The Happy Mondays prefer chilling on the sofa to an all-night party these days – but that certainly wasn’t the case back in the early 90s.
Here we are taking a look back at one of their most outrageous incidents, which took place on a tropical island in the Caribbean.
With front man Shaun Ryder acknowledged to be heavily addicted to heroin at the time, the group was shipped out to Barbados to finish their already much-delayed fourth album, Yes Please!.
Tony Wilson, the late manager of Factory Records, sent the band to singer Eddy Grant’s Blue Wave studio in Barbados after reportedly hearing there was no heroin on the island.
Within 48 hours of the Mondays arriving, Wilson claimed they had managed to develop a new drug dependency, with Ryder allegedly racking up a habit of up to 50 rocks a day.
Shaun and Bez just wanted to party (Image: Julian Makey / Rex Features)
The group quickly ran out of money, and it’s claimed they resorted to desperate measures to fund their drug habit.
According to Wilson, they started flogging studio equipment and furniture from Grant’s house to make cash quickly.
The band also reportedly created “crack dens” out of sun loungers in Grant’s swimming pool.
“But no one told us it was Crack City,” Wilson told a Manchester Evening News reporter before his death in August 2007.
“The day we pulled the recording, because it completely collapsed due to crack, a person from the band was stopped at 1am with the back fire doors of the studio open.
“He was taking two sofas out of Eddy Grant’s studio to town to sell for crack.”
Shaun didn’t even record any lyrics (Image: Ian Dickson/REX/Shutterstock)
Wilson later claimed that, as his plane was coming into land, he saw Ryder and Bez wheeling one of Grant’s sofas down the road to trade for drugs.
To make things even worse, maracas-waving band member Bez broke his arm after overturning a hired Jeep, while Shaun failed to actually write any lyrics.
“I was not in Barbados at the time, but I was getting blow-by-blow accounts by phone on a daily basis,” said Grant.
“My wife was saying, ‘These guys are doing all kinds of crazy things. They’re going to die before they leave here’. It has now passed into legend.”
The situation did not get much better when the band returned to the UK.
Bez and Shaun continued to create musical magic together (Image: Brian Rasic / Rex Features)
Having reportedly blown almost their entire budget on drugs, they came home with only a handful of scratchy recordings that contained no vocals.
It was claimed that Shaun got hold of the master tapes for the ill-fated album and threatened to destroy them if Factory Records did not pay him, so he was given £50.
The entire exercise had been a complete waste of time and money for Factory, who were officially declared bankrupt shortly after the album was finally released.
Music tastes were changing and by this time alternative rock was breaking through, so they were hit with a critical backlash and low sales, which was a huge factor in the collapse of Factory Records.
Shaun loved the party lifestyle (Image: Getty Images)
The Happy Mondays referred to heroin by the secret codename of ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken’, which inevitably led to some awkward situations.
In a meeting with EMI in 1994, Shaun is said to have walked out just as the Mondays were about to sign a £1.7million contract.
He told executives he was “going for a KFC” and claimed he would be back soon, but never returned and the deal fell through.
In another incident in 1989, which is described in Shaun’s 2011 autobiography Twisting My Melon, he was arrested by police in Jersey for possession of cocaine.
When asked if he wanted an advocate, Shaun replied: “I don’t want no poncy southern drinks”.
Group portrait of Happy Mondays
It has also been claimed by a former band member that the Happy Mondays once hosted a wild four-day party with sex shows and dwarfs.
Rowetta, who recorded and toured with the band from 1990, admitted they lived up to the mantra of ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’.
“The lifestyle we had back then was non-stop. We really were 24-hour party people. It was every day of the year. It was too wild,” she told Daily Star Sunday in 2019.
“It was too mad. Everything was too extreme. We used to stay out for days. When you’re young and you’re having fun that’s OK.”
During a trip to Ibiza, the band hosted a sordid party at their hotel and linked up with Welsh drug smuggler Howard Marks.
Rowetta in concert with Shaun in 1990 (Image: Peter Brooker/REX/Shutterstock)
“Usually it was just a couple of nights of partying because you get tired and you have to go to bed eventually,” explained Rowetta.
“But when we played at Manumission in Ibiza in 1999 we had a party at our hotel that went on for four days.
“Howard Marks was there, there were dwarfs doing all sorts and there were sex shows everywhere. It was just weird and wacky and wonderful.”
Rowetta remembered seeing the rest of the band being left unable to walk due to the effects of the substances they were taking.
She continued: “I remember me and Shaun seeing our mates coming towards us and noticing that they were struggling to walk. They’d just discovered ketamine.
“When you see what that drug does to people it’s terrible.”
Shaun Ryder with wife Joanne Ryder (Image: David Fisher/REX)
By 2007, determined Shaun decided to kick the drug and booze habit he’d had since he was a teenager.
“I’d had enough of living the same life I’d been living at 17. That was embarrassing,” Shaun told The Sun in 2018.
“I’d out-smoked meself, out-e’d meself, out-charlied meself, out-whizzed meself, out-drunk meself.”
The Happy Mondays front man is often asked if he misses the hedonistic drug-taking days.
But he is very content spending time with his wife Joanne and their two daughters, who he credits with helping him swap all-night partying for cycling.
“People ask if I miss the old days. Well, no. It was brilliant but that was then and this is now and I like now too,” Shaun told The Sunday People in August 2019.
Shaun and Bez are more likely to be found on the sofa these days (Image: Manchester Evening News)
“When I hit 40 I thought, ‘Wait a minute, your kids are growing up, you’re not young anymore yet you’re living the same life you was at 18
“I had lots of goes in rehab but it never worked, I didn’t really want it to.
“I never thought I was in danger land. I partied and took lots of drugs but was never an intravenous user.
“So, to me, if I wasn’t banging away with needles, and smoking heroin, that was fine. But I was lucky to have lived in a rock ’n’ roll bubble.
“The pals I grew up with that didn’t are either doing 21 years in prison or they’re dead.”
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
