Bummed

McGough organized for Happy Mondays to record demos of their new material at Out of the Blue studio in Ancoats.[14] Factory became aware that the band were known around London as being a difficult act to record with, not helped by the poor reception to the production of their debut album.[15] Ryder was impressed with the self-produced material at Out of the Blue and asked if they could self-produce their next album, only to be told that they need a known, popular producer.[16] Factory director Alan Erasmus suggested Martin Hannett; he worked with the label in their early years and split following the construction of the Haçienda, which he was opposed to.[15][16]

McGough liked the idea of having Hannett, as did Ryder, who learned of him through New Order frontman Bernard Sumner and his work on Unknown Pleasures (1979) by Joy Division.[17][18] Factory Records co-founder Tony Wilson was hesitant about the idea, before realising it would work well for both Hannett and the band.[17] Hannett had been struggling financially at the time, stemming from a prior lawsuit with Factory.[19] Bassist Paul Ryder and drummer Gary Whelan drove to pick Hannett up from Chorlton to take him to the studio.[19] Happy Mondays and Hannett decamped to Strawberry Studios in Stockport with the intent to record demos; however, Hannett and the members instead spent session time in separate pubs.[20] They ended up only recording an early version of "Wrote for Luck".[21]

Bummed was recorded in August 1988 at The Slaughterhouse in Driffield with engineers Colin Richardson and John Spence.[22] It was a residential studio with a state-of-the-art 36-track recording console.[19] The location was picked as it was a large distance from the Haçienda, in an attempt to cut Happy Mondays from their ecstasy supply.[23] Upon arriving, they found that the living quarters had no food and the rooms were astray. They instead lived at a terrace house that previously contained the studio. Hannett stayed at another house in the nearby town, which allowed for visits from his family.[24] Within two days of visiting a local pub, the band were made aware of a near-by army base, where they befriended various personnel. The band started selling the servicemen ecstasy; rave culture subsequently broke out at the pub, which caught the attention of local press.[23]

Describing the drug's impact on the recording, McGough recollected that the members of the band were consuming it daily, added they brought 200 pills of it with them, "but they ran out after ten days so I had to go back to Manchester and collect another hundred. Bummed is definitely an E album, perhaps the first full album ever made on that drug".[25] Bez was arrested while in Manchester for stealing a car and possessing marijuana. He also had 500 ecstasy pills, but the police were not aware of what they were at the time; he had to sit out of the remainder of the sessions.[26] Ryder also noted the influence of LSD on the sessions.[25] The band provided the alcoholic Hannett with large amounts of ecstasy to keep him from drinking during the recording.[27]

Hannett would have the band perform the songs over and over for several hours at a time, and as such, would record the majority of the album live.[24] Due to his previous experience as a bass player, Hannett spent time alone with Paul Ryder working on a specific sound.[24] Hannett ran the instrument through a multitude of digital filters, time modulation and effects pedals.[28] In addition to using his own guitar on the album, guitarist Mark Day used one of Hannett's. Aware of Hannett's financial issues, Shaun Ryder bought the guitar from him for £300.[29] On one occasion, Wilson visited the band during the sessions. Upon entering the studio, he found it dark and filled with smoke, as the floor was completely covered in house records.[30]

Wilson brought with him a film crew to shoot part of the sessions for a TV programme he was involved in about working environments.[31] As the band returned to Manchester, Hannett continued experimenting with the master tapes at Strawberry Studios, with engineer Laurence Diana.[22][32] He brought in additional musicians to enhance the tracks: percussion from drum teacher Dave Hassell, piano from his friend Steve Hopkins, and banjo from Derek "Horseman" Ryder (father of Shaun and Paul Ryder).[32] Hannett saturated the recordings in effects such as reverb and echo.[27] The sessions lasted for three weeks in total, costing £50,000; the final recordings were mixed at Strawberry Studios in September 1988.[22][33][34]

Musically, the sound of Bummed has been described as Madchester,[35] psychedelic funk,[36] and acid house.[37] Author Dave Thompson, in his book Alternative Rock (2000), said it sounded like the "missing link between post-punk and the burgeoning baggy scene"; he compared Ryder's vocals to that of Fall frontman Mark E. Smith, recommended that Day should audition for Siouxsie and the Banshees, and suggested Bez and Wheelan "send their résumés to Adam Ant".[38] Ryder said it had a fuller sound when compared to Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out), building off the progression from "24 Hour Party People".[39][40] Referring to the origin of the album's name, Whelan recalled that "'Bummed', was a saying at the time. Shaun used to say he was out all night and he bummed her all night long, a slang word for sex. I didn't even know what the album was called until it came out."[41] Ryder said he used the term for the album intentionally to be "offensive and we thought loads of people would take it the wrong way".[42]

In his biography of the band, Shaun Ryder: Happy Mondays, Black Grape & Other Traumas, author Mick Middles said the public overlooked its intent, theorising that it could be used in varying contexts: "from the more obvious cadging (e.g. he bummed a fag from his mate) to scrounging a room for the night (e.g. he bummed a carpet)".[43] The 1970 film Performance became a big influence on the band, with Ryder directly lifting lines of dialogues for lyrics, or being inspired by some of the scenes in it. He would mix in slang words he had heard while shifting ecstasy.[39] Ryder was expected to have finished writing the lyrics to the songs in the months prior to recording; by the time recording was nearly done, he had lyrics for less than half of the album. It prompted him to finish the other half in the final few days of the sessions.[44]

"Country Song" – the opening track on Bummed – was originally known as "Some Cunt from Preston", acting as rhyming slang for country and western. John Wilde of Melody Maker described it as "the world's first psycho-reggae-country-western number".[45] It was written before the band had figured out their sound; while rehearsing at The Boardwalk, they came up with what Ryder called the "Salford version of a country song".[46] Its title changed was from "Some Cunt from Preston" to "Redneck", before ending up at "Country Song".[47] "Moving in With" is about the place Ryder lived at while in Boothstown, Salford.[48] An earlier version of it was recorded during the same session as "24 Hour Party People". With the song, Paul Ryder attempted to emulate the bass part in "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" (1983) by Talking Heads. Whelan's drum part was inspired by the one in "Running Up That Hill" (1985) by Kate Bush. Shaun Ryder's lyrics were influenced by the folk tale Henny Penny, and namechecks several of its characters.[49]

"Mad Cyril" is named after a character from Performance, and includes a sample of a different character from the same film, Harry Flowers.[27][50] The song's lyrics describe a gangster having a trip.[51] "Fat Lady Wrestlers" is representative of the life style the band had at the time, as Ryder explained: "We were very much living like crazy hustlers".[52] "Performance" is written from the perspective of Chas, another character from the film of the same name.[27] Similar to "Moving in With", it also references Ryder's place in Boothsdown, where they would stash valuable items such as drugs or clothes.[53] "Brain Dead" opens with Ryder quoting a line from the film Gimme Shelter (1970): "You're rendering that scaffolding dangerous!"[47]

With "Wrote for Luck", the band tried to write a song that could be played at the Haçienda. Paul Ryder unsuccessfully tried to play sequenced basslines, which he heard in the Chicago house music that Pickering was playing at the club, on his bass guitar. Keyboardist Paul Davis tried to play the synth part from "Two Tribes" (1984) by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, while Whelan had a go at emulating "Running Up That Hill" again.[39] Day later contributed his guitar part, while Shaun Ryder added the song's hook, "Higher than high high", based on his mental state at the time.[9] It marked the first time Ryder attempted to write a song about the same topic, namely a heroin drug deal gone wrong. One of its lines is dialogue directly taken from the film Stardust (1974).[33]

Ryder said "Bring a Friend" is the closest track to a love song on the album, with many of its lines taken from a pornographic magazine he had read while in Amsterdam.[40] "Do It Better" was initially called "E"; it is centred around a guitar part and Ryder ad-libbing around the phrase "on one", which referred to being high on ecstasy.[39] The album's closing track "Lazy Itis" has Can-esque drumming patterns and borrows a lyric from "Ticket to Ride" (1965) by the Beatles, resulting in a writing credit between Happy Mondays and Lennon–McCartney.[22][27][47] Its title phrase was a word the Ryders' grandmother used to say.[33] For the single version of the track, Ryder decided to include lyrics from "Gonna Make You a Star" (1974) by David Essex.[54]

"Wrote for Luck" was released as the lead single from Happy Mondays' forthcoming album; author Simon Spence in his book Happy Mondays – Excess All Areas: A Biography (2014) listed the release date as 31 October 1988,[63] while a contemporary issue of Music Week gave the date of 28 November 1988.[64] "Boom" and three remixes (dance, radio and club mixes) of "Wrote for Luck" were included as its B-sides.[65] Robertson wrote that the sleeve's "hand-drawn lettering was an intentional move away from designers relying on type specimen books" as with previous Factory Records releases.[66] The music video for "Wrote for Luck" was filmed by The Bailey Brothers in the middle of the October 1988 tour.[67] They decided to shoot the band enjoying a night out at the Legend club in Manchester, which was a rival to the Haçienda.[68] They hired the venue for the shoot, which featured their friends and crew members as extras.[69] Concerned that the video was not going to received airplay on The Chart Show, a second video was filmed during the afternoon with a younger crowd. It starred children from a local drama group, who spent a week rehearsing acid house-style dancing. As none of them liked "Wrote for Luck", The Bailey Brothers put on music by Pepsi & Shirlie and Wham! in order for them to start dancing.[70]

"Lazy Itis" was released as the second single from the album; a contemporary issue of Music Week listed the date of 24 April 1989,[71] while Spence gave a release date of 6 May 1989.[72] Robertson said the artwork was a "bright arrangement [of colours] that is also bloated and sluggish and is delivered in a hallucinogenic daze", while its title is "incorporated into a three-dimensional typographic sculpture through which runs a river of ink".[73] The single iteration is dubbed "Lazyitis – One Armed Boxer"; its B-side is a remix of "Mad Cyril".[74] The former is a duet between Ryder and yodeller Karl Denver, which was intended as a theme song for an unrealised film by The Bailey Brothers. The song's music video was filmed a month prior at the Mancunian Way flyover with the band and Denver.[54] It stars the band in Strangeways prison attire, playing football while their friend Big Les walked around them with a dog. As The Bailey Brothers wanted to include rain in it, they hired a rain machine; filming concluded when Denver was unable to continue mouthing the words due to his teeth chattering from the cold.[75]

In an attempt to boost the album's reach in the UK, McGough suggested making a house remix for one of its tracks. He was put in contact with Pete Tong at FFRR, who connected McGough with Paul Oakenfold. Bez had previously spent the last six months convincing the band to work with him, and Ryder had been playing "Jibaro" (1988) by Oakenfold's band Electra frequently during the making of Bummed.[76][77] McGough quizzed the members on who else they wanted as a remixer, with Paul Ryder suggesting Vince Clarke of Erasure.[78] Oakenfold played white label copies of his remix at various clubs, all to positive reception from the crowds.[62] Reissued on 18 September 1989,[79] "Wrote for Luck" – now retitled "W.F.L." – included Clarke and Oakenfold remixes of the title track, with "Lazyitis – One Armed Boxer" as its B-side.[72][80] Robertson said that the artwork for this version adapts the original "Wrote for Luck" cover as it "becomes the backdrop for what appears to be fish tank", with species of fish swimming in front of it. He added that this contributes a "playful dimension to their pre-existing aesthetic".[81]

Bummed was reissued in 2007 as part of a two-CD set through Rhino Records, which included B-sides, the Madchester Rave On (1989) EP and a variety of remixes.[82] It was included in Rhino Records' Original Album Series box set in 2013, which collected Happy Mondays' first four studio albums.[83] That same year, the band performed the album in its entirety to celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2013.[84] The album was re-pressed on vinyl in 2020 alongside their first, third and fourth albums.[85]

"Wrote for Luck", "Lazy Itis" and remixes of "Wrote for Luck" and "Mad Cyril" appeared on Happy Mondays' first compilation album Double Easy – The U.S. Singles (1993).[86] "Mad Cyril", "Lazy Itis" and a remix of "Wrote for Luck" were included on their second and fourth compilation albums Loads (1995) and The Platinum Collection (2005).[87][88] "Mad Cyril" and remixes of "Wrote for Luck" and "Lazy Itis" appeared on the band's third compilation album Greatest Hits (1999).[89] Remixes of "Wrote for Luck" and "Lazy Itis" were included on the band's fifth compilation album Double Double Good: The Best of Happy Mondays (2012).[90]