Easy Ryder

IT’s mid-afternoon and Shaun Ryder is just getting up. “Sorry mate,” he slurs in his Manchester drawl, “I was just having a rest.”

But then you wouldn’t want it any other way.

The Pills ’n’ Thrills and Bellyaches star is as much cartoon character as rock icon.

The frontman of seminal Manchester indie band Happy Mondays, he forged that link between dance and pop which kicked-off the 90s baggy scene and spawned a generation of beat-driven rock acts.

An instantly recognisable figure, he is a towering, if shambling presence and renowned hedonist, who has spoken openly of his insatiable appetite for drink and drugs, and whose taste for the hard stuff led to the break up of the Mondays back in 1992.

The last thing I wanted to hear from Shaun was that he had just been making a salad, enjoying some yoga or stretching after a jog. Clean-living he ain’t.

“I’m having a family day,” he goes on, at home in the Worsley area of Manchester.

“I’m enjoying myself though.

“I was 48 in August. I thought I’d start knocking it on the head when I reached 40 – and I have a different pace of life now.”

A week on Monday, the original 24-hour party person returns to Oxford for a gig at the O2 Academy, alongside fellow Mancunians The Charlatans, to promote Tim Burgess’s band’s new album Who We Touch.

It’s an inspired match – though I can’t be alone in puzzling as to how it came about.

“I’ve been bumping into The Charlatans for the past 20 years,” he says. “I wouldn’t say we are good mates, but I do remember Tim from when he was really young when he started his band.”

As a founding father of indie-dance, who was spotted by impresario Tony Wilson in a battle of the bands at his legendary Hacienda club, I suggest to Shaun that he must have witnessed some crazy scenes.

“I can’t remember,” he says apologetically – and definitely not for comic effect. “I can’t remember anything from then because of all the beer.”

And the rest? “Not really; the drugs weren’t the problem – it was the beer.”

Determined to dig up a tale from his substance-clouded past, I persist. What was the funniest moment, I ask? He laughs: “That would be our first line-up. Heaven knows how we ever made it as a band.”

Though not exactly clean-living, Shaun admits to having calmed down. A lot.

“I don’t have mates any more, I have family,” he says proudly. “I don’t do the showbiz thing or knockabout with all that crowd. From day-one it was about making music; not being famous, just making music – and money.

“We always knew from the beginning that we were going to make it, and that’s why lots of bands better than us didn’t make it. They didn’t have the right attitude.

“A lot of bands better than us were starting in 1981, and I didn’t develop my songwriting skills until ’85.

“But it’s not about music – it’s about the rock and roll lifestyle, and I played it to the full – which you can do as a kid. But now I’m hitting 50, I don’t party, I don’t drink, I go to work and I play dad to my three kids. And you won’t find me doing any showbiz rubbish or reality TV.”

The last remark is surely a dig at bandmate Mark ‘Bez’ Berry, who won Celebrity Big Brother in 2005?

“For a geezer who shakes his head, dances in a band and doesn’t do anything else, he’s done well. He has that entertainment gene.

“As for me, I just write and sing – if that’s what you want to call it.”

Shaun’s visit will be his first to the Academy since his show with the reformed Happy Mondays, shortly after the venue opened in 2007 – at which he incurred the wrath of Oxford City Council by lighting up a cigarette on stage in open defiance of the then-recently imposed smoking ban.

Is he planning a similar stunt? “No, I probably just forgot about the smoking ban,” he says genuinely. “I didn’t do it just to say ‘I can smoke!’. And anyway, that was then. We’ve now had a few years and I’m getting used to it.”

He is keen to see his old fans down at the front again, though. “Get yourself down to where we are playing,” he says – but suggests the night will be a lot tamer than some of the hair-raising shows of old. “I don’t think I’ll be hanging around,” he laughs. “And I’m definitely not hitting the dancefloor! Well… not unless I’ve had a few beers!”

* Shaun Ryder plays with The Charlatans at the O2 Academy Oxford on Monday, October 18. Tickets are £23.50 from ticketweb.co.uk In next week’s Guide, Tim Burgess shares the highs and lows of two decades with The Charlatans.