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Authors: Shaun Ryder
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competition with your dad, or your son, and it affected our relationship for a long time. We’ve got on much better over the last ten years or so, but it was only when I reached about forty that we stopped trying to be in competition.
When we first started writing our own songs, they were just full of in-jokes, because we didn’t really think about anyone else hearing them. We were just writing songs for us, so they were full of our little catchphrases, observations, nicknames and references to films we liked. We did take the band quite seriously from the off, though. No one else would be allowed into rehearsals, it was just us. In a way it was the first thing in my life I had taken seriously, or at least the first thing I had put as much effort into as I did into stealing and making money. I suppose subconsciously we were beginning to think it might be a way out for us. None of us had a trade, or any great prospects.
Not that Mark Day ever saw rock ’n’ roll as a great prospect. Mark is a very good guitarist, but he was never cut out to be in rock ’n’ roll – he’s just too square. Even back then, when he was nineteen and we’d only just started the band, he’d complain , in his dopey cow voice, that ‘Rock ’n’ roll’s not a proper job. You don’t get a pension with it.’ That’s the whole point , mate. That’s why you get into rock ’n’ roll. Because you don’t want a proper job. You don’t get into rock ’n’ roll if you’re worried about your final salary pension. For fuck’s sake. Mark didn’t even give up his job as a postie until we had been on Top of the Pops a couple of times. The first time we did To p of the Pops , with the Stone Roses in 1989, Mark had to get back up to Manchester afterwards so he could do his fucking post round the next morning.
Just after we started getting the band together, I was in the Wishing Well one night and it kicked off, as usual. Our lot were there from Salford, and there was a bunch of lads from Swinton there who wanted a ruck. Gaz was with the Swinton lot and one of them said to him, ‘You know him, don’t you? Ryder from Little Hulton?’ and Gaz said, ‘Nah, I don’t know him, I’ve never met him in my life.’ We’d been fucking rehearsing for three or four weeks already. Proper Judas. In fact, I could say Gaz has betrayed me three times. Once in the Wishing Well, once when the Mondays split up, and once more recently when he left the band again.
Our first gig was at Wardley Community Centre in Swinton, near my nana’s house. I actually remember it pretty well. I was nervous so I got a bit pissed and stoned to take the edge off it. Well, I actually got very pissed and stoned. PD didn’t play that first gig with us as he wasn’t quite ready. He was coming to rehearsals but hadn’t quite got it together to go on stage. I remember it felt pretty rammed, but it was only a small room, so there were probably about twenty-five people there. After we finished our set, these girls came up chatting to us. Our first gig and girls wanted to speak to us because we were in a band. But PD, the knobhead, came up and just blurted out, ‘We don’t want to talk to you!’, screaming, ‘Hey, fuck off,’ so the girls did one . I turned to him and said, ‘What did you say that for, you dick?’ That’s what he was like. Nice one, PD.
Denise and I got married on 22 May 1982. She was twenty-one and I was nineteen. If someone got married at nineteen nowadays, you’d think they were mad, but it wasn’t a big deal back then. That’s just what everybody did. I wasn’t pressurized into it or anything. You’d think my dad would have pulled me aside and said, ‘What you doing lad? Aren’t you a bit young?’ Certainly if one of my kids turned round to me at nineteen and said they were getting married, I’d just laugh and say, ‘You’re just a child, you’re a baby! What are you doing?!’ But it was a different world back then. Especially round our
When we first started writing our own songs, they were just full of in-jokes, because we didn’t really think about anyone else hearing them. We were just writing songs for us, so they were full of our little catchphrases, observations, nicknames and references to films we liked. We did take the band quite seriously from the off, though. No one else would be allowed into rehearsals, it was just us. In a way it was the first thing in my life I had taken seriously, or at least the first thing I had put as much effort into as I did into stealing and making money. I suppose subconsciously we were beginning to think it might be a way out for us. None of us had a trade, or any great prospects.
Not that Mark Day ever saw rock ’n’ roll as a great prospect. Mark is a very good guitarist, but he was never cut out to be in rock ’n’ roll – he’s just too square. Even back then, when he was nineteen and we’d only just started the band, he’d complain , in his dopey cow voice, that ‘Rock ’n’ roll’s not a proper job. You don’t get a pension with it.’ That’s the whole point , mate. That’s why you get into rock ’n’ roll. Because you don’t want a proper job. You don’t get into rock ’n’ roll if you’re worried about your final salary pension. For fuck’s sake. Mark didn’t even give up his job as a postie until we had been on Top of the Pops a couple of times. The first time we did To p of the Pops , with the Stone Roses in 1989, Mark had to get back up to Manchester afterwards so he could do his fucking post round the next morning.
Just after we started getting the band together, I was in the Wishing Well one night and it kicked off, as usual. Our lot were there from Salford, and there was a bunch of lads from Swinton there who wanted a ruck. Gaz was with the Swinton lot and one of them said to him, ‘You know him, don’t you? Ryder from Little Hulton?’ and Gaz said, ‘Nah, I don’t know him, I’ve never met him in my life.’ We’d been fucking rehearsing for three or four weeks already. Proper Judas. In fact, I could say Gaz has betrayed me three times. Once in the Wishing Well, once when the Mondays split up, and once more recently when he left the band again.
Our first gig was at Wardley Community Centre in Swinton, near my nana’s house. I actually remember it pretty well. I was nervous so I got a bit pissed and stoned to take the edge off it. Well, I actually got very pissed and stoned. PD didn’t play that first gig with us as he wasn’t quite ready. He was coming to rehearsals but hadn’t quite got it together to go on stage. I remember it felt pretty rammed, but it was only a small room, so there were probably about twenty-five people there. After we finished our set, these girls came up chatting to us. Our first gig and girls wanted to speak to us because we were in a band. But PD, the knobhead, came up and just blurted out, ‘We don’t want to talk to you!’, screaming, ‘Hey, fuck off,’ so the girls did one . I turned to him and said, ‘What did you say that for, you dick?’ That’s what he was like. Nice one, PD.
Denise and I got married on 22 May 1982. She was twenty-one and I was nineteen. If someone got married at nineteen nowadays, you’d think they were mad, but it wasn’t a big deal back then. That’s just what everybody did. I wasn’t pressurized into it or anything. You’d think my dad would have pulled me aside and said, ‘What you doing lad? Aren’t you a bit young?’ Certainly if one of my kids turned round to me at nineteen and said they were getting married, I’d just laugh and say, ‘You’re just a child, you’re a baby! What are you doing?!’ But it was a different world back then. Especially round our
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