Before Britpop of the mid-1990s, there was a scene in Manchester that captured the country. A fresh new sound infused the 60s Psychedelic sound and the Acid House of the late 1980s which was described by the press as Madchester. The name stuck with its fans, and it soon spread throughout the UK.
One of the bands in the Madchester scene was the Happy Mondays. They quickly rose to the top of the scene with hits like ‘Kinky Afro’ and ‘Step On’ which captured the UK scene. By the time the band released their fourth and final album, ‘Yes, Please’ things were going off the rails. So much so that their antics ended up bankrupting their record label. This week the Beat Marches On to 17th November 1992 when Factory Records released their last single.
Most bands have Spinal Tap moments. The Happy Mondays are the closest thing to the fictional band that the UK has produced. Formed in 1980 in Salford near Manchester the band were different in their style amongst the others at the time. Even those bands from the same area.
After watching the Sex Pistols when their tour stopped in Manchester, local TV journalist Tony Wilson decided he wanted in. He always thought that his hometown was the best in the country and wanted to show off the local scene. So, he opened a club to showcase the latest new bands.
The club named the Factory started hosting bands in the Manchester area and quickly became the hot new club to attend. Some of the early bands that appeared on stage were new bands like Joy Division and The Durutti Column as well as original punk bands like The Undertones and The Dammed. The success of the club became the go-to place for the locals.
The club’s success gave Wilson and his partners the idea to help the regular bands get signed by launching their own record label also called Factory Records. The first album released was Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division in June 1979. Wilson helped promote the albums and singles with a local music program he hosted called So It Goes.
With the help of Joy Division’s debut album and follow-up Closer, Factory Records was becoming one of the most successful independent labels in the country. With early singles from Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and A Certain Ratio, the label was starting to put pressure on the bigwigs in the industry.
In the mid-1980s the label signed The Happy Mondays. The band got the attention of the Factory executives when they slipped a demo to the DJ at the club owned by the label ‘The Hacienda’. They were a blend of indie/alternative rock music with a dance-style electronic drum beat. This style of music along with other Manchester-based bands such as Inspiral Carpets and The Stone Roses was dubbed Madchester.
The Mondays became the second biggest act on the label by the end of the decade. It was only New Order (previously Joy Division who changed their name after singer Ian Curtis committed suicide in 1980) who were selling more albums than the newcomers. Then in 1990, the breakthrough album for the band would launch them into the stratosphere.
The third album by The Happy Mondays ‘Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches’ was a nationwide smash producing two top-five singles the aforementioned ‘Step on’ and ‘Kinky Afro’, the band looked like they were going to get better with their next release.
By this time the Mondays were living the rock n roll lifestyle and all, its accesses. Lead singer Shaun Ryder and brother Paul who was the bass player were addicted to heroin and other members of the band had their vices. Factory tried to help them get off the drug but the plan they had was going to backfire.
To record the follow-up to ‘Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches’ the label sent the Mondays to Barbados to record in Eddy Grant’s studio. They chose the country above others as there wasn’t any heroin on the Island which is a good thing for a heroin addict to help get clean.
Although there wasn’t any heroin in Barbados, the country was in the middle of a crack cocaine epidemic. Whilst waiting to depart from Manchester airport an accident happened destroying the methadone supplied to help ween the Ryders off the drug. You just know trouble is going to happen. It’s been alleged that Shaun Ryder smoked around 25 rocks a day. To fund the habit, he started pawning equipment and furniture in Eddy Grant’s house and made a makeshift crack den on the patio deck.
With all the distractions in the recording process, the album was sapping all the resources from Factory Records. The Mondays spent seven weeks in Barbados and there were only intermittent reports about what was happening (it was the 1990s) Wilson had enough and asked them to return and show him what music they recorded.
Most of the band got their act together and in between the debauchery (they also wrecked several rental cars on the island blaming the island’s terrible roads) they recorded ten tracks. They played the tracks to the Factory board of directors and there was a particular thing missing. Something quite important was missing, there weren’t any lyrics. The backing tracks were the same Happy Mondays Madchester sound but no singing.
The crack Ryder smoked gave him a throat infection and he couldn’t sing, but the drug habit also distracted him from writing any lyrics. He blamed the producers of the album former Talking Heads members Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, but the consensus was it was the crack.
Ryder sobered up again after Barbados and recorded lyrics in Surrey. The singer now sober wanted more money and took the master tapes for the whole album and held them for ransom. With his brother, he met the Factory Records executives at a pub and demanded a pretty penny for the album and settled on £50 as that was all the cash the execs had on them.
The £50 was the cheapest that Factory paid for the production of this album, with estimations of around a total of £380,000 spent making the album. With the other leading label act New Order costing the label around the same price with their latest effort the excessive fees of the two albums had left Factory Records bankrupt.
Factory had to sell up. The Mondays album had bombed, the first single failed to chart and they were still waiting for New Orders latest album. London Records which handled the distribution of Factory’s releases was looking to buy the rights to the Happy Mondays and New Order songs, but they didn’t need to go through the label. A rebel move by Wilson in 1978 when he first decided to start the label had backfired. A mantra written in blood by Wilson claimed that the artists will always have rights to their songs which was great for the artists, not so much for Factory. This meant that London could take the artists without Factory’s consent.
Factory Records was bankrupt by the end of November 1992. They were one of the last independent labels to make an impact on the music industry. There was an attempt to revive the label with Factory too in the late 1990s but it didn’t last long. They couldn’t capture the same magic as the previous label.
The Happy Mondays didn’t last much longer than the label, they were finished as soon as Britpop came along but the legend of their debauchery was told down to music generations and were leaders in the Madchester sound.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for six years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
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Websites used for research are:
Wrote For Luck: The Rise And Fall Of Happy Mondays | Features | Clash Magazine (clashmusic.com)
Career Killers: “Yes Please!” by The Happy Mondays. – Victor-Li.com
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