What Planet Am I On? (3 page)

There was a good documentary made about it a couple
of years ago called
DMT: The Spirit Molecule
, which is on Netflix and well worth watching. In the documentary, they have scientists who talk about taking DMT and going on trips out to the universe. They’re also talking about how they might use it in medical science as well. They all agree it’s much more than a drug experience. It opens your mind and helps you understand life and death and all sorts. Lots of people who’ve taken it say you can see the life around plants, almost like the aura of plants.

DMT seems like a really positive thing to me, but the thing is when you’re prepared for that sort of trip then you’re ready for it, aren’t you? You get yourself in the right mindset. But when you’re just at a festival and someone passes you something and you don’t know what it is, you just think it’s something relatively harmless, so you crack on and then you don’t know what’s fucking hit you. BOOOOOM! All of a sudden we were in this really, really intense psychotropic mind-bending trip, which was much deeper and more intense than any acid I’ve ever taken. We were certain we could read each other’s minds. We were sat there in this room, absolutely out of it, convinced we were mind-reading, like a scene straight out of a sci-fi film.

I was sat there looking at Johnny, and in my head I’m thinking, ‘Right, I’m not talking now, Johnny, OK? And you’re not talking either, but nod if you can understand me . . .’

And Johnny nodded, which was just fucking mind-blowing.

Thing is, in reality I was saying all this out loud. We only
thought
we weren’t talking.

Then Johnny would do the same to me. He was thinking, ‘Right, now let’s see if you can read my mind. Nod if you can understand me, Shaun.’ And I thought I could hear what he was thinking, so I nodded, and it just blew our minds. The DMT had fucked us up so much we thought we had super powers.

I have a really, really strong mind when it comes to hallucinogenics and things. When me and Bez first met we spent a year doing acid together every day, and I always had a strong enough mind to separate what was tripping and what was real life. Even when me and Bez would be tripping in the fields, and we were looking up at the clouds which were turning into Greek gods and climbing down out of the sky and talking to us – even then I had a strong enough mind to say, ‘No, this is a trip, this is not really happening.’ And even then we never saw a UFO.

But that incident with the DMT in Germany even threw me for a bit. That DMT stuff was something else. But as I say, that night was just a weird drug experience more than anything. So even though we thought we might have experienced some kind of alien mind-fuck that night, I’d definitely put anything out of the ordinary that happened down to the chemicals.

The reason I’m telling you all this is that I want to make it absolutely clear that despite what people might think, my interest in UFOs is nothing to do with drug
experiences. It predates that, it goes back to when I was a kid, and it’s still with me now, long after I’ve stopped partying like I used to.

I’VE GOT A
pretty inquisitive mind. I wouldn’t say I’m a conspiracy theorist, but I definitely don’t believe everything that the government or the media tell us either. I don’t believe what politicians or the authorities are telling us half the time. And I don’t believe half the stories you read about so-called celebrities, so I definitely don’t believe everything that’s said, or not said, about UFOs or the existence of life out there.

I find it funny when individuals get into power and they’re really interested to find out more about UFOs. I tend to find whoever it is, be it the President of America or the British Prime Minister, gets into office and says, ‘Right, show me the UFO file.’ Then it generally goes quiet – you never hear anything after that. One of two things happens: either they keep knocking on doors and
getting no answer, because even if you’re the President or the Prime Minister there’s some top secret department who won’t give up all their secrets to you. Or perhaps sometimes they do go, ‘Here y’are then, here’s the UFO file’, and Obama or Tony Blair or whoever it is goes, ‘Bloody hell, right-o, maybe we better keep schtum about this.’

Either way, once they get in power, they seem to keep quiet about it.

Most people know about the most famous UFO occurrences like the Roswell incident. That was what kicked off popular UFO culture, if you like. Roswell is to ufology what Elvis at Sun Studios is to rock’n’roll, you know what I mean? Ever since then, the public has been fascinated by UFOs. Since I first heard about the Roswell case, I’ve been gripped by it.

My opinion on Roswell has changed over time. I’ve always been open to suggestions and up for learning more about possible theories on UFOs, which is one of the reasons I wanted to make the TV series and write this book. I watched one programme about Roswell that made a good case for suggesting it was all tied up with the beginnings of the cold war and nuclear power, and the Americans were trying to explain away new technology they were developing. There’s also the other explanation they came up with that it was some new-fangled weather balloon that confused the fuck out of the people who found it because they had never seen such an advanced material, so they thought it was something from another
planet. It seemed a pretty convincing argument, and I was having it. But then I did also like the argument that it was a bit of a blag by the Americans to cover up some nuclear experiment – that they would rather have the general public half believing there was a UFO cover-up than the Russians finding out what was really going on, which was that they were developing some new spy plane technology or something. So for a while I was more inclined to believe that perhaps it was a US military cover-up of some kind and the whole alien thing was just a smokescreen.

Then I saw another documentary which showed some other evidence and a new way of looking at it, which made me think again and come back round to thinking, ‘Nah, something definitely happened at Roswell. There was definitely some contact with an alien race that those fuckers in charge don’t want us knowing about.’ Nurses who worked there later came out and swore blind that they were there when autopsies were done on little bodies. So that’s where I’m at now with Roswell. I’m back to thinking that something
definitely
went down there.

When the US started their ‘Star Wars’ programme under Ronald Reagan, obviously your average man on the street got even more interested in what was happening out there in space. Now they’ve abandoned it, but I don’t think that’s stopped the general public’s interest.

I think young kids are particularly fascinated by UFOs. Especially now they’re not being told, like I
was, that there is
no
life out there; they’re being taught that water has been found on Mars, and that there
may
be life out there somewhere and that there are planets similar to Earth, that could sustain life, being discovered all the time.

I talk to my kids about UFOs and whether there is other life out there, just as my dad used to talk to me when I was a kid. I’ve talked to them about what I’ve seen. Their response was, ‘Why were they here, Dad?’ I said, ‘They’re probably coming to check up on us, to see how we’re doing, to make sure we’re all right.’ And they were happy with that. I also talk to my wife Joanne about it, and she’s very much of the same opinion as me that there is definitely life out there.

If you look back at history, most things that humans have thought about have gone on to be invented. Most things that you think about become reality. Someone thought about photography one day and then it became real. Someone thought about moving pictures one day and it became real. Someone thought about landing on the moon, it became real.

That sort of stuff fascinates me – how the mind works and changes reality. Like the cat-in-the-box theory. It’s called the Schrödinger’s cat theory. It’s a bit too complex for me to explain, but look it up – it’s to do with our influence on everything around us and how we affect reality.

I think we’re all aerials or antennae in a way, and we all tune into and pick up signals from people who are similar to us, and we attract people who think in the same way and believe the same sort of things. That’s how we end up getting drawn to certain people. With Happy Mondays, our drummer Gaz Whelan was always bang into UFO sort of stuff, and we would chat about it for hours when we were on tour. Bez also has a really inquisitive mind. I’m sure you all know the boggle-eyed caricature of Bez, which everyone loves, but anyone who’s ever sat down and had a chat with Bez, when he’s not off his head, will tell you that he’s a really intelligent and inquisitive guy. He contradicts himself all the time, on everything and anything, often in the same sentence. But he’s an interested, and interesting, dude.

Like I said earlier, Kermit from Black Grape is also fascinated by things like this, which is one of the things we bonded over. Well, along with the fact that we both had quite healthy drug habits at the time. Too Nice Tom, a good friend of mine who is a boxing trainer and directed
The Grape Tapes
, a film about Black Grape, is the same. Too Nice Tom is another geezer who has a very inquisitive mind, and me and him could sit there all day talking and debating about all kinds of things.

I began to investigate more for myself when I started using the internet and sites like YouTube over the last few years. I only became internet friendly, or computer-literate I suppose would be the proper term for it, about four years ago. I never had a bloody computer until I
was forty-five. They didn’t exist when we were kids, obviously. The first arcades had started coming out that had
Space Invaders
and
Pac Man
and that, but not home computers. Then when I was in a band for twenty years, touring the world, I never really needed a computer. When you’re in a band you have a tour manager who organizes everything for you and basically runs your life. You don’t need to be going on the internet and checking your flight times or anything. All we needed to do was try to be in hotel reception for whatever time and a car would be there to pick us up.

I remember way back in 1995, when the first Black Grape album came out, me and Kermit had to go down to London and do a load of press interviews and stuff. That was the first time we had to do any press involving the internet. One of the things that we had to do was record one of the first podcasts. I don’t think the word podcast had even been invented then, but that’s basically what it was, an interview with some geezer that was only put out online, so I suppose it was one of the first podcasts, even if some trendy marketing genius hadn’t come up with the actual term yet. The other thing we had to do was a question-and-answer session online with some fans. Some techie guy set us up online and the first thing me and Kermit thought was, ‘Bingo, let’s talk to girls. Where are the girls?’

I first started to use the internet by myself when I got a phone that had access to the internet on it. This was probably about 2004. At first I just used it for texting.
It took me a little while to get up to speed with that. I remember being on tour with the Mondays in 2006 in the States and we got stopped by the cops, just a routine check, and this cop smacked me on the hand with his truncheon because I was stood there in front of him with my phone in my hand, texting. I couldn’t believe it, the cheeky bastard. For once I knew I hadn’t even done anything wrong. But the Americans were slower than us to get on to the texting lark, so this cop didn’t even know what texting was. I said, ‘Ow, what the
fuck
are you doing you
dick
? I’m just texting!’ He just saw me with my hand in front of my pants, fiddling around with something, and he made some ridiculous remark about my ‘lewd behaviour’. Fuck knows what he thought I was up to but I got a fucking smack on the hand with a truncheon. Nice one. But I’ve learnt over the years with American cops that their interpretation of what’s going on is more important than what is actually happening. It might look to everyone else like you’re not doing anything wrong, but if the cop that’s in your face interprets it a different way, then you’d better watch out.

After I got the hang of texting, a bit later someone showed me how you could go online, so I started using YouTube and stuff. Then someone showed me how you could use Google to look something up – just type in a name or something and it would show you all the results – and then a bit after that I got a computer at home.

I’m not on Facebook or Twitter or any of that nonsense, though. I can’t be doing with all the social
media gear. Why would you want to be telling the whole world your personal business like that? You must be crazy to do that. My privacy gets invaded enough, thank you very much. I don’t mind doing all the press and TV that comes with the job – in fact, I quite enjoy a lot of it – but the last thing I can imagine doing is sticking a load of personal photos and info up there on the internet for everyone to look at, telling people what you had for tea. You don’t know what Facebook or whoever is doing with that information anyway, as all this recent business with the US government shows. We live in enough of a surveillance society as it is; they’ve got enough info on us all without us giving them a load for free. There are Shaun Ryder pages that are looked after by my management, letting people know about forthcoming gigs and stuff. But there’s no Shaun Ryder personal accounts where I upload pics of my steak pudding that I’m having for my tea, or me on a day out with the kids, and there never will be. It’s just not for me.