There has never been a land of pure excess quite like Manchester. Before the 90s had established itself as the decade of brash nationalistic merchandising and tabloid intrusions, Manchester was ‘Madchester’. This title emerged from the late-80s acid house scene, a moment of immense cultural significance where raves swept the nation, bringing with it hedonism, drug-taking, and, eventually, Bez.

Let’s sort out our chronology. The First Summer of Love was that psychedelic rush of peace and love in the 60s, when free love turned off the freeway and landed in the flower-powered hands of hippies in San Francisco. The Second Summer of Love was the revival of this in warehouses and fields across Britain, powered less by flowers and more by MDMA. ‘Madchester’, a term that was coined by a Happy Mondays EP, was born from this Second Summer, but also went on to outshine it. 

Manchester has always been a cultural powerhouse. From 10cc to Take That, from The Chemical Brothers to the Bee Gees, the city for many decades outdid (and continues to outdo) itself in terms of musical output. With this in mind, Madchester was not a peak, or a summer; for Manchester, it was a rebirth. It was the bridge between the 80s and 90s, the spring before the summer of Britpop and Cool Britannia, and with it came a singular figure: Shaun Ryder.

Ryder was Madchester personified. As lead singer of the Happy Mondays, he was the commercial codpiece of the movement: always at the front and forever below the belt. He was loud, loutish and cruel (a famous anecdote about Ryder recounts how he killed thousands of pigeons with some rat-poisoned bread), and yet penned some of the most transcendental and memorable songs to come from the city. The self-identified ‘Twenty Four Hour Party People’ made their aims very clear on their breakthrough track ‘Hallelujah’, released on the Madchester Rave On EP: ‘Not sent to save ya/ Just here to spank you and play some games’ […] ‘Reverend Shaun William Ryder/ Will lie down beside ya, fill you full of junk’.

Unfortunately, the demise of the Happy Mondays also mirrored that of Madchester. As the media spotlight essentially popularised the regular use of ecstasy, it accelerated its heady comedown; just as Paul McGann says in Withnail and I, ‘sooner or later, you’ve got to get out because it’s crashing, then all at once the frozen hours melt out through the nervous system and seep out the pores’. The Happy Mondays disintegrated in a convolution of member disputes and drug binges, coinciding with the Stone Roses’ (the other Madchester frontrunner) disappointing sophomore effort and cancellation of tour dates. The flame had burned too wildly and swallowed itself in the process. Other Madchester bands – Inspiral Carpets, James, 808 State – had not the presence nor the tunes of the Happy Mondays to sustain the scene and to stop the lethargy from setting in.

All was not lost, however. As I said before, Madchester was not the peak but the rebirth, and this acid-fuelled warehouse romp paved the way for popular music in the 90s. The decade’s biggest bands, Oasis and Blur, have cited the Happy Mondays as influences, with the two going on to spearhead the Britpop phenomenon. For Shaun Ryder himself, it was not the end either. He would (surprisingly) go on to top both the UK Albums and Singles chart, his funk-rock-rap group Black Grape releasing the album It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah, whilst Ryder featured on the No.1 single ‘Dare’ by Gorillaz. 

Nowadays, Ryder has relegated himself to reality television, in between the odd Mondays or Black Grape reunion. Sadly, this is the fact of modern life, more rubbish than ever before: music scenes no longer capture the nation’s imagination; television is for the lowest common denominator; and old stars are strung out on the public washing line, drying out for our own self-cannibalising nostalgia. We can only hope for something new to rears its head, to bring energy where there is only deflation, seeing in not another summer of love, but a spring of excess.

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