As a child, the singer loved to start fires. As an adult, he was barely less chaotic. He discusses Bez, charisma, ADHD, his new memoir – and why making music is great, even if the record industry will always screw you over
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here are thousands of pictures of Shaun Ryder and Bez in Happy Mondays, from the mid- to late 80s, that run the gamut from mashed to wrecked. They don’t always look that cheerful, but when they do, they look insanely fun. In Ryder’s new memoir, 24 Hour Party Person, he quotes a critic: “The poorly educated might just call [Bez] a dancer, but he’s the proprietor of good times.” What Bez did for the band, the band did for the era: just went way too far, in an absolutely magnetic way.
Ryder, in a Novotel hotel to the west of Manchester, explains what drew the whole band together. “When you are neurodiverse, you attract other people who are,” he says. “I would have said at the time we were all fucked-up loonies. I mean Bez [he launches into a spirited impression]: ‘I’m-not-fucking-neurodiverse’… it’s like, mate. You are. ‘I’m fucking not.’ Mate, you are. The same with all of them. None of them have been tested and gone through the thing, but they are. All of them.
“The difference between me and Our Kid [Paul Ryder, his younger brother, who died in 2022 aged 58], was that he didn’t have the H in ADHD, the hyperactive bit, so he just came across as lazy. Wouldn’t get out of bed. Always going for a nap. Like Brian the snail.” But it’s not laziness, he says. “It’s part of his condition. He hasn’t got that get-up-and-go, he’s not motivated.” He’ll start a sentence in the past tense and by the end, his brother is still alive. He resists sentimentality like a cage fighter, though: “My brother couldn’t get anything out of his mouth except to slag me off.”
