For nearly 16 years after the initial breakup of The Stone Roses, all of the band’s former members denied any rumors of a reformation. In 2009, John Squire famously released a new piece of artwork which had been inscribed with the text: “I have no desire whatsoever to desecrate the grave of seminal Manchester pop group The Stone Roses.” All four of the ex-Madchester rockers were proven to be liars at a 2011 press conference in which they announced that the long awaited resurrection of The Stone Roses had come. 

One of the Roses’ first concerts back was a massive Manchester homecoming gig played at Heaton Park. Over 70 thousand fans were in attendance and the Heaton Park shows became the fastest selling rock gigs in British history. They subsequently embarked on a world tour that lasted from 2012 to 2013. Near the end of the tour, Ian Brown announced that the Roses had finally started writing new material and that a third album should be expected within the next five years.

Roses fans would not have to wait the whole five years for new material, though. In May 2016, the Roses released their first single in over 21 years: “Beautiful Thing”. Like “Love Spreads” in 1994, “Beautiful Thing” left most listeners massively disappointed. It’s clear why people felt this way. The lyrics are very subpar when compared to the Roses’ earlier releases. The refrain, “All for one, one for all, if we all join hands we’ll make a wall”, sounds like it could have been written by a four-year-old. The instrumental is somewhat interesting, but the melody sounds like an uninspired protest chant that really dulls the whole song. Brown’s voice is also completely shot at this point. His vocals are lacking in any inflection and are straight out of auto-tune hell.

The Roses’ follow up single, “Beautiful Thing”, performed far better than “All for One”. “Beautiful Thing” wasn’t a masterpiece, but it was just baggy enough to satiate the long starved club rats of the Second Summer of Love. The song brought back the Roses classic dance inspired drum beats and featured some cool guitar work from Squire.

Also, in 2016, the Roses would embark on a second world tour. In 2017, at the conclusion of what would be their last show, Brown said to a Glasgow crowd, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” Two years after this, John Squire would confirm in an interview that the Roses had broken up again without ever releasing a new album.

Unfortunately, I would have to say that looking at the reunion in retrospect, it seems to me that it was mostly just a cash grab. The Roses themselves never really seemed that happy to be performing alongside each other again. Early in their initial tour, Reni even stormed off the stage before the encore at a show in Lyon, France after an argument with the band’s other members. Putting this alongside the facts that they only did two tours over the course of six years and they only released two new singles leads me to believe that money was the overwhelming motivation for the reunion. Mani even said himself that he went from having £1000 in his bank account before the reunion to £1 million afterwards.

The Roses will likely never reform again, which means that unfortunately I’ll never get to see them play live as I only became a fan of theirs a couple years ago. Regardless of whether or not they ever reform, though, The Stone Roses will be remembered for a longtime and have already gone down in musical history as rock legends.

The Stone Roses | All For One

The Stone Roses | Beautiful Thing

On June 9th, 1990, The Stone Roses played at Glasgow Green in what would be their last live performance for almost five years. Many fans even refer to this as their final concert, disregarding everything the Roses would do afterwards.

In 1993, the Roses’ new label, Geffen Records, was growing impatient with the Roses lack of output. They finally demanded that Roses finish their second album or risk being dropped from the label. This prompted the lads to start working. Unfortunately, their return to the studio would not be as productive as their previous sessions. Unlike their debut album, which was recorded at lightning speed, the recording of their sophomore attempt proved to be a long and tortuous process. All of the Roses had recently become fathers which had changed their priorities and strained the writing partnership between Ian Brown and John Squire as the two began to spend less time together. Producer John Leckie had also cut ties with the band during their extended hiatus, so any product they released was bound to sound different from their past works.

In November 1994, the Roses finally released their long-awaited comeback single: “Love Spreads”. The new song was the first track released by the Roses to not feature any writing input from Brown; it was written entirely by Squire. The song became the band’s highest charting single, peaking at number two on the UK Charts. The chart success of the song did not reflect popular opinion though. Hype for the Roses return to the music world was so great in 1994 that they could have released a ten minute recording of Mani farting into a microphone overlaid with Reni shouting racial epithets and it still would have at least cracked the top ten. Although it would go on to receive greater appreciation in later years, many were initially turned off by the song’s departure from the band’s original sound.

While “Love Spreads” retained the dance inspired drum beats the Roses had become known for, the guitar in the song was markedly different from the soft playing of shoegaze tracks like “I Wanna Be Adored”. “Love Spreads” was the band’s most guitar heavy song to date, with Squire abandoning his 60s jangle pop inspired style in favor of a more harsh hard rock sound. To me, it sounds amazing, but I can see how the song might have disappointed 1994 audiences who were expecting the next “Fool’s Gold”.

The following month, the Roses would release their second album, Second Coming. The album would continue to display the fractured partnership between Brown and Squire, as nine of the 13 songs on the album would be written solely by Squire. Only one song, “Begging You”, would be credited to both Brown and Squire.

Second Coming proved to be an even greater disappointment than “Love Spreads”. The album’s Led Zeppelin inspired sound failed to capture the hearts of audiences and fell out of the UK Charts top ten after the first week and never returned.

After the release of Second Coming, the Roses embarked on a worldwide tour that would ultimately kill the band. Before the tour even began, Reni quit the band after a series of arguments with Brown. Roughly a year later, Squire would leave as well. After a disastrous performance at the 1996 Reading Festival in which Brown’s singing was described as “so off-key it was excruciating to have to listen to”, The Stone Roses finally disbanded in October of that year.

Reni would leave the music business after the split while the other three members would go on to pursue other projects. Mani would become the new bassist for Primal Scream and Squire attempted to form a new band, The Seahorses, which lasted only three years before breaking up. Brown had the most successful post-Roses life, beginning a career as a solo artist that would spawn 15 top-40 UK Singles.

Next week, for my final post I will be discussing the Roses’ 2011 reunion and their two 2016 singles: “All for One” and “Beautiful Thing”.

The Stone Roses | Second Coming

Four months after the release of their massively popular self-titled debut album, The Stone Roses capped off 1989 with the release of their nearly ten minute long single, “Fool’s Gold”. The song was the Roses biggest hit at the time of its release, peaking at number eight on the UK Singles Chart.

“Fool’s Gold” deviates from the sound of previous Roses releases. Their trademark 60s-esque jangly guitar riffs are absent, with the Roses leaning more into their dance-rock influences to produce a funkier and more club friendly tune. 

“Fool’s Gold” wastes no time jumping straight into its funky instrumental. There is a one second long percussion intro that transitions straight into the main portion of the song. The Roses’ rhythm section dominates “Fool’s Gold”. Mani plays the song’s famous trembling bassline while Reni provides a drumbeat sampled from James Brown’s “The Funky Drummer”. The guitar parts in the main portion of “Fool’s Gold” are relatively sparse. The song’s guitar is like the icing on the cake that is the drums and bass, with John Squire coming in at the end of the verses and during the choruses to provide some wah-wah soaked licks. The song’s vocals are also different from previous Roses singles. While he was never known as a belter, Ian Brown takes his subdued style of singing to a new level in “Fool’s Gold”. He practically whispers the song’s lyrics. It may sound odd, but it works for this groovy number.

While I do love “Fool’s Gold”, I have to say that it overstays its welcome being nine minutes and 53 seconds long. The main portion of the song lasts about five minutes and concludes with an extended instrumental that could really stand to be shortened by a few minutes.

Before writing this post, I had never really thought about the lyrics of “Fool’s Gold” and after thinking about it, I don’t think that they matter much. I don’t understand them completely, but they seem to describe a group of men on a journey to find gold. They provide a nice backdrop for the song, but “Fool’s Gold” is a dance track that is purely about having fun and losing yourself in the music. Any meaningful analysis of the terribly vague lyrics is unnecessary.

After the release of “Fool’s Gold”, the Roses would release one more single the following year before a four year drought began in which the Roses did not release any new material until 1994. After the success of their debut album and the subsequent singles, the Roses wished to get out of their contract with their independent label, Silvertone, and sign a lucrative deal with a major label. Silvertone, however, took out an injunction against the Roses in 1990 that prevented them from recording any new material with another label. The matter was finally settled in May of 1991 when a British court ruled in favor of the Roses, releasing them from Silvertone. Unfortunately, the whole ordeal proved to be draining for the Roses, and their subsequent recording sessions were very unproductive.

Next week I will be breaking from my format of only discussing singles and talk about the Roses second album, Second Coming, as a whole.

The Stone Roses | Fool’s Gold