“I love Scotland. Honestly, it’s one of my favourite places.” So says Shaun Ryder when we catch up for a chat.
However, when pressed for specifics, the Happy Mondays and Black Grape frontman struggles.
Shaun recalls he’s been to some of Scotland’s islands, and places “in the middle of nowhere”.
Alas, he can’t remember where exactly.
“I’m s** with names of places,” he admits. “It’s part of my condition, innit. I don’t retain stuff.” (He was diagnosed with ADHD aged 50).
I’m chatting to Shaun as he prepares to hit the road for a spoken word tour promoting his new warts-and-all memoir, Happy Mondays, And Fridays, And Saturdays, And Sundays.
Unashamedly I tell him I’m a massive Mondays fan, having bought all the albums (on vinyl, no less) and sported various band T-shirts through the years. He seems impressed.
I also mention I was at Dundee’s Caird Hall when the band played there in November 2017.
Mondays memories
But did the Mondays ever grace Dundee back in the ’80s or ’90s?
Shaun laughs. “One of the good things about being me is that I don’t really remember!
“We played all over Scotland, even in some of the most far-out places. I’m sure we played Dundee a few times.”
Prior to our chat, a colleague revealed he’d bought Shaun a pint after a DJ set at the old Circus nightclub on Ward Road in the noughties.
Shaun apparently took to the decks and played Kinky Afro as his opening song.
“It’s gotta be about 16 years since I deejayed!” he says. “Bez still deejays but Bez is still 21.
“I’m 61 and I find starting work at 2am a bit too much. So 16 years ago I stopped deejaying and started doing Q&As. It’s much simpler.
“You start work about 8.30pm and finish by 10.30pm. That suits me fine now.”
Corrie and an early night
So all-night parties are most definitely a thing of the past for the former lover of the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.
These days, if he’s not working, he’s likely to be watching Corrie in his slippers and tucked up in bed by 11pm.
Shaun is a huge fan of the soap and great friends with Andy Whyment, who plays Kirk.
If he was ever asked to do a quick walk-on part, he’d be well up for it. He chuckles: “A pint in the Rovers Return? Get me in!”
His absolute best mate is, of course, Bez. “I’ve said it a million times – we’re in a non-sexual relationship,” he jokes. And of course the pair are a riot on Celebrity Gogglebox.
“If someone told me when I was 14 I’d have a job getting drunk watching telly with my best mate, I have thought, yeah right,” says Shaun.
“But I’m really lucky to have that one.”
He’s also starred on I’m a Celebrity, Celebrity Mastermind, and most recently, Celebrity Send Off, in which Bez plans a UFO-themed funeral for Shaun.
Scottish support for the Happy Mondays
Back to the subject of Scotland, and Shaun says he’s grateful for the support the country gave him when he was starting out in the early ’80s.
“I’ve gotta say, Scotland was into the Happy Mondays well before the Mancunians. We weren’t really that big in Manchester until 1989, 1990.
“We had more fans in Scotland when we started off than in Manchester or anywhere else. We were on Factory Records. Scotland had a keen interest in Factory Records.”
Bringing the chat to a parochial level, I ask if Shaun is a fan of The View. Turns out he’s heard of them, but he’s never felt the urge to listen to them.
“I haven’t got a f***** clue, me,” he admits. “I listen to Gold Radio and Radio 2. When I’ve got my teenage girls in the car I’ve got to put up with f***** Capital.”
Mondays music
Does he often listen to old Mondays albums? Shaun baulks at the idea.
“The thing is, right, we still go out and do the Happy Mondays and Black Grape – we just made a new Black Grape album.
“I spend that much time recording in the studio, and once I’ve got it right, I walk out and that’s it over with.
“But if I walk into a bar somewhere, and someone puts on Step On, with ‘call the cops’, and ‘you’re twistin’ my melon, man’, it’s a bit naughty.
“I get lines from those Mondays songs shouted at me all the time. Builders shout them across the street. I get it when I’m on my bike, too.
“I appreciate it, but you know, I don’t really listen to me own music.”
Does he ever get sick of playing the old tunes live? Not at all.
“I got past that about 20 years ago, when we’d been at it for about 20 years,” he elaborates.
“I actually really love what I’m doing.”
The magic of cycling
Away from music, Shaun loves cycling – and credits it for getting him off drugs.
He’s been clean for a good two decades but at the height of his addiction he’d smoke “50 rocks of crack” daily.
“When I was a kid we’d cycle from Salford to Blackpool (about 50 miles) on our bikes.
“And when I was a post boy, I used to ride all over the place.
“Cycling was the thing that got me off gear. Sometimes I’d be on the bike for 12 hours a day.
“I’d start early and keep cycling until everything was out of the system. It was cheaper than rehab.
“I still cycle now. I draw the line at wearing lycra and all that but I’ll put my waterproofs on if it’s raining.
“I f*** off without any real idea where I’m heading. I just see where I end up.”
Movie about Shaun’s life
Shaun’s new book mentions that Christian Bale wants to play him in a movie about his life. What does he make of that?
“He’s a top f***** actor. But he’s well too old to be playing an 18 or 20-year-old Shaun Ryder. But it’s a massive compliment.”
As he heads into his 62nd year, Shaun is the first to admit his health is not what it once was. He jokes that he takes more pills now than in his hedonistic heyday.
He called himself ‘Uncle Fester’ after developing alopecia and losing all his body hair in 2019. He also has arthritis, a fake hip, and no thyroid gland.
He also had to deal with losing his younger brother, Paul, who played bass for the Mondays. He died aged 58 in July 2022.
It’s a subject that leaves Shaun feeling conflicted. All he’ll say is that the siblings “didn’t get on too well”.
“Our kid came back in the band in 2012 and for some reason he had a problem with me.
“Anyway, he’s dead and we got another bass player, so there we go.”
End of.
From the Hacienda to happily ever after…
Shaun has been together with his wife Jo since 2004, although they first met at the Hacienda nightclub in Manchester when she was 17.
“Jo blew me out because the band was just taking off and she thought I’d be at it with groupies and all that,” he reveals.
“But we stayed in the same circle. I was 40 when she reeled me in.”
The pair have two daughters, Pearl and Lulu, and Shaun has four kids from other relationships.
The future looks bright…
So what’s next? Shaun says he’s put the Mondays “to bed” for three or four years so he can focus on Black Grape and his new band, Mantra of the Cosmos.
“I’ve got Black Grape shows through summer and I’ve finished an album with Mantra.
“We played Glastonbury last year. It’s me, Bez, Zak Starkey (from The Who and Oasis) and Andy Bell (from Oasis).”
So it looks like Shaun won’t be retiring any time soon. “I can’t. I’ll be like Tommy Coper and drop dead on stage.
“I’m enjoying things too much to stop.
“I don’t have hair, eyebrows or eyelashes and I’m on so many pills that I rattle when I walk. But I’m still full of energy.”
- Shaun’s tour includes dates at Stirling’s Albert Halls (October 26), Rothes Hall in Glenrothes (April 11), Aberdeen’s Tivoli (April 12), and Dundee’s Whitehall Theatre (April 13).
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