Last modified on Tue 11 May 2021 06.17 EDT
Shaun Ryder is being uncharacteristically quiet. Thatâs because heâs mistakenly stuck himself on mute and canât work out how to turn on the microphone of the computer heâs on. We spend a rather amusing (and awkward) five minutes mouthing silently at each other, pointing fingers and shrugging shoulders, while Ryder wrestles with his device, occasionally spinning it around so that he appears upside down. Eventually, though, an unmistakable Salford accent comes crackling through my speakers: âCan ya hear me now?â
Loud and clear, Shaun, which is good because Iâve got a burning question that demands answering. Earlier this year, Ryder contracted Covid-19, along with his entire household (Ryder lives with his second wife, Joanne, and their two daughters). He was sick for three weeks, with bouts of fatigue that dragged on after that. But, according to best pal Bez â his partner in crime through the hedonist
Don t show me this message again✕
Alan McGee: ‘I was called a lightweight when I went sober’ (Press image)
I think the rock’n’roll lifestyle is f ing bulls t,” says Alan McGee, former manager of the biggest rock’n’roll band in the world. “If anybody’s into that I pity them, to be honest. There are loads of people my age – in their fifties and sixties – still caning it. That’s frightening.”
The Creation Records label co-founder, whose colourful life is the subject of a new biopic written by fellow Scotsman Irvine Welsh, is very aware he risks sounding like a hypocrite. McGee and several of the rock bands he managed were notorious in the late Eighties and early Nineties for their drug and alcohol-fuelled antics. But McGee gave it all up aged 32 – with one exception. He was prescribed Valium for anxiety after suffering a nervous breakdown in 1994 (“they used to hand them out like sweeties”) and only managed to ditch it a few years ago. Oasis w