Twisting My Melon (23 page)

Sitges, outside Barcelona, became our base for a little while. It was a beautiful place, absolutely gorgeous. I haven’t been back for ages, so I don’t know if it’s been invaded by the English yet, but then it was lovely and the place where all the cool crowd from Barcelona would go. It was the gay capital of Spain as well. I remember when we went in a club there for the first time and a few of the Spanish geezers got their cocks out and started swinging them about. We just used to laugh at that.

We filmed the video to ‘Step On’ while we were in Sitges, with the Bailey Brothers. We wanted to get the single out quick at the start of the summer, so not too much thought went into it. A lot of people think it’s filmed in Los Angeles for some reason, maybe because there’s a shot in the video that is very similar to a shot where a plane takes off in the film
Bad Boys
, which is set in LA.

‘Step On’ had a summery feel to it, so it made sense to film it in the sun, and we just filmed it on top of the hotel we were
staying
in at Sitges. I don’t even think we asked their permission; we just went up on to the roof and did it. There were five massive letters spelling out ‘H O T E L’ and I ended up climbing up on the E. When I saw the huge E, I just thought, ‘Ha, perfect. Just what we need. A shot of me on a massive E.’ Kevin Cummins, the photographer, was there for the
NME
, so he took a picture of me climbing on the E and it was used as an
NME
front cover. I knew it had the potential to be an iconic image. The letters were actually illuminated, but I broke a bit of the E off when I climbed on it and it wouldn’t light up any more after that. Someone else damaged the L as well, so in the end it just said ‘H O T’.

There was no plot to the video, but there rarely was with the Bailey Brothers. They just approached our videos like they were shooting a load of cool guys in a movie, just hanging out. A gang of cool guys on a hotel roof, in the sun, with a bit of marijuana smoke drifting across the set, and that’s it. It’s almost like a rap video approach in a way; they usually don’t have a plot to them, it’s just hanging about.

I woke up the day after the video shoot in my hotel room and there was sick on me, so I went, ‘Fuckin’ hell, did I spew on myself?’ and Muzzer said, ‘No, that was me, sorry, I didn’t make it to the toilet in time.’ When we were sharing rooms on tour, me and Muz would always room together because we both had a shit sense of smell. So he couldn’t smell my feet and I couldn’t smell anything either. We both smoked a lot of weed but couldn’t really smell much. We were the gaffers as well, really. I kind of ran the band and Muzzer’s official title was Assistant Tour Manager, but he basically ran the tour.

After the ‘Step On’ shoot, we did a couple of dates in France, including the Bataclan in Paris. Loads of coaches came over from England for that gig.

After France, we went on to Iceland, which was our first time over there. Iceland was a weird place, but beautiful in its own way. Mad landscapes. It’s like landing on Mars. We did the Blue Lagoon, the volcanic lake and all that stuff you do on your first trip to Iceland, which was brilliant. It’s expensive as fuck – even though you’re warned about the expense, it still shocks you. We ordered four pizzas and that cost £50, and remember this is twenty years ago now. A gram of amphetamines was over £100. A ton for a gram of speed!

The gig itself was in a kind of school hall-type venue, which was a bit weird, and there was no licence but it was a great gig. Then we went to this place afterwards called the Moon Club, where it all kicked off. All the Icelanders were
really
leathered. A lot of them seem to be already steaming when they come out at night – they probably get pissed at home before they come out because the drinks are so fucking expensive. Anyway, they were bumping into us and everyone else, and Bez started a row with this huge, wide Icelandic guy, a big yeti of a bloke who had bumped into him. Bez had given him a few digs and he’d gone down a bit, on to his knees, but then he’d sunk his teeth into Bez’s leg. So I picked up this big chair and started really whacking him across his back and the back of his head, trying to get him to let go. I really belted him with this fucking chair, and must have hit him ten times before he finally slumped over. But they seemed to be used to that sort of thing – it didn’t seem out of the ordinary for them.

I thought they were great, the Icelanders; they reminded me of people from Salford quite a lot. They had a similar attitude, in the way that you can have two guys who have a beef with each other and they will get right at it, really leathering each other, and one of them might even stab the other, but then an hour later they’re having a beer together and a laugh about it. If that happened in Moss Side, one of the kids would go home
and
get a gun and come back and shoot the other one. But in Salford they would leather the shit out of each other, absolutely brutal stuff, but then when it’s done, it’s done, and they would both walk away and they’re mates again. I don’t know if it’s the Viking in them or something, but the Icelanders seemed very similar.

The Icelanders had only just heard of these things called warehouse parties and they had no idea what they were, or how you put one on. They actually thought you had it in a normal warehouse, so after the club closed they opened up this ordinary warehouse, which was full of stock – clothing, shoes and skiing equipment – and just started partying round the stock. Now at that stage we were doing all right financially and we didn’t want for anything really, but there is no way you’re going to put our lot in a warehouse full of stock and expect us not to rob it. Impossible. Even though it was stuff that we didn’t need. We were like kids in a candy shop. We just couldn’t help ourselves.

There was another incident on the flight back from Iceland. Some really drunk guy, a video director or something, who was quite a big dude, kept hassling me. He wanted me to agree to do something or other, and kept going on and on about it. I was sat at the back of the plane, in the smoking bit – remember that, when you could smoke in the back three rows of the plane? Seems mad now that you could do that. Anyway, Muzzer came down the aisle to see what the mither was all about and told this guy to fuck off and leave me alone. This guy turned round to Muzz and said something like, ‘I’m talking to the act, not his monkey.’ Big mistake. Muzzer just fucking headbutted him. The guy’s nose just exploded and there was blood everywhere. I think it even sprayed on to both walls of the plane. Then it all kicked off and it got to the stage where the pilot said he was going to divert the flight to Glasgow. I
managed
to calm the bloke down and the pilot didn’t turn the plane around.
I
always seemed to end up on my toes to try and talk us out of whatever situation we’d got ourselves into.

When we got back from Iceland, it was pretty much straight on to do the G-Mex, which was our biggest gig to date. Our schedule was pretty fucking relentless at that stage. No days off. G-Mex was the biggest venue in Manchester at the time, and when someone first suggested we should play there Simon Moran, whose company SJM promoted most of our gigs from
Bummed
onwards, wasn’t convinced we could sell it out. Which is why we ended up doing it in-house and putting it on ourselves. Two pals of ours, Jimmy Sherlock, who everyone knew as Jimmy Muffin, and John Kenyon, who everyone called John the Phone, promoted it. They had a company called Nighttime Promotions and they had originally done the bootleg T-shirts outside our gigs, until me and Nathan decided we wanted in on the bootleg operation as well. So we offered them the chance to do our official merchandise stalls inside the gig venues as long as they also gave us 50% of whatever they made on the street.

It did seem a little bit scary doing the G-Mex, because it was a big jump up from the Free Trade Hall, which was the biggest venue in Manchester we’d done up to then. That’s how quickly things had exploded for us. At the end of 1989 we did the Free Trade Hall, which was 2,000, and then at the start of 1990 we’re doing the G-Mex, which was 10,000. We missed out doing those middle-sized venues like the Apollo. Outside Manchester, it was an even bigger jump: we’d gone from doing 500-capacity venues to arenas.

The Manchester Evening News Arena wasn’t built at the time, but now we’ve played that, if I go back to the G-Mex it looks small. But at the time, playing it was a massive thing.
Bands
like us just didn’t play there. But Jimmy Muffin and John the Phone got on the case with putting it on sale and pro moting it, and next thing they turned round to us and said, ‘Look, we’ve done this – it’s happening. Sold out. We’re going to put a second night on sale.’ Which must have made Moran sit up and take notice, because they weren’t even promoters, really. They were ticket touts and merch sellers, and Muffin had promoted at the Thunderdome. But they knew what would sell at street level, because they were tuned into the vibe on the street and were confident it would sell out. And they were right.

As usual, we made a little bit of extra dough on top as well, especially after it sold out. I don’t remember this, but Andy Spinoza said in
City Life
magazine that he stopped me on Deansgate the afternoon of the gig and tried to grab a quick interview with me, but I told him I didn’t have time because I still had some tickets to get rid of for that night’s gig. We were still definitely touting our own gigs at that stage, although I would have thought we would have had someone else out on the street doing it for us.

We stayed at the Midland Hotel the weekend of the gigs, which is just across the road from the G-Mex. We knew there was potential for trouble if a lot of our fans managed to book rooms in there, or just even get in the doors. We really tried to warn the hotel, but they didn’t take any notice. We didn’t want it all to come back on our toes. By this time we’d had the police coming to see us about the behaviour of some of our fans and we were like, ‘What can we do? We don’t know anything about it.’ I’m sure that when Elvis played Vegas, if something got robbed in the casino next door the cops didn’t drag bloody Elvis in and question him about the behaviour of his fans, or ask him about this firm or that firm, y’know what I mean?

So we had been down to the Midland beforehand and
actually
had a meeting with them and stressed: ‘Watch who you sell rooms to, and watch who comes through the door, and we want you to know these people have got nothing to do with us.’ But they didn’t listen. They just said, ‘Oh, it will be fine, we’ve had the Who and Frank Zappa here and that was no problem.’ We tried to tell them that the Who fans are nothing compared to our lot, but they just didn’t listen.

There wasn’t an official after-show at the hotel or anything, but inevitably everyone piled back after the gig. Bez probably invited hundreds of people back. The bar got rinsed, and someone, I think it might have been Bobby Gillette, threw a champagne bottle that smashed a mirror. The place just got trashed. There were glass cases in the lobby with watches and jewellery in, and they all got robbed. Someone just opened them up and took everything.

The next day, of course, someone from the Midland rang up complaining to us, but we just said: ‘It’s nothing to do with us. Check with your area manager or whoever, because we fucking warned you this could happen.’

The gigs were filmed for Channel 4, but it’s all a bit of a blur to me, though everyone says they were top gigs. Rowetta played with us again on backing vocals, and after that she pretty much played every gig with us. She was great when we played live, because she used to dress up in all this leather gear and wield a cat-o’-nine-tails, and it just gave us another visual element on stage. Inevitably, I started shagging her, and it’s pretty obvious from the videos of some of the gigs that there was something going on between us. That continued almost through the whole time she was with the Mondays, even though I was with Trish and other girlfriends later on. You should never get involved with a girl in your band but, like I say, there’s a certain amount of inevitability about it when you’ve got long drives across America and endless nights in
hotel
rooms. But then I found myself in the situation where I had the groupies to deal with, and then still go and sort out Rowetta. It was hard work.

A couple of days after the G-Mex gigs, we went to Marbella and Puerto Banús for a few days to chill out – all the band plus our girlfriends and wives. ‘Step On’ had just been released and we were waiting to hear about the chart position. I think I did a live radio interview with Annie Nightingale while we were out there. You know when they used to phone you up during the chart show to get your reaction to your chart position? It had gone in at No. 5, so I was buzzing.

While we were out in Puerto Banús, the Strangeways prison riot started back in Manchester. One of our lads, Platty, was actually doing time in Strangeways then. So we were looking on telly, trying to see if we could spot him. He was one of those that went up on the roof for the first day or so, but then was smart enough to get down before he risked getting time added on to his sentence. We were hearing all sorts of rumours about what was going on in there, about kangaroo courts and all that sort of stuff. One of Gaz Whelan’s family had a bar in Figuerola – I think it was his auntie. So that’s what we spent most of our time doing while we were over there, watching the Strangeways riot on telly in Gaz’s auntie’s bar. We were all dead proud of the riot – ‘Go on lads!’ – it was great. The funniest thing was this geezer in Salford, who had gone up on his house or garage roof in sympathy for the Strangeways lads. All the local TV crews were coming round filming him sat up on his roof. It was hilarious.

The riot just seemed to fit in with all the madness that was going on in Manchester at the time. The police chief was talking to God, the Haçienda was still mental, the prison was rioting, the whole city just seemed like a cartoon.

May was the Haçienda’s eighth birthday. The Haçi was still at its peak then, and people would kill to get into birthday parties or New Year’s Eve or whatever. They would pay £300 for a ticket from a tout. Ridiculous prices. And I had handfuls of them. I was still in that mindset where I couldn’t help but take advantage of the chance to make a bit of extra dough. I could just be standing outside the Haçi waiting for a mate or something, and people would come up to me and say, ‘Shaun, have you got any tickets? Can you sell us a ticket please?!?’ They’d offer me £300 for a ticket that I was probably just going to give away to a mate, and then someone else would see that going on, and go, ‘’Ere, have you got another one, Shaun?’ There were times when I’d literally just go outside the club for a bit of fresh air for five minutes and come back in with an extra couple of grand in my pocket.