Thursday 09 February 2012
Twisting His Melon: Shaun Ryder Set To Spill The Beans At Brighton Film Festival
A local nine-day film festival can boast the likes of Louis Theroux, Nick Broomfield and Luke Holland as past guests. Now that eclectic line-up will be joined by the iconic name of one, Shaun Ryder.
The mixture of screenings, seminars, Q&As and master classes will give the former Happy Mondays and Blake Grape frontman the chance to spout forth about his successful career as a musician, occasional newspaper columnist, actor, author, singer-songwriter and television personality.
Ryder’s life is now so busy that he feels like he’s living the life of a crew member of the Starship Enterprise.
“Well, you know when one of the crew members on that show got a fever and would have some sort of hazy out-of-body experience? Yes, I feel like I’m having one now myself.”
Music impresario Tony Wilson once referred to Ryder’s often witty lyrics as the stuff of legend.
Recently The Happy Mondays produced yet another album, Uncle Dysfunktional.
In 2009 he made a cameo appearance (a non-speaking role) as himself in Channel 4 drama Shameless and appeared in I’m A Celebrity .. Get Me Out Of Here.
His recent autobiography, Twisting My Melon, has proved a big success and he’s just committed to a full Mondays reunion.
“I did Celebrity ’cos me missus Joanne loves it and because I had a Best Of album out and a new solo record on the way. A day longer than Johnny Rotten did, that was the plan, but I ended up enjoying myself there.”
In the end Ryder came a respectable second and ended up doing a full round of promo.
“I was sick of the exaggerated rock and roll image I used to put out there and wanted to show the real me. I felt at last that the the true Shaun got the chance to shine.”
Following the original Happy Mondays split, and despite rumours of how his substance abuse had finally caught up with him, Ryder returned to the spotlight in 1995 with his new project, Black Grape, an immediate short-term success whose first release, It's Great When You're Straight... Yeah, topped the British album chart for a week. The group split after the second album flopped.
Ryder claims not to give ‘a fuck’ whether the Mondays and Black grape went down in musical history or not.
But at the See Festival Ryder will be looking back and telling his side of an amazing career that just seems to grow and grow in variety and intrigue.
In Conversation with Shaun Ryder at Brighton Dome on Fri 30 March 8pm. See brightondome.org for more info.
by: Mike Cobley
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