Black Grape

Concorde 2, Madeira Drive, Brighton, Saturday, June 27

WHEN Happy Mondays disintegrated in 1993 among a mess of collapsed record labels, botched Ibizan recording sessions and drugs frontman Shaun Ryder says he got the blame for everything.

So looking back it was a surprise he was out of the blocks again so fast with his next project, Black Grape.

“I had brought Kermit in to do certain tracks on Yes Please [the Mondays last album],” says Ryder.

“We were Manchester scene drug buddies. With the Mondays finished we had already been over to the States, sorted out a deal and had half the album done.”

It’s Great When You’re Straight... Yeah shot straight to number one in the charts in 1995, supported by the hit singles Reverend Black Grape, In The Name Of The Father and Kelly’s Heroes.

The vocal style was recognisable Ryder, but with a stronger electronic hip-hop and sample influence courtesy of Kermit - real name Paul Leveridge.

“It’s a brilliant album,” says Ryder today. “We knew we had something good while we were doing it, but when you’re going out and performing you don’t have the chance to sit back and enjoy it until 20 years later.

“It was like when the Happy Mondays did the Bummed tour [in 2013] – I hadn’t listened to that album since I came out of the studio. When I took it on the road again I realised I had done some good writing, I could pat myself on the back.”

As well as playing the album in full this tour will see Ryder and Kermit resurrect some of the tracks from the album’s less-favoured 1997 follow-up Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.

“Black Grape was really me and Kermit,” says Ryder, pointing out former Mondays bandmate Bez only appeared in a couple of early videos and live shows.

“We produced it and played all the instruments in the studio.

“We have been rehearsing again, having a jam, banging our writing heads together. There will definitely be another Black Grape album.”

There very nearly wasn’t. Black Grape broke up in 1998 when Kermit fell seriously ill.

“He had the last rites read to him,” reveals Ryder. “He was already collapsing before that. It was a pretty mad time 20 years ago.

“We decided to do something now Kermit is in such a good place.”

The pair performed together again at a show for Bez’s Reality Party supporting homeless charities.

Ryder may have voted for the first time at the last General Election – but it wasn’t for his old bandmate.

“I felt this time I had better do something,” he says. “There’s a lot of stuff going on which really affects working people. Salford is really hardened Labour, so voting for Bez would have been a wasted vote. And some of his policies – he wanted to abolish the police force and taxes! He believed he would be Prime Minister.”

Ryder has gone on record admitting he remembers more of the 1960s – a decade which ended when he was seven years old – than of the 1990s when Happy Mondays and Black Grape were at their height.

By the time Black Grape disintegrated he was creatively dry.

“I had been on a treadmill for a long time,” he says. “I started with Happy Mondays when I was 18. We made album, after album, after album, and then started with Black Grape.

“When I hit 40 I thought ‘I’ve got to change my lifestyle’. It’s like a car going into an MoT – when you hit 40 you can’t carry on like you did in your teens, 20s or 30s. It took three years to get myself back, but I got there slowly but surely.”

With two children under eight his musical tastes now stretch to Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, although if he gets control of the stereo he puts on Johnny Cash or Dean Martin.

“As you get older your music tastes change,” he says. “I don’t listen to as much new music as I should.”

His public image was given a boost when he took part in I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here in 2010.

His adventures in the jungle have continued with a project he recently undertook with Happy Mondays.

“We’ve done a television show with an indigenous tribe of natives in the Amazon,” he says. “We went to make music with them. The Mondays hadn’t made music together since 1994 – we did a 2007 album but it wasn’t the original band.”

Some of the resulting music will be available to download on the night the show airs, with all proceeds going to help the Amazonian tribe. And Ryder says a new Happy Mondays album is in the can for future release.

Following this Black Grape tour, Ryder will reunite with his former band to mark the 25th anniversary of their creative highwater mark – the classic Pills ‘N’ Thrills And Bellyaches album - with a jaunt across the country in November and December and a few summer festivals.

“It’s pretty full on, but I really enjoy it,” he says. “I live a totally different life now – there’s not much drama. It’s just all good.”

Doors 6.30pm, tickets £24. Call 01273 673311.