The Massive Attack cider challenge that almost broke The Dandy Warhols: “Wow, that’s a drug”
Of all the drinks I love, I often wonder why my hometown is renowned for the one I hate the most. As a man who loves a beer, doesn’t mind a cocktail, and can pretend to know what a good wine is during a fancy dinner, I would consider myself a relatively easy-going person in the culinary department. But I draw the limit firmly at cider, despite living somewhere that’s made its global name from it: Bristol.
As a Somerset native, it was after all the first drop of alcohol I ever touched, and that’s largely why I’ve developed such an aversion to it.
Banding around the swing set of my local park, with a group of wide-eyed mates, we would share the very worst offerings the cider industry has to offer, painfully guzzle them down and cosplay as adults for the evening. An admission that won’t seem all that shocking, should you be reading from the UK, for these sorts of experiences were a rite of passage growing up.
But at that point, I didn’t know I would make my home in a city just an hour north that positions itself as something of a mecca of the drink. Dotted around the city are boozers that celebrate the violent reaction of a warm cider, poured by bar staff who proudly sport the thick accents of the West Country.
The older I’ve gotten and the more I’ve realised the romance of it all, I’ve kicked myself for ruining my chances before I even got started, because so much of Bristol’s musical history is wrapped up in these pubs, more specifically, The Coronation Tap/Cori Tap, a legendary boozer that was regularly frequented by Massive Attack on their ascendancy to global fame in the 1990s and early 2000s. Despite that legacy, the pub is better known in the city for its challenge, which involves drinking ten half pints of its own brewed £2.50 double-strength Exhibition Cider, in one sitting.
So, as hospitable hosts, when Massive Attack were tasked with guiding The Dandy Warhols around the city, amid their stay to record their 2008 album Earth to the Dandy Warhols, they thought it was only right they took them to The Tap and gave them a baptism by cider.
In a recent interview with Far Out, The Dandy Warhols’ Courtney Taylor-Taylor said, “We became friends with Massive Attack. They invited us to come stay in Bristol and work in their studio for a few days, and that was really cool. The song ‘And Then I Dreamt of Yes’, that’s the only song that we actually completed.”
Why were they so sluggish in terms of productivity? Well, that was largely down to the half pints of Exhibition that Massive Attack had them drink. Taylor-Taylor continued, “We were introduced to a cider bar and had Scrumpy Jack or some shit like that. Wow, that’s a drug”.
As a man who’s been active in the music industry since the early ‘90s, Taylor-Taylor would have surely been privy to some of the industry’s hardest substances, and the very fact that the Bristol cider ranks high on the list goes a long way towards showing you just how serious it is.
