Twisting My Melon (8 page)

If you got to eighteen and you weren’t driving, you became a real postman. You didn’t necessarily have a round; you could be on indoor sorting. I did a bit of time in Newton Street, bit of time on Kings Road in Old Trafford, and then I ended up in Walkden, which was where I got the sack. I had a round then, and one day I clocked the IB following me. They knew I was pulling scams and were determined to catch me. So when I got to the end of a cul de sac I knocked on the door of a house
where
I knew the owners, explained I was being followed, and they let me jib through the house and out the back, while the IB were still waiting for me outside.

I used to take acid before I went out on my round sometimes, and another postie had already grassed me up for that. I had a lot of enemies at the post office by this stage, people who were pissed off that I was getting away with murder. The final straw was one day when I was tripping my box off on my round again. There was a little horrible mongrel dog at a pub on my walk, and every time you tried to deliver the mail to the pub it would attack you and try and bite you, ‘Yap! Yap! Yap!’ This particular morning I was on acid, this little pissing dog tried to bite me again and I just flipped and thought, ‘You know what? I’ve had enough of you,
you little fucker
!’ and picked it up and bit the thing. I bit the fucking dog and it yelped, then I threw it over the fence. Someone saw it and reported me, so I was up for that and for taking drugs. They suspended me on full pay for a few weeks – it might even have been a couple of months – while I was waiting for some hearing, but I knew what was coming, and sure enough they sacked me.

After I got the sack from the post office, I decided to hustle about on the dole and spend more time on the band. Denise wasn’t too happy with that, obviously. She was working behind the counter in the post office in Swinton and she’d come home to find me and the band and a few other pals listening to music, smoking weed and dropping acid. I was the first one of our lot to get a house, so everyone would pop round to get stoned. Denise would come home and see us all off our heads, drinking cans of beer, and go mental. She really was like a fucking raging bull, so I started calling her Bull.

Bull hated me smoking weed, and hated it even more when I used to do little deals to make a bit of extra cash. I started to go to Moss Side now and again to buy a few ounces of weed,
which
I’d split and then knock out in fiver bags. Once I had a mound of it on my glass coffee table when all of a sudden there’s a knock at the door and I look out the window and there’s two coppers standing there. Not bobbies on the beat, or from a Panda car – these were high-ranking bobbies.
Fuck
. My arse absolutely went because I thought it was coming on top. If you don’t know what ‘coming on top’ means, it’s kind of a generic saying for when you’re in the middle of a situation that is in danger of getting out of hand; either you’re about to get rumbled for something or it’s about to kick off. Either way, if things are coming on top you have to deal with it.

I closed the living room door to try and stop the smell getting out, and answered the front door to see what they wanted. It turned out all they were doing was going from door to door advising people on security because there had been a few robberies in the area, so I just listened politely to them and then they fucked off.

I never told Bull half of what was going on in that house. Half the deposit and the mortgage payments on our house had originally come from scams at the post office. As far as she was concerned they were savings, but I never told her dick.

After Ian Curtis had died, Joy Division had become New Order, adding Stephen Morris’s girlfriend Gillian Gilbert on keyboards. Joy Division had never made it to America, but New Order were really influenced by their early trips to New York and its dance scene, and their time there working with people like the producer Arthur Baker. Together with Factory Records, New Order decided to open a nightclub in Manchester based on New York clubs such as Danceteria and Paradise Garage. They called it The Haçienda, which they took from a situationist quote, and it opened on 21 May 1982, the night before my wedding.

New Order were the main band on Factory at the time and a lot of the money that was spent opening the club and keeping it going in the early years came from their pocket, as Hooky never lets anyone forget. The Haçienda couldn’t have been more different to the other clubs in Manchester, like Rotters and Oscars, which were all proper old-school nightclubs. Oscars even had tablecloths on the tables. The Haçi just felt super cool in comparison. I’d never been to New York, so it felt more German or European to me at first. It was a huge futuristic warehouse space, and even though it could be quite empty and draughty some nights, you knew it was an important place; it felt like a place where things could happen.

Our Paul went to the opening night, and probably went more than me at first – he was really into going and watching bands there. I would go with him and saw some great early gigs, like the Smiths, Orange Juice and Nico, but I was also doing other things, and I was still married.

When I did start to go regularly, I would see musicians from Factory like Barney or Hooky from New Order in there, but I never mithered them. I thought New Order were great, but I was never one of those who went up talking to people I didn’t really know, and I certainly wasn’t going to ask anyone for an autograph. Even when we eventually joined Factory and I became a bit friendly with Barney, I would never ask him questions or advice about being in a band.

Our next gig was a battle of the bands in Blackpool. My dad had found out about it through someone at the post office. It was in this weird venue with a kind of tinsel gold backdrop – a proper cabaret type of club, real
Phoenix Nights
tackle. We had put a few of our own songs in the set by then. They had terrible titles like ‘Comfort and Joy’ and ‘Red’, and they never saw the light of day, but they were a start. Someone actually emailed my manager, Warren, recently, saying, ‘I bought this
demo
tape off Paul Davis who said it was an early Happy Mondays demo. These are the songs on it. Is it real?’ and just by looking at the song titles I could tell it was. PD had obviously kept the early demos and photographs, then sold them to some obsessive Mondays fan.

We actually managed to record a couple of demos in the days when we were rehearsing at All Saints primary school, because my dad had bought a four-track from Johnny Roadhouse in town, one of those four-tracks that comes in a suitcase. He helped us record those demos. ‘Comfort and Joy’ and ‘Red’ were on the first one, then the later one had songs like ‘The Egg’ and ‘Delightful’. By this stage, we were taking the band pretty seriously, practising quite religiously twice a week and beginning to think we might be able to make something of it. I think even my dad thought we were good, or at least thought we had
something
.

It was when I was married to Bull that I took heroin properly for the first time. I’d had my first taste of it in blowbacks, just round at people’s houses at a party or whatever. The other person would smoke it, sucking it in through a tube, and then blow it back into your mouth through the tube. It’s not as strong a buzz. It’s like a second-hand heroin buzz.

The first time I smoked it myself properly was one night when Bull had gone to bingo with her mam. Me and a mate decided to get some gear that night, and we didn’t have that much dough, so we only got a fiver’s worth each. We were both up for it, neither of us pushed the other one into it. Smack then, in late 1982, was actually easier to get than weed or hash at some points, because it had come flooding in. Sometimes it seemed like everyone had heroin but hardly anyone had hash.

When you first do heroin, you either love it or hate it. Even if it makes you sick, which happens to a lot of people the first
time
they take it, the chances are you will probably have it again, because you enjoy it after your stomach calms down. But when I smoked it that night, I straight away had this instant sort of Ready Brek glow, this invincible ‘I don’t give a fuck’ feeling.

My mate smoked his and just completely passed out and puked while he was unconscious. Which wasn’t ideal, because watching him gurgle on his vomit was ruining my nice buzz.

I then clocked the time and realized I had to go and pick up Bull from fucking bingo, which was a right ball-ache. In the end I had to get hold of my mate, who was still passed out, drag him out to my car and stick him in the back seat while I went and picked up Bull. Her mam wasn’t with her, thank God. I was driving a 120Y Datsun at the time, which looked a bit like Starsky and Hutch’s car, except it was a Datsun and a sort of mustardy colour. So not quite as cool as Starsky and Hutch.

I don’t think Bull knew I’d done heroin that night. She clocked I was wasted, that was fucking obvious because I was still pinned the next day, but I think she just thought I’d been smoking a load of weed or hash. I was still definitely wary of getting involved with the gear. I knew it was serious tackle, because it had been set in my head as a little kid when we were told by the police when they came to our school how addictive and dangerous it was. I was like ‘Woooaahh, I’ve got to be
really
careful what I’m playing with here.’ Especially as I’d already seen mates sucked in. There were quite a few of my pals who were at it, big time. My best mate at the time had gone from smoking to digging in a matter of weeks and you could see the effect on him. He didn’t smile or dance any more. It was horrible to watch.

That’s what we called injecting – ‘digging’ – and people who were injecting were called ‘diggers’. I was never under the illusion that heroin wasn’t quite as bad if you smoked it – I’ve
never
deluded myself like that. I’m just not a needle fan. I don’t think it’s macho or sexy to stick needles in your arm, so I was never going to be a digger. But once you could smoke it, then it seemed much more doable. It seemed an easier decision: ‘OK, I’ll have a go.’ It was months before I tried heroin again, and even then I only had it a couple of times before I left it out altogether for a couple of years.

Obviously by the time the Mondays split most of the band had one vice or another. Eventually we were all either doing cocaine, taking heroin or smoking crack. Everyone, apart from Gaz Whelan. But at the same time they were
all
saying to me, ‘This band’s getting ruined because
you’re
taking heroin and
you’re
smoking crack and
you’re
doing this.’ All of them pointing the finger at me. But we’ll get to that later.

After the battle of the bands we played another couple of gigs that my dad sorted out in youth and working men’s clubs around Salford and Bolton. But we didn’t want to be playing those types of places for ever, as no one was going to spot us playing a youth club in Bolton. I knew we needed to be going the other direction, into town. We got our first gig in Manchester at the Gallery, which was at the corner of Peter Street and Deansgate. The Gallery could be a bit moody, but all those gaffs that were late-night joints back then were like that – places such as the Cyprus Tavern, opposite Legends on Princess Street. We used to go to the Gallery on Saturday nights, when they played a lot of black music.

Our Matt did a poster advertising the gig; it was the first artwork he ever did for the Mondays. He used a photograph of a United fan from the 50s, a kid with a side parting and an old-school short back and sides, who looked like a very early Perry Boy. Me and Our Paul, PD and Gaz fly-posted them all over town.

It was a midweek night and there were about forty people there, mostly our mates. Lloyd Cole and the Commotions were supposed to be playing that night, but they’d just had a hit, so they cancelled. That gig at the Gallery was the first time we got listed in the
Manchester Evening News
, which made it seem a bit more real. Not that the paper ever helped us at all when we were starting out. It made me laugh years later when the
Evening News
journalist Mick Middles wrote a book about me and the Mondays, as he was one of those who always ignored us. Even when ecstasy took off and they had this bloody cultural revolution on their doorstep, it took the national press to write about it first before the
Evening News
realized what was going on.

The only journalist in Manchester who was interested was Andy Spinoza from
City Life
magazine and he was a fucking Cockney! He approached us after our first album came out, in the Haçienda I think, but he was the only local journalist who had a clue. Later on, when the rest of them cottoned on, the
Manchester Evening News
would moan if we didn’t talk to them or if we gave an interview to someone else. ‘Why are you speaking to them? Why aren’t you speaking to us? We’re your local paper.’ I tell you why not. It’s because you fucking ignored us for years, and now you’re only interested in us because everyone else is.

By the time we played the Gallery we were aiming to get a deal. We used to send off loads of demos. We wanted to sign to Factory, because we were big fans of Joy Division and New Order, but we would have signed to anyone who would have had us. Apparently Our Paul put a demo tape through Hooky’s door. I’m not sure I remember that, but after he passed his driving test Our Paul was a driver on the mini-vans, delivering telegrams, so he would go all over Manchester. If he did find
out
where Hooky lived, he probably would have put a tape through their door.

Around 1983 we started hanging around Phil Saxe’s stall on the underground market in Manchester, which was on Brown Street, just off Market Street. It’s all gone now, but it was basically just by where the Tesco’s is on Market Street. Phil had a really cool stall. He had loads of decent gear, so we would hang about there because we were into our clobber. We were the first lot to start wearing flares, and we would get them off Phil. We used to ask him to get them in for us – 17-inch, 18-inch, 19-inch.

We were hanging out at the Haçienda more by this time, but it was just full of students. This was still way before ecstasy hit. The only people I would say who were in there wearing flares were our lot and Steve Cressa (who later became the Stone Roses’ ‘vibemeister’ for a bit – their version of Bez), this other kid who had done an armed robbery, and Eric Barker. Eric was a great kid from Ancoats, who was a bit of a man about town and had a second-hand clothes shop in Afflecks Palace back then, but went on to put on loads of parties round town later, when the E kicked in. His little brother Andy used to DJ with his pal Darren Partington as the Spinmasters, and they later went on to be in 808 State.