Subscribe to Uncut and make huge savings on the cover price – find out by clicking here! Originally published in Uncut's Take 157 It started out as a trenchant political protest song by two white South African folkies, a song that drew parallels between the oppression of black South Africans and...
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SHAUN RYDER: As soon as we recorded “Step On”, Tony said, “Fuck it, Elektra can have ‘Tokoloshe Man’. We’ll keep ‘Step On’ as our single.” And he was fucking right. We didn’t even tell Elektra we’d recorded it. We rush-released it a few weeks after we recorded it. It was just dead easy.
GAZ WHELAN: We tended to work out songs in the rehearsal studios. We’d start off with the drums and bass, jamming, playing grooves. And our guitarist, Mark Day – who was always the best musician of all of us – would be playing licks. We’d jam for hours. Then Shaun would come in, sit cross-legged on the floor with his mic, a pen and paper, and he’d just scribble. And he’d ask us to keep playing. In the days before you could just record a loop, we had to physically play these grooves over and over again for Shaun to write over them! We didn’t mind. We only stopped because we’d be in creases of laughter at the lyrics he’d be coming out with!
SHAUN RYDER: Where did “twisting my melon” come from? A Steve McQueen documentary I saw. Apparently he used to walk into his director’s office and argue. And there was this guy doing an impression of him saying, “Oh man, he’s twisting my melon”. So I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll just have that.’ It’s a great phrase, innit?
PAUL OAKENFOLD: “Step On” convinced me I could do a whole album with the Mondays. I was shitting myself. It was an incredible risk for the record company, considering I’d never produced a rock band before! Osbourne had engineered before, so we were reliant on his studio nous.
GAZ WHELAN: “Step On” certainly set the tone for the Pills’N’ Thrills… album in LA. Oakey’s way of working, that was how we did every track on Pills’N’ Thrills…
PAUL OAKENFOLD: It was a tricky job. I was given £100,000 to go out to LA and come back with an album. So I had London Records on my case, Tony Wilson on my case, 10 guys running riot around LA, and the buck stopped with me! The Mondays liked to socialise – they ended up dragging a dozen of their mates out to LA to keep them company. So I had to make sure we socialised, and boy, did we party. We all had these convertibles, like in Bullitt! And when we rolled, we fucking rolled! But I had to get the balance right, and we had to be very disciplined in the studio. I remember this bigwig from Elektra coming down to the Capitol studios while we were recording. This is the studio where Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole had recorded, where the Beach Boys did Pet Sounds. And this bigwig was standing there in his linen suit and shades, watching these scallies fucking around, and he looked absolutely horrified. I had to go and placate him and say, “No, just trust me, it’ll all sound great when it’s done, honestly!” It worked with “Step On”, so I knew it would work with the rest of the album.
JOHN KONGOS: When I heard the Mondays’ version of “He’s Gonna Step On You Again”, I actually did call the cops because Shaun twisted my melon, man, ha! But I soon grew to love his very different version. People come up to me now in Arizona and say: “I didn’t know you did a cover of the Happy Mondays song!” So it’s all cool.
SHAUN RYDER: To be honest, I used to hate singing “Step On” at first. You don’t want to be remembered as a fucking covers band. Then after 10, 12, 15 years of doing it you get pissed off with repeating it. But I’ve started getting over all that bollocks. I’m back where I do like doing it now. The fans like it. It’s a fucking great song, isn’t it? Something to be proud of.
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