Rowetta : Music News Feature

One of the few ladies to consider herself totally well in on the Factory scene, Rowetta’s feisty straight talking ballsy-ness marks her out as easily having been able to slide into being one of the lads with the Happy Mondays.

A born survivor and Mancunian soul diva, her recent dancefloor success with new mixes of a pre Monday’s 1989 tune “Reach Out”, adopted and remixed by the likes of Todd Terry, Steve Angello & Laidback Luke. It’s not that widely known that Rowetta contributed vocals to quite a few dance tracks before joining the Mondays but work with both Vanilla Sound Corps and an early Park / Pickering incarnation Dynasty Of Two “Stop This Thing” became Hacienda favourites way before “Step On” was released.

I’m really lucky that I got to spend so much time with him

Kind of in two minds about her first series X Factor success, coming fourth as the highest finishing woman to three blokes who nowt’s been heard of since, she confesses that “there have been benefits and they have been brilliant but I much prefer for people to come up and recognise me from the Mondays.”

Afforded the honour of playing herself in 24 Hour..., Rowetta’s long been intertwined and immersed in the Manchester scene and in her only interview at the Tony Wilson Experience revealed to Clash in no uncertain terms how ferociously proud she is of the city and her multiple Manc associations.

“What are you favourite memories of Tony?”

“Well that’s really difficult ‘cos I knew him for years. I’m really lucky that I got to spend so much time with him. I couldn’t pick one memory just the love he showed us and I loved him before I even met him and thought he was an inspiration when we used to see him on Granada Reports. It was fantastic. I think you had to be here and be a certain age, and when he said the Sex Pistols were the greatest band in the world you believed him because you’d already been sucked in. There’s nobody in TV that does that nowadays, there’s too many channels.”

“He used to leave me little notes backstage. I called him a wanker once in the Hacienda because he’d said we were all shit on Top Of The Pops apart from Shaun and it was the opposite, Shaun was awful on loose fit and we weren’t talking to him cos he’d been so horrible to everybody. So I called him a “fucking wanker” and I got a note, a lovely hand written note from him, I’ve still got it at home, saying “Yes I am a wanker” and then it went into why he was a wanker and how sorry he was, it was really lovely..

“What do you think of the event today?”
“I think it’s brilliant. I wasn’t sure whether it should be all conversation or whether it should be more music but I think the combinations worked wonderfully, there’s been some really good ones and really interesting people here. We’re all talking about memories of him what he’s done for Manchester, how he’s influenced our lives so it’s been brilliant

“How do you see Factory’s and Tony’s legacy continuing now he’s gone?”
Well I hope the legacy continues, I think it will cos otherwise it would have been finished already. It’s now thirty years since Joy Division and I don’t even really remember Joy Division that well back then, I didn’t see the episodes of Granada reports they were on, I don’t think I listened to them or I found them depressing, it was before the internet, I didn’t buy the records, didn’t got to any of their gigs and it was only when I was doing 24 Hour that I got into them and met the guy who was playing Ian Curtis who was so brilliant and the gigs they did as Joy Division were amazing. Now I think I would have loved that if I’d been aware of it back then.

“You played yourself in 24 Hour Party People, what was it like to revisit your own history in a movie?”
“We were all very lucky really to have the involvement that we did with the Hacienda and when I did the movie, the chance to relive it all, do it again was just fantastic. I think initially I was needed for 5 days and I was there every day for 8 weeks. It was like Steve was saying earlier you didn’t want it to end. I used to go to Michael Winterbotton’s parties every Thursday in order to see everyone from it, like the camera guys, the crew. It was just exciting, we had a pretend band and the pretend Happy Mondays played in Cannes with Paul Ryder and we started getting offers to play out as the Mondays.

...he didn’t want to offend anybody really

“Having Tony around when we were filming the movies was great and not weird like maybe it should have been with Steve playing him cos I think they respected each other, they used to talk to each other a lot. I loved watching Tony watching Steve. I loved it. Steve cant really say what did Tony think about you playing him but I think Tony loved it, I don’t think we would have had anyone else playing him.

There was times when he worried about the storyline and had a few problems with it.
I think he didn’t want to offend anybody really. The way he was portrayed was brilliant and he wasn’t happy with the movie all the time. It is a great legacy with the film and with the music so he’ll always be remembered.

“You’ve got a record out at the moment…..”
“I did a tune 18 years ago called “Reach Out” which has been sampled by Todd Terry who I know played it last night, he did it with a project called Limelife, it’s been sampled by everybody, Laidback Luke and Steve Angello had a big hit last year but they illegally sampled it and they shouldn’t have so it’s been remixed and got put out on Beatport and it went straight in to the club charts at 5, the dance charts at 2 and we’ve just got a record deal for it because of it. I’m getting really top dj’s onto me like Carl Cox wants an edit, Pete Tong’s been hammering it and playing it on the show and luckily it’s been sorted out and it’s coming out, I also wrote it which is nice. I’m going to New York in September to do some dates and it’s all because of one tune that I did before the Mondays.

Sweet Mercy featuring Rowetta’s “Reach Out” is available now via www.beatport.com and awaiting a physical release.