David Squires delves into… Happy Mondays’ manic drugged-up trip to Barbados
When all is said and done, perhaps the maddest thing about the Happy Mondays is how they were actually one of the most pivotal bands in the history of British music.
They might have sought out more drugs than a Bolivian sniffer dog, bankrupted Factory Records with reckless behaviour, and yes, their most famous member may well be a dancer with saucers for eyes, but they not only helped to launch the Madchester scene, their unique mix of house music and indie spearheaded music’s present dissolution of genre.
Yet, if you ask the band – whether they were recording in Driffield or Barbados – they barely seem to remember making any music at all. “Some things are best left to memories,” Bez once said. That places their music in a curious position.
It was their trip to Barbados that proved most curious when it comes to the Happy Mondays, somehow fashioning an album out of a haze of drugged-up carnage. As David Squires uncovers in the cartoon below, even the Caribbean was never the same after they left.
