"The poorly educated might just call [Bez] a dancer, but he's the proprietor of good times. What Bez did for the band, the band did for the era: just went way too far, in an absolutely magnetic way."
"When you are neurodiverse, you attract other people who are. I would have said at the time we were all fucked-up loonies. None of them have been tested and gone through the thing, but they are. All of them."
"The difference between me and Our Kid was that he didn't have the H in ADHD, the hyperactive bit, so he just came across as lazy. But it's not laziness, he says. It's part of his condition. He hasn't got that get-up-and-go, he's not motivated."
Shaun Ryder discusses how neurodiversity attracted the members of Happy Mondays together, creating the band's distinctive chaotic energy. Ryder, diagnosed with ADHD in his 50s, reflects on how undiagnosed neurodiversity characterized the entire group, including Bez, whose role transcended dancing to embody the band's spirit of good times. He contrasts his own hyperactivity with his brother Paul's lack of motivation, attributing Paul's apparent laziness to undiagnosed ADHD without the hyperactive component. Ryder resists sentimentality while acknowledging his brother's death in 2022, emphasizing how he and Bez simply "walked in and were themselves." The band's appeal lay in their authentic, unfiltered presentation during the mid-to-late 1980s, with their magnetic excess defining an entire era.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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