Twisting My Melon (9 page)

As we hung out around Phil Saxe’s stall, I got chatting to him more and more, and I discovered that he was a pretty cool guy. He was a north Manchester Jewish market stallholder, but he was also one of the original DJs at the Twisted Wheel, and had been one of the original mods and soul boys. It turned out that he knew people in the music scene, including Mike Pickering, who was in charge of A&R at Factory and was an old family friend. When I realized Phil was connected and had an in at Factory, it was a pretty obvious decision to ask him to manage us. I gave him one of our demo tapes and he came down to see
us
rehearse. I don’t think my dad was best pleased at first, because he wanted to manage us, but I knew we needed more of a professional, someone from the outside, and although Phil hadn’t managed a band before, he had connections. He seemed like someone who could make things happen and hopefully introduce us to Factory. There was still a place for my old fella, though, absolutely, and over time he kind of became Phil’s right-hand man.

We then got this rehearsal space on Adelphi Street in Salford, in an old mill, which has been knocked down now. We didn’t realize when we first started rehearsing there, but there was a hidden back room where they used to have bare-knuckle fighting. One day I was going to pay the geezer who ran it, to give him his rent, and I went behind the bar and discovered a door in the wall. It was a weird, small door, which was raised off the ground – you know like you would get on a ferry? I opened it and inside it was like something you see in a film – a dingy room full of smoke, and two blokes bare-knuckle fighting, going right at it, and all these geezers stood round betting on it.

Me and Bull ended up splitting up towards the end of 1984. We had been married for going on two years, but she’d grown up and we’d grown apart. It was obvious to both of us we were going our separate ways. It wasn’t too painful a wrench for either of us, because it was so apparent that we now wanted completely different things, and different lives. We were only kids when we got married and we didn’t really know who we were, what we were doing or what we wanted. You don’t at that age, do you? The last I heard, which was at least fifteen years ago now, she was living in Wales and married to an airforce pilot. Which is probably what she wanted, really.

After we split up I started taking some trips to Amsterdam.
Since
the late 70s lads I knew had been going to the Dam, so I would jib across there on the ferry for a few days whenever I got a little bit of dough. On one occasion I came back on the Magic Bus from the Dam to Manchester and I got pulled at Dover. I only had a few porno mags on me and some weed, but the bastards charged me with importation of pornography and marijuana, charges which would cause me complications a few years later with visas, especially with America.

After I split with Bull, I got myself a flat in Boothstown in Salford, which is just past Worsley, off the East Lancs. I’d just come out of my marriage and had my own gaff, so I had a couple of wild months there and that flat saw all sorts of activity. I was still really skint, but I found ways to get by, making a few quid here and there, doing small deals. We were still rehearsing hard with the band, at the rehearsal space next to the bare-knuckle fighters, and trying to get more gigs and get noticed.

That’s when I first met Mark Berry – Bez. I’d heard about him before and people kept telling me I should meet him, then one day a kid I knew called Minny, who did a bit of wheeling and dealing, was dropping something off at the flat and Bez was with him in the car. I knew him by reputation, as he had just done a short term in Strangeways Youth for stealing. I didn’t want him coming in the flat because I didn’t want any more dodgy characters hanging around as I was selling a bit of gear. But we exchanged a brief hello that day. Then, shortly after, we met properly, really got on, and pretty quickly started hanging out and spending a lot of time together. Bez is Bez, you know. He’s a maniac. He’s a force of nature and creates chaos everywhere he goes. But there’s a very likeable side to him, and he’s great company, especially if you’re going out getting wasted.

Bez started crashing round at my flat and so did Our Paul. Sometimes the only thing we could afford to get a buzz off was
a
tube of gas. Then someone told us about these sleeping pills and downers that you could get on prescription from the doctor, so we did quite a few of those, because they were free. It was pretty easy to get them from the doctor. Listen, if you were on the dole, living in a shit-hole of a dirty flat in Salford in the early 80s and went to your doctor and told him you were depressed, he wasn’t going to question it, was he? Anyone could get depressed in that situation. I don’t really look back on that really skint period through rose-tinted glasses. Some of the prescription drugs were quite trippy, and one of them literally sent you to sleep for a couple of days. We would sometimes take those if it was a couple of days before our dole was due, just so we could wake up a couple of days later when we would have some money.

When we did go out, me and Bez would often walk in to the Haçienda from Boothstown, which is about eight miles. We would set off in the afternoon and stop off at the pubs on the way. We had a scam going, which I’m not proud of. We would get chatting to birds at a pub table. Bez would chat them up, while I slipped my shoes off and got their purses out of their handbags with my toes. I would take the money out of their purses and then sneak them back into their handbags. I would try and make sure they had enough money left to get a taxi home, but it’s still not something I’m proud of.

Around this time I started seeing a girl called Susan Bradbury, Suzy. I had first met Suzy when she was going out with one of my mates, Si Davis, who worked in Oasis. They would come down to the early youth club gigs and to watch us practise, and then when they split up I ended up with her. Suzy was great – she was really cool. She was blonde and she looked Swedish, or like a Dutch porn star. She worked as a secretary at some place on an industrial estate, and after we started seeing each other she moved into my flat in Boothstown. Bez
and
Our Paul had been crashing there a lot, but they had to get out then, although Bez was still round there quite a bit. He had a flat in Eccles that his grandparents were paying for, to help him back on his feet after he’d got out of Strangeways. Because I had Suzy living with me, I used to say, ‘Come on, Bez, you’ve got to get off.’ But to get home he had to walk down a really long road, which was pretty deserted, and if we’d been tripping and watching vampire films or something he wouldn’t want to go home, because he’d be shitting it walking down that road, thinking that vampires were coming to get him. We were doing a lot of acid then. A lot of microdots. I remember watching
Watership Down
one day on acid, and both of us ended up crying.

Eventually, Mike Pickering at Factory heard our first demo through Phil Saxe. He says now that I sound quite different on it, a bit like Feargal Sharkey. That’s probably because I was still trying to impersonate Ian Curtis a bit. We’d only done about five or six gigs at that stage, but through Mike we were invited to play a battle of the bands at the Haçienda. That was the very first time Bez ever got on stage with Happy Mondays. I remember saying to him, ‘Just get up on stage and do what you’re doing.’ He would be in front of the stage or the side of the stage anyway, so I just told him to get up there with us. I knew we needed something else in the band. We were sounding better and starting to write some half-decent songs, but I knew there was something missing. This kid was a character. Bez was into his drugs and his music, and I needed a sidekick on stage. I’ve never run about on stage – I’ve always been pretty static, and the rest of the band were hardly very rock ’n’ roll in their performance.

Bez didn’t invent his way of dancing when he got up on stage with the Mondays that night. That’s just how Bez dances.
That
’s how he’s always danced. That’s how he walks. He would dance like that all the time, even if he was in a gaff that was just playing cheesy chart music. He would dance like that when he was straight, if he was ever straight. Gaz Whelan got it – he understood. I think the rest of the lads just thought it looked ridiculous. But after that night Bez was in the band.

Mike Pickering was really into the Mondays. He got us more than other people on Factory at first. And he understood Bez. The other Factory directors, Wilson, Alan Erasmus and Rob Gretton (New Order’s manager and Pickering’s best mate), had pretty much given him licence to sign any band he really believed in, so he was pretty key to us joining Factory. Wilson also wanted us on the label, but at first that was more about him being into the fact that we were a gang of working-class lads from Salford than about the actual music. There was no big signing session when we joined, because there was nothing to sign – Factory didn’t do contracts. It wasn’t like joining a major label. But it was a massive deal to us, even though, in a way, nothing much changed and it only seemed real when we released a record.

Early on we played a gig in Leeds, supporting New Order, and it kicked off. Loads of Leeds fans turned up at the gig and started giving it out. I’m on stage singing, and these Leeds lot are all right in front of me, and they’re all pointing at my trainers and laughing. I was wearing a pair of white Adidas with blue stripes; I can’t remember what they’re called. They’d only cost me £12, but they sell them now as Adidas Originals at £70 or something. But basically I had all these Leeds lot laughing at me, but they were all wearing Doc shoes and stuff like that, so I just thought, ‘And you’re laughing at me, you cunts?’ One of them jumped on stage and Bez just laid into him.

We did end up making friends with some of the Leeds lot later, and some of them ended up in a band called the Bridewell Taxis after seeing us. (Bridewell Taxis was the nickname for the police vans that would nick people in Leeds.) They were just football heads who then decided to get into being in a band, and they supported us when we played Leeds Warehouse in 1989.

We didn’t get an advance or anything when we joined Factory, but we really tried to keep our noses clean and stay out of trouble. Which wasn’t easy, because we were so skint and there was a temptation to try and make some money on the side. You never want to get caught when you’re up to something, but once we were with Factory we really did think we had a chance and we thought it would be over if we got nicked, so we were on best behaviour. People would ask me to look after stuff for them. They would give us a bit of money to look after a nine bar of weed for a bit, or give us a few grams of heroin and say, ‘Try and sell that if you can.’ They knew damn well I’d end up taking some of it and then owe them money and have to sell some heroin for them to pay them back. I’d stick the heroin out of sight in the loft, but then I’d have a few drinks and end up tapping into it anyway.

After we joined Factory, Tony Wilson would phone up my flat and ask us to come into town to drop him off some coke or some weed. He wasn’t a big cokehead, Tony, but he did like a smoke. He generally kept his distance from us at first, though. I think the Stockholm Monsters had frightened him to death a bit, so he kept away from us. The Stockholm Monsters were a bit like us, really – just a bunch of lads. The bass player was a grafter from Blackley and a mate of Antony Murray, or Muzzer, who later became our tour manager and a best mate of mine.

Pretty soon after we joined Factory we were given a couple of dates supporting New Order. I think Mike Pickering organized that with Rob Gretton, their manager and Factory director, because they were best mates and sharing a flat at the time in Rusholme Gardens.

When we first went out with New Order I loved being on a big stage with a decent PA. We supported them on two dates – at Maxwell Hall in Salford, which is part of Salford University, and at Macclesfield Leisure Centre. We’d only done about six or seven gigs and we were supporting fucking New Order. It didn’t feel like we weren’t ready. We were living our dream, so we just went out there and did our best. We always got a decent reception wherever we played with New Order, because a lot of the people who came were fans of Factory in general, so they were intrigued and wanted to check us out because we were the new band on the label. New Order had just finished
Low-Life
, which is maybe not their best album, although it did open with ‘Love Vigilantes’, which is a great song.

It didn’t bother me, making that step up to bigger venues with New Order; in fact I much preferred playing on a proper stage, with a larger gap between you and the audience. Once you start doing venues of that size, everything becomes a bit removed. I prefer playing bigger venues really, because when you’re on stage it doesn’t seem real. Playing small, intimate venues is more real to me and much more like proper, hard rock ’n’ roll work – venues like Corbieres, a small cellar bar in Manchester, or Hull Adelphi, which was basically two terraced houses knocked through, and you were actually playing in the front room. In tiny venues like that there’s no stage and the audience is literally a foot away, staring at you. That’s hard work. That’s where you learn your craft, doing those tiny venues, that’s what beats you into shape as a band. I find playing the Manchester Evening News Arena or the O2 or
somewhere
much easier. When you’re thirty feet up in the air on stage it seems more showbiz, so you don’t feel a dick being rock ’n’ roll. I don’t care if there are 15,000 or 17,000 people out there. That doesn’t bother me; it’s not an issue. It’s more scary when you’ve got 150 or 170 people in a small room, right up to you, in your face, when you’re trying to be rock ’n’ roll. I can see why punters like those intimate gigs, obviously, and if I could go and see the Rolling Stones play a tiny venue like that it would be fucking brilliant. I understand that. But actually playing small gigs like that myself I find terrifying.

After the New Order support gigs we went in to record our debut single, ‘Delightful’, for Factory. We recorded it at Strawberry Studios with Mike Pickering producing. I like Mike and I think he really did get the Mondays, but for me that recording session just didn’t work. Looking back, I don’t think we were nearly ready to record. It wasn’t Mike’s fault. We didn’t know how the recording process worked and we didn’t understand what a producer did, really; I just thought a producer recorded you. If you’d shown me a mixing desk back then, I’d have thought it was something you cut sheet metal on.