Twisting My Melon (28 page)

Half of our lot ended up taking girls from there back with them, though. One of the lads ended up spending three days
with
his – she was gorgeous. These girls would do anything for you. They’d give you a bath and wash you, they’d wash your clothes, iron your clothes, give you a massage, shag you, and then you just gave them a gift at the end. One of our lads just gave his girl some chocolates and stuff out of his minibar, and I think she was happy with that.

Another one of our guys, thinking he was smart for some dickhead reason, was with one of these girls for a day and instead of just bunging her some money laced her drink with methadone so she passed out, then he did one and checked into a different hotel room. She didn’t wake up until a day later, and he had robbed everything of hers – her bag, her clothes, her jewellery; the fucking lot. These birds don’t mess about, so she went straight to the fucking police, who don’t mess about either. She wanted revenge, because these birds don’t get had over, you know what I mean? They have
you
over. She tracked him down, which wasn’t that fucking hard, because he was just in another room at the hotel. It was such a fucking daft thing to have done. I had to meet her and the police and smooth it over, and bung them some dough. She got some money, dropped the charges, the police got some money and that was it. What a fucking dick.

When we eventually got to do the gig, there was a thunderstorm during our set. A proper, fucking tropical, torrential, thunderstorm. It leathered it down. I had all my lyrics written out in marker pen on paper, taped to the stage, and they just all washed away. They just turned to grey mush. Kevin Cummins, the photographer, was there, watching from the side of the stage, and says it was one of the best gigs he’s ever seen me do, because I just freestyled my way through most of the verses, making up words as I went along, until we got to the chorus and I remembered it.

We were also getting bombarded on stage by stuff being
thrown
from the crowd. They were throwing bottles and plastic bags and all sorts at us, and I’m going, ‘Fuck off, you dicks!’ But apparently, or this is what we were told afterwards, this was a sign of respect. They were celebrating the fact that we continued playing in the downpour, and didn’t run off stage and not play because it was raining.

One night we went to a club where there was a Prince after-show. Everyone was told that no matter who you were, even if you were George Michael or A-Ha, you weren’t allowed to look at Prince. How fucking ridiculous. So of course the first thing that we did when we got in there was stand there and stare at him. He was surrounded by security, and when he wanted to dance, four of them would stand on the four corners of the dancefloor, and then four of them would actually stand directly around him, while he danced on his own.

I loved Rio, despite a couple of hairy moments. It was great. The drugs were ridiculously cheap. Me and Muzz went out to score one day and took a taxi up into one of the favelas to this dealer’s gaff. I was after some gear and Muzz was after some weed. I got my gear and did it in, and went into this real nodding state and needed to get my head down for half an hour. The problem was this dealer’s gaff was pretty much just one room and there was no bed. His grandma had just died, though, and they already had the coffin there waiting for her. So I just dived in and got my head down for half an hour. He was fine with it.

Just after we got back from Rio, my first daughter, Jael, was born, on 16 February 1991. Her full name was Jael Otis Ann Ryder. Jael is a name me and Trish liked that we found in one of those baby name books. It means ‘climber of mountains’. Otis was after Otis Redding and Ann was after my nana. I was there at the hospital and we played
Rubber Soul
by the Beatles.
One
or two of the tabloids turned up to take a picture. I’d never really wanted kids when I was younger, but when I knew Trish was pregnant it didn’t faze me at all. I felt quite ready to be a father. In fact, after Jael was born I decided I wanted to have quite a few kids – becoming a father didn’t freak me out. I wasn’t really ready for the responsibility, though. I think Trish expected me to grow up, but I didn’t; my lifestyle didn’t really change.

Now we had a kid, we decided to move out of the city centre and we bought a house in Didsbury, on Beeches Mews. It was a new-build townhouse, three storeys but only two beds. It should have been £175,000, but the developer had gone bust, so they were selling them off for £90,000. Kevin Kennedy, who played Curly Watts in
Coronation Street
, lived in the flats opposite, so he was my neighbour and we used to have a drink with him now and again in the nearby Woodstock pub.

Not long after Jael was born, we had to go on tour to the States, which would normally be a massive wrench, to leave your new baby. If I go out on tour now, I always miss my little kids, but I didn’t back then because I was just anaesthetized by the drugs. Heroin doesn’t allow you to miss anything except heroin.

We played with Jane’s Addiction at Madison Square Garden and Perry Farrell, the lead singer, was an absolute wanker. We were slightly late turning up, through no fault of our own. We were stuck in gridlocked traffic, probably the worst traffic I’ve ever seen in New York; it was a fucking nightmare. But we had people from the record company with us and someone had a mobile phone and we were in touch with the venue all the way, keeping them up to date. But by the time we got there we were late and only had time to go on stage and do twenty minutes. We were only getting paid a poxy fee, about $400 or something, but we’d taken the gig because we wanted to play Madison Square Garden. We’d played venues that size in
Europe
, but Jane’s Addiction had never played a venue that big before, so I don’t know if it was Perry Farrell getting too big for his boots, or even being nervous about the show, but when Muzzer went to get our fee they said we weren’t getting paid. Perry Farrell was being a right obnoxious twat, stood there with this twenty-three-stone bouncer, this huge wide motherfucker who looked like he lived in McDonald’s, telling Muzz we’re not being paid because we ran over a minute or something daft. Muzz just stuck one on him. He wasn’t going to take that shit from some dick.

When we got back we headlined a massive gig at Elland Road, Leeds United’s ground, called Match of the Day. It was us, the Farm, the La’s and Stereo MCs. I remember winding the crowd up during the gig, saying ‘Are you Man U, you?’, because that’s what Leeds fans always used to say when they were looking for a kick off.

We’d played with the La’s before and they were sound, although I hope I didn’t get any of them into heroin, as I’ve got vague memories of staying in a dingy hotel and getting the tinfoil out – although ‘There She Goes’, which they’d released a couple of years before, is supposedly about heroin. John Power, who went on to form Cast, was a top lad.

We’d known the Farm for ages. They were actually on TV well before us. I remember watching them on
The Oxford Road Show
in the early 80s. Their lead singer, Peter Hooton, got a bit jealous of our success later, but I’ve seen him more recently and got on with him fine.

Me and Muzz decided to record our set and put it out as a bootleg live album ourselves, as we thought it would be a way to make a quick bit of extra dough, although we obviously kept it quiet that it was us who released it. We had ‘Made in Sardinia’ stamped on the cover, but they were actually made
in
Salford. I was quoted as saying, ‘The people who have produced this bootleg have assured me that all the profits are going to animals and poor children.’ I can assure you now that
none
of the profits went to animals and poor children. But there wasn’t really any profit. We thought we were going to make the same profit as we had with drugs, but it was nothing like it. In the end, we were like, ‘You know what, this ain’t worth fucking doing!’

Weirdly, Factory decided to put out a live album of the gig themselves later that year, but taken from the same recording we used.

That August we played Cities in the Park, which was a two-day festival in Heaton Park in north Manchester, featuring most of the bands on Factory, and everyone from Electronic to De La Soul and the Wonder Stuff. We headlined the Sunday night, and I remember as soon as I got there someone told me Salford had bumrushed the gate and a few hundred had got in for free. Which didn’t surprise me. Heaton Park is that close to Salford, you have to get the security bang on, or you’re just going to get taken for a ride. Alan Wise was the promoter and was moaning about the fact that we got a hundred guest tickets and got one of our lads to flog them outside. It was full of blaggers that day. I think Alan joked he even thought about turning the stage around, because there were more blaggers backstage than there were punters out front.

When autumn came round, me and Bez edited
Penthouse
. The editor was a big Mondays fan and had reviewed the album, and Jayne Houghton got talking to him about us doing something. I’m not sure if it was just supposed to be more of a straight interview at first, and then it escalated – because when you’re in the band you don’t always get to know every
discussion
that goes on – but by the time it was suggested to us it was just, ‘Do you want to guest-edit
Penthouse
and do a photo shoot for them?’ and I was just like, ‘Damn right we do, yeah!’

We went down to London to do it, and Trish insisted on coming with me. She said, ‘I’m coming with you on
that
…’, so she did. They call it editing, but it’s quite simple, really. I’ve done it a couple of times, for different publications. You sit at a desk, and first you read over a couple of letters and give your opinion on them, and that’s editing the letters’ page. Then you look at a problem letter and you give your opinion, and that means you’ve done the agony-aunt page. Then you have to look at a few pictures of girls and pick a couple out for a photo shoot. Then you pose for a couple of pictures at a desk and that’s it.

Linzi Drew was the main girl at the time for
Penthouse
, and she was keen to be in on the shoot. There was also a girl called Miss Whiplash, who had got her name because she was caught whipping some MP. We did the photo shoot the next day at the Holiday Inn in Swiss Cottage. We had a suite with a jacuzzi, and we all ended up in it. I think Bez had a bit of a touch and a bit of fun. I was going to wear a sports vest at first, but then it was like, ‘Nah,’ so we just had boxer shorts on, but you couldn’t tell because they covered us up in bubbles.

Shortly after that the
News of the World
did a number on me apparently confessing I had been a rent boy. It all stemmed from an MTV interview where I had been joking with the presenter, and the
News of the World
had taken the quotes completely out of context. The thing was, not many people had Sky back in 1991, before the Premier League, so they could almost get away with doing that. Weirdly, the picture they used was from the
Penthouse
shoot of me and several busty models,
which
hardly matched the story of me supposedly being a rent boy. Our Paul found it hilarious, but I was fuming. That evening I went down to Dry Bar with Muzzer. I was still seething, I was off my nut and drinking too, and I walked in Dry with my 375 Magnum. I was going to blow a hole in the bloody roof of the place because I felt I had to make a point, I had to show how furious I was about the piece. But I stopped short of that in the end. I just ended up smashing the mirror with a bottle. Again, it was not like it’s depicted in
24 Hour Party People
. Leroy Richardson, who used to work at the Haçienda but was then running Dry Bar, was there and he just tried to calm me down and speak to me. Muzz and I just did one.

The
News of the World
then had the fucking cheek to send the female reporter up to interview me about the whole thing, to see why I was so upset. I was still fuming and not thinking straight, so I rang up a little firm of girls I knew who were pretty naughty, who would sort someone out for you. They did that for a living. I had it all set up with these girls, who were capable of serious damage. They were hiding in the toilets of Dry Bar and they were going to leather this journalist when she walked in there, then nick her handbag and make it look like a robbery. But I had second thoughts at the last minute and decided to call it off, so I just nipped down to the women’s toilets and gave them a whistle and got them out of there.

If it had been two years later, or even a year later, I would have just laughed off the whole story. I probably would have taken them to court, because we had evidence of what I had said on film, and you can clearly see I’m laughing and joking. I could easily have got damages. In the end the
News of the World
printed an apology and retracted the story, but it’s one of those apologies that’s about the size of a postage stamp, so hardly anyone spots it anyway. I don’t know how they get away with that, the fuckers. I
wasn
’t surprised at the recent revelations about the
News of the World
. I know what some of these reporters are like.

Whether the press were positive about us or not, they were certainly interested in us, and it was definitely me and Bez they were focusing on. If there had been simmering resentment in the band since we first got that front cover a few years previously, it was now openly coming to the boil.

YES PLEASE
! WAS
pretty much doomed from day one.

We were sort of pushed into recording a new album because Factory’s financial situation was getting more perilous by the end of 1991, and it had also been over a year already since
Pills ’n’ Thrills
had been released, so it was about time for us to get back in the studio. We hadn’t really had any time off in that year. We hadn’t been lazing about or anything – we’d been gigging and doing press, so we hadn’t really had time to write new material. Bez and I had done so much press that year that Nathan joked that the only person who’d had more coverage than us was Lady Di.