Happy Mondays
English alternative rock band
Happy Mondays are an English alternative dance band formed in Salford in 1980 by brothers Shaun Ryder (vocals) and Paul Ryder (bass), with Gaz Whelan (drums), Paul Davis (keyboard), and Mark Day (guitar). Mark "Bez" Berry later joined the band onstage as a dancer and maracas player. Rowetta joined the band as a vocalist in 1990, initially credited as a guest vocalist, and performed with them until 1993 and again from 2012 until December 2024. They were originally signed to Tony Wilson's Factory Records label.
The group's work bridged the Manchester alternative dance music of the 1980s and the emerging UK rave scene, drawing influence from funk, house, and psychedelia to pioneer the Madchester sound. They experienced their commercial peak with the releases Bummed (1988), Madchester Rave On (1989), and Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches (1990), with the latter going platinum in the UK. Happy Mondays disbanded in 1993. They reformed several times and released the reunion album Uncle Dysfunktional (2007).
History
First incarnation
The band were signed to Factory Records after passing a demo tape to Phil Saxe, a trader at Manchester Arndale who was on friendly terms with Mike Pickering, a DJ at the Haçienda nightclub. Saxe became the band's manager.
Their first release was the "Forty Five EP", often called the "Delightful EP" after its first track.
“Happy Mondays” enters the record as english alternative rock band. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Happy, Mondays and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1141495. VIAF identifies the subject as 147607071. The Library of Congress control number is n92031726. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980, 1990, 1993 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Happy Mondays” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.