Little Hulton
The Happy Mondays came from Little Hulton, a council estate on the western edge of Salford. It was not the kind of place that produced pop stars. It was the kind of place that produced hard men, grafters, and people who knew how to look after themselves. Shaun Ryder and his brother Paul grew up there, and the estate shaped everything about the band: the attitude, the humour, the street-level intelligence, and the absolute refusal to play by anybody else's rules.
Shaun William George Ryder was born on 23 August 1962. He was not, by any conventional measure, a natural frontman. He couldn't really sing. He couldn't play an instrument. What he could do was write lyrics that sounded like overheard conversations in a Salford pub at closing time, delivered in a drawl that was part threat, part comedy, and entirely his own. Nobody had ever sounded like Shaun Ryder before, and nobody has managed to since.
His brother Paul played bass. Mark Day played guitar. Paul Davis played keyboards. Gary Whelan played drums. And then there was Bez. Mark Berry, known universally as Bez, was the band's dancer, percussionist, and vibes man. He shook maracas, danced with a manic energy that suggested he had no idea where he was, and became the most unlikely icon of the Madchester era. His official role in the band was never entirely clear, but his presence was essential. Without Bez, the Happy Mondays were just a band. With him, they were a carnival.
Factory
Tony Wilson signed them to Factory Records. It was, depending on your perspective, either an act of genius or an act of insanity. Wilson saw something in Ryder that others missed: an authentic voice from the estates, unpolished, unpredictable, and completely original. The Happy Mondays were the polar opposite of Joy Division's austere post-punk or New Order's electronic precision. They were loose, chaotic, funky, and frequently incomprehensible. Wilson loved them.
Their debut album, Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out), was released on Factory in April 1987. The title alone was a statement of intent. John Cale produced it, recording at Fire House in London in December 1986. The album was raw and shambolic, a collision of funk basslines, indie guitars, and Ryder's half-spoken, half-sung vocals. It didn't sell in enormous quantities, but it announced the band as something genuinely new.
Bummed followed in November 1988, this time produced by Martin Hannett. It was tighter, more focused, and significantly more danceable. "Wrote for Luck" became a dancefloor anthem after a remix by Vince Clarke and Paul Oakenfold. The fusion of indie rock and acid house that would define Madchester was happening right there, in real time, on a Factory Records release from a band who looked like they'd wandered in from a lock-in at a Salford social club.
Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches
Their third album was the one that changed everything. Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches was released in November 1990, produced by Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne. It was the sound of Madchester at its peak: loose-limbed, ecstasy-fuelled, and irresistibly groovy. The production was cleaner than Bummed but kept the chaotic energy that made the band unique.
"Step On," released as a single in March 1990, was their biggest hit. A reworking of John Kongos's 1971 track "He's Gonna Step on You Again," it reached number five in the UK charts. "Kinky Afro" followed in October and reached number five as well. The opening line, delivered in Ryder's unmistakable Salford drawl, became one of the most quoted lyrics of the era.
The album went to number four in the UK charts and was certified platinum, selling over 400,000 copies. The Happy Mondays were on Top of the Pops, on the covers of the NME and Melody Maker, and headlining the Hacienda on Friday nights. They were the band that proved Madchester wasn't just about the Stone Roses. It was a movement, and the Mondays were its most unpredictable, most dangerous, and most entertaining participants.
They were also, by this point, in serious trouble. The drug use that had fuelled the music was becoming the story itself. Ryder's heroin addiction was escalating. The band's behaviour was legendary for all the wrong reasons. They were brilliant and they were a mess, and the distance between those two things was getting smaller by the week.
"They were a shambles and a joy in equal measure. Nobody who saw Bez dancing at the Hacienda has ever forgotten it."
Barbados
In 1992, Factory Records sent the Happy Mondays to Eddy Grant's Blue Wave Studios in Barbados to record their fourth album. The logic was that removing them from Manchester would separate them from their drug supply and allow them to focus on the music. The logic was spectacularly wrong.
The sessions were a catastrophe. Ryder found new drug connections within days of arriving. The recording was chaotic, unfocused, and eye-wateringly expensive. Producers Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads were brought in to oversee the sessions and reportedly struggled to get anything usable out of the band. The bill reportedly reached around £380,000, more than double the £150,000 budget.
The resulting album, Yes Please!, was released in September 1992. It was widely regarded as a disaster. The reviews were brutal. The sales were poor. The album effectively bankrupted Factory Records, which went into receivership in November 1992. Tony Wilson's label, the home of Joy Division, New Order, and the Durutti Column, was finished. The Happy Mondays had not single-handedly killed Factory Records, but they had certainly helped dig the grave.
The band split in 1993. Ryder was in the grip of addiction. The Madchester era was over. The party, which had seemed like it would never end, had ended in Barbados with nearly four hundred thousand pounds of someone else's money and an album nobody wanted.
After the Party
Shaun Ryder formed Black Grape with Bez and Kermit Leveridge in 1993. Their debut album, It's Great When You're Straight...Yeah, was released in August 1995 and went straight to number one in the UK. It was a brilliant, funny, and unexpectedly focused record that proved Ryder's talent hadn't been destroyed by the years of excess. "Reverend Black Grape" and "In the Name of the Father" were both Top 10 hits. Against all odds, Ryder had come back.
The Happy Mondays themselves reformed in 1999 and have continued in various configurations ever since, touring regularly and playing festivals. The reunion was driven by nostalgia and economics in roughly equal measure, but the live shows retained the shambolic, joyful energy that had made the band special in the first place. Ryder, cleaned up and surprisingly lucid, proved to be a warm and funny presence on television, appearing on I'm a Celebrity in 2010 and becoming a genuine national treasure in his late middle age.
Bez won Celebrity Big Brother in January 2005. He has since stood for election as an MP, launched a range of honey products, and remained one of the most loveable and inexplicable figures in British pop culture. His contribution to the Happy Mondays was never about the maracas. It was about the energy, the chaos, and the feeling that anything could happen. That was what the Happy Mondays were about, and Bez was the living embodiment of it.
From a council estate in Little Hulton to the Hacienda dancefloor to the cover of every music paper in the country. They nearly destroyed Factory Records. They helped define an entire musical era. They were a shambles and a joy in equal measure. Nobody who saw Bez dancing at the Hacienda at 3am on a Friday night in 1990 has ever forgotten it, and nobody ever will.