Ryder, Paul Ryder, Mark Day, Paul Davis and Gaz Whelan. X, Horse, Cowhead, Knobhead and No Arse.
We always called each other by our nicknames; we hardly ever used our real names. I was originally called Horse because my surname’s Ryder. Horse rider. Then they started calling me X, because I was doing little drug deals here and there and it did my head in when we were in the pub or on the street and someone would blurt out, ‘Shaun, have you got any weed? Have you got any whizz?’ and I would have to take them aside and go, ‘Will you stop shouting my fucking name out! I’ll sort you out, don’t worry.’ So PD said, ‘Oh, you think you’re some sort of secret agent do you? OK we’ll call you “X”.’ So I became X, and Our Paul then became Horse, and my old fella was Horseman.
PD was just called Knobhead because that’s what he was, an absolute plum. But a nice plum, in the early days. Harmless. An idiot nutcase. A funny kid. It was only after the band took off and people started taking what he said seriously that he became annoying. He’d hit the whizz and the cocaine, which didn’t do him any favours, and he became even more of a nutcase.
Mark Day was Cowhead because he looked like a cow, and he sounded like a cow with his big dopey voice, or Moose. Gaz Whelan was either No Arse, because he had no arse, Ronnie, after Ronnie Whelan, or Pepe Le Pew, because he’d always fart when he walked into a room. He’d cock his leg and leave his scent everywhere.
My dad helped us out quite a bit in the early days. Just before we started he had stopped going out and playing gigs himself, so I suppose he transferred his enthusiasm and energy to us. From then on he was living his fantasy through us. He was just as enthusiastic about the band as we were, if not more so. He wanted to drive the van, set the equipment up, tune the guitars and do everything. It would have been a lot harder in the early years without his help. He even ‘acquired’ some of our equipment. It wasn’t unknown for him to walk into some working men’s club or venue, unscrew the speakers and walk out with them. Or part of an amplifier, or a mic stand. We got our equipment from wherever we could in the early days.
Horseman would come down and set everything up for us at rehearsals. I didn’t want to sound ungrateful, but what we really wanted him to do was set everything up for us, make sure it was working and then leave. You don’t want your dad around when it’s your little gang trying to make music, do you? ‘Will you just leave us to it, Dad?’ It was nothing personal – no one would ideally want their dad around in that situation. But he would be like, ‘It’s my bloody equipment, so I’m staying!’ He even got the name Happy Mondays put on a sticker across the windscreen of his old Renault 5. You know when couples would have ‘Daz and Sharon’, or whatever? Horseman had ‘Happy Mondays’.
He really helped us out in the early years, but it affected our relationship for a long time. As I say, when we first started out he would do everything, hump gear and do the soundcheck and the monitors, but when you reach a certain level with a band you can’t have one person doing everything, and he never got that . You need specialists. My old fella was still doing the sound on stage, mixing the monitors, when we played Wembley Arena for the first time, years later. I couldn’t hear myself properly and I was trying to tell him, and he just went, ‘It sounds fine to me,’ and I’m going, ‘I can’t fucking hear myself!’ We got into a row during the gig and he ended up coming across the stage and punching me, in front of ten thousand people.
Because my dad had been a singer, but never really made it past the local pubs and club scene, there was a little bit of rivalry between us, simmering underneath. He was also still quite young when the Mondays kicked off, as he was only a teenager when he had me. It’s not healthy to be in
We always called each other by our nicknames; we hardly ever used our real names. I was originally called Horse because my surname’s Ryder. Horse rider. Then they started calling me X, because I was doing little drug deals here and there and it did my head in when we were in the pub or on the street and someone would blurt out, ‘Shaun, have you got any weed? Have you got any whizz?’ and I would have to take them aside and go, ‘Will you stop shouting my fucking name out! I’ll sort you out, don’t worry.’ So PD said, ‘Oh, you think you’re some sort of secret agent do you? OK we’ll call you “X”.’ So I became X, and Our Paul then became Horse, and my old fella was Horseman.
PD was just called Knobhead because that’s what he was, an absolute plum. But a nice plum, in the early days. Harmless. An idiot nutcase. A funny kid. It was only after the band took off and people started taking what he said seriously that he became annoying. He’d hit the whizz and the cocaine, which didn’t do him any favours, and he became even more of a nutcase.
Mark Day was Cowhead because he looked like a cow, and he sounded like a cow with his big dopey voice, or Moose. Gaz Whelan was either No Arse, because he had no arse, Ronnie, after Ronnie Whelan, or Pepe Le Pew, because he’d always fart when he walked into a room. He’d cock his leg and leave his scent everywhere.
My dad helped us out quite a bit in the early days. Just before we started he had stopped going out and playing gigs himself, so I suppose he transferred his enthusiasm and energy to us. From then on he was living his fantasy through us. He was just as enthusiastic about the band as we were, if not more so. He wanted to drive the van, set the equipment up, tune the guitars and do everything. It would have been a lot harder in the early years without his help. He even ‘acquired’ some of our equipment. It wasn’t unknown for him to walk into some working men’s club or venue, unscrew the speakers and walk out with them. Or part of an amplifier, or a mic stand. We got our equipment from wherever we could in the early days.
Horseman would come down and set everything up for us at rehearsals. I didn’t want to sound ungrateful, but what we really wanted him to do was set everything up for us, make sure it was working and then leave. You don’t want your dad around when it’s your little gang trying to make music, do you? ‘Will you just leave us to it, Dad?’ It was nothing personal – no one would ideally want their dad around in that situation. But he would be like, ‘It’s my bloody equipment, so I’m staying!’ He even got the name Happy Mondays put on a sticker across the windscreen of his old Renault 5. You know when couples would have ‘Daz and Sharon’, or whatever? Horseman had ‘Happy Mondays’.
He really helped us out in the early years, but it affected our relationship for a long time. As I say, when we first started out he would do everything, hump gear and do the soundcheck and the monitors, but when you reach a certain level with a band you can’t have one person doing everything, and he never got that . You need specialists. My old fella was still doing the sound on stage, mixing the monitors, when we played Wembley Arena for the first time, years later. I couldn’t hear myself properly and I was trying to tell him, and he just went, ‘It sounds fine to me,’ and I’m going, ‘I can’t fucking hear myself!’ We got into a row during the gig and he ended up coming across the stage and punching me, in front of ten thousand people.
Because my dad had been a singer, but never really made it past the local pubs and club scene, there was a little bit of rivalry between us, simmering underneath. He was also still quite young when the Mondays kicked off, as he was only a teenager when he had me. It’s not healthy to be in
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