Press
Happy Mondays, Rig, Rowetta, Vanilla Sound Corps
20th April 1990

Rowetta interview with Seamus Quinn, South Manchester Reporter, April 20, 1990.

Believe that this is one of the very first press interviews with Rowetta.

Back in 1990, I had the good fortune to be writing The South Manchester Reporter’s long-running “Trelawney’s Sounds of The Suburbs” music column.

The previous incarnations of “Trelawney” were Dave Hicks (formerly of Lavolta Lakota and, at the time, bassist with Peter Hook’s band Revenge) and pioneering culture journalist Stephen Kingston (now the editor and publisher of the Salford Star), who kindly passed the baton on to me.

I was absolutely desperate to meet Rowetta. I loved her voice so much (still do), particularly on a single on the local Blip label called “Reach Out” by Sweet Mercy.

Rowetta’s mesmerising, deeply soulful acapella on this release was later sampled (and still is) by a huge range of dance music acts; perhaps most famously by The Black Eyed Peas on their multi-million selling global hit “Boom Boom Pow” in 2009.

Anyway, Rowetta suggested Dry Bar on Oldham Street, really early. In fact, when we met outside it was just about opening. We were first in and it still had that cleaning smell. I ordered a coffee to keep up professional appearances. However, this was going to take ages as they hadn’t even turned on the machine.

So I started with a pint. Rowetta asked for a coke.

Over the course of our interview, it turned out her trademark “voluminous bag” was home to a money-saving bottle of spirits. The cokes were just mixers. I was more than impressed.

After the tape recorder clicked off and the drinks started flowing properly, Rowetta then proceeded to tell me, a complete stranger, a series of increasingly outrageous (and unrepeatable) personal tales, some of which were really quite shocking.

These were all delivered with such a deadly, deadpan humour that they had me literally hurting myself with laughter one minute and being a bit concerned the next. Very Manchester.

All gets a bit hazy after that. Know we motored straight through till about tea time in Dry.

Then I seem to remember we got a taxi back to the West Didsbury/Chorlton border. Turned out we lived about 15 mins walk from each other and never needed to meet in town in the first place. Top day, though!

This cutting also features Rig, Cut Deep Records, P Love and Blue and Vanilla Sound Corps.