Happiness for beginners according to Bill Ryder-Jones

In 2016, long before mental health was talked about as openly as it is now, Bill Ryder-Jones, a 32-year-old English musician (he is now 40), starred in A Light Went Out, a short documentary about mental health in the music industry. In it he told of his problems since, as a child, the death of his older brother, who fell from a cliff on vacation, destroyed his family. His mother went into depression and he began to suffer night terrors and nervous tics. Everything scared him, especially contact with other people. “Things like sleeping in someone else's house were unthinkable to me. Something broke inside me as a child and it was never the same again,” he recalls in Madrid, during the promotion of his fifth album, Iechyd Da.

He got over it. In 1997, at the age of 16, she founded the sextet The Coral. Success came soon. He was 17 when they signed a contract with a multinational, he left school and they traveled half the world. He released five albums with them that entered the top 10 in the United Kingdom. The second, Magic and Medicine (2003), was number one. Alcohol helped him overcome her fears. But in 2007, filming near where her brother had died, she suffered a breakdown. One so hard that she spent almost a year sleeping in the same bed as her mother. “There was a time when I thought she would never be able to leave the house. “I suffer from agoraphobia and monophobia, which is the fear of being alone,” she says. “During the promotion it's not that complicated, because I always have someone around me and I also spend a lot of time in closed places. It's more complicated at home, when I have to go to a store that is 15 minutes away. There, sometimes, I have to stop and ask for a taxi. Or tell someone to come with me. In my town, West Kirby, everyone knows me.”

Apparently, the pandemic ruined that safe place of 12,000 inhabitants on the Wirral peninsula, near Liverpool. If I went out into the street I was alone. There was no one to ask for help. “They were two hectic years. The drinking got out of hand and I felt bad, worse than ever. All I did was write and rewrite. In fact, some songs are blurry, I don't remember what I wanted to say.” For example, he claims not to know how he composed the delicious, aching breakup song 'A Bad Wind Blows in My Heart Pt. 3'. 10 years ago, on his first album, there were parts one and two. “It's actually just a good way to remember how many times I've had my heart broken. If a girl, or boy, has treated you like shit, write a song about them and put a number on them. “Fuck you, number 3.”

At his worst, 10 years ago, it was Laurence Bell, president and co-founder of the Domino label, who pulled him out of the hole. “When I left The Coral,” Ryder-Jones recalls, “I explored other things. I tried to enter university, but I didn't succeed because I didn't have good grades. At the time I only had £300 in my account, but I was determined to never make music again. Then Laurence called me and said: 'I don't know if you remember me, we met when I was with Alex from Arctic Monkeys.' It sounded familiar to me. Turns out someone had sent him my music and wanted to sign me. So a minute before I was going to quit music forever and suddenly they had given me £10,000 to record an album. It was like: guys, I'm back.”

Domino is a record label that takes care of its artists. Whether giants like Arctic Monkeys or cult musicians like Ryder-Jones. For example, a person from the label accompanies him on this promotional tour and sleeps in the next room, just in case. “A mutual friend sent me his music,” Laurence Bell recalled days later by email. “I was impressed by the quality of his compositions. The emotional force of his way of writing and playing it. There was something strange and moving about them.” More touching than strange, actually. Ryder-Jones belongs to that lineage of pop eccentrics that abound in Liverpool: artists with a lot of personality, an incredible talent for composing melodies and a touch of cussiness like Julian Cope, Marc Almond, The La's or Michael Head. In fact, in addition to being a musician, Ryder-Jones is a producer in his small studio and is responsible for getting Head, considered one of the best living British composers, to enter the charts in 2022 after 40 years of failures with The Pale Fountains or Shack.

It is a sound that embraces, that makes one feel inside a warm bed covered by a feather duvet.

It's almost a cliché to compare Ryder-Jones to Nick Drake. Presumably it happens because the tragic sixties folk legend made sweet music that revealed his inner torment and not because the unfortunate Drake died young. That soulful sound Bell spoke of comes in Iechyd Da to exalted levels. It is reminiscent of the pastoral psychedelia of Mercury Rev as well as the depth of Fred Neil or the orchestral pop of The Left Banke. It is a sound that embraces, that makes one feel inside a warm bed covered by a feather duvet. And the title is a Welsh toast (“cheers”), because his family comes from Wales. “My grandfather worked in the coal mines. He came to England for a better future for his children. He came out average: my father is a gardener, my mother, a cleaner. When I am tempted to complain about something, I remember that his life was indeed a hard one.”

There is a small cult around it. Those followers who have supported him and who have pushed him to the top 30. “The title of the album is about them, that 'cheers' is a way of thanking them,” he explains, looking for a cigarette in his backpack. He says he does not miss that success that came to him very soon. In 2001, the then all-powerful magazine NME called The Coral “the best new band in the UK”. The Strokes had released their debut and the British press was on the hunt for the island group to stand up to them. In two or three years dozens came out. “We hated them all. We hated The Strokes, we hated The Libertines and Arctic Monkeys. We especially hated Keane and Kaiser Chiefs. Anyone with a leather jacket and Converse looked like an asshole to us. Opportunists looking for a place for themselves in the new world dominated by The Strokes,” he recalls.

He assures that, of all the albums he has recorded, this is his favorite. Something that is typical of all musicians, but all his words are sincere. “I don't like interviews because they force me to have answers, but I try to do the best I can. Am I doing okay?”, he asks with a face that makes you want to get up, give him a hug and tell him that everything is okay. But he is not. In that 'A Bad Wind Blows in My Heart Pt. 2' that he recorded 10 years ago he repeated a verse over and over again: “Will happiness ever come?” What would you say to that Bill? “That the answer is no. Happiness has not come and will not come.”

You can follow Babelia in Facebook and xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.

_