Shaun Ryder: Life really begins at 60
He’s the wild man of rock, a guy who makes Mick and Keith look like wannabes. Shaun Ryder, frontman of The Happy Mondays and Black Grape, and the star of more-TV-shows-than-anyone-has-a-right-to-feature-on redefined the sex’n’drugs’n’rock’n’roll lifestyle during the halcyon age of Madchester. Now, with a new book out, he’s touring the country and spilling the beans…
Written by Guest Author
*Contains swearing
The real Shaun
Shaun is on good form:
Life begins at 60. It used to be 40, but not anymore.
So who exactly is Shaun Ryder?
Well, if you believe Wikipedia, I’m an English singer, songwriter and poet – a leading figure in the Manchester cultural scene of the late 1980s and 1990s.
But that was over thirty f**king years ago now – so there’s a lot more to this long and winding story than that. I’ve grown up… a bit!
There used to be a time when I was just the mad rocker who went onto TV shows off my head on heroin. I’m still having great fun in the spotlight, whether that’s with the Happy Mondays, Black Grape, or as a solo performer, but these days you’re just as likely to find me blowing off the cobwebs on a bike ride, watching telly with my best mate Bez, or catching up on Corrie in my slippers.
Shaun Ryder for I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!
About the book
So tell us Shaun, what’s it all about?
I’ve got the attention span of a goldfish, an inability to plan too far ahead, but an opinion I’m prepared to share on pretty much everything. And thankfully we still have free speech in this country of ours, don’t we?
My new book and tour is an epic journey from Madchester to Mastermind, Brazil to Barbados, Spanish sunburn to the sewers of Salford. I’ll tell you some truths that are so improbable you’ll know they can’t possibly have been made up.
Also, let me tell you one thing right from the outset. It isn’t one to read soothingly to your grandkids at bedtime. It’s a boys’ own adventure which is about as far removed from Enid Blyton as you can get. So if you’re faint-hearted or easily offended, I’d suggest you jog on, make yourself a milky cup of cocoa, and binge the latest series of Antiques Roadshow instead. I’ll be visiting Caribbean crack dens, encountering extra-terrestrials, and leading you through my hedonistic, hectic, and sometimes hell-raising life in the music and entertainment business.
This is me at my most honest; nothing is off the table – so expect the unexpected. I might not have any hair, eyebrows, or eyelashes these days. I might be on so many pills that I rattle when I walk. But I’m still brimming with energy and excitement for whatever’s coming next.
This is my journey, my memories, my views… presented in my own unfiltered words.
Early days and Madchester
Music was always around his family. His dad played banjo in the Irish clubs while Shaun got into the Rolling Stones.
If I’m honest, I didn’t learn anything really after the fourth year of junior school. At secondary school – when I was there – I learned nothing at all.
I couldn’t get into playing things like football or rugby either, because I could never get my head around the rules. I was always f**king offside, and no one wants someone like that in their team!
By the time I was 13 I wasn’t really going into school. I’d get my mark in the register, then I’d just f**k off. Eventually, it got to the stage when I wasn’t even bothering to go in to get my mark.
Being ADHD, and not knowing back then that I was, meant that taking heroin for the first time made me feel what I can only describe as normal.
Shaun formed Happy Mondays and was pivotal as Madchester swept the world.
We were a massive success. We’d headlined the Friday night at Glastonbury in 1990, and that same year Paul McCartney told NME that we reminded them of The Beatles in their ‘Strawberry Fields phase’. Things were great. But no, the egos wanted all of it. That’s why we split up.
Everyone was doing drugs, everyone was doing mad things, so for anyone to blame me and Bez for what happened is in my opinion completely ridiculous. When you think about it, after the Mondays split up in early 1994, you didn’t hear anything from any other members of the band. None of them did anything until we brought the original band back in 2010.
Shaun with fellow Black Grape member, Kermit.
Within months of the Mondays finishing, one of them was a door-to-door salesman, and our kid was signing on the dole. They’d all just got mortgages, so they’d put themselves at risk of losing their houses as well. They shafted themselves. When we brought the original band back in 2010, we hoped that lessons from the past might have been learned, but within a year the same stuff started happening again. They hadn’t learned a thing from the first time around. If anything, this time it was even uglier.
Collaborations, Joanne and a 2024 tour
Shaun’s collaborated with others, including Paul Oakenfold and Gorrilaz.
I like collaborations. I’ve done loads with Oakenfold – often when he’s working with an artist on an album, he’d ring me up and see if I wanted to do a track with them. I did something with Intastella in 1993 on the track Can You Fly Like You Mean It? and I also featured on Agent Dan, a track on the Agent Provocateur album Where the Wild Things Are.
Then there’s the Gorillaz. Damon Albarn got in touch with me and invited me to come to London and try to do some writing with them. This was about 2002 or 2003, and I was absolutely dry. The legal troubles had been getting worse, money was getting cut off, and it was all getting on top of me.
Shaun on stage.
It gave me writer’s block. I tried as much as I could to do something with Damon and it wasn’t happening. I’d put the headphones on and he put the track on, but I couldn’t hear it. “Turn it up,” I said to him. “I can’t hear the beat.” As he starts to increase the volume I’m shouting: “It’s comin’ up, it’s comin’ up, it’s comin’ up…. it’s there.” Damon stopped and went: “Do that again.”
There became Dare, because that’s how I said it with my accent, and it was used for the opening of the hit Gorillaz song Dare. Basically, there had been no lyric at that point, there was no song, we were just getting started.
Behind it all is a remarkably good woman: Joanne Ryder, Shaun’s wife.
My wife Joanne is an amazing woman. I’ve been with her since 2004, and she saved my life. She recognised straight away when we got together that I’d got some sort of condition. Her background is working as a teaching assistant with special needs children, which probably helped. But I also like the fact that she is someone who takes no nonsense.
I met her first at the Hacienda years and years earlier when she was a teenager – she binned me then though, because the band was just starting to take off and I think she thought I’d just be jetting off everywhere and sleeping around all over the place. She didn’t want to risk me taking it out of her, but we stayed in each other’s circles and I always had feelings for her.
When I hit 40, she reeled me back in.
And now he’s hitting the road, this autumn, with a tour to go with his book. Can we expect mad scenes and late nights?
No chance. As soon as I’m off the stage I’ll be back to my hotel room to watch the news and get a good night’s sleep.
Book now
Shaun Ryder is at City Varieties Music Hall Wed 13 November 2024.
He’s the wild man of rock who became a national treasure. Happy Mondays and Black Grape frontman Shaun Ryder is hitting the road for a new, spoken word tour.
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