By Sam Wise.
I think I was 17 when I first heard the Happy Mondays. My brother, always much cooler than me, had introduced me to the Stone Roses, but the first Mondays track I remember was Hallelujah.
I remember seeing them in the NME, and thinking just how totemic Bez really was; more even than Sean Ryder, he was the figure that tied the Mondays, and Manchester together. A scene that could make a gurning dancing scally as famous as a great guitar player felt like one that truly represented our generation, confusing and contradictory as we are.
So when the opportunity to talk to Bez, even for 15 minutes, was offered, I jumped at it.
From those heady days of the late 80s baggy scene, through Black Grape, his appearance on Celebrity Big Brother and even his abortive campaign to be MP for Salford, this gangling, happy go lucky maracas player is as emblematic of Gen X as Kurt Cobain, at least on this side of the Atlantic, so a conversation with him, more even than those I’ve had with very elevated musicians, felt surreal.
15 mins doesn’t give you long to build rapport, so I dived straight in. This tour is a celebration of 35 years since the release of Pills Thrills and Bellyaches, if Bez could live all those years in the spotlight again, what would be do differently, if anything?
The answer couldn’t have been more Bez: “I can’t believe what happened, so you know, what can you change about what you can’t believe?”
It’s the sort of open hearted, credulous answer you would expect from the caricature most of us have in our minds of Bez.
I get to unpacking why my childhood on the Isle of Wight didn’t give me quite the Hacienda scene experience when Bez interrupts (a feature of the conversation) to tell me he played on the Island the previous weekend. Things have clearly changed on the Isle, but I’m interested in whether something like the Hacienda/Madchester/Baggy scene could happen today? What were the conditions, I wondered, that allowed it to thrive?
Bez, however, can’t leave the subject of the Isle of Wight behind.
“I tell you what, I’ve had a brilliant idea though. Why don’t we turn the Isle of Wight into the party capital of the world?!”
I can see that trying to stick to my plan for the interview isn’t going to bring me the best results, but he does warm to my theme. “It’s not looking too clever at the moment, I do admit, but you’ve always got to believe that the youth are still out there doing it, and once they get a voice, it’ll happen again”.
I recall Mark Chadwick from the Levellers, who once told me in no uncertain terms that the internet had ruined live music “scenes”, because when the Levellers got going, if you wanted to follow them you had to buy a van and live on the road, whereas now you can just dip in from your living room.
Bez isn’t willing to be that negative, feeling that the internet is a great way to build a new movement, but that making money from music is harder than it was. Then he reveals something that surprises me.
“I’ve been reading a book called The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists recently, and I got called a Communist for reading it, but what was happening then is happening now,” he says.
Robert Noonan’s semi-autobiographical exposé of the exigencies of capitalism as experienced by a house painter was published in 1914, and I have read it, but the caricature in my head of Bez probably wouldn’t have, so I’m wrong-footed again.
“People are having to choose between eating and heating their houses, it’s getting desperate, nobody can afford to really live any more because we’re all paying for, like, wars that are nothing to do with us,” he says with passion.
“But it’s still out there; the kid who used to live in my garden, he’s not even 16 yet and he’s making tunes like you wouldn’t believe!”
Bez’s core belief is that people haven’t changed, the environment has, and if we can redress that change, create a more functional society where people have time and money to think, create, and dream, good times will return.
I mention the trials of UBI for artists and musicians, and Bez shares that the Mondays started on something like the young enterprise scheme, although he can’t remember the name: “You could just sign off the dole, get on with building the band, and not get mithered all the time”.
On a lighter note, I ask Bez if he could choose just one song from that late 80s/early 90s era to take with him, one which wasn’t a Mondays song, what would he choose?
“I think something like Can maybe, if it’s the only song I’m gonna have then let’s have something psychedelic and 20 minutes long!”
I also ask whether he thinks every band should have a Bez, and he demurs “No, because that would mean less work for me!”
He tells me that the Mondays were terrible musicians when they started out, and that John Cale (of the Velvet Underground, who produced their first album) taught them real basics in the studio; they didn’t even know how to count time.
“He literally taught us 1,2,3,4, we didn’t even know what that was”
I have always wondered how a bunch of complete unknowns from Manchester got John Cale to produce their first album, and I ask whether Tony Wilson (Factory Records founder and Manchester scene impresario) set that up for them.
“Yeah, it was Tony, and what a roll of the dice eh?”
While we’re on the topic, I ask about Tony and Factory Records, and particularly about the tale of the Mondays trip to record Yes Please! in Barbados bankrupting the company.
While Bez doesn’t deny the absolute debacle of that trip, with Sean Ryder disappearing on benders for days at a time, and a very patchy album eventually resulting, he’s unwilling to let the Mondays take all the blame for the collapse of Factory.
“Yeaaah, that is the urban myth of it, and it was probably a contribution towards it all, but the truth was they also expanded from a bedsit in Didsbury, and spent so much money on this new building in the centre of town; they spent £30 grand on like this perspex chairman’s bloody table or something,” he says.
“It’s things like what broke Factory records really, it’s an overspend at the wrong time. We don’t mind taking the blame though, cos it’s a much better story, innit? More rock and roll!”
Finally, I dig myself out of past reminiscences and get on to what Bez really needs to talk about, the upcoming tour.
They’re not 25 anymore, and I wonder what to expect? Are they gonna turn Bournemouth upside down?
“Well the thing is, we’re all doing much better now, we’re all adults, we’ve put past problems behind us, and that means we can have a lot more fun now amongst ourselves, and we can transfer that to the audience as well.
“I think people are gonna be surprised how much energy we’ve got, and how much fun they’ll have. You’ve got to remember we’ve all known each other since school days, it’s a bit like the Last of the Summer Wine, we’re all reminiscing on the good old days, marching round the hills!”
Whether Bez is more Compo, Foggy or Clegg is a topic for another day, but he still sounds like the mischievous scally that made The Happy Mondays so much fun, and it sounds like the show should be wonderful.
- Image credit: Creation Management.
- The Happy Mondays come to Bournemouth Academy on April 5. Tickets available from happymondaysofficial.co.uk
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