Trivia / Happy Mondays

• Black Sheep Hit: Their cover of John Kongos' "Step On" was this for a while. Shaun used to hate singing that song. He mellowed a bit, later.
• Creator Killer: The disastrous creation of Yes Please! led to the band breaking up and Factory Records going bankrupt, see below.
• Development Hell: An infamous case in the album Yes Please!. First, they moved to Barbados in order for Shaun to avoid heroin. It didn't work^note Shaun took an entire month's supply of methadone, but the band inadvertently smashed the case containing it by messing around in Manchester airport. Working with a different producer (Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne produced Pills 'n' Thrills And Bellyaches, now this album was being produced by Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz) caused the band's signature Madchester sound to be traded in for Caribbean-influenced synthpop (a genre that had become very dated by the time the album was released, just a year after the success of Nevermind and the explosion of grunge and Alternative Rock in the mainstream consciousness), and lots of slacking. Add to that Shaun's discovery of crack, leading to spending a lot of money and basically loading Eddy Grant's studio gear into a van and going downtown to sell for crack (they also took his sun loungers and basically created "crack dens"). After they got back to England, they didn't want to give the master tapes to Tony Wilson and the rest of the Factory personnel. However, they sold it for £50, only for the Factory guys to discover that it didn't contain any vocals (because Shaun didn't write any lyrics and couldn't be bothered). This waste of time and money, combined with the failure of Yes Please! to turn anything close to a profit, ultimately led to Factory going bankrupt.
• Genre-Killer: The failure of Yes Please! was one of the last nails in the coffin of the short-lived Madchester/Baggy scene.
• Missing Episode: "Desmond", from their first album, drew a lawsuit because it blatantly lifted the vocal melody from The Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", and had to be removed from subsequent pressings of the album.
• Money, Dear Boy: The band briefly re-united in 1998 when Shaun Ryder and Bez both faced huge tax bills.
• Troubled Production: Their fourth and last album Yes Please! was a production so troubled that it bankrupted the label that financed it, Factory Records. The album went way over budget, some members became addicted to crack (while attempting to kick a heroin habit), to the point of selling some studio gear in exchange for some more crack, and a recording session in Barbados resulted in recorded instruments but no vocals (due to Shaun Ryder forgetting to write the lyrics). When the album was released, it was universally panned and sold only an eighth of what its predecessor made.
• What Could Have Been: In an interview with ChannelBee, Johnny Marr said that he was invited to work with the band shortly before they began work on Yes Please! in Barbados, only to arrive at the airport realizing how such an experience would be. He notes that he was in the band "for about 25 minutes".

---