Lincs: Engine Shed date in December for Madchester legends The Happy Mondays
Front by Shaun Ryder and featuring the equally iconic maracas-wielding Bez, The Happy Mondays are famous for anthems like Step On, Hallelujah, Loose Fit and Kinky Afro and albums like Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches.
This tour marks 25 years since Pills ‘n’ Thrills was released and they will be performing it in its entirety, at well as the other hits.
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“It’s great to be doing 25 years of ‘Pills ‘n’ Thrills,” said Shaun Ryder.
“Here’s to another 25 years. I’m going to remember it this time.”
Released late in 1990, ‘Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches spent 31 weeks on the UK albums chart, peaking at number four.
It was preceded by the release of Happy Mondays’ biggest hit singles, Step On and Kinky Afro, which both reached number five in the UK singles chart.
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Step On gave rise to the now classic phrase ‘twisting my melon, man’ and ensured the Mondays went from struggling Manchester indie band trying to emerging from the wake of the Stone Roses into a global hit.
“There’s some really great work on Pills ‘n’ Thrills, it was the album that put us on Top of The Pops,” added Shaun.
The Happy Mondays were discovered by the late Tony Wilson during a battle of the bands competition at the legendary Hacienda nightclub in Manchester in the late 1980s.
Their first album was produced John Cale, of the Velvet Underground, before they released Bummed in 1988 and then Pills ‘n’ Thrills in 1990.
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Pills ‘n’ Thrills was produced by superstar DJ Paul Oakenfold and went platinum in the UK.
Paul McCartney commented at the time that the Happy Mondays reminded him ofThe Beatles in their Strawberry Fields phases and the Mondays’ popularity with the Britpop scene that followed in the early and mid-1990s was assured.
As well as sharing the charts and nightclubs with the likes of Oasis, Blur, Ocean Colour Scene, The Charlatans, The Stone Roses, Paul Weller and more musically, the band were just as good at generating column inches for themselves in the tabloids with sometimes controversial but often hilarious statements and soundbites in interviews, mainly from Shaun Ryder or Bez.
The original Mondays split in 1993 as Ryder and Bez formed Black Grape but the band reformed in 1999 only to split again.
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A second reformation took place in 2001 and this lasted until 2010.
The Mondays were gone for two years before the current line-up got back together again with Shaun saying old wounds had healed and it was like the good old days again.
They are at the Engine Shed on 4th December.
Tickets are available now on 0844 888876 or www.engineshed.co,uk