Shaun Ryder
X. The man with the rhymes.

Bez
A one man dancing vibe machine.

Paul Ryder
Horse. Brother to Shaun and creator of funky bass lines.

Moose
Guitarist. Last seen selling books door to door.

PD
Keys. Later wanted to sing. Blames Shaun for the split of the Mondays.

Gary Whelan
Mondays drummer. Made it back for the reformation in 1999.

Philip Saxe
First Mondays manager. Met the Ryders at a jeans stall in the Arndale Centre.

Mike Pickering
Factory A&R Man, signed the Mondays. Also massively successful Hac DJ, and later on the M in M People.

A rehearsal in a school room, after hours, in Swinton, the legislative capital of Salford and half a mile up the road and up the environmental scale from Little Hulton.
Shaun Ryder's band. In fact, Shaun Ryder's gang, and how many great groups have as their social structure the teenage gang? You can't do any better.
Brother Paul was on bass. Gary Whelan drummed and was handsome and PD played keyboards through a personality haze. Some say PD's otherwordliness came from walking into a pub in Swinton in 1983 and shouting something rude about Swinton sucking dick or something. He got a kicking that left part of his brain, clearly an important part, on the pavement. Others say it was the cautious nature of Ryder's gang who, whenever they discovered a new pill, liquid or potentially narcotic substance, would try it out first on PD to check the side-effects. Whatever had happened, PD performed hypnotic keyboards in a manner that implied he was personally and continually hypnotized.
The odd one out in the group was Moose, the guitarist. He was odd, and he was the odd one out 'cause he was kinda nice and the rest would have a go at him 'cause nice wasn't it.
It is by a deeply Dylanesque twist of fate that this seminally working-class band, whose very name celebrates the dole-queue celebrations of the lumpenproletariat, who hated getting out of bed, should ascend the sticky rungs of the music industry ladder courtesy of one of Manchester's most resoundingly dull middle-class suburbs. Bramhall is where Stockport meets Cheshire, in that it doesn't even have the nerve to be boorishly rich, merely boringly rich.
Philip Saxe and Michael Pickering were residents of Bramhall which merely proves that human beings have little control over where they are born and bred and must rise above these potential handicaps. Philip confided in Mike that he 'had' a band and they were good. Pickering arranged a support gig at the Haçienda for his mates to check out the Saxe recommendation. This was not a frequent activity. The fact that it was done at all implied the Pickering imprimatur and in the manner of things with this lot, it would have taken something pretty shitty for the guys to have told the Pick to fuck off. As it was, the shambling, bunch of scallies who sashayed out on to the dark shelf that was the Hac stage did more than enough. They had exactly what was being looked for. They had something and it was something that gave away absolutely no idea of what it was.
'They're cool. They've got something and I have absolutely no idea what it is,' said Wilson, leaning on the South African granite top of the Kim Philby Bar.
Gretton harrumphed. The Mondays were in. No one really knew why and that was, of course, exactly why.
Although, there were propitious signs. In the middle of the third number the lead singer seemed to be getting a little agitated with the rest of the band. In the manner of the famous Danish goalkeeper Schmeichel explaining to his back four that they were little better than worthless shit and that a slow death was too good for them, Shaun explained to his band that they were going 'too fucking slow.'
There was a lack of agreement from the assembled party, in particular the group's bass player, who could be lip-read as replying, 'Fuck off, you scaggy twat.'
Ryder elder then took a swing at Ryder junior, a scuffle commenced mid-stage and the group's monitor man came on from the side to sort it. Pushing in-between, he got his arms caught and all three went down in a sprawling, scrapping, rolling human lump. The rest of the band looked on with that seen-it-all-before stare and hey, whaddya know, the whole thing went up about 5bpm. The bodies rolled and rolled and rolled, occasionally knocking into the drum riser and heading back to front of stage.
Saxe turned, worried about impressions, to the boys at the bar.
'It's OK, it's family, just family. Their dad Derek does the sound, that's him in there with them. Just family.'
'One child grows up...' muttered one of the board of directors. 'Cool,' said another.
Order restored and bpms upped, they got to the sixth number and Shaun was shouting again; not at the band, but at the audience this time. Screaming.
'Bez. Bez. Get up here.' The rest of the band were bemused, unamused. Their boss wanted his new mater from space on stage with them. Why?
'Bez, fucking get on stage.'
Out of the tide of humanity came the alien, a little embarrassed but with a wide grin and wide legs, gat-leggit, like Ursula Andress wading up the beach into all our lives and onto the Happy Monday's stage.
'Dance, you fucker, and shake those maracas,' said the boss to an alien who was indeed already well maracca'd. And he started to move. Fuck, did he move.
Arms outstretched, slow wings feeling for the air in undulating fashion, hallucinogenic t'ai chi. And the shoulders, pressing forward beyond the alien's centre of gravity, always the shoulders.
And the audience, swaying and wondering what they were watching, found out what they were watching Bez. Rock as dance, dance as rock. Bez.

From 24 Hour Party People, by Tony Wilson.
Click here to buy a copy

From the Horse's Mouth
Who's Going to Step on You Again?
Horseman
Inside Factory Design - Central Station
It's a Wonderful Life
Mike Pickering
Top Tune - Rowetta
 

Bummed (November 1988)
 

Pills 'N' Thrills and Bellyaches (April 1990)

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