How Hollywood icon Steve McQueen inspired a classic Happy Mondays song

29 November 2024, 11:57

"You're twistin' my melon, man!"

Everyone knows that Happy Mondays frontman Shaun Ryder is a fan of WWII movies.

He named one classic Black Grape single 'Kelly's Heroes' after all, and he's now spoken about how he borrowed a line from The Great Escape's Steve McQueen for one of his most famous songs.

• The Great Escape and NCIS star David McCallum dies, aged 90
• Listen to the Music from the Movies Live Playlist on Global Player, the official Gold app

The Happy Mondays' radical reworking of John Kongos 1971 track 'He's Gonna Step on You Again' was titled 'Step On' and became their biggest-selling single on its release in 1990.

As well as riffing on the original, Shaun ad-libbed his own catchphrases all over the song. Well, not entirely his own.

Shaun nabbed "call the cops" from local character and Haçienda regular Bobby Gillette, while the immortal 'You're twisting my melon, man" was a lift from McQueen.

Happy Mondays - Step On (Official Music Video)

"I robbed that line from a Steve McQueen documentary," Ryder told Apple Music 1.

"Steve McQueen has always been one of my dudes, from the way he dressed and everything. When I was a little kid, he was in great movies, Great Escape and all that sort of thing."

He added: "In a documentary, either a manager or one of the studio execs was telling a story where McQueen's gone in, started an argument with the movie exec.

"The movie execs give him a load of crap back, and so McQueen's gone in, 'You're twisting my melon, man. You talk so weird'. And then walked off."

It's not the first time Shaun has revealed his unlikely inspiration for the lyric, having previously written about it in his 2011 memoir titled, of course, Twisting My Melon.

Shaun also complained that despite their version of 'Step On' being so radically different from the John Kongos original, his publishing company wouldn't give them a single percentage of songwriting royalties for the hit.

He's Gonna Step On You Again (2014 Remastered Version)

"[Manager] Alan McGee went to the publishing company a couple of years ago, and said, 'Just give Shaun 1%, right?. For Twisting my melon, man and call the cops'. Anyway, they wouldn't have it," Shaun said, before going on to credit produce Paul Oakenfold for making the song what it was.

"The version that we did in our rehearsal rooms was pretty basic. We had a bass line, guitar and drums, then we sent that to Paul Oakenfold.

"Paul Oakenfold wasn't THE Paul Oakenfold then. He was a DJ in Ibiza and, if you were outside of London and you hadn't read DJ mags, then you didn't know who he was."