Angela Smith is a journalist and international award winning TV producer, as well as the former wife of Paul Ryder, with who she has two children.

The Paul Ryder Tapes podcast is being released weekly, but they’re also doing an 8pm video release on YouTube today, via their Youtube channel, which will only be available for a very short time before it’s taken down.

APPLE PODCASTS  https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-paul-ryder-tapes-sex-drugs-the-mondays-and-me/id1695494793
SPOTIFY  https://open.spotify.com/show/7DDA7nBfCPD7II6IINNw2c?si=3841531073994ab9

 

Angela speaks exclusively to Gigsltuz:

 

Can you please tell me a bit about your upbringing?

I was brought up in a place called Westhoughton, a small satellite town of Bolton which is a satellite town of Manchester. It’s only 16 miles from Manchester but it may as well have been 100 miles away. I always knew there was a big world out there and couldn’t wait to go and explore it. We were a pretty ordinary family, my dad worked in an office for a firm in the textile industry and my mum worked as a telephonist, then in clothes shops. I went to the local grammar school then left home at 17 to go to university.

What was the first music you can remember hearing?

The first single I ever bought was Goodnight Midnight by Clodagh Rodgers. I loved Top of the Pops and had posters of The Sweet on my bedroom wall. I loved David Cassidy and Donny Osmond, then got into the Bay City Rollers and David Essex who my cousin Melanie introduced me to. At 17 I became a massive fan of Kate Bush and learned the words to all of her first three albums and was also big into Joe Jackson.
I have a brother who is five years older than me so he introduced me in the 70s to bands like Status Quo, Roxy Music and T Rex. My mum had a record player and a great collection of singles by people like Joe Brown, Vikki Carr and Engelbert Humperdinck. My dad played The Beatles and Neil Sedaka at full blast in the car whenever we drove anywhere.

What was the first serious music you can recall hearing?

At my primary school they always played classical music at the start of the daily morning assembly. Then one day a teacher brought in Funeral for a Friend by Elton John, and they played that instead and my mind was blown!

How did you get into journalism?

I studied Economics at Nottingham University then went to the City University in London and did a Postgraduate Journalism course when I was 20 so that’s when I really started writing.

How about music journalism, how did you get into that?

In 1986, I went to live in New York. By day I was working on the Wall St Journal’s TV show but by night I was New York correspondent for Record Mirror, which was a glossy music magazine like Smash Hits. It was great as whenever a British band came to town I’d get to go and see them and, somehow, I managed to get free entry into most of the nightclubs!

Have you interviewed many famous artists?

I suppose by now I have. I’ve also worked on many TV shows where artists have come in and out. I was at MTV for a year in 1990 then produced The Hitman and Her in 1991. I produced a music TV show in Ireland called JMTV Rocks the Garden which was great too, and also had a stint on The Big Breakfast in the nineties.

Do you have a favourite artist that you’ve interviewed?

Well, I have to say Paul Ryder, don’t I?! Seriously, of course this has been my favourite for its sheer depth and authenticity. Paul has never liked doing interviews and rarely did them, so to get him to sit down and trust me enough to bare his soul as he did was amazing. He said a few times that I got things out of him that no-one else could have done, so that was good to hear, especially as I knew that he really did want to talk about all these things that had been bottled up over the years.

Had you seen Happy Mondays before you met Paul?

No, I’d only read about them in the music press. I was working at MTV at the time – this was 1990 – and was producing a show there called Xpo that showcased new releases. We had a tiny budget to film outside of the studio, so I persuaded my boss to let us fly to Iceland to do a story about them playing a gig there as they were just about to release the Hallelujah EP in Europe. They were from close to my hometown, and I thought they sounded refreshing and an antidote to the pre-packaged over-produced record company stuff that was coming out at the time.

I met Paul once backstage at a gig and he was overly polite, entirely gracious and just very friendly. When and how did you first meet Paul Ryder?

Yes, Paul was always very humble and often actually quite shy. I met Paul first on that Iceland trip in 1990 when I was filming for MTV. It turned out that we came from towns just four miles from each other. We saw each other a couple of times after we got back from that trip but soon after they blew up and became huge and then I opened a copy of The Face magazine about six months after I’d met Paul and saw that he was getting married! I didn’t see him again for nine years until we reconnected in 1999. The whole story is told in the podcast!

Was there an instant connection between you both?

Yes, it was pretty effortless. After we reconnected over the phone in 1999, we met a couple of days later and that night he said, “I want to marry you and have babies with you”, and I said, “Yes, OK, let’s do that”. And we did!

Can you detail the years you were together with Paul?

We met and dated briefly in 1990 then got into a relationship in 1999. We had two children – in 2000 and 2002, got married in 2010 and broke up in 2016.

As the podcast expresses the Ryder family sound a very close-knit family. Did you find this to be the case?

Yes, absolutely they are. There’s a big extended network of cousins – family parties are enormous!

Was the Mondays heyday as chaotic as the historic stories make out?

I think that without the chaos you wouldn’t have had the art. If they’d been controlled by a conventional record company, there would not have been the Mondays as we know and love them. Some stories are exaggerated, some are very real – listen to the podcast and you’ll learn the whole truth!

It appears from the outside the bands ups and downs, break ups, reformations etc. might have been something that lead to Paul’s addictions, is this true?

It’s very hard to say. Probably not, as there were underlying issues that led to Paul’s using, although his mental breakdowns were definitely related to their first breakup, and the stresses of being in the band definitely made his efforts to quit drugs more difficult. In fact, the reason he left the band in 2000 was that he really wanted to stay clean and knew that if he carried on having to deal with the stresses involved in being in the band, he wouldn’t have been able to succeed at that.

I remember reading, although my memory might be wrong, that Paul’s drug excesses got so bad when the Mondays split he thought he was a dog and had to go into rehab. Are some of these kind of stories told in the podcast?

Yes – all the horror stories are laid bare in the podcast. He goes into great depth about his mental breakdowns and struggles with heroin addiction.

I know you say in the first podcast Paul wanted to write a book for a while, did it take some time to think of who to interview and how to put a concept together?

Not really. We just started recording. I tried to keep it chronological, but we often jumped ahead and had to double back. He would come over to my house where we had the studio every Sunday for several months as he found it hard going to record more than one or two hours at a time. We literally finished recording his story 12 days before he died. After he passed away, I made a list of all the people he had talked about in the podcast and all the people who I knew would have an interesting perspective to offer and reached out to them and set about recording all the extra interviews. The list was huge, and I have almost 50 people who are included. There are many more episodes to come with some really great guests.

There appears to be some exciting plans afoot concerning Paul, including a book, is this correct? Can you go into any more details you can reveal?

Yes, a book is in the works, as well as a movie project that he was involved in – it’s a comedy drama about a band who were once big and then decide to reform after 25 years. It’s not the story of the Mondays but some of the scenarios are definitely inspired by his experiences!

What’s your favourite part of the podcast?

I love the heart and humour that comes across as well as the depth of storytelling. We talk about some very heavy topics and don’t shy away from the hard truths, but underpinning the entire project is heart and redemption. It’s a great legacy for him.

What are your fondest memories of Paul?

His sense of humour, like his funny names he had for everyone. Literally everyone he knew he’d invent a new hilarious name for them.

What legacy does the podcast give Paul?

His legacy is that he lived a very colourful life and did some things that most people would try to keep secret – but Paul has been brave enough to tell his whole story, warts and all. He’s never been afraid of telling the truth and I know one of the reasons he was willing to speak out about what he went through was he hoped it might help others going through something similar. So there’s that, and of course his music which will live on for generations to come, plus he has four great kids as well as two grandchildren that he doted on.

Are you involved in any other podcasts at present?

Yes, I’m involved with three other very different projects. One is a true crime podcast called Framed for Murder? – The Case of Matthew Turner, about a guy who is 32 currently serving his 14th year of a 90 years to life sentence in a California jail for a crime that all the evidence suggests he did not commit (and we have actually uncovered evidence of his innocence), so the podcast will follow his bid for freedom in real time. Another one I’m involved with is called Accidentally MILF – Online Dating Adventures After 50, which is a fun romp through online dating adventures and chat, and the third is called Soulbare Sessions – Where Momma At? where I’m interviewing an incredible guy called Terrance Holloway who’s from South Central Los Angeles and grew up on the run from a drug gang with his mother, became a rap artist and, when he was an adult, discovered that his mother was homeless on the streets of Los Angeles so he made himself homeless in a bid to find her. Where Momma At? is the first season of Soulbare Sessions, which will follow a new surviving and thriving story each series.

Finally, what’s on your turntable at present?

I’ve recently become re-obsessed with the Bunnymen, Portishead and Air. More recent artists I’m liking at the moment include Tones and I, Lauren Spencer Smith, and Otto and Astrid who are too brilliant of a parody band. I can’t get that song “A Little Bit Happy” by Talk out of my head at the moment, and finally, I’ve been listening to Baxter Dury as Paul was a big fan.

 

Paul Ryder TV can be found via the following link