Forget the pills, thrills and bellyaches and remember the Happy Mondays for their music. Balearic Mike does…

When Factory released the Happy Mondays’ debut EP, ‘Forty Five’, in September 1985, there was little to suggest the band would evolve into one of the most original, exciting and revolutionary groups to emerge from the UK’s independent scene. 

Today few would dispute that claim. Their musical achievements are often overlooked in favour of the endless tales of acid house-inspired debauchery, but by a confluence of right time, right place, right taste and access to the right drugs, they achieved what no other bunch of white blokes with instruments had done before and fused the sound of the exciting new house records coming out of Black America with the 1970s rock and pop music they loved. 

Sure, other bands had been influenced by electronic music, and, more specifically, dance records from the US and Europe. Labelmates New Order and A Certain Ratio, for a start. But none had their minds blown by house music and ecstasy at quite the same time, in quite the same way, and then tried to make music inspired by those records with a drum kit and guitars. 

As the band celebrate 40 years of musical mayhem, we hail their 40 greatest moments. Rave on.

1. ‘W.F.L.’ (Oakenfold & Osborne’s ‘Think About The Future Mix’)
Oakey or Vince? I’m not having that argument again, but just so you know, Shaun Ryder prefers the Oakenfold & Osborne mix too. There aren’t many records that better capture the excitement of that third Summer of Love of 1989 than this. The original version was as close as the band could get to creating the music they all loved, but it just needed that extra sprinkle of magic disco dust. A breakbeat from N.W.A., a sample of Jack Nicholson’s Joker from the ‘Batman’ movie and actually a lot of paring back. This was from a time before DJs remixed indie bands on a regular basis. Acid house? Balearic beats? Indie dance? Who cares? It was – and remains – perfection.

 2. ‘Performance’‍

“No comedians!” Controversial, but this is my favourite track from what, in my opinion, is their best album, ‘Bummed’. The Mondays hit it off with producer Martin Hannett. Although he was basically an alcoholic, their constant supply of ecstasy meant he pretty much stopped drinking – or at least long enough to work. In return he managed to get the music Shaun Ryder heard in his head on to record. This is the band at their most assured, funky, loose, original best. Although you can spot the influences – labelmates A.C.R., New Yorkers ESG (also signed by Factory) – no one else has ever sounded like this. The title comes from the 60s counterculture film starring Mick Jagger as a reclusive rock star, which was a band favourite and a huge influence on the album. This is dance music that hadn’t been imagined before, and includes some of Ryder’s most hilarious, and obviously E-inspired, lyrics. Footage of them performing the song live on Anthony Wilson’s arts and culture programme ‘The Other Side of Midnight’ shows a band in their prime – and Bez at his most ‘Bez’!

3. ‘Wrote For Luck’ (Club Mix)
The ultimate fusion of house music, ecstasy/rave/club culture and guitar-based alternative rock music. This distils the sound that the band had been striving for since their discovery of E and house music in 1987. The album version was produced by Martin Hannett, with their second manager, Nathan McGough, remixing this version on the 12-inch. Often their finale live, it’s a thundering, E-fuelled juggernaut of a track. The ‘luck’ of the title refers to E, among other things, while the line “You were wet, but you’re getting drier” is taken from a conversation between David Essex and Adam Faith in the film ‘Stardust’. Directors the Bailey Brothers made two versions of the video (which, oddly, features an edit of the Vince Clarke remix), filmed at the club Legend, one featuring the band performing and dancing in a ‘possibly’ refreshed state, while the other was full of dancing children.

4. ‘Hallelujah’ (Weatherall & Oakenfold Club Mix)
Andrew Weatherall’s first remix wasn’t ‘Loaded’, but this incredible track. The ‘Madchester Rave On’ EP took the Mondays into the charts for the first time, but Martin Hannett’s original versions were pretty weird, building on the psychedelic funk of ‘Bummed’. After the success of the ‘W.F.L.’ remix, the band wanted Oakenfold on board again, and he made the decision to ask Weatherall & Farley, then DJing in the back room of his weekly Spectrum night at Heaven, to join him. The results are astounding, turning the track into a euphoric dancefloor chugger, as well as a pop-dance classic. If you envisage the song in your head, it’s this version that you’re hearing.

5. ‘Tart Tart’
The decision to get Velvet Underground’s John Cale to produce the band’s debut album wasn’t entirely successful. Cale didn’t understand the band, who wanted Bernard Sumner again, but he was over committed, and worried about making them sound like New Order anyway. There are several high points, though, and this is the best. A scratchy, exciting, punk-funk groove, it has real swagger and great riffs, plus Ryder delivering some of his finest lyrics; basically, three short stories. The ‘Tart Tart’ of the title was a friend and speed dealer called Dinah who took young Shaun and Bez under her wing and tragically died of a brain haemorrhage. Another part refers to Hannett, whom the band hadn’t yet met but who fascinated Ryder thanks to Sumner’s stories. The third part reflects the panic around Aids as it swept through the city.

6. ‘Freaky Dancin’’ (Live)
After a slight false start with Haçienda DJ Mike Pickering producing the Mondays’ debut record and giving them a bog-standard indie-guitar sound, Bernard Sumner saved the day. In the audio commentary for the film ‘24 Hour Party People’, Wilson says: “Barney is one of the great producers of the 80s in Manchester.” His genius move was to capture the band playing live, unleashing their unique sound on the public for the first time.

7. ‘Rave On’ (Farley & Oakenfold Club Mix)
The most deranged track from the EP of the same name gets transformed into an indie-dance masterpiece by Boys Own’s Terry Farley and Oakenfold. The decision to copy the bassline from The O’Jays classic ‘For the Love of Money’ is genius. The result is the closest the band had yet come to making a house record, which might not sound like much now but in 1989 was a game changer.

8. ‘Twenty Four Hour Party People’
After their legal dispute over ‘Desmond’ (see 25), the band were quickly dispatched to Suite Sixteen Studios in Rochdale. The resulting anthem has become a theme tune, representing the hedonistic, amphetamine-fuelled lifestyle they then enjoyed, pre-ecstasy. When Michael Winterbottom and Frank Cottrell Boyce made a movie about Factory Records, it was nailed on they would use the name.

9. ‘Loose Fix’ (The Grid Remix)
‘Loose Fit’ should have been another top five hit, making it three in a row for the band, but as the (first) Gulf War broke out, Ryder’s lyric, “Gonna buy an air force base, gonna wipe out your race” earned the single a BBC ban. It still made the top 20 but should have been their biggest hit so far. The Grid managed to improve on Oakenfold’s original version somehow, making for sublime Balearic indie dance, with a guitar part that echoes Pink Floyd’s ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’.   

10. ‘Country Song’
The opener from their second album, ‘Bummed’ (produced by Hannett for the first time), displays a new-found confidence and swagger. Which is odd, because it sounds like Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’ at the wrong speed, with the additional impediment that the record is pressed off-centre, so it sounds all woozy and disorientating. Totally bonkers and utterly original.

11. ‘Lazyitis (One-Armed Boxer)’
While the original closes ‘Bummed’, the single version was re-recorded as a duet with Scottish yodelling sensation Karl Denver. It’s the band’s attempt at “an off-the-wall pop song” and, while Shaun Ryder didn’t think they got there, I disagree. With tinkling, country music-style pianos and a little help from Lennon and McCartney, David Essex and Sly and the Family Stone, as well as a nursery rhyme, this is a joyful noise, illustrating Shaun’s magpie/post-modern approach to lyric writing.

12. ‘Bob’s Yer Tune’ (Grid Remix)
The remix of ‘Bob’s Yer Uncle’ might be the most Balearic track the band ever released. It features floaty, atmospheric synths, divine flute parts, breathless moaning female vocals a la the best Italo or Spanish house track, a totally filthy lyric and a sexy lead vocal from Mr Ryder too, who does his best Barry White impression. Apparently, this was played at Tony Wilson’s funeral.

13. ‘Kuff Dam’
This driving indie-funk gem opens their debut album. The title is a flip of a porno film called ‘Mad Fuck’ and includes Ryder’s memorable line: “You see that Jesus is a cunt and that I helped you with everything that you do. Or you done.”

14. ‘Do It Better’
Their most blatant E song, with most of the lyric being about being “on one”. The band had just got into the drug while recording ‘Bummed’ and Shaun wrote most of the lyrics referencing the effects of taking E. Indeed, they spent most of the time recording the album chomping the little fellas down. It was originally called ‘E’, and is in the key of E. 

15. ‘Kinky Groovy Afro’ (Oakenfold & Osborne Mix)
According to Shaun Ryder, this song “was a reference to my old man who was a bit of a fucking womble”. Derek Ryder once came second to a 14-year-old Lisa Stansfield in a local talent contest and was the band’s roadie and sound man for a while. This slightly extended version of one of the standouts from ‘Pills ‘N’ Thrills and Bellyaches’ is indeed very groovy and propelled the band to their second top five UK hit.

16. ‘Little Matchstick Owen’s Rap’
The version of ‘Little Matchstick Owen’ on their debut LP is great, but this take, on the B-side of ‘Tart Tart’, sounds like something from the early 80s downtown New York club scene at Danceteria or The Fun House, rather than Manchester in 1986. Mike Pickering suggested London rap trio Three Wise Men for the job, but the studio’s window cleaner Mike Bleach stepped up to the mic instead. Weird, scratchy and psychedelic post-punk-funk.

17. ‘Oasis’
Later re-recorded to appear on ‘Squirrel and G-Man …’, this original version, from that first ‘Forty Five’ EP, was an early example of Ryder’s gift for ‘borrowing’ inspiration from the greats. Features a liberal snatch of Tom Jones’s ‘It’s Not Unusual’, although with a slightly rude twist.

18. ‘Mad Cyril’
Another track from the ‘Bummed’ era and also inspired by ‘Performance’. It includes multiple samples of dialogue from the movie, and the line immortalised in Ryder’s lyrics: “I said I like that, turn it up!”

19. ‘Loose Fit’ (Greg Wilson & Ché Wilson Remix)
There have been some great attempts at remixing the Mondays’ back catalogue from the likes of Justin Robertson and Ewan Pearson over the years, but this stunning version from the father and son DJ and re-edit duo breathes new life into this classic. Released at the tail-end of 2024, the track is twisted into a gurgling, acid house chugger.

20. ‘Fat Lady Wrestlers’
Another highlight from ‘Bummed’. Probably the closest they got to another ‘Wrote For Luck’, with its heavy, repetitive groove. Ryder had just returned from Amsterdam, and the lyrics, some of the earliest to be inspired by E, recount some of those “adventures”. 

21. Stinkin’ Thinkin’ (Boy’s Own Mix)
By 1992, Ryder was so ravaged by the double whammy of heroin addiction and a massive crack binge when he should have been recording (the lacklustre) fourth album ‘Yes Please!’ that he could barely sing. He managed to pull this off, though, the lyrics partly inspired by his visit to the Priory. Farley & Heller turn in some great remixes. The house one is a proper Fire Island-style organ-led thumper, but this is a total gem, which lifts off when Rowetta starts singing.

22. ‘Bring a Friend’
Urgent, visceral, scratchy funk, inspired by Ryder being busted coming back from Amsterdam with a load of weed and some porn mags. The lyrics imagine a dream sequence in ‘Performance’ in which Jagger meets some of the stars from the x-rated mag.

23. ‘God’s Cop’  
You couldn’t make it up, but the chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, James Anderton, openly declared that God talked to him. As such, his bigoted, homophobic, sexist and racist moral crusade was him doing God’s work. Ryder lampoons him beautifully when he switches the lyric “God made it easy, God made it easy on me…” to “God lays his Es on, God lays his Es all on me…”. One of their most rock’n’roll songs, with a guitar riff fit for Keith Richards.

24. ‘Step On’ (Oakenfold & Osborne Stuff it In Mix)
The song that made them pop stars. Not bad for a track that began as a request from their US label Elektra to provide a cover version of something from the label’s back catalogue for an anniversary compilation. Ryder manages to make the track their own with some memorable ad-libs, which are now the only lyrics anyone remembers. “You know you speak so hip, you’re twisting my melons man. Call the cops!”. Hit number five in the charts.

25. ‘Desmond’
Included on the first pressing of their debut LP, until someone, possibly Michael Jackson, more likely his lawyers, who then owned The Beatles’ Northern Songs catalogue, noticed that it bore more than a passing resemblance to The Fab Four’s ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’. The album was reissued with the hurriedly recorded title track in its place.

26. ‘Moving In With’
In which Shaun sings the words to the nursery rhyme Chicken Little. He told a journalist if he could have fitted all the rhyme’s words to the tune of the song he would have sung them.

27. ‘Hallelujah’ (McColl Mix)
Although the ‘Madchester Rave On’ EP was their breakthrough ‘Top of the Pops’ moment, most wouldn’t have heard the original version, which continued to expand the noisy, psychedelic sound of ‘Bummed’. Steve Lillywhite was asked to remix it for radio, cleaning it up and, with wife Kirsty McColl adding backing vocals, this was how they performed it on that legendary November 1989 TOTP appearance alongside The Stone Roses.

28. ‘Olive Oil’
Inspired by a girl the band knew who had large eyes and feet (like the character in the ‘Popeye’ cartoons), it sounds a bit like The Smiths. Delightful indie jangle.

29. ‘Dennis and Lois’
Named after the legendary New York couple who became something like adoptive aunts and uncles to Manchester bands visiting the city.

30. ‘Clap Your Hands’
The next catchiest track on the ‘Madchester’ EP after ‘Hallelujah’. It didn’t get the remix treatment and so doesn’t get the love it should. 

Yes Please! The Next 10

31. ‘The Egg’

32. ‘Stayin’ Alive’ (12-inch Mix)

33. ‘Tokoloshe Man’

34. ‘Donovan’

35. ‘Holiday’

36. ‘Judge Fudge’

37. ‘Sunshine and Love’

38. ‘Delightful’

39. ‘Hallelujah’ (Ewan Pearson Remix)

40. ‘W.F.L. (The Vince Clark Remix)

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This article first appeared in issue eight of Disco Pogo.

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