worth about £10,000.

Those sort of gaffs in LA would employ bunches of Mexicans to bring in all the furniture and set it all up, then take it away afterwards. When I realized I’d left my watch and ring there, all I could think was some Mexican dude in a poorly paid job has had a right result there. He’s gone home with a watch worth about £5,000 and a diamond ring worth about £10,000. I didn’t even bother phoning up to see if they had found it. Where I come from, if you leave an expensive watch and a diamond ring in an apartment which then gets cleaned, it ain’t gonna be there if you phone up later. No fucking chance. If we’d found them when we were younger, there’s no way we would have handed them in.

Towards the end of February it was Tony Wilson’s fortieth birthday, and he said later that he took eleven different drugs that night, and alluded to the fact that it was because he was hanging out with me. I’m not sure about that. I do remember Tony driving round the centre of Manchester in his Jag, with this special sort of tray next to the steering wheel, which he used to skin up on. One of the most famous people in Manchester, and he used to drive around skinning up. He did get pulled by the cops, but they just used to let him off. I’ve
been
with him when he’s smoking a joint while talking to the cop and nothing happened. The cops would turn a blind eye back then.

After I moved to Didsbury, me and Muzzer would be speeding up and down Princess Parkway into town in our BMWs and Mercs, doing 120 or 130mph. I remember flying down there one day and this car came right up my arse, so I put my foot down a bit more, and next thing the sirens come on. It was the police in an unmarked car. So I pulled over and they got out and clocked it was me and said, ‘Fucking hell, it’s
you
. Get back in your car and slow down, you cunt!’ and just let us off.

The Old Bill can be funny. If a copper was a United fan and he caught a City player speeding like that, he could lose his licence. Likewise, if the copper was a City fan and he caught a United player, he could lose his licence. If I got caught and the cop was a fan of the Mondays, he’d just say, ‘Go on, get back in your car and fuck off, you silly cunt. Just
slow down
.’ I have to say, I have been one
lucky boy
with the police in Manchester and London. I should have been charged with so much stuff that I actually got away with because they liked the Mondays or Black Grape, and they let me walk. There’s no need to go into those incidents now, but the number of times they just said, ‘Go on, get off, and sign that while you’re at it.’

At the start of March, we went on a mini European tour. We played Hamburg, Berlin and Cologne, and then went to Spain to do a few dates and film the video to ‘Step On’ while we were there. We did a performance at the Arts Studio in Barcelona first, and we had the usual hassle from the Spanish police. Back then, it seemed to us as if the Spanish police were just there to be bribed. They’d do stuff like sneak into your dressing room before you got there and hide behind curtains or doors and
watch
you doing lines of cocaine, or see you with a big chunk of hash, then they’d just step out from nowhere and say something like, ‘This is worth, er, eight hundred thousand pesetas’ or something like that. It usually worked out about £300–500. So we’d pay it and then about three hours later we’d get gripped by another lot. They would follow us. We’d end up going, ‘Not you lot again. Fuck off!’ We’d pay the bribe the first time, and even the second time, but the third time we’d tell them to fuck off and we’d be on the way to the station. But you never got charged. It was mental back then in Spain, I could never work out the law. It seemed as if at half past one in the afternoon it would be legal to smoke hash, then at three o’clock the same afternoon it would be illegal. By the time it was ten to six, it was legal again. That’s what it felt like, particularly in small towns, depending on who you were dealing with. It was as mad as that. We loved it.