Twisting My Melon (25 page)

We eventually got to Los Angeles and we were supposed to jib up to San Francisco for one last date, but we just couldn’t be arsed. We’d just got to Los Angeles, where we were going to record the album, and Soul II Soul were playing in LA that night, so we fucked off the gig in frisky Frisco. Nathan phoned up and told them that PD had an abscess, which wasn’t total bollocks. He did have an abscess and it was causing him major grief, but it was also a slightly handy excuse for us. I’ve never been someone to pull gigs, really; it just wasn’t our style. I think I’ve only ever pulled a handful in this country, and usually for a very good reason. I’ve been really, really ill with all sorts and still gone on.

There have been a few we’ve sacked over the years. I sacked the last Black Grape gig, because that was all going tits up, and we sacked a couple of early Mondays gigs in Spain, after the stage collapsed and the lighting rig fell in and I nearly died. I’d just gone off stage when the lighting rig collapsed, and there but for the grace of God … Basically, if we’d done another song it would have fallen on me. So after that happened, when we arrived at the next few gigs our tech Ed would go out there and check everything, because health and safety wasn’t a massive priority in Spain back then, and if he came back and said it wasn’t safe then we wouldn’t do the gig. I’m sure it’s not as bad now in Spain, but back then everyone would be like ‘
Mañana, mañana
.’ Then you’d read another report in the paper of a stage collapsing and people dying.

Ed, Di and Oz, our crew, had all worked on Joy Division and New Order and when we started getting support slots they started helping us out, because up until then we just had our old fella doing the sound for us and working as a roadie, and we needed more back-up. Fair play to them, when we started gigging and were still travelling round in a transit van, Ed, Di
and
Oz would just dive in the back of the transit and come down to London or up to Glasgow with us, and basically work for nothing, because we weren’t getting paid hardly anything for the gig. Then when we did start getting paid and we needed someone to do those jobs, the work went to them, which is how it should be. Payback for good people.

So anyway, we sacked off the gig in frisky Frisco. We had arrived in Los Angeles, the sun was shining, and the vibe was right. We just wanted to go out and see Soul II Soul and have a top night, then have a few days’ chilling. Then it was down to Capitol Studios to crack on with the new album.

I CAN’T REMEMBER
who first had the idea to record
Pills ’n’ Thrills
at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles, but I was bang up for it; I thought it was a great idea. I knew about the massive history of the place and who had recorded there, everyone from the Beach Boys to Beastie Boys. There was an engineer there called Ray who had been there for years and years and worked on a lot of the iconic albums, and he would tell us stories of past recording sessions. The building was just as iconic as the music, because Capitol Records Tower is a Hollywood landmark.

I remember Ray and me were in the studio one day, soon after we started, and we both suddenly really freaked out when this smell hit us. Some people like putting cocaine in their joints to smoke it and one of our guys had sparked one up. The smell of burning cocaine is pretty instantly recognizable and it really turns my stomach and makes me feel quite ill. Ray started absolutely freaking out. He jumped up and started shouting, ‘Whoa, what’s happening, man?!? What’s going on??!’ and started having these mad flashbacks and physically
shaking
. It had somehow tripped off some flashback for him, some memory of some band who must have been doing the same thing – smoking cocaine when they were recording back in the day. It totally tripped him out, and he was physically shaking like a leaf. He had to go and have a two-hour sit-down in a quiet corner and try and get his head together. That was poor old Ray’s introduction to Happy Mondays.

I first had the idea to use Paul Oakenfold as the producer on
Pills ’n’ Thrills
when we were recording the last album,
Bummed
, at Driffield. I loved ‘Jibaro’ and the great Balearic mix of beats and Spanish guitar that Oakey had on there. He had then done the remix of ‘WFL’ for us, which I really loved as well. So right from the early discussions about recording
Pills ’n’ Thrills
I absolutely knew I wanted Paul Oakenfold from day one. The rest of the band weren’t too sure at first, and neither were Tony or Factory; they still saw Oakey as a DJ rather than a producer, even after the remix of ‘WFL’. At that time, Oakey was more of an ideas man than a studio man, and he worked with Steve Osborne, who would do all the knob-twiddling because Oakey was still feeling his way around the studio.

What really swung it, I think, was what he did with ‘Step On’. After Factory saw how it came back when he’d finished with it, then they were like, ‘Right, okay, you want him, you can have him.’ Still, no major label would have done that. There is no way it would have happened with any other record company but Factory, especially as this was such a big album for us; this was the album where we really needed to make that step up. With that in mind, any other record company would have opted for an established producer, a safe pair of hands.

We all got hire cars as soon as we landed in Los Angeles, and
me
and Muzzer got a convertible Golf GTI, which was quite a cool car in England at the time. But not in America. The Yanks were still quite backward in their thinking in some ways, even in Los Angeles. Me and Muzz would be driving about in it and everywhere we went these beefy Americans would beep us and shout something like, ‘
Motherfuckin’ fags! Get a proper motherfuckin’ car
!’ We’d just shout back, ‘
Fuck off, you big, daft, thick cunt
!’ Our Golf GTI could blow them away if we put our foot down.
Booom
! Just leave them standing at the lights. ‘Y
ou get a proper car, you fuckin’ rednecks
!’ Nowadays you go to LA and they’re driving round in nippy little fuckers, Minis and that. But back then, everywhere we went it was the same –
Beeep, beep, ‘Motherfuckin’ fags!! Get a proper motherfuckin’ car
!’

Bez, of course, did want a ‘proper motherfuckin’ American car’, so he got a huge convertible Chrysler LeBaron. He wrote it off straight away. The same day we arrived I think. He piled into the back of someone, then proceeded to get out of his car and go and drag the fella he’d crashed into out of his car. This big argument went off. We had to calm Bez down and say, ‘You can’t hit these fuckers over here, mate, because you’ll get sued for the rest of your life.’ I think the dude did try suing him, but it got smoothed over. I think we might have had to give the guy a bung or something, but it got sorted out. Bez didn’t even have a proper licence; he had a blag licence and he’d blagged the car from the hire company on that, I think, so we didn’t want that to come on top either.

Bez’s main problem when he’s driving is he doesn’t watch the road. You’ll be in the passenger seat and he’ll be driving, but he’s just looking at you going, ‘Right, where we gonna go and what’s happening and I reckon we should do this and get some of that and blah blah de blah blah blah …’, just looking at you
and
not looking at the road. Then someone in another lane will beep him and he’ll turn round and start giving
them
a right mouthful, and now he’s looking at them and giving it out, but still not looking where he’s going. He
never
looks at the road ahead.

But then if I offer someone a lift and they’re getting in a car with me, Bez will have the cheek to say, ‘Don’t get in a car with X – he’s fucking lethal,’ and I’m like, ‘Fucking hell, Bez!’ I’d actually never written a car off in my life at that stage.

We were staying at the Oakwood Apartments in Burbank, which is one of those gaffs that are full of musicians, actresses and porn stars. Again, it’s one of those places that when you phone up to book the apartment you have to choose from a menu – ‘Er, I’ll have the leather settee, two televisions, a vase of flowers, a silver teaset, and two pictures – the one with the crying boy and the one with the crying swan.’ Weird place.

Chris Quinten, who played Brian Tilsley in
Coronation Street
, was staying there at the same time as us, trying to make it in LA as a movie actor. He must have heard our accents, but I don’t think he had a clue who we actually were, because when we clocked him and said, ‘All right?’ he just blanked us. I thought, ‘You cheeky bastard!’

Within a few days of being in LA, we got to know the kids out there, mostly Mancs and Scousers, who were running all the early raves there and dealing the E. There were a lot of them out in LA then; there still are. Back then some of them were grafters, but some of them were just hairdressers or something, who sold a few pills and put on raves on the side. We even got to the stage with these kids where they would ask us who they should let in on the door and who they shouldn’t. One night Chris Quinten turned up trying to
get
in and I was like, ‘Well, he isn’t coming in for a start, because he dissed us.’ Then he was running round asking everyone, ‘Why don’t them lot like me?’ Why don’t we like you? Well, we tried to be nice and say ‘All right?’ to you, and you blanked us. Now you want to come to all these raves? Do one.

What made me laugh, as well, was when the Yank kids would come up chatting to us, and they didn’t have a fucking clue. They’d be going, ‘Hey man, I believe you all even starting raving over in England now, huh?’ I just thought, ‘You bunch of dicks, we’ve been at it for years. All these raves you go to, which you think is
your
scene, are organized by Mancs and Scousers.’ They didn’t have a clue.

Bez got introduced to Julia Roberts one of the first nights we were there, but he didn’t really know who she was. I remember him coming over to me and saying, ‘X, do you know who Julie Rouberts is? That’s her over there and she’s got a bodyguard called Evil.’ I said, ‘Yeah, you know who she is.’ Bez said, ‘No, I don’t.’ I said, ‘You know that film that we watched on the plane on the way coming over,
Pretty Woman
? That’s Julia Roberts.’ Bez was like, ‘Oh, yeah. I think she fancies me.’ I think she did. She ended up going out to her car to get her driving licence to prove to Bez that she was Julia Roberts. Nothing happened between them, though. I think Bez got on better with her bodyguard, Evil.

We used to hang out all over. Venice Beach was still quite heavy back then; it didn’t start getting cleaned up until the mid-90s. We went to Johnny Depp’s club, the Viper Room, where River Phoenix later died. Oakey also had a residency at a club on Friday nights and we used to go down there a bit. I’ve hung out all over LA. When I was back there later, with Black Grape, I used to go to Billy Idol’s wife’s place, which was up where Danny Saber, who became part of Black Grape, lives.

While we were recording
Pills ’n’ Thrills
there was this lad hanging round the studio for a few days, a Scouser, who just seemed dead normal and pretty cool, and we didn’t clock who he was. It was only after a few days that we realized it was Ian Astbury from the Cult. Obviously we were aware of the Cult, but we thought they were slightly glamorous LA-style rockers. We didn’t know that Ian was actually a Scouser. You couldn’t really tell, because he looked the part and fitted so well into that LA scene. I really liked him. I haven’t seen him much since, but back then he seemed quite cool.

I’ve never been tempted to move to LA full time. Over the years I’ve done stints when I’ve had to be there for months and months at a time, usually for recording purposes, and I’m always quite glad to get out of there. Particularly because of the game that I’m in, which is full of bullshit. We spent quite a bit of time out there with Black Grape, because we had American management and were signed to an American label. We did some music for films, because Gary Kurfirst, who signed Black Grape, was quite plugged into that world, and we got taken round the film sets and introduced to everyone. That world is so fake and transparent. It’s like, ‘Hey, here comes Tom!
Hey Tommy
! You gotta meet Tom, he’s such a great guy!!’ Then you might be in a restaurant five days later and Tommy walks in, but all of a sudden he’s not hot any more and everyone’s whispering, ‘Hey, Tommy just walked in. Don’t look at him,’ as if he suddenly smells of shit. From hero to zero. Six days later he’s hot again, and everyone’s like, ‘
Hey, Tommy
! Great to see you man.
Looking good
!’ It used to do my fucking nut in.

Even though we were in Los Angeles in the sun, and we were still quite young, all in our mid- to late twenties, we were actually quite hard-working on
Pills ’n’ Thrills
. Of course we were going out partying as well, but we did really knuckle
down
in the studio – as we did for
Bummed
with Hannett, even though we were totally off our heads on the E, and as we’d done with
Squirrel
and John Cale. When it came down to work time, we were still really focused on the job in hand when we were in the studio.

I think we had six tracks already written and demoed when we arrived in Los Angeles, stuff that we’d written back in Manchester, and the other tracks – songs like ‘Loose Fit’ – started from beats that Oakey and Osborne had, which we then worked up into full songs. Those beats from Oakey and Osborne played a massive part in shaping the sound of
Pills ’n’ Thrills
. I knew from ‘Jibaro’ the sound that I wanted to get from us working with them, to marry that Balearic beat with the Mondays sound, and they gave it to me. I generally only need a bass line and/or drums to start getting ideas to write with, so working with those beats was perfect to me. It was a really pleasurable experience making
Pills ’n’ Thrills
, from start to finish. It just worked so well, and I was really confident in what we were producing.