AN EXPLOSION IN SPACE: Happy Mondays. CBGB. New York City. August 1989.

Tony Crean looms large in my life. In the last thirty odd years he’s been there at pretty much every twist and turn. When things were utterly incredible, he was the first there to pat me on the back and congratulate me. By the same chalk, when things were unbelievably bad, he was the first on the scene to assess the damage and stage direct the recovery. He lives hundreds of miles away from me. I love him dearly. I always say everybody should have a friend like Tony. I mean it from the pit of my soul.

The best gig we ever attended took place in August 1989 in New York City. CBGB was a fucking shithole that should have been condemned and closed down many years before I arrived. The place was fucking rank – for me there’s nothing romantic about squalor. It seemed that because the place is steeped in rock ‘n’ roll history, it must have been a good excuse to just let the place go to rack and ruin. I may be missing the point here, but I reckon even those poor unfortunates with an electric guitar for a brain need somewhere to take a piss. Or somewhere to sit between solos.

It was into this world that the Happy Mondays rocked. At the end of a national tour supporting Pixies, tired and washed out, they had one more show before home time in CBGB, on a summer Saturday night, opening for a speed metal band from California called Chemical People. The headline band, their miniscule following and the decrepit, ghastly fucking venue wouldn’t know what hit them. What started off as a couple of pints with the band in a bar next to Carnegie Hall, over the next 18 hours turned into several excursions into a pharmaceutical wonderland. Petals, flowers, flickering lights. All the greats. Those neutrals, onlookers, or the just curious had assembled in the horseshoe booths facing the stage. The dance floor – if it could be called that – was occupied by about 25 or so ‘English people’ out of their minds on MDMA. The contrast was palpable from forty paces. The stage was filled with young men, standing around, touching things, sitting on amps, stretching, doing nothing. Not all of these people were in the band. Shaun Ryder took to the stage with his hands full. Beer, joint, tambourine. As he faced his audience he began smashing the tambourine into the mic-stand, shouting “Wake up! Fucking wake up! America, fucking wake up!” Without missing a beat, this ramshackle collection of beaten musicians launched into “Do It Better” from their current LP, “Bummed”. This terrifying yet satisfying wave of Northern English belligerence swept over the Bowery for the next 45 minutes. Happy Mondays were truly majestic – a heady mixture of a punken attitude, that swagger you acquired at school and a shedload of psychotropic love drugs took the roof off the place, and scarred me forever. Every gig I have been to since has been gauged on that miraculous performance.

Earlier that night Tony had been in a building that exploded and had to be
rescued from the fifteenth floor by the New York fire department. Me? I’d been in a building and my mind exploded, none of New York’s finest could save me. I like those “nothing will ever be the same” moments, and this certainly was one of many I experienced in my younger years. Everybody should have them, all
the time. They really are what living is all about.