How do you do?... Space Monkeys

In the first of our new How Do You Do? series of interviews, which aims to introduce the stars of the Manchester music scene to a wider audience, we catch up with Space Monkeys frontman Richard McNevin-Duff ahead of their Valentine's night gig at Band on the Wall.

Formed in 1995, they were the last band signed by Tony Wilson to Factory Records, releasing their debut album The Daddy of Them All in 1997, which spawned their biggest hit, "Sugar Cane." Despite it not even hitting the Top 40 in the UK, it became one of the very rare entries from a Mancunian act on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, where it stayed for four weeks after peaking at no.58 in January 1998 (only Usher's Nice & Slow and Pearl Jam's Given to Fly were higher new entries).

Following the collapse of Factory, the band split in 2000, with keyboard player Tony Pipes going on to be a creative director, responsible for designing the 11th & 12th Doctor's incarnation of the Doctor Who logo. The band reformed in 2015 and released the album, Modern Actions, in 2018.

How do you do, Space Monkeys?...

First up, we know where (drummer) Chas is from as he was in our class at school in Ramsbottom, but where are the rest of you lads from?

North Manchester – Heywood, Middleton, Bury, (Jupiter, Venus, Mars) and one token Scouser we picked up along the way from Liverpool (Uranus).

Are you Reds or Blues?

Red or dead. If we hadn’t seen such riches, we could live with being poor. The North Stand will rise again.

And how do you like your Vimto?

Injected with a clean syringe and a side measure of Jack Daniels.

When you’re at the chippy, what do you call chips on bread?

I don’t get involved in any of these little click-bait arguments. If I’m at the chippy it’s Pudding, Chips & Gravy all the way. No days off.

What is your favourite place in Manchester?

All my favourite places are music venues that have sadly shut down – The Boardwalk, Hacienda and the Roadhouse. The Holy Trinity. I judge the greatness of a music venue on how bad the toilets are. If the toilets are nice and clean and not flooded, it has no soul. That new Factory one made from glass and recycled plastic looks very clean. Could probably eat your dinner off the toilet floor.

And who would you crown King and Queen of Manchester?

King - I’d have a playoff between Ian Brown and Eric Cantona. Kung Fu battle to take the Crown. And then I would fully expect the winner to renounce the throne and declare Manchester as a Republic.

Queen – Kyla Brox. Queen of the Blues. One of the most amazing voices to emerge from Manchester. We’ve been friends with Kyla since she first started out. She sang with us when she was a teenager back in the 90’s and she blessed us again with her beautiful soul and spirit on our last album ‘Modern Actions’. It was like Picasso adding a few finishing touches to a Banksy.

A picture of Eric Cantona appears on the inside sleeve of your brilliant debut album The Daddy Of Them All in 1997. Did he ever get a copy?

We didn’t really mix with footballers or celebrities back in the 90’s we were too busy enjoying ourselves. I went to Old Trafford a few times with Tony Wilson after Eric had left the building and he told me that Eric loved the Mondays, Tony was very happy with that.

Eric was a hero of ours and still is. I saw him at Stoller Hall last year it was a great performance, loved it. Maybe we can get him to sing on the next album.

So take us back to 1995 when you first met. What happened and do you ever reminisce about those days in Manchester today?

I met Tony Pipes [DJ and keyboards] working in Our Price, a record shop in Bury in 1990. Tony was into Hip Hop, I was into Bob Dylan and the Stone Roses and we formed a strong friendship through music which then became a band. We were all young and wild and free in the 90’s weren’t we?

It seems like a different world when you look back. Maybe because it was the last decade before the internet and the digital world, it makes it seem like another era.

Our unreleased second album was called ‘Escape From The 20th Century’ as we felt something was changing but we didn’t know what it was. We toured America for a year and a half and none of us even had a mobile phone. You just had to find your own way to places and all meet up at the same time. I didn’t even have a watch. It’s a wonder we are all still alive.

Where did the name Space Monkeys come from?

It just fell out of the sky to be honest. Looking back, maybe subconsciously it was a mix of The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. As a kid growing up in the 70’s I was into Planet Of The Apes, Star Wars, Monkey, Space 1999, The Monkees TV show, Jungle Book, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong; it was all about Space or Monkeys one way or another. Maybe the name chose us.

How influential has being from Manchester been on your sound and career to date?

I was 17 years old in 1989 and the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays were everything to me. It was my Punk, and I’m sure it was the same for Liam and Oasis and many others of our generation.

It was an exciting place to be, the Hacienda, Boardwalk, Band On The Wall, they were like cathedrals to us.

We used to go to a club called The Hangout at Isadoras in the old Corn Exchange in Manchester, every single week and the DJ Dave Booth mixed Hip Hop, 60’s Psychedelic records, Northern Soul, Bob Dylan, The Stone Roses and Acid House and that’s kind of the blueprint for Space Monkeys. Mixing all the chemicals together to make something explosive.

You’re one of those Manchester bands - like Barclay James Harvest, When in Rome, Puressence, Lamb, and Hurts – who, outside of your hometown, enjoyed greater success overseas than in the UK. Did you get a feeling of frustration when Sugar Cane charted in the U.S. but not at home, in 1997?

It’s all a hustle at the end of the day, the music game. We didn’t join a band to have a successful career or shift units or whatever. We believed in the Rock n Roll dream, Kick Out The Jams, Highway to Hell, No One Here Gets Out Alive, One Step Beyond - that’s what we did, that’s how we lived it, and we loved every minute of it. It was all just one big trip for us.

You must be the most unlucky Manchester band, having been the last act signed to Factory just before they collapsed at the time you looked to be flying. Your incredible debut album won rave reviews, you had a US hit single and you’d been asked to record a track for the Sliding Doors soundtrack. Did your world come crashing down in 2000 and how many Goop coffee enemas did you have to insert before you found yourself reuniting in 2015?

I don’t believe in luck, it’s not a word I use. I read ‘The Catcher In The Rye’ by J.D Salinger when I was a teenager and it had a big influence on me. There’s a line where Houlden Caulfield gets offended because someone wished him "Good Luck" and he says, "I’d never yell 'Good Luck!' at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it." That has stuck with me ever since.

We made our own path. I hustled a lot to get us a record deal. The band worked hard, and we weren’t gifted musicians, but we practised and improved and had a lot of success and we probably made a few bad decisions down the line as well.

I’ll never look back and regret anything we did or didn’t do I’m just happy for all the good things. I dreamed of being in a band when I was a young kid listening to Madness and the Jam and I managed to make that dream happen and it’s still happening.

What happened to the songs you recorded for your second Factory album, Escape from the 20th Century? It was belatedly released in 2013 but so rare, it remains unheard by many of your fans. Any chance of releasing it again, alongside your solo work as Munki?

(Ullyses, on the ridiculously good 2002 all-star Cohesion Manchester Aid to Kosovo charity album, ranks among your finest work). ~ Buy the Cohesion CD here ~

Thank you. I love ‘Ulysses’, it was a direction we were travelling in just before we came to the end of the road. We were mixing the guitars and hip hop influences but in a darker and more brittle way than ‘Sugar Cane’. It was mixed by Scotty Hard (Wu Tang Clan engineer) in New York.

I like the fact there’s music of ours out there still that people haven’t heard. I like the mystery.

We are looking at releasing some stuff from the archives. I have hundreds of DAT recordings, different mixes of all ‘The Daddy Of Them All’ tracks, demos, rehearsals, unreleased tracks. We will dig into the crates and get all the best stuff out there for anyone who is interested, it’s just a case of finding the time.

Shortly before her tragic passing, you collaborated with one of this city’s finest ever vocalists, Primal Scream's Denise Johnson.

We were privileged and honoured that Denise offered to sing with us and it’s something that I am eternally grateful for.

We were good friends but if Denise didn’t feel the vibe of the song was right, she wouldn’t sing on it, she had her own rules. She was one of the strongest people I’ve ever met and took no messing from anybody, but she was also very giving and generous, especially to musicians who she felt an affinity with who maybe needed a break.

I played her a few songs, and she chose one song ‘We Are Together’ that she wanted to sing on and her voice and her artistry made the track a hundred times better than it would’ve been without her. That’s the magic quality she had.

It was such a terribly sad day when Denise passed away for all her friends. She was a beautiful person and an incredible artist. The celebration of her life afterwards from all her friends and fellow artists was joyous and still is to this day. Her voice shines on.

23 years passed between your debut, The Daddy of Them All, in 1997, and its follow-up, Modern Actions, in 2020, yet the sound was unmistakable eclectic Space Monkeys, blurring the line between Madchester baggy, jazz funk, classic rock, soul and pop. Where would you say that your sound is at, at the moment, and do you have plans to work on new material?

I write all the time. I pick up my acoustic guitar late at night and write whatever is floating around my head. I throw so many songs away and just keep the ones I think are the most interesting to me.

We have been rehearsing a couple of brand-new songs which we will be recording and releasing later this year, maybe a double A side 7” single, that would be cool. The sound is still the same, Psychedelic Hip Hop Rock we used to call it, just mixing all our influences together, no rules.

What can fans expect at your Band on the Wall gig in February?

Smiley faces and plenty of sunshine.

[Buy Tickets Here]