Twisting My Melon (34 page)

Like I said previously, I didn’t like the Nicholls when I first met them, through Chris and Tina when we were finishing
Yes Please
! I thought they were really obnoxious. But this was Kurfirst’s idea, so I went along with it, which was to prove a huge mistake.

Gary Kurfirst quite quickly hooked us up with the American producer Danny Saber. I’d described my vision of the album to Kurfirst as the idea of merging the Stones with Cypress Hill,
and
he thought Danny would be the right man to produce it, especially because he had worked with Cypress Hill. He said, ‘This guy would be perfect for you. He’s rock and he’s hip hop,’ and he sent him over to Manchester for an initial session.

We booked into Spirit studio on Tariff Street in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, and we got on straight away, and I could tell we could work well together. Danny could play a lot of different instruments and he was a great producer. Me and Kermit had similar approaches to ripping records, and Danny totally understood where we were coming from. In those short sessions we wrote two of the songs that would end up on the album.

The nucleus of Black Grape from then on was me, Kermit and Danny. Plus Bez, of course. Then we also had Ged Lynch on drums, Danny played bass on the record and we brought Paul Wagstaff, or Wags as everyone calls him, on guitar. Wags had been the guitarist in the Manchester band Paris Angels. I can’t remember exactly who introduced me to him, but we were looking for a guitarist in Manchester, and Wags was a good one, and another smackhead, so he fitted in well.

Between the sessions at my house, Drone and Spirit, we had more than half the album written when we went down to Rockfield studio in Wales to start recording proper. Coincidentally, the Stone Roses were down there at the same time, finishing
Second Coming
. From the demos we had already laid down, we knew we were on to something and there was a great atmosphere. We had a blast down there. The sessions were quite Guinness-fuelled at first. Well, Guinness, Es and Temazepam.

We spent quite a bit of time in the local pub sticking things like Thin Lizzy and Rod Stewart on the jukebox, because that was the kind of upbeat party vibe we were after. We also had a pirate copy of
Pulp Fiction
from the States, which hadn’t come out in this country yet, and we sometimes watched that several
times
a day, so that was also an influence. Some of the religious imagery on the album was influenced by Samuel L. Jackson’s character Jules in the film, and the way he quoted biblical passages. I also thought
Pulp Fiction
was a pretty realistic depiction of the effects of heroin. The scene where John Travolta’s character, Vincent Vega, has just seen his dealer and is driving down the road like he’s floating in his own little bubble was pretty true to how I felt when I was on heroin.
Trainspotting
was pretty real, but that was more the dirty digging end of the scene. The most realistic portrayal of a whole drug scene, and the way it’s run and organized, from street-level soldiers to the boss, is
The Wire
. From the corner boys, to the way they use burner phones, to the way money is laundered, it’s spot on.

I wasn’t actually on the gear when we started recording
It’s Great When You’re Straight …Yeah
! but I was back on it by the time we finished it, ironically. At first we were just on the Guinness, Es and Temazis, but let’s face it, if you put me, Kermit and Wags together, there’s a certain inevitability about us getting some heroin. Towards the end of recording, the sessions had to be stopped temporarily while someone nipped to Bristol to get us some gear, or we’d make a call and have someone drive it down from Manchester.

Temazis, or ‘jellies’, were my favourite drug at the time. I loved them. I had a mate in Manchester whose girlfriend was a psychiatric nurse, and she used to rob tubs of five hundred Temazis. People had started using them to help them come down off crack or heroin, but they then became popular as a party drug. Basically, the whole recording down there was a bit of a Temazi party, which is where the song on the album ‘Tramazi Parti’ came from, although we changed the spelling to avoid legal problems.

We had a few run-ins with the locals while we were there. It seemed like it was almost an established routine that whoever was recording down there would get pissed, do mad things, and then end up in the local court and get fined. It was almost a game for the locals. I can remember being in the pub with Mani in Monmouth and the local kids were trying to goad us, banging on the window and going, ‘Come on!’ trying to get you in a fight. Me and Kermit were nicked several times for being drunk and disorderly or something. One night we were off our heads on Temazis and E and got into another scrape, and the police turned up and I shouted at Kermit, joking, ‘Go and get the guns!’ That’s the sort of weird nights out we had down there.

While we were making the first Black Grape album, Oriole gave birth to our daughter, Coco, on 11 April 1994. She was named after Coco Chanel, not Coco the clown. Her full name is Sean Coco Chanel Ryder. I was made up to have another daughter. Like I said earlier, after my first daughter, Jael, was born, I was quite keen on having a few kids, and me and Oriole started trying not long after we got together.

Kurfirst and Radioactive had brought Steve Lironi in as a co-producer. I didn’t really understand why he was there at first, because Danny Saber knew exactly the sort of record that me and Kermit wanted to make. But Kurfirst and Radioactive were a little worried the album might be too hip hop, so they brought in Steve. He had been in Altered Images and was married to Clare Grogan, and they wanted him to ensure we kept a rock element to the album. Basically, they didn’t want the album to be too black.

The most obvious example of that is ‘Kelly’s Heroes’, which I don’t think turned out as great as it could have been. I loved the song originally, but I think that huge guitar riff in the finished version that was released takes over the song. I wanted
a
bit of a rock lick on there, not this huge riff, but that’s what the Americans love, and that’s what Kurfirst and Radioactive wanted. When we wrote it, me and Kermit were really bouncing off each other in the song: ‘Jesus was a black man!’, ‘No, Jesus was a Batman!’, ‘No, no, no, that was Bruce Wayne!’ But when the track became a bit rockier, it lost a little bit of that energy, because it’s easier to bounce off each other when you have more of a groove than a rock riff behind you. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good track, but it could have been better. It should be punchier and funkier. It should be a bit tighter for the verbal sparring to really work. ‘Kelly’s Heroes’ was a little dig at the celebrity culture, ‘don’t talk to me about your big, big heroes’. Although one person did once say to me, ‘Why are you having a go at Serbians? Do you not like Serbians?’ Which confused me, so I asked them what they meant. ‘Why do you sing “Don’t talk to me about heroes, most of these men stink like Serbs”?’

‘No, mate, it’s “subs”, glug glug glug …’

‘Reverend Black Grape’ was the opener and the first single off the album, and therefore probably the first Black Grape track most people heard. It was a great introduction to the band. I wasn’t trying to be deliberately controversial with the line about the Pope and the Nazis: ‘Oh Pope he got the Nazis, to clean up their messes. In exchange for gold and paintings, he gave them new addresses’. Reverend Black Grape was just a fictional character. I suppose he’s part me, part Kermit, a character that emerged when we were riffing off each other while we were writing it. The chorus is ripped from the hymn ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’, which is probably that influence from Jules in
Pulp Fiction
.

‘In the Name of the Father’ is again not really about anything. ‘Neil Armstrong, astronaut, he had balls bigger than King Kong’ – they’re just little snippets or stories that I’ve
pulled
together, ‘first big suit on the moon and he’s off to play golf.’ Although I do remember watching the first moon landing in 1969, back in Little Hulton, when I was six.

‘Yeah, Yeah, Brother’ was something that was left over from the Mondays. Not the whole song, but I had chunks of the lyrics. It’s not necessarily about Our Paul, because I wasn’t quite aware of just what a backstabber he could be at that stage, although he had walked away from the new band. It’s more about all the rest of the Mondays and backstabbers in general.

I’d also been listening to quite a bit of Serge Gainsbourg, which you can hear on ‘A Big Day in the North’, as it’s a slight rip of his song ‘Initials B.B.’

‘Submarine’ is another track that is not really about anything in particular. ‘He smoked steroids, and he got me in a headlock’ isn’t about anyone – it just sounded good. That was one of the last songs we recorded in that session, which you can tell because I’m a bit more magpie with my lyrics, like ‘You paid a debt today, oh boy’ is a slight rip from the Beatles’ ‘A Day In The Life’.

‘Shake Your Moneymaker’ is also a bit of a rip, this time from the Stones’ ‘Fool to Cry’. It’s not a straight rip, but if you listen to the two tracks side by side you can definitely see some influence in there. That was also probably down to the feedback we were getting from Kurfirst, because he would love tracks like that, which had some rock influence, and he would reject tracks that were a bit more hip hop – those that I thought were actually more in keeping with the album we were aiming for.

Danny would deliberately record me and Kermit adlibbing or just talking bollocks in the studio, and he added snippets of that in at the end when he was mixing tracks. Like the outro of ‘Little Bob’, where you’ve got me and Kermit just riffing off
each
other and talking rubbish: ‘I believe everything I read …’; ‘Speak up, speak up.’ We wanted to make the record as diverse and interesting as possible, so we added little samples and unexpected references from everything, from films to the old Cresta Bear, who used to say, ‘It’s frothy, man’ on the advert. I’d done that since
Bummed
, which was littered with quotes and references to films like
Performance
and
Gimme Shelter
, but we took it to another level with Black Grape.

By the end of our time in Wales we still hadn’t settled on a name for the group, and Kurfirst had been asking me to come up with something for weeks. He then started pressurizing me for one: ‘We need a name for the band. You’ve got to come up with one now.’ Kermit had a can of black grape juice in his hand, and I just thought, ‘You know what, we’ll call it Black Grape,’ and as soon as I said it, it just seemed to fit.

While we were recording there had been a rumour going round about me signing on the dole in Salford. Piers Morgan actually rang me and said, ‘Look, we’ve got photos of you signing on,’ and I said, ‘Piers, you know me, mate. If you’ve got photos,
look
at them, because I’m telling you, it’s
not
me, mate.’ So Piers said, ‘Do you need money?’ and I said, ‘Piers, look, between you and me, I’ve already done a deal and I’ve got a great new album coming out, which will probably go to Number One. Why would I be signing on the dole, Piers, you know what I mean? Check your source and check your photographs.’ Anyway, less than two hours later, I get a phone call back from Piers agreeing it isn’t me in the photos, and it’s a load of bollocks, but apparently there was some kid in a dole office in Salford posing as Shaun Ryder. He was signing on and claiming for whatever he could claim for – his house, garden tools, anything he could get.

I’ve got a good idea of how it happened. Like I said, when the Mondays split, Paul Davis and Our Paul had all gone and
signed
on the dole. Now this is Salford, so if anyone had seen those three of the band go and sign on, but they ain’t seen me, and don’t think I’m claiming, then they’ll get on the scam. It’s not too hard to get any info that you need – my date of birth, address, or whatever info you need when you fill in the forms. I never found out who it was. I could have done, but what’s the point? Someone was pulling a scam, it wasn’t me, but it wasn’t costing me. The dole were the mugs for paying out and believing it. The tabloids had actually got the story from the dole as well, so someone there really got themselves in the shit, because they sold the story and then it turned out it wasn’t even me.

After we finished recording in Wales, we went to Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire to put the final touches to the record. We were a couple of tracks short, because Kurfirst had rejected one or two that he thought were too hip-hop orientated. Working with Kurfirst was the first time I found out what an executive producer does. It basically means he gets to choose what tracks go on the album.

Chapel Studios is in a weird little place called South Thoresby, which is a proper wife-swapping village. There was only one pub there, so if we got up to any mischief in there, taking Temazis or something, the whole village would know what you’d been up to. It wasn’t far from Skegness and we went there one day for a photo shoot. That’s where the photo on the inside of the album sleeve is taken – on top of the arcade in Skegness.

We hadn’t really been listening to much new music while we were recording; we had just been in our own little bubble. When we had finished and I got to Manchester, I called in on Cressa in Chorlton and he’d just got a copy of the first Oasis album,
Definitely Maybe
. He played it to me and I was like ‘Oh, okay …’ I thought it was really good, but I was a tiny bit
surprised
it was straight down the line rock ’n’ roll, which is not what Black Grape was about.

I went to their gig at the Haçienda when the album came out, but I didn’t know Noel and Liam at the time. I never knew Noel back in the day, although, as I mentioned earlier, I found out years later it was him who had been sending those rude faxes back to us from the Inspirals’ office. But I didn’t meet him for years. I actually met Liam before I met Noel. Donovan was over visiting me and Oriole in Didsbury, and me and Don had popped to the Woodstock pub. Liam just happened to be in there and bowled over and introduced himself – ‘Shauuunnn! Donovan!’ I got on really well with him, but it was quite funny because no one in the pub seemed to have any idea who Liam was at the time, and me and Don were the ones that were getting recognized by people.