Twisting My Melon - Shaun Ryder

TWISTING MY MELON – SHAUN RYDER

I'm sorry but when I look at the cover of Shaun Ryder's Twisting My Melon autobiography all I see is a nose. It's a very weird nose he's got, don't you think? Like a proboscis monkey. I wonder if the vote on whether or not to use this particular photo for the cover was unanimous? I mean, if you're going to have a photo of Shaun on the cover of his autobiography then surely it should be the one of him inside a letter 'E', as featured once on the cover of the NME? The publishers obviously had the same thought but they've opted instead to use just a part of that photo for the back cover. I wonder why?

And if you can manage to tear your gaze away from Shaun's nose for a moment, what is that look he's giving? Is that his 'come to bed' eyes? His 'come hither' look? Thanks, Shaun, but I think I'll sleep on the couch tonight if you don't mind?

There's something incongruous about the cover as well, as in the banner headline at the top declaring 'The Sunday Times bestseller'. Maybe it's me but my perception of the Sunday Times and my perception of Shaun Ryder are at complete odds with one and other. I don't understand at what point the two worlds meet. I just can't imagine Shaun telling us how much he appreciates the Sunday Times aesthetic when it comes to art and their approach to it, and how his weekend isn't complete without digesting the thoughts and political insights of their columnists. Just as I can't imagine the Sunday Times writers applauding and pontificating over the merits of petty theft, drug taking and tales of growing up on a shitty council estate in Salford. All over a few glasses of Pinot Noir and some little saucers of nibbles.

There's a clue, however, in the quote from the Sunday Times displayed prominently on the cover where it says 'Fantastically entertaining... a seamless, authentic, exhilarating read'. It's that word 'authentic'. It's a very middle class word, I think. It's the kind of word used by middle class writers when they describe something or someone they like but would never choose to inhabit the place where that same something or someone is coming from. It's a word used to recuperate something (or someone). And it begs the question: Is the Sunday Times advocacy and promotion of Shaun Ryder's autobiography a way of recuperating an aspect of working class culture?

Am I making too much of this, I wonder? Well, possibly not because Shaun even touches upon it himself when talking about the Wrote For Luck video: 'The Manchester Evening News would never really touch us as a band, before we made it, and part of that was because we were the sort of people that they would cross the street to avoid if they were coming out of a pub late at night in the centre of town. A lot of people in the media were a little bit frightened of what was happening at that time, because they just didn't get it'.

Not that Shaun could care less about such a thing so long as he was being paid top dollar for it. More fool the media, if anything.

'Come hither...'

As almost to be expected, Shaun's story steps up a gear when the E starts making an appearance in the summer of '87. Up until that point Happy Mondays were just another Northern Indy band struggling to establish themselves in the wake of Joy Division and New Order. Rather cruelly but succinctly, Julian Cope summed up the Mondays at that time (dressed up in their anoraks and cagoules) when he said of them: 'Who do they think they are, the fucking Undertones?'. An observation the Mondays didn't take very kindly to.

The E, of course, changed everything and being right in the middle of it, Shaun's take on the whole subject is a valid one: 'I knew idiots who would go out and fight and stab people, people whose whole night was about going out and kicking off in a bar and having a fight, or going to the match and kicking off. That's what it was all about for them, but once they started taking the E, that fucking shit stopped. It's a cliché, but it's absolutely true. You could see everyone really loved up, and yet at the same time you're reading in the press about this killer drug being the downfall of society. It was complete bullshit and it just makes you wonder about what other bullshit they are feeding you'.

It must be said, there was no great meaning to the Happy Mondays. No insights, no pertinent message, just hedonism essentially. The Happy Mondays were a vibe, a groove, an attitude, a nod and a wink. Represented perfectly by Bez, a man whose sole contribution at first sight seemed only to dance on stage with them whilst shaking some maracas but in actual fact was the key to the band. The Happy Mondays could have been a silent disco. In fact, if you watch a Happy Mondays video (such as the one for Wrote For Luck) with the sound off you get just as good an idea of what they're about as you would by watching the video with the sound on.

And no matter what Tony Wilson said about Shaun's lyrics on a good day being are on a par with WB Yeats on an average day, though he possessed a distinctive voice he was no great lyricist. Never did he come out with anything on a par with (for example) Higher Than The Sun by that other great 'E' band, Primal Scream. Or even anything by The Shamen, come to that. Shaun's lyrics were psychobabble. Words strung together simply because they sounded good. And Shaun's happy to admit it, so it's not a criticism at all.

I saw the Happy Mondays that time when they played Glastonbury, when it was the mud bath and they'd snuck a photocopier in so they could duplicate back-stage passes for their entourage. They were a suitable shambles but then if they had been slick and professional they wouldn't have been living up to expectations. The funniest thing about them, actually, was their fans in their flares. It was the most unsuitable trousers for such conditions as you could get. Caked in mud, their flares must have weighed a tonne as they dragged themselves around the site. Suffering for fashion, I guess, but as Joe Strummer once said, 'like trousers like brain'.

Twisting My Melon is over 400 pages long so it isn't just a quick read. It would obviously be beneficial when reading it to be a Happy Mondays fan but if you're not, it's a bit of a challenge. For all that, it's an entertaining romp if scamming, crack cocaine and an unspoken fear of the working class is your bag. Which might explain why the Sunday Times like it so much...

John Serpico