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1
SOMETIMES I FANTASISE:
The Stone Roses and Me
by
Stuart Wilson
2
For Ian, John, Mani and Reni. Thank you.
3
IMPORTANT – PLEASE READ
This is a free gift. You can download it, pass it on to your friends, copy it, post it on a forum or host it
on your website. I only ask two things in return. If you like what you have read, then please donate
whatever you think it is worth to one of the following charities:
1. This is a charity set up in memory of The Clash’s Joe Strummer. It helps aspiring musicians
and supports projects involving music in the community.
http://www.strummerville.com/how-to-donate/
2. This is a project set up by a friend of mine, Jose Lechiguero, to help underprivileged children
in Nepal. He runs it solely with his girlfriend on a shoe-string budget. They have already set
up an orphanage and are helping the kids get educated. Their next project is to build a
hospital. It’s a bit more fiddly to donate given that the project is set up from Spain, but
please do it if you can, as they have struggled for two years and this may be their big chance
to make a huge difference.
https://www.ciden-nepal.org/en/quienes-somos
Secondly, if you use anything from this book, please give the book a mention, and please try to link
to the charity pages if you do. Thanks.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Kendo for being the only other person I knew over the years who got it. Thanks to
everyone I met in Barcelona, Amsterdam and Manchester. Thanks to everyone who’s ever rolled
their eyes and had to tolerate this strange obsession of mine. Thanks to The Stone Roses and thanks
to anyone who reads this and donates money to the charities above.
4
Preface………………………………………………………………………………………………………...5
PART 1: The Past Was Yours…
1989-1990…………………………………………………………………………………………………….6
1991-1995………………………………………………………………………………………………..…11
1996-2010…………………………………………………………………………………………………..17
PART 2: The Future’s Mine…
16th-17th October 2011…………………………………………………………………………………..20
18th October 2011………………………………………………………………………………………….21
8th-9th June 2012 – Club Razzmatazz, Barcelona…………………………………………….25
10th- 14th June 2012 – Heineken Music Hall, Amsterdam……………………………….29
29th- 30th June 2012 – Heaton Park, Manchester……………………………………………32
5
Preface
In many ways, this is a book that is destined to fail. There are no words I could put onto these
pages to describe some of the things I have felt when I’ve listened to The Stone Roses or
watched them perform. Some of you will get it. Others won’t. This book, primarily, is for
those of you who get it. I met many of you in Barcelona. If you don’t get it, then I hope you
enjoy what follows but be warned: it may come across like the demented ramblings of an
obsessive madman in a (baggy) anorak. If you want to get it…..then try to imagine what it is
like to listen to music that makes you feel 10 feet tall and utterly invincible. Music that
somehow seems to articulate what it is like to experience euphoric love, like the best drug
ever created but without the chemical input or the inevitable comedown. Music that gets so
deep into your soul that you actually crave it, and you know that you couldn’t possibly live
without it. Music made by a band who looked, sounded and acted cooler than any other band
there has ever been. If you get it, that will all make perfect sense. This is a story about being
young, growing up and getting old. It’s about finding your way in the world and your place in
it. This is a story about a pilgrimage. A journey to watch the band who changed my life play
together for the first time in 22 years; a prospect that had seemed utterly impossible only 9
months previously. Most of all, this book is to say “thanks” to the band and to give something
back for everything they have given me over the last two and a half decades. The story begins
in 1989, when I was 12 years old….
6
PART 1: THE PAST WAS YOURS….
1989-1990
I can’t remember the first time I heard them. All I can remember is a vibe. A sense of
excitement was sweeping through the nation that was so strong that even a 12 year old boy
living in a town 250 miles away from the epicentre could detect the tremors. The town was
Greenock, 30 miles from Glasgow. Along with neighbouring Gourock, Greenock had a
vibrant music scene and would become inextricably linked to The Stone Roses. Nobody
really knows why. The first sense I had of something stirring were the haircuts in the dressing
room of my football team. They were getting a bit longer, and people were speaking of their
attempts at cultivating “Beatle-cuts”. After one game, our striker’s usually spiky hair had
been flattened into a bowl-cut by the rain. “You look like one of The Stone Roses!” someone
said as we left the pitch. It was the first time I had heard that name. Around town trousers
were becoming baggier. At school, my friend mentioned that he was thinking about buying
some flares. The older kids who used to hang around in the park opposite my house started to
look different as they adopted what looked like some kind of unofficial uniform. The speed at
which this happened was astonishing. It was as if the world had gone Day-Glo psychedelic
overnight. Although I was slightly too young at that stage to be a real part of it, I definitely
noticed it, even if I had nothing to compare it to and wasn’t entirely sure what “it” might be.
The name I kept hearing was the Happy Mondays. As an impressionable teenager who was
only too keen to soak up anything I possibly could, I regularly ventured down to the local
independent record store, Rhythmic Records (sadly no longer there) to see what gems I could
uncover. The owners of Rhythmic had their finger on the pulse, and it wasn’t difficult to pick
up the records that were coming out of the emerging scene in Manchester, so I diligently
made the journey a couple of times a week after school. One of the first things I picked up
was the Mondays’ Bummed album. I remember this because the owner of Rhythmic wouldn’t
sell it to me with the inside sleeve (a naked woman), so after a brief negotiation that resulted
in a plain white inner sleeve replacing the corruptive influence that the Mondays had
intended, I rushed home to see what it was like. It was difficult to get my head around at first
because it was so different to anything I’d listened to before. The Mondays sounded as
scruffy as they looked, and I desperately wanted to like it because liking it would make me
7
cool. I listened to that record again and again and it wasn’t long before Wrote For Luck
became my new favourite song and the Happy Mondays my new favourite band. There was
something else in that record, something in Shaun Ryder’s drawl and the loose-but-tight way
that the band played; something that tipped me off that there was more to this than met the
eye. Apart from anything else, I was just happy to have a record and a band that I could call
mine, having grown up sitting in front of my dad’s stereo playing the 7” singles from the
1960s that he inherited from his own father’s pub jukebox. There was much talk around
school of the Happy Mondays, but also of another band: The Stone Roses. The Roses, I soon
learned, had been at the forefront of the audacious move back to flares. Although I can’t
remember the first time I heard them, I’m guessing that it was I Wanna Be Adored that I
heard first. I’m also guessing that the reason it didn’t make an impression on me was because
I wanted immediate gratification and the intro to Adored is something of a slow burner. It
could’ve ended there and then, but soon my heartstrings were to be tugged by the band that
would change my life. I was visiting my friend Al, and as I arrived he was playing the debut
album in his bedroom. I only heard the final two songs, but as soon as they had finished I
asked him to play them again. I wanted instant gratification and This is the One seguing into I
am the Resurrection delivered. I detected something special and I knew I needed to hear
more, so the next day I went out and bought the She Bangs the Drums 12” single. I went
home as quickly as I could and played it on my dad’s record-player. I can still remember
dancing joyously around the house, feeling for the first time the rush that I’d still be feeling
22 years later. It was like an adrenaline shot straight to the heart, and it was the first (but not
the last) time that something in this band’s music made me jump around in a state of sheer
ecstatic abandon. I played She Bangs the Drums again and again, before eventually glancing
at the cover and realising that there were more songs on the other side. Mersey Paradise and
Standing Here; two songs that were so ridiculously good that it seemed an act of insanity to
have wasted them as b-sides. I played those songs constantly, and the next day I went back to
Rhythmic to buy the album. The Happy Mondays had now been supplanted. From that
moment on, The Stone Roses were my favourite band.
***
The rest of that summer still seems like a dream. Everywhere you went you heard this music
and felt this electricity. Luckily for me and my mates, there was a club in Gourock called
Janey’s that was enlightened enough to run an under-18s night on a Friday called “Joy”. I
was conned into going to Joy by Al, who told me that he’d been before with his cousin Tony.
8
He hadn’t – he was just saying that so that I would go with him. It was my first experience of
a club, and I still remember feeling as if I’d entered a new chapter in my life when I inhaled
the first haze of dry ice as it floated over the dancefloor. What was notable about Joy was
how quickly it evolved. The first night I was there they played an eclectic blend of tunes,
from American hip-hop, to dance, to traditional UK and US indie. Manchester bands were
represented, but they weren’t dominant. Within just a few weeks, Madchester had taken hold
and the place was bouncing to the Mondays, the Roses, the Inspiral Carpets and all the other
bands that defined the era. Although it was under 18s, there were rumours of over-18s
occasionally trying to get into the youngsters’ night because they’d heard that the vibe was so
good.
For the next year, everything revolved around the Manchester scene. The music we listened
to, the clothes we wore and the opinions we expressed were all influenced by what was
happening there. My parents booked a family holiday to Spain, flying out of Manchester
Airport. I insisted we go down early to spend the day in Manchester so I could check out
Affleck’s Palace and Eastern Bloc records (both of which I’d seen in a TV documentary
about the scene). I even made them find the legendary Hacienda club (owned by New Order),
just so I could get a picture of the “Fac 51” sign outside (the look on a local’s face when a
family in a car stopped him to ask for directions to the Hacienda at 5am was priceless – “it’s
over that way”, he said “….but it’s closed”)
I would religiously buy the NME to find out who the latest bands were and to catch up on
who was releasing what and when. Hardly a week went by without a classic NME cover story
or a new must-have single or a directive on flare-dimensions by someone who thought they
knew about such things. Every day seemed to deliver some new song or band or album to fall
in love with. I had no means of comparison so I just assumed that this was what life was like
all of the time. It was an exciting time to be young and discovering music. Me and my mates
would go round to each other’s houses to check out their records and their clothes. On
weeknights we’d hang around the local park admiring each other’s trainers, clumsily showing
off in front of girls and generally trying to be like the older kids. On Fridays we’d meet on the
corner and walk a long and protracted route to Janey’s through a park. Once in the club, we’d
find a corner and wait for the first great tune of the night. Once that had been played then we
knew we were in for classic after classic, and the entire room would become one big dance-
floor full of teenagers with their hands in the air. If you were lucky, a girl might make a bit of
extended eye-contact with you and if you were really lucky she’d stick her tongue down your
9
throat, but that didn’t matter as long as the DJ played the tunes. Ah, the tunes. Dance music,
guitar music, hip-hop. At that time these labels didn’t mean much to us. These were just the
tunes we loved. The DJ could play De La Soul followed by early REM followed by James
and we didn’t think that any of them were out of place.
At the centre of all of this were The Stone Roses. I had already bought their album twice
because I had worn out and scratched my original copy (I’ve lost count of how many times I
have bought the album since – I’d guess about 12). After initially dismissing I Wanna Be
Adored (which I was/am slightly embarrassed about) I quickly became convinced that every
song on this album was a classic, and they were soon engraved upon my soul. At Joy, they
would regularly play at least half of the album and the songs seemed to have a galvanising
effect, with everyone throwing their arms around each other and singing along. The rush of
She Bangs the Drums, the chime of the guitar in Waterfall, the menace of the lyrics in Bye
Bye Badman, the perfect pop of (Song for My) Sugar Spun Sister, the heart-tugging chorus to
Made of Stone, the sheer majesty of This is the One and the heart-stopping triumphalism of I
am the Resurrection. It was and still is an album I never grow bored of. Every time I listen to
it I get the same shivers that I got when I first heard those two closing tunes in Al’s bedroom.
Squire played the guitar in a way that made us forget it was a guitar. Reni’s drumming was
fluid and funky and his harmonies were perfectly matched to Ian Brown’s hushed northern
vocals. There were times when I would listen to the entire album solely concentrating on
Reni’s voice, then play it again straight after to focus on his drumming. Mani’s bass parts
were inventive and funky, perfectly complementing everything else. The songs didn’t sound
as if they had been written. They sounded like they had existed forever, in some Platonic
realm of perfection that the Roses had somehow broken into and plundered.
At some point during this period, I went on a school-trip to Switzerland. We got the ferry
over to the continent and we were delighted to discover that there was a disco on the boat. As
the only disco we had ever experienced was Joy, we naively thought that all discos played the
same music, so it was baffling to us when we arrived to find the DJ playing Stock, Aitken and
Waterman chart rubbish to an empty dance-floor. Something had to be done, and after a
quick bit of smooth-talking I was dispensed to my cabin to fetch the compilation I had
created for the trip. The DJ realised that playing our requests was the only thing that was
going to stop us harassing him, so he put my tape in the tape-deck and soon we were happily
dancing to This is How it Feels by the Inspiral Carpets. It was a long bus journey to
Switzerland, so a Walkman and a large bag of cassettes were essential for the trip. I, of
10
course, had the Roses debut on tape. Someone (I can’t remember who) asked me what I was
listening to, and when I said it was the Roses, they handed me a cassette and said “you should
check this out – it’s some of their early stuff”. I was only familiar with the debut album and
the associated b-sides but on this tape were Sally Cinnamon, Here it Comes, All Across the
Sand, Elephant Stone and The Hardest Thing in the World. I don’t think I ever returned that
cassette. This was the moment when the obsession began. This was when I went from being a
guy who liked The Stone Roses to a guy who felt their music engrave itself on my DNA. I
listened to the Roses constantly on that bus, spacing out for hours and letting the melodies,
harmonies and lyrics seep deep into me. Just about every kid on the trip was decked out in
full Madchester regalia, a sight that caused more than a few bemused double-takes amongst
the locals when we all disembarked in a sleepy Swiss mountain village. When I returned
home, I knew I was hooked. I went out and I bought every single thing I could by The Stone
Roses.
***
It seemed as if the Roses were everywhere during 1989 and 1990. Hardly a week went by
without there being an article about them, a TV show documenting them or a new single in a
brilliantly paint-splashed cover being released. I had fallen in love with the music, but it
wasn’t long before I also fell in love with the band. That wasn’t difficult because they looked
cooler than anyone I had ever seen. Like all the best rock stars, they looked like they had
fallen to earth from a different dimension, but somehow managed to also look like the coolest
kids on your street. As Bob Stanley described them in Melody Maker, they looked like boy-
gods. The hair, the clothes, the cheekbones, the pouts – it all just looked perfect. I’d seen
classic pictures of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and, as much as I loved those bands,
they were from a different time….I couldn’t call them my own but this was happening now.
This was for us. A good image is one thing, but to be bona fide superstars, you have to
combine it with attitude, and here was yet another reason to love the Roses. They exuded
self-belief and (importantly) it didn’t come across as contrived. When they said they were the
best band in the world, it wasn’t bravado: it was fact. Everything they did and everything they
said seemed real and without pretension. They had learned from the punk bands that they had
grown up with and adopted an ideology that still lingers within me all these years later. The
Roses stood for integrity and honesty. They would never sell out or do something for the
wrong reasons. If an interviewer asked them a stupid question, they wouldn’t answer it (or if
they did respond, they’d tell the interviewer what a stupid question it was). They insisted on
11
doing things on their terms and they absolutely refused to compromise. To see a band
conduct themselves in this way was inspirational. It taught me (and many others from my
generation) that life could be lived according to a certain set of principles, and that deviating
from those principles was corrosive. They were anti-royalist at a time when the teenage me
didn’t even know such an option existed. They believed in fairness and justice at all costs. If
anyone doubted these credentials, they only had to look at what the Roses did when someone
attempted to take advantage of them. Incensed that they were being exploited by a former
record-company, they went down en masse to the boss’s house and splattered him and his
BMW with paint. Immediately afterwards, they recorded One Love. The day after, they were
arrested and very nearly went to prison for their actions. They showed similar grit in standing
up for their principles when they realised that the record contract they had signed was one of
the most restrictive contracts ever drawn up in the music industry. Although badly advised by
their manager, the band had signed it nonetheless and attempting to get out of a binding
contract with a major label was unprecedented. They had much to lose. If they were
unsuccessful there was the very real possibility that they would not be able to release any
official material ever again. But their values held strong and they stuck to their guns, stating
that they would tour and let fans distribute bootlegs should their career be hampered in this
way. In the end, they won a victory that shook up the industry and led John Squire to describe
it as their biggest contribution to the music business. All because they stuck to what they
knew was right. I watched all of this play itself out in the music press, and although I didn’t
know it at the time, I was being taught the values that I would live by for the rest of my life.
They cared about their fans, and never wanted to be idolised. To them, it was as much about
the buzz the fans got as it was about what the band were doing. They wanted to give people
experiences that would last a lifetime, which is what prompted the iconic gigs at Blackpool
Empress Ballroom, Alexandra Palace, Glasgow Green and Spike Island. Again, I was just a
bit too young to experience any of these happenings first-hand, but I was keeping a keen eye
on all the channels available to me and I got a very real sense of what was going on and how
important it was. Even at my young age, you realise something unique is happening when
you read stories about people giving up their jobs just to follow a band around. The Stone
Roses were the perfect band at the perfect time. Which is not to say they were entirely of the
time. Although they were part of the Manchester scene, they were also detached from it. They
were smart enough not to get too caught up in the “Madchester” thing, which only added to
their mystique. We heard that they planned to go on Terry Wogan’s chat-show with the sole
intention of pulling off his wig. When they appeared on a late night arts programme they
12
berated the TV crew live on air when their equipment failed. This was a band that was
operating outside of the usual boundaries. They didn’t seem like other bands. They were
different. They were special. And then they were gone……
13
1991-1995
The signs were there, but I didn’t really notice. The court cases were well documented in the
press, but I loved seeing the Roses in the papers, turning up at court looking like rebels taking
on the establishment. They had released One Love in 1990, after a slight delay caused by the
fact that the proofs of the cover were accidentally reminiscent of a swastika1. One Love was
reported as a disappointment at the time, but that’s not how I remember it. Fool’s Gold and
What the World is Waiting For had taken them into the stratosphere the previous year, but to
me One Love was just the next great Roses single, and the b-side of Something’s Burning
suggested that they might be getting even more loose and funky in the future. Although the
Madchester scene had predictably fizzled out, we were all looking forward to the next Roses
album and I would scour the music press for any information on when it might be out. Early
reports suggested that the band had writer’s block and that they had rejected a batch of Squire
songs for not being up to standard. At the time, I thought this was reassuring as it suggested a
level of quality-control that would ensure the new album was every bit as good as the
previous one. Eventually, the news dried up. We’d occasionally hear about their battle with
their record company, but I had faith that it’d all be sorted out and they would return
triumphantly with a killer new single and album. And then, nothing…
***
We now know that the Roses were unravelling during this period, but their complete
disappearance only added to the air of mystery surrounding them. They had always had this,
probably driven by their reluctance to say much when interviewed, but going underground for
so long whilst creating the ultimate follow-up to their astonishing debut album was (in my
eyes) the coolest thing they could do. They eschewed fame and celebrity, instead focusing on
the music and dedicating themselves to recreating that rush. As the months turned into years,
rumours started to emerge. John Squire had been listening to nothing but old blues and Led
Zeppelin and (in the words of one report) had “hit a run of form that surpassed Clapton at his
peak”. We read that they had won their court case and had signed with Geffen for a multi-
million dollar advance, prompting tales of Ian Brown walking around Manchester handing
out £20 notes to the homeless because he “believed in giving alms”. But there was still no
1 This is how it was reported in the press, but according to Simon Spence’s biography of the band, the swastika
was entirely intentional and was there because John Squire thought the Roses could “reclaim” it from the Nazis. If true, this shows just how high the self-belief levels were in the Roses camp at the time.
14
new music. Other bands had entered the scene, most notably Nirvana, the first band I ever got
drunk to. Nirvana shared the Roses’ ambition and values, but I couldn’t quite connect to them
on the same level as I had once connected to the Roses. I’d still regularly play all the songs. I
went to Uni in 1994, and in the Student Union bar I’d frequently play the entire album on the
jukebox during an afternoon drinking session. When I went out on my first-ever date I
blasted This is the One whilst getting ready (something that I think I’ve probably done on
about 90% of subsequent first-dates, and 100% of the ones that I wanted to go well). Any girl
I went out with was quickly informed that I was a Stone Roses fan, and how she dealt with
that determined my subsequent opinion of her. When someone asked me what music I was
into, I would proudly reply “The Stone Roses” and their reaction told me all I needed to know
about them. Although the floppy fringe and flares had long been consigned to the bin, the
Roses influence still haunted me every time I got my haircut or bought new clothes. I wasn’t
trying to be them. I wasn’t even trying to be like them. I just knew that I had adopted
something somewhere along the way, even if I didn’t know exactly what that thing was (and
still don’t). It was an attitude, a style and a worldview (I suppose).
All of this happened in the Roses’ absence, which only intensified their myth and somehow
made the songs more special. Maybe they would never return. Maybe this was it – one
perfect album: their gift to us to be cherished forever. The friends I had at school all diverged
into different things; some into dance music, some into rock music, some into indie. It was
only in retrospect that I realised just how all-inclusive the scene from a few years before had
actually been, and how quickly things fragmented as people retreated into cliques that had
meant nothing only 3 years previously.
***
Eventually we started to hear whispers of recording sessions. John Leckie, the producer of the
first album, was reported to have been working on new songs, including a “five minute
wonder” called “Ten Storeys” (this was how it was reported…the song was Ten Storey Love
Song). It wasn’t much, but it was something, and the existence of new Roses songs sent my
imagination into a tail-spin. What were they concocting in that studio? One day in 1993, I
picked up the latest NME and my heart almost stopped when I saw a picture of Ian Brown on
the cover with the headline: “Gotcha”. The NME had sent a reporter to find the band. The
resulting piece was hammed up to the max, but to me it was absolutely thrilling and added
even more to the air of mystery surrounding them. There were still no release-dates or news,
15
but this was evidence that The Stone Roses still existed and were playing music together.
That was good enough for me. For the next year, we waited. The only news seemed to be of a
succession of producers who came and went, with Leckie being reported as having left the
project because he “felt he was involved in something so strange that it was ruining his life”.
What on earth were the Roses doing? A&R men from the record company were also on a
revolving-door, every one of them failing to penetrate the Roses inner circle and get any
answers as to what exactly they were doing and when they might be ready to release
something. Eventually, we started to hear rumours of songs. One rumour maintained that they
had recorded a 10 minute song that consisted solely of jungle noises (this would end up being
the intro to the second album’s opener Breaking into Heaven). Maybe Leckie was right. This
did sound strange.
Eventually, a title was announced for the comeback single: Love Spreads. Dates were
announced and then changed. Right up until I heard the song, I told myself to prepare for the
possibility that it might not happen. November 21st 1994 was listed as being the day that it
would be released, but it would be played on the radio before that. I bought a brand new
blank-tape especially for the occasion and had my finger hovering over the “record” button to
record from the radio. The first few notes took me by surprise, but they shouldn’t have –
we’d been told that Squire had “gone Zeppelin”. Reni’s drums crashed in, and the song
settled into a groove. When Ian’s vocals made their first appearance I knew for certain that
the Roses were back and they meant business. Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream called it
“the greatest comeback single of all time”. That night I went to our local club, Rico’s and the
DJ (McD – Greenock’s music Svengali, a subsequent friend of the Roses, and all-round good
bloke) played Love Spreads. He’d obviously taped it off the radio as well, and it sounded
even better on the big speakers. On Monday 21st I left home early to go to University. I
wanted to be at the shop at 8am so I could buy Love Spreads before my first lecture. All the
way on the train I thought of nothing else but buying this single. I wondered what the b-sides
would be like, remembering that the Roses always had great b-sides. Once off the train, I
walked as fast as I could towards the record shop. I expected to have to join a queue, but
there was none there. For a horrible moment, I thought that this meant the single had been
cancelled at the last minute. I went into the shop just as they were opening, and there it was,
right in front of me. A whole display-stand of them. The cover wasn’t the paint-splash I’d
been expecting, but it still looked great. I grabbed one and took it up to the counter. “I never
thought I’d see this day” said the guy serving me. “Me neither” I managed to mumble
16
without taking my eyes off of the cover. I’ve still got the receipt somewhere. It says “08:00”
as the time-of-purchase.
And then we got news of the album. It was going to be called “Second Coming” – perfectly
appropriate given that the closer to the debut was “I am the Resurrection”. Everything was
falling into place at last. As with the single, some of the album tracks would be played on the
radio prior to release. The date given was a night on which I was at football training, so I
knew I wouldn’t be able to record it. My mate Kendo, however, was a fellow Roses fanatic
and I knew he would record the new song for me. After football training I drove my mum’s
car over to his to pick him up. He slipped the tape into the stereo, and hit play. At first, there
were some odd psychedelic noises, but gradually these gave way into something wonderful –
this was Ten Storey Love song, the tune that Leckie had described as a five-minute wonder –
and those first few lines melted my heart. The Roses were back and they sounded as brilliant
as they ever did. My imagination ran away with me, and I convinced myself that the album
was going to be every bit as good as the first, if not better. So we didn’t spoil the joy of
listening to the album as a whole, I made Kendo tape over the recording of Ten Storey Love
Song. The album was only a few days away. Again, I bought it first thing in the morning, but
this time I waited until after my lectures before going home for the first listen. I had a 45
minute train journey to get home, and the knowledge that I had a new Stone Roses record in
my pocket that I hadn’t heard yet was driving me insane with both excitement and frustration.
After what seemed like several hours, I got home and pressed play on my CD player. Ten
minutes of jungle noises ensued – it was true! The album wasn’t as immediate as the first
one, and there were a few gear-shifts that I wasn’t prepared for. It took me a few listens to get
used to the changes in direction, but eventually I loved Second Coming almost (but not quite)
as much as I loved the debut. Breaking Into Heaven was the natural successor to Something’s
Burning (which was their last recorded output), so it seemed like there was some continuity
despite the five year gap. Ten Storey Love Song was majestic, had a chorus to die for and a
magical understated guitar solo. Good Times was an out-and-out rocker, whilst Tears
summoned the spirit of Led Zeppelin. How Do You Sleep harked back to What the World is
Waiting For and boasted a classic Roses chorus and another great melodic solo. Love Spreads
closed the album with the fierce slide guitar that had heralded their comeback a few weeks
before. Although it’s not faultless, I’ll defend that album to anyone because as far as I’m
concerned, any album with those four playing on it is compulsive one way or another. It
maybe hadn’t been the euphoric nirvana that we were all hoping for, but it was never going to
17
be. How do you improve on perfection? Second Coming was just a very good album, and
after the five year wait, that was good enough for me.
***
Now that I had two album’s worth of Roses tunes (three if you count the b-sides) I’d take
great pleasure in creating compilation tapes of old and new Roses tracks for my trip to and
from Uni. It even got to the point where, if I had forgotten my Walkman or if the batteries
died, I would leave University early just so I could go home and satisfy my craving for The
Stone Roses. It was beginning to feel like an addiction. They gave their only comeback
interview to The Big Issue, annoying the mainstream music press and further cementing their
status as big-hearted outsiders. Word spread of a tour. Given that they tended to do things
differently, I expected any live performances to be unique. The rumours were that they would
do about half a dozen secret gigs in small clubs up and down the country. I can’t remember
where I heard it, but the Garage in Glasgow (a student haunt that I was familiar with) was
touted as being part of the tour. My girlfriend’s dad did some work for the Garage, and so
began a relentless campaign on my part to have him get me into any Roses gig one way or
another. According to his sources, the rumours were true; the Roses would be playing a secret
gig in Glasgow, and somehow I would be there to see it. And then it fell apart. We heard that
the secret gigs had been cancelled, and then we heard that they had pulled out of some other
promotional activities. And then the bombshell: Reni had quit.
***
The news left me numb. Reni was a key player; they were ALL key players. They were a
gang. It seemed inconceivable that they could carry on without Reni. But they did. They
quickly announced that a new drummer had been installed and that they’d be touring
throughout 1995. When UK dates were announced, I knew I had to get tickets, Reni or no
Reni. I was playing in a football tournament in Dunoon (a ferry-ride away from Greenock) on
the night before the tickets for the two Glasgow gigs went on sale. The plan was to get to
Rhythmic at about 6am and then wait for them to open and get my hands on the gold-dust
tickets. However, being a bit slow in the changing room after the tournament meant that me
and about 3 of my team-mates managed to miss the last ferry home. This in itself wasn’t a
disaster, because the manager of our team said we could stay at his place and get the ferry
home the next day, but I knew that it was a disaster because the first ferry was at 6am,
meaning that I wouldn’t be able to get to the ticket queue until 7am at the earliest. I was
18
convinced I was going to miss out. The next day I got to Rhythmic, and my heart sank when I
saw a queue of about 30 people lined up outside the shop. I started doing calculations in my
head: how many people were there, how many tickets they would each be buying, and how
many tickets were Rhythmic likely to be selling? Almost as soon as I joined the queue,
someone from the shop came out and started handing out raffle-tickets, explaining that only
people with one of these would be able to buy tickets. Luckily, I got one. I bought four tickets
for me and my mates for the second night at the Barrowlands. Soon afterwards, one of my
mates said he couldn’t go, which left me with a spare ticket that I managed to swap for a
ticket to the first night. I was going to finally see the Roses, and I was going both nights. The
gigs were several months away, and I spent these months immersing myself in the new
album. I was in my late teens and a student. I enjoyed being a student, because it gave me the
opportunity to concentrate on music (give and take the odd exam here and there). I’d save up
the money that I was to use for food and at the end of the week I’d head over to Fopp
Records and see what I could find. Every week I’d have a new obsession. 60s Soul; Delta
Blues; American New Wave. About 90% of my current CD collection was bought during my
four years at University, and I could easily spend a whole afternoon exploring the second-
hand record shops of Glasgow desperately searching for that next buzz. I’d get into
discussions with other people in my class, some of whom were cooler-than-thou scenesters,
and whenever we had those “top 5 albums/singles/bands…..” debates, I would always argue
for the Roses. I was doing what most 18 year olds do; going out, getting drunk and having
fun. I’d also obtained a bit of a reputation as a Roses fan and when I went to Ibiza with my
mates that summer, Kendo was astonished when he got speaking to some Scottish guys in the
queue at McDonalds. After telling them he was from Greenock, one of them said “yeah, I’ve
heard of a guy from Greenock who’s really into The Stone Roses: Stuart Wilson or
something”.
***
In 1995 I knew the Roses were touring Europe and America prior to the UK dates, and I was
desperate to find a bootleg (these were the early days of the internet, and bootlegs were still
nuggets to be physically tracked down at record fairs and market-stalls). Flip was a shop in
Glasgow where I had bought many of my clothes during the Madchester era, and they had a
CD stall in the basement that wasn’t entirely committed to only selling “official” releases.
Every single day I would go in there on my way to the train station after Uni and ask the
long-haired hulking metal-head that owned the stall if he’d gotten anything in by The Stone
19
Roses. After a couple of weeks he said “look, mate, why don’t you just give me your phone
number and I’ll give you a ring if I get anything in?” I did, but a couple of weeks later I
happened to drop in as I was passing, and there it was…the first bootleg of the tour, called
The Song Remains the Same and recorded “live in Europe” (it wasn’t more specific than
that). Again, I rushed home and put it on (completely forgetting to ask the metal-head why he
hadn’t phoned me). This was my first chance to hear how they sounded live with the new
drummer. I was disappointed. Ian’s voice was all over the place. I knew he wasn’t the
greatest live singer in the world, but his voice on this made the CD unlistenable. I don’t think
I’ve listened to it since that night. This didn’t bode well, but I knew what the Roses were like
and I was confident they’d pull it together for the UK leg of the tour. Once they were in front
of their home fans I fully expected them to deliver.
December couldn’t come quickly enough. That summer I’d seen Oasis introduce songs from
their upcoming album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory at Irvine Beach, but the Roses
were the band that I really wanted to see. I’d been keeping an eye on the reviews from their
American tour, most of which were mixed some of which were scathing, but none of which
could dampen my excitement. The night of the first gig arrived. I was going with my mates
on the second night, so for the first one I was on my own. I got on the train, and when it
started moving I was acutely aware that every passing second was taking me closer to The
Stone Roses. I met a girl I knew from school who tried to start a conversation, but my mind
was solely focused on what I was about to see and I think I was probably a bit rude in my
interactions with her. I got to the venue early, bought a beer and took up a position alone at
the very front of the stage and in the middle. The lights went down and the jungle noises of
Breaking Into Heaven began, and along with a thousand others I erupted with elation. The
west of Scotland has an affinity with this band that can’t really be explained, so to see them
in the legendary Barras Ballroom was truly special. Ian Brown was every bit the star I had
hoped he would be, and Squire was now pulling some rock-god moves that nobody who
watched the Blackpool Live video could ever have predicted. The second night was just as
good – one of my mates got up on my shoulders for She Bangs the Drums and I had a lump
in my throat during Made of Stone. Sure, Reni wasn’t there but the other three were and they
were playing the songs that I’d spent the previous 6 years getting to know and love. As I
walked out of the Barras that night, I was convinced I’d seen the best gigs of my life.
Seventeen years later, the Roses (this time with Reni) would make me feel that way again,
but not before they fragmented in the most heart-breaking way imaginable……
20
1996-2010
To me, the Roses had always been a close-knit gang. Legend had it that Ian Brown and John
Squire had met in a sandpit when they were kids, forming an unshakeable bond. Mani had
been the final piece of the jigsaw, providing raw spirit and enthusiasm. When Reni left, it was
crushing but there was a part of me that thought he might return once the tour was over. I
couldn’t imagine that they’d ever not be that gang. Stories from the tour weren’t encouraging.
Squire was travelling separately to the rest of the band, and they hinted that all had not been
well between them during the recording of Second Coming. But they still existed, and I
assumed that they’d regroup to mine that chemistry once again and make a third album. By
1996, the UK music scene was gripped by Oasis-mania. I loved Oasis, so I was only too
happy to be caught up in it. I’ll defend the first three Oasis albums to the hilt, but despite
being as amazing as it was possible for them to be, they weren’t The Stone Roses. “Britpop”
had arrived, and although there were only really one or two good bands, it was a good time to
be young. The scene felt a bit blunter than Madchester but despite that, my weekends
consisted of going out with my mates and jumping around to Oasis songs. I still adhered to
my lifetime rule of dancing to the Roses any time they came on in any club I happened to be
in, but Oasis were where the buzz was at and I must admit that I can’t remember even
thinking about the possibility of a third Roses album after I’d seen them on those two cold
December evenings in Glasgow. So when John Squire announced that he had left the band, it
was a shock but I wasn’t entirely surprised. It had been clear for a while that things had
soured between the band members. When I heard, I naturally thought that the Roses story had
come to an end. But it hadn’t. Ian Brown announced that they had recruited a new guitarist
and would be playing some gigs. He also made noises about a third album. At this point,
every Roses fan knew that this was going to be a long, protracted death. Something wasn’t
right about this, and we all knew it. They were about to gamble with the legacy that they had
worked so hard to achieve in the early days. The thought that there could be a Stone Roses
album without Reni was bad enough…but without Reni and Squire? It was inconceivable.
Eventually, of course, the Roses played at the Reading Festival in what was an
embarrassment of a gig. I read the reports and thought “it can’t have been that bad…”, and
then I heard a bootleg and realised that it was much much worse. A dancing girl, a Squire
copy-ist, a drummer who lacked the subtlety of Reni and a keyboard player who appealed to
the crowd to let him “see those hands in the air…” And Ian’s voice, described by one
reviewer (I think it was Caitlin Moran) as “a man at a bus-stop shouting into a bucket”. This
21
wasn’t the band I loved. It was relief when Ian Brown finally announced the end. I reckoned
that they had just about managed to escape without totally destroying their legacy, and I
looked forward to whatever the original members did next. I was to get a taste of this sooner
than I imagined. John Squire had quickly formed another band called The Seahorses and
there was much excitement over what they might be like. At this point, Squire was
considered to be the musical genius behind the Roses, so his next project was highly
anticipated. I’d heard that they’d played one gig in America and another in Wales, and I was
only beginning to track down reviews when I got a phone call. I was sitting in my mum’s
house with my girlfriend one evening when my mate Andy (thanks, Dale boy) called me and
asked if I’d fancy seeing The Seahorses. I obviously didn’t believe him at first, but he
promised me it was true: John Squire’s new band was playing in Rico’s – the club we went to
most weekends (thanks to McD). I got down there as quickly as I could to find a larger than
average queue. I asked a few people what was going on, but nobody seemed to know
anything for sure beyond the rumour that had got me there. We got in and saw that the stage
had been set up for a band – unheard of on a Saturday night at Rico’s. I don’t think I ever
found out for sure what was happening until Squire and his new band bounded on stage. I
was thrilled – here was my guitar hero playing in a tiny club in my home town, a few meters
away from where I stood! I was ready to be blown away. Squire’s guitar playing was as good
as it ever was, but there was something missing: the rest of the Roses. The songs didn’t have
that sparkle, the drummer was nowhere near as mercurial as Reni and the singer looked and
sounded like the busker he was. It wasn’t that they were terrible – they just weren’t the
Roses. After the gig, Squire left the stage and I rushed over to the exit (there was no
backstage and he had to get through the crowd to leave). As he disappeared through the door,
I shouted “John!” and was amazed when the door opened again, and he came towards me
offering his hand. As I shook it, he leaned into me and whispered something in my ear…..
and to this day I have no idea what it was!
***
That night began a fifteen-year period during which I would see each member of the Roses as
many times as I possibly could in their new roles. I first saw Mani play with Primal Scream
in 1997 at Glasgow Green (scene of the infamous Roses gig) and subsequently saw him on
countless occasions. Bizarrely, my sister’s friend started going out with a friend of Mani’s
(and Noel Gallagher’s) which meant that Mani was frequently in my home-town and hanging
out with my sister’s friends. On one evening, I was at a club with my new girlfriend when
22
Mani walked in. The Roses were heroes in Greenock, so the entire club stopped what they
were doing and watched as he swaggered through the door. He had a quick look around,
spotted my sister, and immediately bounded up to her to give her a hug, shouting “Netters!!”
as he did. “Shit” I thought, “not only does Mani know my sister, he’s even got a nickname for
her”. Later that night, my sister’s friend introduced me to him, but I was too star-struck and
the music was too loud for me to be able to say anything more than “how you doing?”
It was Ian Brown that I saw most. Nobody really expected him to do anything after the Roses,
which always surprised me because he was, after all, half of the Squire/Brown partnership
that had written those timeless classics from their heyday. I liked Brown’s solo stuff without
ever really loving it. One night Kendo and I saw him in Glasgow, and he started with three
Roses songs. We lost our minds and thought we were getting an entire set of Roses classics.
We didn’t, but just to hear him sing those songs again was magical, even if it was without the
rest of the gang. Shortly after that, The Roses connection with my hometown was further
solidified when McD made Ian patron of the new music department of the local college and
Ian played a free show in the Town Hall. Tickets were supposed to be via a ballot, but I like
to think that it was my reputation as a Roses fanatic that secured me mine (but it may not
have been).
Squire also incorporated Roses songs into his solo gigs, but his voice never really suited them
and it was a frustrating experience hearing the guitar parts without Reni’s drums, Mani’s bass
and Ian’s vocals. Kendo and I even managed to catch Reni at King Tuts during his short-lived
band The Rub. The first thing Reni said when he came onstage was “who’s from Greenock?”
More proof of the inextricable link between the Roses and my hometown.
With the Roses no longer in existence, I started collecting memorabilia. The centrepiece of
this is a signed print of the Elephant Stone artwork of which only 300 were produced. The
day they went on sale I was on the website first thing, expecting there to be an enormous rush
for such Roses rarities. I entered my credit card details and sat back happily. A couple of
hours later I got a phone call asking me if I could give them my details again: “we had no
idea anyone was going to buy one right away and we hadn’t set up the website properly”. I
had been the first person to buy one (although when it arrived, it was 13/300).
From time to time, a Roses reunion was touted. Over the years, it had become clear just how
bad the breakdown in the band was. Ian and John had obviously fallen out badly, and nobody
really knew where Reni stood. Mani seemed to be the only one on speaking terms with the
23
rest, and the only one who seemed up for a possible reunion. I always said that I was dead
against any reformation. The Roses had a legacy that was matched only by a few other
legendary bands, and I thought it was too precious to gamble with. Plus, reunions were crap,
weren’t they? Old bands getting back together for a final pay-day was the antithesis of what
the Roses were all about. They would never sell out like that. It went against what they stood
for. Most of the band seemed to feel the same way, and were dismissive and hostile whenever
the possibility was put to them. Ian and John were particularly resistant, and as more emerged
about their feelings for each other, it seemed that this was a relationship that was impossible
to fix. When Squire responded to the latest round of reformation rumours in 2009 by
denouncing them on Newsnight and creating an artwork declaring that he had “no desire
whatsoever to desecrate the grave of seminal Manchester pop group The Stone Roses”, it
looked as if the legacy was safe.
In the same year, Ian released his sixth solo album: My Way. As I always did whenever an ex
Stone Rose released new material, I bought it straight away. I put it on and went into my
kitchen to do some washing up. It was sounding pretty good, but then a song came on that
stopped me in my tracks. It was called “Always Remember Me” and by the end of it I was
standing in my kitchen, holding a half-washed plate, crying my eyes out. That was the
moment that I realised that perhaps Ian hadn't moved on as much as he liked to have us
believe he had. He still loved the Roses and had channelled that love into his most tender solo
song to date. He had written a love song about his old band, reflecting on how much they had
achieved and how much they meant to people. There was also a sense of sadness about how it
had all fallen apart, but there was no bitterness in there. There was only love. At first I
thought it was a message to Roses fans, but after repeated listens it sounded more and more
like a message to John Squire. I wondered whether John would ever hear it, because this
beautiful and straightforward song may have been a message from one old friend to another
that had taken 13 years to deliver. A message that signalled that, to Ian at least, the Roses had
unfinished business to attend to…
24
PART 2: THE FUTURE’S MINE….
16th
– 17th
October 2011
Fifteen years had passed since The Stone Roses announced their breakup. I was now
approaching middle-age with a career and a mortgage. The days of going to clubs on
weekends and dancing around with my mates to the tunes we loved had gone. Many of my
friends had families. Some had moved away. I watched as people I knew got trapped in jobs
they hated, doing things purely for the money that had no passion for. I was lucky – I had
managed to find a job I loved and that I would probably do for free. Luck came into it, but so
did the lessons I learned during those formative years. There were many points along the way
where I had to choose between the right thing to do and the easy/selfish/profitable thing to
do, and whenever a decision like this presented itself, I always drew on what I had learned
twenty years previously. The lessons had served me well. Did I go to Uni to do something
that would guarantee me a job and a large wage, or did I go to do something that I had a
genuine enthusiasm for even if there was no guarantee of a job at the end of it? I chose the
latter. Follow your heart and the rest will take care of itself. It wasn’t always easy, and there
were always pressures to take the money and run, but I knew that once I made that decision I
would have to become someone that I didn’t want to be. Again, I wasn’t trying to be them
and I wasn’t trying to emulate them: it was more that I identified with certain values and
thought they were worth sticking to. In that respect, I owed The Stone Roses everything. Not
only had they provided me with innumerable hours of joy through listening to their music,
but they had given me a moral compass and helped shaped the man I eventually became. For
this, I am eternally grateful but for me, the story of The Stone Roses was finished. They left
us with a classic album, a handful of amazing b-sides, a few gold-plated singles and a flawed
but brilliant follow up. Their legacy was assured and they were already considered to be one
of the all-time great bands. Theirs was a tale of a band who were determined to be the best
but didn’t have any appetite to pander to anyone in the process. They imploded in the end,
but even that was part of the story. For this fan, there was nothing more for them to do.
***
On October 16th
2011, I started getting texts around mid-afternoon from various people
asking me if I’d heard that The Stone Roses were reforming. I was used to this kind of thing
as it blew up every couple of years, so I knew the drill. I’d get a few texts that I’d denounce
25
as nonsense, confident that a reunion was not something that the Roses would do. After a day
or so, someone from the band or their people would officially put the rumour to bed. That’s
how it had worked in the past, and that’s how I expected it to work this time. “But there’s a
press conference in a couple of days” someone said. “Big deal” I replied “it’ll be about Blur
or something”. The rumours grew, with a tabloid claiming to have inside info on a tour, and
then Reni released the statement I’d been waiting for: “Not until 9T will I wear the hat for the
Roses again”. Done and dusted until next time, I thought. But the rumour persisted, and this
time John Robb, a confidante of the band and the author of a book about them, seemed to
support it. Something didn’t seem right.
26
18th October 2011
I found out the time of the press-conference and sat in front of my computer watching the live
feed. I was staring at four empty chairs and at this point, I fully expected some other band to
sit in them. I was looking forward to sending a series of “I told you so” texts to all the people
who had texted me over the last couple of days. I found John Robb on Twitter and kept
checking his updates. It soon became clear that I had been wrong. John Robb tweeted a
picture of himself and Ian Brown who, he reported, was on his way to the press conference.
The live feed had died, so I was getting my information solely from Twitter. The Stone Roses
had reformed, and would be playing gigs in 2012. Oh, and there were new songs as well. I
started getting texts right away, many from people who thought I would be deliriously happy
with this development. It’s hard to put into words the emotional rollercoaster I went on over
the next couple of days, but happiness was not something I felt for a long time after the Roses
reformed. This was my band. I revered their principles. I thought and hoped that they were
above something as crass as a reformation. That was what the old-guard did. That’s what
money-grabbing sell-outs did. Not the Roses. Not my band. Emotions were running high, and
I was getting so many texts and emails that I poured my heart out into a reply that was really
an essay. Reading it back now, it sounds harsh, but at the time I meant every word:
They gave me something to believe in. Not just me, but thousands upon thousands
of our generation. They were the band who had everything. They looked perfect.
Their clothes, their haircuts, their pouts and their poses. They were beautiful:
classic rock starts, but somehow avoiding clichés. But anyone can dress well.
That’s never enough. The Roses also had an attitude. Not a “bad” attitude, nor the
“difficult” tag that they were so often accused of, but a self-belief and a sense of
right and wrong that was as uncompromising as it was laser-sharp. Bands that
come with ideologies are usually never far away from self-righteous pomposity,
but again the Roses dodged these clichés. Their ideology was fairly simple. Never
sell out. Always stay true to yourself and behave with integrity. Do things your way
and don’t ever do things for impure reasons. It was this attitude that permeated
their interviews and their music. Ah, the music. Not before or since has a band
sound so effortlessly perfect. Spine-tingling melodies, delicious harmonies, a
rhythm-section to die for and the guitarist of his generation. The effect of the
soaring music that they made had on me and countless others is impossible to put
into words. They made me feel 10ft tall and capable of doing anything at all.
27
Theirs was the sound of pure love in musical form. Everything about them,
including the time they emerged, was perfect. Hardly a week went by without
them releasing another magical chunk of pop-perfection wrapped up in a paint-
splattered sleeve. Their songs could be heard everywhere you went. It’s often said
that the impact of a band can be measured in the influence they have on the
nation’s trousers and haircuts. In 1990, The Stone Roses had somehow seduced
the nation’s youth into wearing flares and adopting bowl-cuts. They were the band
of a generation, and they deserved to be. They spearheaded a movement that
made you genuinely thrilled to be part of, and still inspires nostalgic teary eyed
reminiscence. In amongst all this, they gave us the greatest album of all time;
preceded and followed by singles with b-sides as good as anything you’d ever
heard. They could do no wrong.
They disappeared, of course, but this just added to their mystique. They never
seemed like normal people. It was almost impossible to imagine Stone Roses songs
being written, because listening to them always felt like the tunes had always
existed. The disappearance was perfect. It added to the legend. Sure, it was
marred by legal disputes. But these were noble disputes. Record labels were trying
to exploit them and the Roses instinctively knew that they had to retaliate.
Retaliation, whether in the form of court battles or a more robust form of stylised
vandalism, was justified and in line with the high standards of integrity that they
displayed. When they returned, they were still as swaggering as ever, but this time
with a meatier sound. It was hard to digest at first, but their comeback album
gradually revealed itself to be a classic in its own right. And they gave their first
comeback interview to The Big Issue. There are those values again. The wheels fell
off, of course. A Reni-less Second Coming tour and a Reni/ Squire-less Reading
Festival disaster threatened to tarnish the legacy, but it remained intact and they
disappeared into the pantheon of music history. Their beliefs loomed so large that
it was inconceivable that they would ever risk tarnishing everything that they had
worked for and stood for.
The reason the Roses meant so much to people wasn’t the trousers, the hair or
even the tunes. It was the whole package. The Roses gave us an ideology to
believe in. Never sell out. Above all else, maintain your integrity. Every important
28
decision that has been made in my adult life has been informed in some way by
the lessons that the Stone Roses taught me in my teens. Those lessons got me to
where I am today.
And that’s why this reunion is a huge mistake. The Roses did things differently.
They weren’t the type of band to cash in. Cashing in was anathema to their values.
They were proud people, proud of their legacy and proud of what they meant to
the generation of fans who adored them. Coming back makes no sense. Playing
massive venues in front of aging nostalgic fans clutching their commemorative
comeback merchandise goes against everything they ever stood for. It is a betrayal
of the ideology that they taught us. What makes Roses fans so loyal is not just the
tunes they bestowed upon us. To be a Roses fan was to share their worldview. You
felt part of a gang. We held them dearly because they stood for something. It
didn’t matter what you had or didn’t have – if you had the right values then you
won’t go far wrong. That’s why Reni uttered my favourite interview-answer of all
time when a Smash Hits journalist asked him what his most treasured possession
was and he replied “the purity of my soul”.
Why risk all that? Why rehash the past and potentially ruin the legend? It makes
no sense. Comebacks are, by John Squire’s own admission “tragic” affairs. I didn’t
sign up to this. I didn’t buy into the Roses to see them become a cheesy cabaret
act. Playing new songs is a huge risk – they can never be the same as the ones we
love. There is nothing about this that is a good idea. The gigs will be full of pissed-
up idiots. The new material will be noticeably average (at best), the cultural
landscape can never re-align itself to what it was in the late 80s-early90s. It’s a
terrible idea, and I have never felt so betrayed by anyone I once looked up to. They
were never supposed to be one of those bands. We all thought they were different.
Special. Unique. Pure. It seems we were all very very wrong. They should be
ashamed of themselves (and probably will be by the end of the tour). I want no
part of it.
Now, I will be the first to admit just how pompous all of that sounds. But I was upset. I
genuinely thought it would be a bad idea, and would turn this precious band into a nostalgic
cabaret act. The last thing I wanted was for the band I loved to become a joke.
29
Then this happened, over text messages, with Kendo.
Kendo: I admire your stance but I'm afraid I can't give up my dream of seeing Reni
play drums in the flesh. Today I woke up around 06.00 with Emily crying. I got up
and took her into bed with us and instead of following asleep again I immediately
started to think about the reunion. I was willing it to be a false alarm and
statements to be released by the Ian and John confirming that they would not get
back together for any amount of money. However I knew deep down that it was
going to happen this time. I thought about all the way to where I was working
today and checked the internet for any news prior to starting at 9. At this point no
news was good news. I started work and forgot about it until I started to write my
report at 14.30 at which point I saw your text and checked the internet again. I
read that article I sent you and kind of accepted that it happened, but a bit of me
was still denying it possibly could. I then received your text confirming it and
despite driving country roads at 70mph checked the internet again. At this point I
read the article in the Guardian and it finally sunk in that this was happening. The
final words in that article confirm tickets go on sale at 9am Friday. I was
gobsmacked that it was happening so soon and then a strange thing happened. I
got goose bumps all over. This was excitement I was feeling. I thought of the
feeling I would get seeing the roses walk on stage hands held high for their
triumphant return. I thought of the majestic feeling I had during seeing Primal
Scream do Come Together in London. Could this actually be as good?
I then had another hour long journey to contemplate what this actually would
mean. My first thought was Reni, I would get to see him at last. But then I started
to think about my earlier feelings of dismay and then my thoughts were no longer
of a triumphant return, now they included the haggard greying Ian Brown killing a
field of dreams. Alas, despite knowing I shouldn't, I will be going all out to be there
at the point they return on stage. At that point I will hope and pray they deliver
and something inside tells me they will. I just hope the image in my head of them
on stage is not ruined forever.
30
Me: A massive world tour of arenas. Merchandise stands. Millions of pounds in
revenue. Old men with beer bellies in Reni hats desperately trying to relive their
youth. Young bampots trying to jump on the bandwagon without the slightest
inkling of what made it all so special in the first place. This isn't The Stone Roses.
This is something else. None of that represents the band we used to love. The old
Roses would never have considered something as vulgar as a comeback world
tour. They may be back together but The Stone Roses died a long time ago. The
spirit has gone. This is a cabaret act.
[more pomposity. I’m sorry]
Kendo: I know. I know. But. You can't miss the comeback shows. What if it’s the
biggest mistake you have ever made? Many many times we've had this what if
conversation and I remember a younger less cynical Stuart Wilson embracing the
idea of a return, if he could just get to see all 4 of them onstage.
It is. It is. It is. You can't get away from it. But The Stone Roses will all be onstage
together. You can't get away from that either. No matter how much the whole
thing goes against your whole being you can't get away from the fact that those
four will be on a stage together. I can't believe you would miss that return. I just
can't believe it.
And that was when I cracked. Something in that last text from Kendo flicked a switch inside
my head. The Stone Roses were back together. It may not have been what I wanted, but they
were my band. I’d grown up with them and I owed it to them to see this thing through to the
end. It may end up being terrible, but if it was terrible, I wanted to be there to see it. Ian,
John Mani and Reni were going to play music together again. Kendo was right. It would
have been insane for me to miss that….
31
Friday 8th
& Saturday 9th
June 2012 – Club Razzmatazz,
Barcelona
I’d managed to get tickets for the first two nights at Heaton Park, the huge comeback gigs
announced by the Roses at the press conference. However, we knew that these wouldn’t be
the first shows; no band gets back together after 22 years and plays their first gig to 75,000
fans in their home town. Kendo and I wanted to be at the first warm-up gig. In the months
after the reunion was announced, the Roses added more dates to their tour. At first it looked
like the first warm-ups might be in Scandinavia, but then two nights were announced in a
club in Barcelona. Tickets went on sale and were surprisingly easy to get, despite some
difficulties negotiating the Spanish website. We were going to see the Roses play their first
gig together since Glasgow Green in 1990. During the previous 8 months it had all been quite
difficult to comprehend. As I had done over the previous 20 years, I’d always put the Roses
on when I was drunk, singing along joyously at the top of my voice. I could be spotted in
pubs and clubs when I am the Resurrection was played, arms outstretched like a drunken
Scottish Jesus. A few months before the reunion, I forced my mate Al and his wife Angie to
watch the Blackpool Live video in my living room, drunkenly but enthusiastically instructing
them to “watch Reni…..WATCH FUCKING RENI!!!!!!”. The prospect of seeing the original
line-up was a strange one. Every so often it would hit me when I wasn’t expecting it, and the
hairs on the back of my neck would stand on end. Sometimes, I’d get a lump in my throat as I
imagined what it would be like to see those four mates walk on stage once again. Could they
recreate the magic that they so effortlessly produced all those years ago? By this point, I had
more or less dispensed with the negativity that I originally felt about the reunion. I wasn’t
sure what it would be like, but I was intrigued. The Roses had gone into hiding immediately
after the press conference. No interviews, no new material, no information. Nothing. They
disappeared, much like they had in 1990. It started to feel like they were being The Stone
Roses once again, and that excited me. Maybe they were going to do it. Maybe they were
going to pull this off…..
***
We suspected that there may be a secret show before the Barcelona gigs. That would be a
very “Roses” thing to do, and we were right. An email came in at 3pm on May 23rd
announcing that the Roses would play a free show that night in Warrington. Tickets in the
form of wristbands were being handed out on a first-come basis. I dropped what I was doing
32
and ran to my car, typing “Warrington” into Google Maps as I did. It was three hours away. I
checked the trains. Three hours. I wasn’t going to make it. Damn! I deliberately placed an
embargo on all information about this gig. When I saw them, I wanted to feel like it was their
first gig. I didn’t want to know anything about the set-list, the quality of Ian’s voice, or the
length of Squire’s hair. I was to be pure for Barcelona. After the Warrington gig, rumours
started circulating about a free gig in Greenock. It made sense given the Roses connection
with the town and I tried my best to find out if it was true, but if anybody knew anything they
weren’t telling. I decided that I couldn’t possibly miss a gig in Greenock, so for the entire
next week I would leave my adopted home of Edinburgh at lunchtime and make the 90
minute drive back to Greenock so that I arrived around 3pm. I’d wait in Greenock checking
emails and Twitter for any potential announcement before heading back to Edinburgh either
later that night or early the next morning. People kept telling me how crazy this was. I knew
it was crazy, but I also knew that if I missed a secret gig in the town where I fell in love with
them, I would be absolutely gutted. The gig never happened, and so on June 8th
2012 I left
Greenock for Barcelona to see the Roses play their second and third gigs in 22 years….
***
I couldn’t relax on the way to Barcelona. The main reason was that we didn’t physically have
the tickets in our possession. The way the website was set up meant that it would have been
nearly £80 to have them posted to us, so I opted for the “collect at box-office” option. This
should have been easy (and it was in the end), but I kept imagining things going wrong. So
much so, that I asked my Spanish friend Jose to write me a letter in Spanish that I could use
in an emergency. The letter said:
This is my good friend Stuart. He does not speak Spanish, but has travelled
from Scotland especially to see two concerts by The Stone Roses in Club
Razzmatazz. He has bought 4 tickets, 2 for Friday and 2 for Saturday. I have
spoken to an employee at the venue who told me that he would be able to pick
up his tickets at the box-office on Friday before the show.
Please help him in any way you can, because if he has had to show you this
letter, then it means things have gone badly wrong and he is seriously
fucked… He has been waiting 22 years to see this group play together, so
please help if you can
33
I was leaving nothing to chance. I needn’t have worried because the entire adventure in
Barcelona was as perfect a weekend as I could imagine having. We met some Roses fans on
the plane. Two were brothers, one of whom had seen the Roses at Glasgow Green (and had
been using this to torment his younger brother for 22 years). Another was called “Sauce” who
wasn’t that bothered about the reunion but just wanted to have a good night out (and he
certainly looked like he was achieving that goal when I saw him later in the evening). After
picking up the tickets without a hitch, we settled down in the bar around the corner.
Fortunately, we managed to hook up with some other Roses fanatics who had travelled from
all over the world to see these gigs. This was to be a true celebration. I had some food and,
crucially, tried not to get drunk (something that the two brothers from the plane failed to do,
resulting in them both forgetting the entire gig and having to stay out for an unplanned second
evening just so they had something from the weekend that they could actually remember). As
the gig drew near, Kendo and I both decided that we just had to get into this venue, even if we
were just around the corner with an hour to spare before show-time. We walked into Club
Razzmatazz and were blown away. I’d read that the club held about 6000, but what I didn’t
realise was that this was spread over several floors – the room that the Roses would be
playing in was tiny. This was a proper club gig! On stage sat Reni’s drums, resplendent with
two bass-drums both decorated with the debut album’s lemon logo. We stood and watched
those drums for what seemed like an age, trying to get our heads around the fact that we were
about to see The Stone Roses, together again. We watched as a Welsh lad who had travelled
from Palma with no place to sleep got chucked out by the bouncers before he’d seen the band
play a note. We looked around us and realised that just about everyone we saw had exactly
the same expression as us – somewhere between excitement and disbelief. Then the DJ played
Stoned Love by the Supremes and suddenly they were there. In front of us. I don’t really
remember what I did when I saw them walk onstage, but I don’t think that I will ever have a
purer, more honest emotional reaction than I did at that moment. I had long abandoned my
scepticism – the Roses were in front of me with Reni behind the drums. This was the
Resurrection.
***
As I write this, that first night in Barcelona was only 13 days ago. Every so often, a new
memory of the night will suddenly present itself to my consciousness. Every song they
played was a song that I’d played thousands of times, always dreaming that I’d one day
watch them play it live, but never daring to think that I actually would. They looked like the
34
band they used to be and they sounded better than ever with Squire’s muscular guitar almost
exactly half-way between the jangly debut and the Zep-rock Second Coming. When the
opening bars of This is The One smashed into me, I struggled to watch through the tears. I
could only put my hands to my mouth and watch in awe, as The Stone Roses played my
favourite song. I didn’t know how Ian’s voice was holding up, because 1500 people were
drowning out every word. When I saw Ian and John smile each other, emotion got the better
of me. The friendship had been repaired. They were mates again. As Mani said at the press
conference, re-establishing the friendships was more important than the reunion of the band,
and the humanity and love that was evident between these four old friends on that stage was
what protected this whole endeavour from ever turning into the cabaret I had feared it might.
I got it now. This wasn’t a cash-in, although cash was to be made. It wasn’t a sell-out. This
was something pure and honest because it happened for the right reasons. Watching the
Roses make eye contact with each other as they played those songs was what convinced me
that not all reunions are crass. They can happen for good reasons as well as bad. The Roses
knew that they had to fix their friendships before they could fix the band, and it was for this
reason that the gig was a success. If they had tried to do it the other way around, it would
never have worked. As always with the Roses, everything about this was 100% real and
honest. Reni was even better than I could have imagined. Absolute effortless and fluid, it
would not be an exaggeration to say that I had just witnessed a genius at work. I thought I had
seen The Stone Roses in Glasgow in 1995, but I hadn’t. I first saw The Stone Roses on 8th
June 2012 in Barcelona. With Reni, their drummer. The gig seemed to last about 10 minutes,
but in reality it was nearly 90. They ended with Love Spreads and then disappeared. The
Roses didn’t tend to do encores, but I don’t think they had much choice on this
occasion…and there was only one song that could possibly fit the bill, as they re-appeared
onstage with Reni leading them into I am the Resurrection.
After the gig we somehow managed to locate the lads we’d spent the day with, who had
congregated in a kebab shop near the venue. We’d only been together for a few hours, but it
already felt like we were a gang. We had shared something special and we were going to
celebrate. After a few more beers a couple of tequilas and a lot of triumphant chanting, I went
back to the club for the after-show party. By this point I was too drunk and emotionally
drained, so I went back to the hotel and went to bed. It had been quite a day, but what I didn’t
realise at that point was that the best was yet to come.
***
35
Kendo woke up with a start on Saturday morning. He had to go home because it was his
daughter’s birthday and when he eventually surfaced he realised that he didn’t have much
time to get to the airport. He threw his things into his bag and rushed off to find a taxi. When
he found one, he called me and told me that he’d seen some of the lads from the previous
night and they were heading out for some food. Luckily, I’d swapped a couple of numbers, so
after a few phone calls and a couple of wrong-turns, I found where they were. Everyone was
still buzzing from the previous night (I think a couple of them hadn’t even been to bed) so I
ordered some food from the Spanish menu (meaning I pointed at something without knowing
or caring what it was) and a beer before downing some caramel vodka shots from a bottle that
the owner of the bar had apparently given us for free. When the bar was closing, we asked for
the bill. It still doesn’t seem right that so many people eating and drinking so much were only
charged 40 euros.
The rest of the day was spent surfing on the euphoria of the previous evening. Another friend
of mine, Craig, had arrived to replace Kendo. I told him that he had no idea what a treat he
was in for, but I’m not sure he believed me. The evening progressed in much the same way as
the previous one, except this time I wasn’t so strict about staying sober. We got to the venue
and had a look at the merchandise stand. I was with Ajay, who I had met for the first time the
previous day. I bought a t-shirt and then casually pointed out a couple of other things that I
liked the look of. Ajay bought them and handed them straight to me. We got into the venue
and Craig went to the bar. That was the last I saw of him until the end of the gig, so Ajay and
I found a decent spot and waited.
The gig, when it arrived, was sensational. Maybe it was because I found it hard to take in
what I was seeing on the first night, maybe it was because the band were more confident,
maybe it was because the “Saturday” crowd were more up for it, but something happened on
the second night in Barcelona that I’d never experienced before and doubt I ever will again.
When I used to read articles about the Roses, they used to speak of the connection that the
band had with their audience. Roses’ gigs from their golden era were sometimes described as
being like raves. I never fully understood what any of that meant until June 9th
in Club
Razzmatazz. It was stunning. Breathtaking. This is a band that feed off their audience, and on
that night everything just seemed to click. The crowd inspired the band to new heights and
every song sounded urgent, as if The Roses had something to prove. As the music poured
over us we celebrated like this was the greatest party that any of us would ever experience.
Mani, perhaps a little subdued by his standards on the previous night, looked like he’d
36
suddenly remembered what he was doing. He looked like the biggest Stone Roses fan in the
room, and the great thing is – he probably was. Spontaneous chants of “Reni, Reni” broke
out in different pockets of the room, and everywhere you looked there were people with their
hands in the air and huge smiles on their faces. During She Bangs the Drums I looked behind
me, and I saw 1500 people bouncing in perfect unison, singing their hearts out and punching
the air with delight. By the time they got to Resurrection I had become part of a 6-man circle
in the second row from the front. It was the most thrilling experience of my entire life. The
band came together after wringing the last possible notes from the final song and embraced
each other. They stayed in their private hug whilst the club around them erupted. And then
they came to take their bow. Every one of them was grinning, Mani punching the air in
jubilation, Ian handing out gifts to the front row, Reni putting on a Reni-hat that landed at his
feet as the chant “Ole Ole Ole, Roses, Roses” filled the hall. Squire was the last to leave the
stage, shaking hands with anyone he could reach as he did. It was the kind of gig that people
will still talk about in 20 years. Outside the venue, we saw a guy grab his girlfriend by the
lapels, shouting “NOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND? DO YOU UNDERSTAND? DO YOU
UNDERSTAND NOW?” He was still doing it when we saw him 5 minutes later. Lee called
his wife and burst into tears on the phone. It was that kind of night. And it still gives me
shivers to say that I was there.
37
Sunday 10th
to Thursday 14th
June 2012 – Heineken Music Hall,
Amsterdam
The plan for Sunday was to have a relaxing day in Barcelona before getting the overnight
train to Paris. I had a few hours to kill before catching the train, so I found some of the lads
we'd met and joined them. After a couple of beers we decided that it would be a good idea to
actually see a bit of the city (for the previous two days, the only part of Barcelona that I had
seen were the road from the airport to my hotel, and the two streets between my hotel and
club Razzmatazz). After a stroll along Las Ramblas, Ajay, Lee and I decided to have some
tapas. We started with some restraint, but the excitement of the previous night's gig soon
overtook us, and three bottles of wine later I was wondering about how I was going to get to
the train station. I left in plenty of time, just in case i got lost. I needn't have worried, because
I found the station easily, which gave me another 90 minutes to kill. Spain were playing Italy
in Euro 2012 so I had another couple of glasses of wine and watched the game. By the time I
got on the train I was drunk and buzzing from the night before. I had booked a bed, and when
I found my cabin I was greeted by a Romanian lad who told me he was just about to find the
restaurant car and I was welcome to join him. I chucked my bag on my bunk and set off down
the train. The restaurant was full, so we sat in the bar until a table became free. More wine.
We got a table after a while and sat with a young American couple from Texas who were
touring Europe. More wine (this time whilst I tried to explain the purpose of my journey - not
easy to three people whose knowledge of UK music barely extends beyond the Beatles). We
finished eating and went back to the bar. More wine. One by one, they went to bed. I was on
a roll, however, so I befriended the only three people left in the bar and ordered more wine.
The bar closed at 3am, but I made sure we ordered enough wine to keep us going for a least
another hour. Eventually, it was only me left standing, at which point I decided I should
probably go to bed. But where was my cabin? The Romanian lad had gone to bed a few hours
ago, and my bag with my booking details was on the bed. I looked down the train. There
were literally hundreds of cabins. I knew mine was on the left. But I didn't know where.
There was only one thing to do, and that was guess roughly where it might be and start
opening doors. So if you are one of the several people who were woken that night by a
drunken Scotsman looking for his bed, I can only apologise. I found my cabin in the end, and
woke up everyone in it by attempting to jump into my top bunk without the help of a ladder.
Again, I apologise.
38
I woke up the next morning feeling absolutely grim. I had a 6 hour stopover in Paris before
my train to Amsterdam, and I was not looking forward to it. Despite feeling that I may
variously vomit, faint or sweat my soul away, I managed to rough out the wait. I found my
seat on the train and was delighted when a stunning blonde Dutch girl sat down next to me
and said "hello". Maybe this trip wasn't going to be so bad after all. Just when I was about to
strike up a conversation, the ticket collector appeared. I opened my bag to get my ticket,
completely forgetting that my self-designed t-shirt that I had worn to both Barcelona gigs was
at the top of my bag and was absolutely stinking. The stench poured from my bag straight
into this poor girl's nostrils. It took her under a minute to gather her belongings and move to a
different seat. Oh well.
***
Amsterdam is one of my favourite cities and I was looking forward to spending some time
there, but the travelling and my hangover had taken its toll on me, so when I arrived I went
straight to bed. I had booked to go to Amsterdam alone, as neither Craig nor Kendo could
justify a third gig. They both had family responsibilities but I didn’t, so I was free to follow
this thing wherever I wanted. I awoke the following morning to two text messages. One was
from Jamie, another guy I had met in Barcelona. He was asking if it was OK for him to take
me up on my offer of floor-space that I had made a couple of days previously. Barcelona had
given him the bug and he needed to see more. The second was from my brother-in-law who
had been inspired by my descriptions of Barcelona that he decided to ditch his business trip to
Sweden and get a last-minute flight to Amsterdam instead. The Roses bug was spreading.
After meeting my bro-in-law (also called Stuart) we had a relaxing day in Amsterdam as I
regaled him with tales from the previous few days. Jamie rolled into town about two-hours
before the gig was due to start, and we got the train to the venue. There wasn’t the same air of
camaraderie that I had enjoyed in Barcelona, but I did sense the excitement of the Roses fans
who were on the train with us. The look on their faces must have been similar to how I had
looked the previous Friday. The venue itself was far-removed from the hot & sweaty
intimacy of Club Razzmatazz. I’d heard that it wasn’t the best venue, but I’d also heard that
the sound was excellent, so I had planned for this to be my “listening” gig rather than
anything resembling the raw emotion of Barcelona. The crowd were more diverse as well,
with groups of lads from the UK mingling with curious locals. When I spotted the first plastic
pint of beer sailing through the air, I knew that the countdown to Heaton Park began here.
The band arrived right on cue, and the first thing Ian and John did was acknowledge the faces
39
in the front that they recognised from Barcelona. When they started playing they sounded
excellent. I could finally hear Reni’s harmonies properly, and they were heavenly. It took a
while for the crowd to warm up, with pockets of hardcore fans outnumbered by those who
had only come to hear the songs they recognised and were uninterested in paying attention to
anything else. The band had obviously picked up on this, with Ian doing his best to encourage
the people in the seats at the back to join in the party. Eventually, though, even those people
were powerless to resist the spell that the Roses cast. This is the One was triumphant, causing
the two well-dressed girls next to me to jump around with the same abandon that everyone
else was. She Bangs the Drums and Made of Stone signalled a further shift in gear before the
dirty blues riff of Love Spreads nearly blew the roof off. During Made of Stone Ian spotted
someone crying during the intro. He showed John and tried to make this person smile by
doing the monkey dance. It was a great moment and it had been a great gig. The Roses were
on form and looked up for it. After Love Spreads, Ian joked with the crowd, saying “we’ve
got to go up three flights of stairs, so you better shout loud if you want us to hear you” (or
something similar). At this point, I turned to Stuart and Jamie and said jokingly “I hope they
never do another encore, because that would make Barcelona even more special”. I had no
idea how prophetic that was to be, because after a couple of minutes of shouting Ian Brown
appeared back on stage, alone. As soon as he started speaking, I knew something was wrong.
“This is no joke, right, but the drummer’s gone home”. I looked at Jamie with a raised
eyebrow. The crowd thought that Ian was still joking – an extension to his teasing a couple of
minutes previously – but he persisted in telling us that he was serious. A few boos and shouts
later and Ian sensed the change in mood. It was then that he uttered the words that would
spread all over the internet within minutes: “the drummer’s a cunt”. Was this it? Was it over
already? It was hard to gauge the tone of his voice, but at the time he sounded fairly serious
to me. I had seen Reni gesture to the side of the stage during the last couple of songs, and as
Love Spreads began I saw him shaking his head. He was clearly unhappy with something, but
had the fragile peace that had been brokered just been shattered before my eyes? As the
crowd slowly began to realise that they wouldn’t be hearing I am the Resurrection, I quickly
got to the merchandise stall. If this was to be the last Roses gig ever, then I wanted some
souvenirs.
***
40
We decided to avoid the mad rush for the train after the gig, so we wandered around outside
the venue for a while. We spotted a little bar that was fairly quiet, and just as we got there I
saw a couple of guys with tour passes walking across the road. I asked them if they knew
what was happening, and they were a bit cagey, saying “how do I know you’re not from the
NME?” Fair point, I suppose. It turned out that this was Phil, the tour DJ and another friend
of the band. They sat down with us, we bought them a drink and they started chatting without
giving too much away. They seemed as shocked as we were and didn’t really have any more
of a clue than we did about what had just happened. At one point I glanced up to my right and
spotted Mani hanging out of a window having a cigarette. “Is that Mani?” I asked with
amazement. “Yes it is, and he’s smoking….his wife will kill him if she finds out!” came the
reply. “What’s happening Mani?” shouted Phil. Mani sighed and shrugged his shoulders. The
three of them arranged to meet later, and then Mani disappeared. It was a bizarre experience.
Here I was at my third Roses gig in a week, and one of my heroes was hanging out of a
window above me. At the time, I thought there was a real possibility that this might have
been the end of the road. In retrospect, I really have no idea whether Ian’s comment was
serious or significant or not. There was even some suggestion that it was staged to add a bit
of drama to the documentary that Shane Meadows was making about the reunion. Maybe
we’ll find out one day, but until then this was just another moment in the story of The Stone
Roses, and I was strangely pleased to have been a part of it. We got a taxi back into town and
tried to make sense of what we had seen. It had been a great gig, but the ending made us all
wonder whether this famously tempestuous band could recover. There was to be no party in
Amsterdam for me that night.
41
29th
& 30th
June 2012 – Heaton Park, Manchester
And then it was Heaton Park. The concerns after Amsterdam had been unfounded and the
Roses had played together at festivals in Scandinavia and a seemingly outstanding show in
Lyon that I’m gutted I missed. The next stop on the journey was to the fastest selling rock
gigs in UK history. They had always liked “events” and at Heaton Park they were to play to
225,000 people over three nights in what were unimaginatively described by the press as their
“massive homecoming shows”. My experience of Heaton Park was different to Barcelona
and Amsterdam. These were mini-festivals complete with noodle bars and VIP tents. I must
admit to being sceptical. I had been to many festivals and outdoor gigs and I thought I had
left behind the hassles that go along with them: rain, mud, insufficient toilets and people
chucking pints of piss all over the place. The journey down had done nothing to quell my
worries. Flooding had resulted in a number of trains being cancelled, and for a while it looked
as if we might have to make alternative travel arrangements. My train, however, was still
scheduled, but not only was it to carry several hundred Roses fans to Manchester, but it was
also to serve as a replacement service for several of the trains that had been cancelled during
the previous few hours. It was absolutely mobbed. I got speaking to a few people, including a
couple who had travelled to the UK from Los Angeles purely to see the Roses. I was
reminded again of what this band means to people and I arrived in Manchester in a better
mood than the one I had left Edinburgh in. Travel worries behind me, I could now
concentrate on the most important thing – watching The Stone Roses triumphantly return to
their home town.
After a hellish journey on a tram, we arrived at Heaton Park. It was massive. One of the first
things to strike me was the sheer diversity of people who had come to see this band. I saw
hip-hop guys, mods (in full mohair mod-suits, with winklepickers….in the mud), I saw
metal-heads in studded leather, I saw indie kids, I saw teenagers I saw old people, I saw gay
people, I saw people of all races and all creeds. It reminded me of how the Roses always
brought people together, transcending barriers. The supporting acts made more sense on the
day. We had The Wailers for the stoners (both nights) and Primal Scream (Friday) and Beady
Eye (Saturday) for the pill-heads. Everyone had been catered for. We arrived a bit late, and
had resigned ourselves to the fact that the front “pit” (which held 20,000 people) was full and
we would have to watch the gig from quite far back. But then out of the blue I got a text from
Jamie, who told me that they had ran out of wristbands at one gate, but there were plenty left
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at another. When we got closer to the stage, I felt my excitement move up a notch. All we
could do was wait and try to avoid getting hit by flying cups of piss.
***
On Friday, Craig and I managed to find a decent spot that was near the front but not in the
middle of the madness (we had lost Kendo and another friend, Gaz, by this point). When the
Roses arrived, everyone went predictably crazy. It was hard to hear the band at all for the first
few moments of I Wanna Be Adored because several thousand people were singing every
guitar line and every lyric straight into my ear. But here they were, still together and still
looking up for it. All around us people were hugging each other, proving that the power of
these songs and this band works every bit as well in a massive field as it does in a tiny club.
They played Bye Bye Badman, which they hadn’t in either Barcelona or Amsterdam (and
which I doubted they would play at all given its complexity) and they nailed it perfectly. The
set had been re-worked with a blistering 15 minute version of Fool’s Gold as its centrepiece.
And no encore. My throwaway statement in Amsterdam had come to pass. The “Amsterdam
incident”, whatever it may have been, had caused them to drop encores from their repertoire.
I was happy about this. I’ve never been a fan of the automatic encore. Instead, they had
introduced Elizabeth My Dear into the set (another song that hadn’t been played at the gigs
I’d seen previously) which gave everyone enough breathing space before Reni kick-started I
Am the Resurrection in exactly the same way as he had done at Spike Island and Glasgow
Green – his last gigs with the band before his 22 year hiatus.
Heaton Park was a long way from Barcelona. The production of these gigs was immense and
the video accompaniments perfectly complimented the songs. On Saturday night we found a
spot directly in front of the sound-desk (which protected us from flying piss). The atmosphere
was in no way diminished, and just before they took the stage a guy standing in front of me
turned around for no reason, looked me directly in the eye and said “you’re about to have the
best night of your life”. I watched as a German lad standing next to me had exactly the same
reaction to hearing the opening notes of This is The One as I had experienced in Club
Razzmatazz: he raised his hands to his head and stood wide eyed and open-mouthed with
tears streaming down his face. As Standing Here entered into its gorgeous, gentle coda, Reni
and Ian harmonised with each other in a way that almost made my knees buckle. I looked at
Kendo and he looked back at me, wide-eyed and with a massive grin. Reni, often viewed as
the most reluctant and accolade-averse member, was the last to leave the stage on both nights.
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All around people were hugging and crying and before anyone could gather their thoughts, a
massive firework display exploded into action accompanied by Bob Marley’s Redemption
Song. The Stone Roses had absolutely smashed it.
***
After the long walk into town we went to a club to meet some of the people we had
befriended in Barcelona. It was great to see them all again, still with the same massive grins I
had left them with in Spain. We swapped stories and memories of the last few weeks. The DJ
played everything a Roses fan could hope for, and I danced so enthusiastically that when the
lights came up a random stranger walked up to me and handed me a brand-new Ian Brown t-
shirt, saying simply “this is for you”. It was the last big gesture of an amazing journey.
And then it was all over. It was hard getting back into normal life after the experiences I had
in June 2012. If you were there, you’ll understand. I am aware that many people reading this
will dismiss it as the hagiographic ramblings of a deranged fan-boy. I make no apologies for
that because the things that I have tried to describe were so thrilling that they made me glad
to be alive. It’s easy to be dismissive and cynical, so if that’s your reaction to this then you
should understand that your opinion doesn’t matter to me. The Stone Roses set out to write
classic songs that inspired a generation and gave people a buzz. As far as I’m concerned, they
achieved that. During those magical three weeks in June I saw exactly what I wanted to see,
heard exactly what I wanted to hear and felt exactly how I wanted to feel. And that, at the end
of the day, is what matters most. One love.
The End