Soundtrack

Prologue"Sometimes I fantasize..."When I was in seventh grade, my favorite conversations came at the bus stop. While my friends and I waited for the bus, which was driven by a drowsy-looking guy named Lenny who would only play Styx's Paradise Theatre, we would energetically cover a range of topics: which girls were hot, what the best song was on Def Leppard's Pyromania, or how Han Solo could still be alive after being submerged in such a deep and heartbreaking freeze for all that time. But what we were best at were pop culture hypotheticals, wildly imagined scenarios whose possibilities were so intriguing that the next day we'd continue the conversation right where we'd left off without missing a beat, without even first saying hello. We'd wonder who would win if Bruce Lee fought Heavyweight champ Larry Holmes; what would happen if the shark from Jaws somehow got in the community swimming pool through the metal drain at the bottom of the deep end; how awesome it would be if Christie Brinkley was our babysitter; or if the rumor was true that Bon Scott was not dead at all, but bearded and sad and rot­ting away in a Mexican prison, and if it was, maybe we should head down there and do something about it. The bus stop was like a bar but without any of the drinks, though the conversations we had did prefigure the kind of drunken musings we would have years later as college students. Of course we knew our endless combinations of preposterous pop culture pairings and bizarre, almost supernatural wishes (''And then Jim Morrison would jump down from the sky right on the stage with wings made of snakes and be like, 'I was never dead"') were never going to come true, but they were so inspired, so sublimely hallucinogenic, they made us glow with excitement because they felt like the newest and best ideas on the planet. And as outrageous and illogical as they were, they felt real enough to happen and that was what made them so seductive. But the fact was, Bruce Lee was dead, and even if he wasn't, it was doubtful he'd come out of retirement and jump both sports and weight classes to fight Larry Holmes; the metal drain at the bottom of the pool was too small for even a baby barracuda to get in; my babysitter was Lisa Gates, a girl who didn't look to be even in the same species as Christie Brinkley; and if Bon Scott really was in a Mexican Prison, and five seventh graders from California somehow slipped under the parental radar and made their way down to Tijuana on a school day, what could they really do once they got there? Reality, however, has not dampened my desire, even into my thirties, to think of the world in the same terms I did when I was a kid at the bus stop. But instead of dreaming up things that fancifully mutate reality, I have now become obsessed with reality itself, and what might have happened if it hadn't gotten in the way. For example, if River Phoenix hadn't died of a drug overdose; if the Smiths hadn't broken up; or if Bjorn Borg hadn't retired from tennis at twenty-six. Of course these are all great artists and athletes who left their marks with deep indentations on popular culture, but the mind just takes off when it thinks about what more they could have done: Phoenix was deepening as an actor and his body of work seemed to only scratch the surface of what he was really capable of; the Smiths' last studio album Strangeways Here We Come was their most accessible yet; and Borg had eleven Grand Slam titles when he walked away from the sport, which at the time was only two shy of Roy Emerson's record. As for me, an ardent music addict with far too many arcane facts easily accessed by the right question and with a music collection so absurdly sizable I can listen to a differ­ent album every day for the next fifty-five years, for me what hurts the most is the story of the Stone Roses.l On the strength of their self-titled debut album, the Stone Roses should not only have ruled the world, they should still be ruling it. Shrugging off time and history and the constantly evolving musical curves of the pop universe, the Stone Roses' harmonious blend of melodic six-string pop and psy­chedelic rock and roll still remains, after all these years, both fresh and vital. Whether it's the slithering, narcissistic arro­gance of "I Wanna Be Adored," the soaring chorus of "She Bangs the Drums,'' or the funky workout of "Elephant Stone," The Stone Roses has more highlights than a David Beckham career retrospective. But more than that, it's a cohesive album, an album not Frankensteined together with one hit single and an array of scraps disguised as songs, but an album whose seamlessly sequenced song cycle begins by devilishly taunting, "I don't have to sell my soul / He's already in me,'' and then nervily ends with the self-obsessed and deliciously arrogant declaration "I am the Resurrection and I am the Light." True to the words of its bookends, the entire album is pompous and defiant, each song crackling with ambition and hunger. The Stone Roses' debut finds that lone, peerless groove occupied in temporary installments by precious few super­stars, that groove where everything clicks and hums and snaps into place, and even the mistakes look good. In other words, when you've got it, you've got it big and it was here that the Stone Roses had it. Even experimental dalliances with backward recording, or a minute-long number set to an old English folk song about assassinating the Queen some­how work. The mastery of this period for the band is evinced on the songs that didn't even make it on to the record. In fact, not only are the b-sides as good, if not in some cases better than the singles they backed, I'm con­vinced that the Stone Roses were so untouchable at this point in their career that a recording of the band eating lunch would have been a hit single. Not that they needed it. After The Stone Roses was released in May of 1989, it climbed as high as #19 on the UK charts, and peaked in the US on Billboard's top 200 at #86.2 Although it wasn't an instant seller on either shore, it did demonstrate a great deal of staying power, lodging itself on the UK charts for forty-eight weeks and the US charts for twenty-six. To date, its sales are estimated to be over four million and in British magazines it consistenty ranks in reader's polls as one of the best albums of all time.3 There are always varying reasons why some albums just stick around, and in the case of The Stone Roses, its endless stream of singles certainly didn't hurt. In the UK from July of 1989 to March of 1992, six songs from the album, including "She Bangs the Drums" (#34), "I Am the Resurrection" (#33), "Waterfall" (#27), "Made of Stone" (#20), "I Wanna Be Adored" (#20) and "Elephant Stone" (#8), not only made big impressions on the singles chart, but indicated the enduring power of the album.4 The band's apotheosis, however, had as much to do with singular events as chart successes. Over the course of their career they provided celebrated live results, with sold-out shows everywhere from the Hacienda in Manchester to Blackpool's Empress Ballroom to Spike Island in Cheshire, where they played for over 30,000 fans. They burned their bridges in public, splashing paint all over the offices of one former record label, while engaging in a protracted legal bat­ de with another.5 They signed a multimillion dollar deal with Geffen then vanished for several years before even putting out a record.6 They appeared on ''Top of the Pops" in a performance punctuated by singer Ian Brown's conspicuously mocking refusal to lip synch. They thumbed their noses at history, making claims they were going to be bigger than the Beatles, and that living legends Mick Jagger and David Bowie were insincere. They turned Jackson Pollock's name into a verb by Polocking their instruments in blasts of color­ful paint. And like Robin Hood, Brown allegedly strolled the streets of Manchester with £100,000 in a carrier bag, giving money to the homeless. Whether you witnessed it firsthand or read about it in the NME, these events forever secured the place of the Stone Roses right next to all the other immortals in pop music lore. But before we get to the Stone Roses, it's worth spend­ing a minute or two on the rich musical lineage of their Manchester hometown. Located in northwest England, Manchester is considered the world's first major industrial city and after London is judged by many to be England's unofficial second city. Some of its early inhabitants were Flemish weavers specializing in linen and wool, while later, during the Industrial Revolution, the advent of steam- pow­ered engines were crucial in making the city known for being the foremost manufacturers of cotton. However, in spite of its roots in industry, Mancunians have a long tradition of a fierce commitment to the arts. Boasting notable art galleries, museums, theaters and reputed music institutions, Man­chester's rich cultural heritage has not only been a continu­ous source of pride for its citizens, its long list of talented artists, writers and musicians have proven it is more than fer­tile ground for creativity and expression. When it comes to pop, many believe that Manchester's music infrastructure was properly established in 1978 when television personality Tony Wilson founded the now leg­endary Factory Records. Branding every Factory product with PAC and a corresponding number denoting its place in the Factory sequence, the label cultivated its own visual mythology, which helped create a mystique for its acts. As the label grew so did its roster, which in addition to its flag­ship acts like the Durutti Column and Joy Division, also eventually included A Certain Ratio, Cabaret Voltaire, the Railway Children, the Happy Mondays, New Order and for a spell, James, whose brief tenure with Factory was confined to a handful of singles early in their career. Before Factory, Manchester had the usual pop music outlets of nightclubs and magazines and record stores, but by the end of the seventies, musically, the city found itself to be in a bit of a rut. But when Factory set down its anchor, it ended up performing a kind of musical quadruple bypass and got the blood flowing through the artistic veins of the city in ways that it never had before. Capitalizing on his success, Tony Wilson (along with Joy Division manager Rob Gretton) opened the Hacienda in 1982, a nightclub that on paper seemed like the perfect base for the bands that were sprouting up all over Manchester. Built in an abandoned yacht showroom, the Hacienda's spar­tan inner environs and admittedly woeful acoustics at first prevented the club from catching on and instead catered to a small crowd of indie guitar rock devotees. But by the second half of the eighties, as dance culture took off and the designer club drug Ecstasy made its way into British youth culture, the Hacienda began to move away from just book­ ing live bands and began hiring DJs who commandeered their own theme nights, spinning acid house, hip-hop, elec­tro funk and techno. With three levels, enough space to hold almost two thousand people, and the quavering beats of a new kind of dance music reverberating throughout, the Hacienda became the hottest nightclub in Manchester. ''The Hacienda was rubbish," says former Creation boss and current Poptones head Alan McGee.7''Then they import­ed loads of Ecstasy and it became good. Suddenly everyone was dancing to balletic house music and it was insane, but it was fantastic fun. The Hacienda was probably the most rock and roll fun you could have outside of Mexico City." With a schedule that now included live bands and adven­turous DJs playing various species of dance music, the Hacienda made it clear that guitar rock and dance music, two previously warring factions, could not only coexist, they could even merge together without anyone noticing. The result of this experimental sonic coupling created a new pop offspring and bands like the Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets and the Stone Roses found themselves emerging as the new sound of Britain. But I'm getting ahead of myself. No one emerges as the new sound of anything without a lit­tle history of their own. Formed in 1983 by childhood friends Ian Brown and John Squire, the Stone Roses rose from the quietly smolder­ing ashes of the two's first band, a Clash-inspired outflt called the Patrol. Although the Stone Roses recorded an album that was never released in 1985, in the nearly flve years it took to fomally put out their debut, they did manage to amass some pretty impressive highlights.8 They opened for Pete Townshend, toured Sweden, played late-night ware­house gigs all over Manchester, had two managers (Howard Jones and Gareth Evans), recorded a single with producer Martin Hannett (who had produced both the Buzzcocks and Joy Division), were the first band in almost a decade to play a live radio gig for Manchester's Piccadilly Radio, got banned from the London Marquee nightclub for allegedly spraypainting their name in a bold trail across Manchester and they secured the services of well-known producer John Leckie to take the helm for the recording of their belated debut album.9Not a bad way for a young band to cram a resume. But keep in mind that when the Stone Roses went into the studio with Leckie in 1988, musically speaking, they were no longer a young band anymore. People around Man­chester had been aware of them for years and had perhaps even grown tired of the band that had been hailed as the next big thing talking so much and producing so little. The lack of an album technically made the Stone Roses rookies, but on the strength of their years together, they were rookies who were deeply seasoned. Initially the rhythm section of the Stone Roses went through several permutations and at various points included former Patrol singer Andy Couzens, future Colourfield and Fall drummer Simon Wolstencroft, and bassist Pete Garner. But for The Stone Roses album, the band was a solid quartet that consisted of drummer Alan "Reni" Wren, bassist Gary "Mani" Mounfield, John Squire on guitar and Ian Brown on vocals. Mani hailed from blue-collar north Manchester, and had cut his musical teeth playing in the Mill with future Inspiral Carpets keyboardist Clint Boon. Wide-eyed and handsome, Mani possessed, according to Jon Stewart, former guitarist of the Britpop band Sleeper, "The kind of straightforward soulful rootsy ballsy bass playing that drives a band--they wouldn't have been the same without him." "He's got every­thing a band needs in those fingers," seconds former Woodentops singer Rolo McGinty. With a kind of casual toughness, and a traceable smirk, Reni would lounge behind his drum kit sending out muscu­lar backbeats and improvised jazz fills, the sticks in his hands flashing like chopper blades. Continually compared to Keith Moon, Reni is still considered by many to have been the Stone Roses' secret weapon due to his musical versatility. Wearing his trademark beanie, he was a dangerously good drummer, but he was also an excellent singer. In his biogra­phy of the band The Stone Roses and the Resurrection of British Pop, John Robb writes of him, "Not only being content with being a great young drummer on the up, he also possessed an outstanding voice, a voice that would play a key role on the first album, underpinning Brown's husky fallen-angel mooch." As for his importance to the band, Brown even went so far as tell Uncut: "...We had a drummer with soul, so we always had a beat. That's what made the Roses." As much a visual artist as a guitarist, John Squire's love of painting seemed to inform his musical sensibility. With a dark fringe falling halfway over his eyes, Squire, an unabashed fan of Jackson Pollock, followed the artist's lead and fearlessly let his inventive riffs whirl and sinuate from his instrument in long, helical sparks. With the tendency in interviews to say very little, Squire often described himself as a loner and seemed to prefer to let the music speak for itself The temptation for many journalists was to compare Squire to Johnny Marr, because not only were both from Manchester, but onstage Squire seemed to hold the same silences as Marr, peering up every now and then as his gui­tar veered and chimed. But Love guitarist Mike Randle is quick to point out the differences between the two: "Johnny Marr is organic and sweet and borderless," he says. "Squire's style was brittle, brilliant and melodic. Squire is a very innovative guitarist in that he seems to marry melody and chords quite well togeth­er, which was refreshing for that time. If you listen to that first record, even when he's not playing notes you still have previous notes in your head."llAlthough his lean build suggested a kind of pop pugilist, Ian Brown's face hinted at the brains of an intellectual and the brawn of a bully. He had not quite a villainous sneer, but not exactly one wracked with morality either. With his nar­row, well defined cheekbones, and his thin, gunfighter eyes, Brown could be mistaken for either a cocky graduate stu­dent or a member of a feral gang who held their meetings under a bridge down by the river. Brown could look some­ times as if he wasn't there at all, but his deep stare also sug­gested a man capable of a probing focus and a potentially splenetic temperament. "I still believe," says singer Martin Phillips of New Zealand's beloved indie rock heroes the Chills, "that the Stone Roses would not have done anywhere near as well without the powerful charisma and looks of Ian Brown. He looked good from every angle. Though largely expression­less, he looked as if there was a lot more going on inside his mind than there appeared to be once he opened his mouth. His lyrics show him to be no fool but he did seem deter­ mined to come across as a bit of a lad." Although The Stone Roses was only their first album, in interviews the band were as self-possessed and confident as a band with a handful of albums under their belts who had been through it all before. Perhaps their confidence stemmed from the fact that they knew they had just let loose a soon-to-be classic album on the general public, or maybe they were just brash by nature and didn't know any better. Whatever it was, by 1988 some kind of magic had happened that transformed a band with only a few half-decent singles to their name into a cocksure foursome who were absolute­ly convinced they had recorded one of the best albums ever. And they weren't shy about saying as much. John Robb tells me the band's shameless belief in them­selves and their music wasn't something that happened overnight, as it appeared, but that it had developed over the years they had already spent together. Robb also thinks wait­ ing so long to put out their debut actually worked in their favor. "Luckily for them," he says, "the planned debut album was scuppered; they managed to avoid the first album fum­blings and move straight into top gear. They had time to lis­ten to more music, rehearse even harder and assimilate more influences. By the time they came to record the lemon album they were brilliant musicians with a very wide musical vocabulary on the cusp of a scene that they helped instigate." And like Muhammad Ali who said, "It's hard to be hum­ble, when you're as great as I am" (it's no wonder that Brown once declared "boxers are my heroes"), or John McEnroe who, mid-match, told his opponents they had no business being on the same court with him, the Stone Roses by the end of the eighties knew they were better than great and the evidence of this knowledge came in interviews and hustings where, in bursts of hubris and swagger, they were quick-wit­ ted, subversively monosyllabic, confrontational and utterly charming. Always a fanfaron, Brown told Roy Wilkinson of Sounds in 1989 that the Stone Roses' debut was better than the Rolling Stones' first offering; he told NME the same year that, "None of our obvious contemporaries do any­ thing for me," and he boasted the next month to NME again that, ''We're the most important group in the world because we've got the best songs and we haven't even begun to show our potential yet." History shows us that Brown may have been right on the first two of his points but as for the last one, he was dead wrong. The Stone Roses shows more than a band with poten­tial--it shows a band sizzling with skill, consumed with drive and aspiration and possessing an almost preternatural mastery of the pop paradigm. On their debut album, they were, for all practical purposes, a band at the height of their powers. The trouble is, they were not only at the height of their powers, they were using them all up. Evidence of this comes five years later on the soggy follow-up Second Coming, which, the band's legal and personal troubles aside, wasn't worthy of their name and didn't live up to its title-instead bringing the band back to earth with the weight of bad reviews, dis­appointing sales and the command over their audience clear­ly dimming. So in spite of the fearlessness and brilliance of The Stone Roses, it may be that the band, together nearly four years at the time of the recording of their seminal debut, by 1994 had already peaked and simply had little left. Before we get things started, I should tell you I'm from a small San Francisco suburb called Concord, which is roughly five thousand miles from Manchester. When The Stone Roses came out in the US in 1989, I was a sophomore in college and working as the Music Director of my campus radio station. When I put on the album for the first time and read the accompanying press kit RCA had sent me, which was loaded with tasty interviews from Melody Maker and NME, I was immediately hooked. The music was catchy and infectious, but the things the band said in those interviews blew my mind as much as the songs. Cavalier, blunt and mouthy, the Stone Roses were the cockiest musicians I had ever encountered, sure of themselves down to the last word. As for me, I had never been sure of anything in my life and the sheer fearless braggadocio of the band and their songs was addictive.12 I had always wanted to live the self-assured life and this was the soundtrack I needed. As much as I loved the album, I'm not ashamed to admit all these years later that at the time, there was a lot about it I didn't understand. I didn't know "Bye Bye Badman" was referencing the 1968 Paris student riots; I couldn't make out any of the lyrics to "Waterfall"; and on "(Song for My) Sugar Spun Sister" when Brown sang "Every member of Parliament trips on glue,'' I thought he was talking about George Clinton and Bootsy Collins. So at the time, I didn't get exactly what each song was about, but I was in love with the Stone Roses' confidence and certainty of their place in the world. I had loved a lot of bands up to that point, like the Police, R.E.M. and the Replacements, but the Stone Roses were the first band that I studied and mimicked. I wore the baggiest clothes I could find, started speaking in an English accent and tried to grow a fringe like John Squire-­ but unfortunately being a scrappy Jewish kid with curly hair, all it would do was rise in a frontal puff above my forehead. It was only a fringe (albeit somewhat of a kinky one) for four minutes after a shower, and then it became the floating curly brownie that was fast becoming my trademark around campus. I even wrote a glowing review of The Stone Roses for the campus newspaper, and at 2,537 words not only did it chal­lenge the normally enforced 200-word length of the paper's record review guidelines, it was also a complete mess. The only bit worth saving was, "Bookended by 'I Wanna Be Adored' and 'I Am the Resurrection,' The Stone Roses begins with a plea and ends with a promise."13 Although when it comes to describing my favorite albums, I've been known to lapse into a kind of room-clear­ing adorational hyperbole, enough time has passed since I first heard The Stone Roses for my bias to give way to the kind of reason and critical perspective which the passing of years generously affords. But those years have changed nothing, and time has proven rather impotent at chipping away my love for this album. I'll be honest, I don't know what Ian Brown's favorite movie is and I have no idea where John Squire likes to buy his clothes, but you have to understand this: I love The Stone Roses and play it more than any other album I own. Not only that, but I can still do a dead-on impersonation of Ian Brown; at the university where I teach I have the same Stone Roses poster hanging in my office that I had in my dorm eighteen years ago; and I have lost girlfriends on long drives who have begged me after the eighth listen in a row, to put on something else. No way. Never. The Stone Roses is my favorite album of all time. And we are gathered here today to talk about it.Notes1 I'm still waiting for a party where a beautiful girl asks me the name of the drummer on the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy's Distressed Gentlefolk. I've rehearsed this so much that I'm sure if it ever happens I'll blow it and instead say the name of the guy who played keyboards in Curiosity Killed the Cat. 2 A two-disc ten-year anniversary edition of The Stone Roses, released in 1999, charted at #9 in the UK 3 In 2003 the writers of NME declared The Stone Roses to be the best album of all time, while in 2004 the British newspaper The Observer revealed a poll of 100 musicians and critics had voted The Stone Roses as the best British album of all time. 4 Although "Fools Gold" (#8) matched "Elephant Stone" in terms of chart position, the Roses' highest charting singles were "One Love" (#4) and "Love Spreads" (#2). 5 The paint throwing, by the way, did get the entire band arrested. 6 It's been said that had the Stone Roses fulfilled this contract it would have been worth an estimated $20 million. 7 McGee got his start as the manager of the Jesus and Mary Chain and is also credited for being the guy who signed Oasis. 8 You can pick through its bones on the bootleg compilation Garage Flower. But if you're an intrepid collector you could try to get your hands on ...And on the Sixth Day Whilst God Created Manchester, the Lord Created the Stone Roses, a highly sought after bootleg album, similar to Garage Flower, which is comprised of early work from 1985-87, and the Martin Hannet-produced sessions they later shelved. 9 Leckie at that point was best known for his tape-op work on solo albums by John Lennon, George Harrison and Paul McCartney, engineering Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and his production on XTC's White Music and the Fall's This Nation Saving Grace. 10 "I have rehearsed in a room next to him," Stewart recalls, "and he was unbelievably loud." 11 Although from a historical perspective Squire's chiming swoon might be as memorable as Marr's moody jangle, Randle points out that a major dif­ference between the two guitarists is, ''Johnny Marr's canvas has way more colors." 12 Earlier that year a girl I had a crush on came to my dorm room late one night, took off her shirt and crawled into my bed. I remember thinking, I wonder if she likes me. 13 Conversely, the low point of the article was, "Seriously, gang, this is the raddest album of the year!"