Happy Mondays Artistfacts

1980-
Shaun RyderVocals
Paul RyderBass1980-2022
Mark "Cow" DayGuitar
Paul DavisKeyboards, samples1980-1993, 2012-2015
Gary "Gaz" WhelanDrums
Mark "Bez" BerryDancing, maracas
RowettaVocals, percussion1990-1993, 2012-2024
Their most popular song, "Step On," is a cover of a 1971 song called "He's Gonna Step On You Again" by John Kongos. Happy Mondays used the same lyrics but took the song in a very different musical direction and added spoken bits like "You're twistin' my melon man" and "you talk so hip."
Happy Mondays are very much associated with British rave culture, so much so that the 2002 movie on the subject, 24 Hour Party People, is named after one of their songs.
Lead singer Shaun Ryder is their lyricist. Early on, Tony Wilson, their boss at Factory Records, told him he wrote like the Irish poet WB Yeats. Ryder didn't know who that was but learned it was high praise.
When they formed, Shaun Ryder wanted to be their drummer, so he got a drum kit and quickly learned that he couldn't play them very well. To stay in the band, he had to become their singer and main songwriter.
Shaun Ryder is very artistic and intelligent, but he was terrible at school. That's largely because he's dyslexic, and he naturally writes with his left hand. At primary school, there was no diagnosis of his dyslexia, and they forced him to write with his right hand, which made a mess of his handwriting.
Happy Mondays are one of the few groups with an official member whose primary function is dancing on stage. That would be Mark Berry, known as "Bez." He does shake maracas when the band performs, so sometimes he's listed as a percussionist, but really he's there to create a vibe with his dancing.
Shaun Ryder credits the drug ecstasy for helping sharpen their musical focus starting with their 1988 album Bummed. "We was all taking E at that time," he told Classic Pop magazine. "[Ecstasy] just chilled us out."

Ecstasy may have had some creative benefit, but Sean and his brother Paul soon got addicted to heroin, which fractured the band and led to their 1993 split.
The Happy Mondays have had fits and starts throughout their career, starting when they split up in 1993 as egos and drug use took their toll. Their first reunion was in 1999, when they embarked on a world tour. They split two years later, had another run from 2004-2010, then got back together in 2012.
In 1993, after Happy Mondays broke up the first time, Shaun Ryder and Bez formed Black Grape, a group that leaned into funk. Many had written off Ryder at this point as an irredeemable junkie, but he proved them wrong when the first Black Grape album, It's Great When You're Straight...Yeah, went to #1 in the UK when it was released in 1995. The title is a reference to his newfound sobriety.
Paul Ryder died suddenly on July 15, 2022 at age 58, just hours before the band were due to play the Kubix Festival in Sunderland. The coroner listed the cause of death as ischaemic heart disease and diabetes.

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