Black Grape could only have been made in Manchester. The swagger, fun and cryptic humour seem hewn from a city historian AJP Taylor once described as offering an archetypally different way of English urban life to London. Both Shaun Ryder and Paul Leveridge, known as Kermit, came from edgy-but-cool parts of the city.
So we have two restlessly creative men, both from the wrong side of the tracks, neither inclined to go to art school or enroll on an MFA programme, yet loaded with street smarts and musical talent, and wanting the world. Good old punk had told every scally they could have it, and a generation of went for it in our own ways, with varying degrees of success. Shaun’s astonishing rise and fall with the Happy Mondays is the stuff of legend.
Drugs, and smack in particularly, are almost custom-designed to ambush such personalities on route, to provide that distracting maze so many us struggle to navigate our way out of at certain times in our lives. But drugs also brought Shaun and Kermit together. As the friendship developed, so too did a stunning collaboration. ’It’s Great When You’re Straight’, the ironically entitled album, which gave a nod to their hook up as drugs buddies around the grizzled fag end of Happy Mondays and Kermit’s Band The Ruthless Rap Assassins. It was a storming phoenix rising from the ashes of the other projects that seemed to have run their course.
Black Grape followed this up with ‘Stupid, Stupid, Stupid’, which, while not hitting the giddy heights of its predecessor, had enough to moments to cement the band as a fixture. Then…nothing. Till now.
In 2017 Black Grape were back on the road, with a new album ‘Pop Voodoo’ that really does rock the fuck out of the discotheque. It’s a rewind to over twenty years ago and the glory days. Shaun’s word play has never been deployed to such devastating effect, and he scores a bullseye whether he hits the obvious targets (Trump), and the more obscure ones…well, find out for yourself. The world is in a big of a state right now, and bullshit reigns more than ever, and perversely disguised as candour. We need Manc street sass, intelligence and wit more than ever right now. That album has that in spades.
2021 saw Black Grape playing festivals throughout the Summer followed by a UK tour. 2022 and 2023 were spent playing more festivals, writing and recording new material with producer Youth at his studio in Spain.
The band’s fourth album and their first in six years ‘Orange Head’ was released at the start of 2024 on DGAFF Recordings. Shows throughout the year included Hyde Park with Robbie Williams, Dreamland in Margate as guests to Richard Ashcroft and many more festivals.
Black Grape ended 2025 with an eleven date UK tour in November and December which finished up at Manchester Academy right before Christmas.