Happy Mondays and Black Grape frontman Shaun Ryder is releasing a new memoir titled '24 Hour Party Person', and will personally sign every copy. The book promises tales of hedonism, danger, and family, according to the publisher A Way With Media.
Ryder, who has previously written 'How to Be a Rock Star' and 'Twisting My Melon', said: 'I’ve done more books now, I think, than Shakespeare, sort of.' The memoir covers his time with Happy Mondays, including taking crack cocaine for the first time in New York, as well as 'dodging bullets in Jamaica, surviving a gunpoint ordeal in New York and escaping kidnap in Amsterdam'.
One particularly vivid anecdote involves watching the animated film 'Watership Down' with bandmate Bez while under the influence of acid in the 1970s. Ryder recalled: 'I’m telling you, when you’re on an acid trip, this hallucinogenic story about rabbits trying to escape destruction from human bulldozers is definitely not the fucking film to watch.'
The book also covers Ryder's later career, including his appearances on 'Celebrity Gogglebox' alongside Bez, and his time on 'I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!' where he came runner-up in 2010. Ryder, often called a national treasure, said in a 2024 interview: 'I’ll take it. Better than being called a crackhead or a smackhead, innit?'
Ryder formed Black Grape in 1993 after Happy Mondays disbanded, and the band's most recent album 'Orange Head' was released in 2024. The memoir is set to include 'the studio sessions, the bust-ups, the benders, the making of era-defining albums', as well as the importance of family.
