Stone Roses - The War of the Roses

The story of the Stone Roses begins in Manchester in 1984, when neighbours and schoolmates Ian Brown and John Squire decide to put together a band that, after an endless string of name and line-up changes (The Mill, Young Teddy Boys, Patrol and English Roses, in honour of a Jam song), settles on the name Stone Roses and starts playing the city's clubs, bringing in Andy Couzens on second guitar, Pete Garner on bass and Alan Wren (known as "Reni") on drums (after Simon Wolstencroft, who had already played with Johnny Marr and Andy Rourke in Freak Party, briefly manned the kit).

Their recording debut comes in November 1985 with the single "So Young/Tell Me", released on Manchester's Thin Line label, in the vein of a still rather raw, Sex Pistols-inspired punk sound. The single's release is followed by some fruitless recording sessions at Strawberry Studios under the supervision of Martin Hannett, who had previously worked, among others, with Joy Division (much of this material would later find a home on the compilation "The Garage Flowers", released by Silvertone in 1996, of notable historical interest).

Meanwhile the band (which saw the decisive arrival of Gary "Mani" Mounfield on bass, replacing the departed Garner, and the exit of second guitarist Couzens) secured a deal with Fm Revolver (with whom bad blood would later lead the band to spray-paint the label's offices) and released the single "Sally Cinnamon" (May 1987), which not only sharpened the aesthetic identity of the Stone Roses' sound but also started spreading the band's name, catching the attention of several labels. In the end the winner was Andrew Lauder's Silverstone, a subsidiary of Jive Records, with whom the band hastily signed a contract for no fewer than eight albums, unknowingly signing their own future death sentence.

In October 1988 came the single "Elephant Stone" (reissued in 1991, by which time the Stone Roses cult had firmly taken hold), produced by Peter Hook with John Leckie assisting on the mix, followed in February 1989 by "Made Of Stone" (reissued the following February), which paved the way for the actual album, simply titled Stone Roses, produced by John Leckie and released at the end of April. Meanwhile, in July of that same year, the new single "She Bangs The Drums" came out. Thus began the Stone Roses' unstoppable rise to success.

Rivers of ink have been spilled on Stone Roses. There are several reasons for this. One of the first is undoubtedly the absolute quality of the musicians involved in the project, and above all the frankly unmatched level of its rhythm section, made up as mentioned of the legendary duo "Reni" Wren and "Mani" Mounfield, who can be considered, on their respective instruments (drums and bass), two of the best and most influential musicians of their generation, at least within Britain. Their inventions and rhythmic textures, in fact, not only defined the sound of an era but also set an example for the new wave of English musicians, leaving an indelible mark on the evolution of rock that followed. But we must not overlook the fundamental contribution of singer "King Monkey" Ian Brown, who, besides introducing into the band's sound influences drawn (as would later become clearer in his solo career) from soul, dub, funk and hip-hop (thus becoming largely responsible for the Stone Roses' future shift into the fertile waters of dance), laid the groundwork, with his slurred and strongly nasal singing style, for an entire lineage of vocalists running from Liam Gallagher of Oasis and Tim Burgess of the Charlatans all the way to Tom Meighan of Kasabian and Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys, passing through Peter Hayes of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Closing the circle is John Squire's garrulous guitar, clearly indebted to Hendrix, forever lively and darting, which in its reckless twists and turns seems to mirror the nervy, explosively Pollock-like style of his paintings (Squire had in fact nurtured, from the very start, alongside his career as a guitarist, a solid vocation for painting, which today is his main occupation and which, moreover, led him to handle the graphic design and artwork of the Stone Roses' records and singles, still instantly recognisable today).

The sound of the Stone Roses' first album draws together various earlier musical paths, which find in the quartet's songs a further, significant stage of development and refinement. What stands out immediately is an in-depth work of reworking and cultural rediscovery of the Sixties, bringing back to the centre of their songwriting a renewed attention to melody, often structured through the careful use of hazy arpeggios and ecstatic choruses that intertwine into thin, luminous layers and not infrequently take on an enraptured, almost mystical cadence.

In truth, this patient recovery of atmospheres dear to the Beatles, the Byrds, Love, Big Star, the Kinks, the Zombies, the Beach Boys and Jefferson Airplane had already been undertaken, to remarkable effect, by Manchester's most important band of the immediately preceding years, namely the Smiths, and had then fed on more "lateral" and peripheral, yet no less important, experiences such as those of Scotland's Aztec Camera and Australia's Go-Betweens (not to mention other Scottish, Postcard-affiliated bands such as Orange Juice and Josef K).

Nor should we forget that the Stone Roses were not an isolated phenomenon, but took part in a specific cultural moment that would later flow into the new "Summer Of Love" of Madchester, and which was being reflected in the almost simultaneous output of bands such as the La's, House Of Love, James and, slightly later, Inspiral Carpets and the Auteurs. A particular musical climate decisively leaning towards sweet, creamy pop atmospheres and gentle jingle-jangle textures, already captured by a small compilation titled "C86", bundled with a 1986 issue of the weekly NME, which almost outlined a new English "scene", however varied and diverse in approach and outcome (the compilation, curated by Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne and reissued for its twentieth anniversary, includes among others songs by Primal Scream, the Pastels, the Wedding Present, and embryonic versions of the future Teenage Fanclub and Stereolab).

The nod to the placid, poetic reverberations of the great melodic Arcadia of the Sixties becomes fairly evident in now-classic tracks such as "She Bangs The Drums" and "Elephant Stone" (originally included only on the American edition of the album), where you can clearly hear how the combined work of bass and drums literally draws out and gradually shapes the gradual unfolding of the songs, letting itself be caressed by the chiselled, glistening colours of Squire's guitar and the perspectival illusions of voices and choruses layered in labyrinthine fashion. The same goes for the beautiful "This Is The One" (built in a more choreographed, deliberate way), for "Shoot You Down", "Bye Bye Badman", "(Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister" and "Elizabeth My Dear", based on the traditional theme of "Scarborough Fair Canticle", made famous by Simon & Garfunkel. Even so, from this point of view the greatest masterpiece ends up being, above all, "Made Of Stone", one of the most refined and unforgettable compositions credited to Brown/Squire, built on the evocative perspectival juxtaposition of acoustic and electric guitar, whose notes clash and ebb against one another like opposing wave crests, before blossoming into a heartrending chorus of rare perfection and intensity, firmly set within the solid, powerful rhythmic blocks laid down by bass and drums.

Along the same lines is "Waterfall", whose soaring melodic cascade, set gushing by Squire's generous hand like an unstoppable flow, is then, as it were, sucked back in and played in reverse on the experimental "Don't Stop", indulging certain deconstructive, manipulative quirks (more fitting for a DJ) that would not be without consequences for the songs still to come.

But the band's potential is not exhausted in an aestheticising revisitation of sixties and psychedelic themes, nor in the crafting of nostalgic, colourful pop madeleines. Proof of this is the litany "I Wanna Be Adored", which serves as the album's hazy vestibule, a sort of evocative, shadowy marble portal, pervaded by that hallucinated, spectral gaze which, in different ways, had already informed fellow Mancunians Joy Division's exploration of alienating urban landscapes. The track is very interesting in that it shows how the Stone Roses' songwriting was marked by a certain stylistic restlessness, which leads them, in this particular case, to open themselves up to the pull of expansive, atmospheric solutions.

The astonishing "I Am The Resurrection" closes the record, starting out as a syncopated Victorian little march before opening up, in its never-ending instrumental coda, into a microcosm of crackling rhythmic and melodic variations, charged with a brilliance and a destructuring drive almost worthy of Pink Floyd, in a riot of colour in which the different instrumental voices of guitar, bass and drums tend to knot themselves into a sort of endless polyphonic dialogue, or sonic rainbow, that does nothing but keep blossoming and regenerating from its own germinating fabric. Needless to say, the overall legacy of this album would, in the years to come, prove practically immense.

In November 1989 came the single release (also later included on the American edition of the album) "Fools Gold", which can be considered, if not the most beautiful, certainly the most innovative and important Stone Roses song, clocking in at around ten minutes. Backed by an equally strong B-side in terms of quality ("What The World Is Waiting For"), the song shot straight into the top ten of best-selling singles. This is the track that sealed the Stone Roses' definitive national breakthrough and, also thanks to their appearance on the TV show Top of the Pops, the explosion into the mainstream of the so-called "baggy" phenomenon. This term is generally used to describe a style of music that spread between the late Eighties and early Nineties, characterised by an attempt to fuse the traditional structures of the pop-rock song with the rhythms, effects and colourings typical of club and dancefloor music. The standard-bearers of this new "movement" were, besides the Stone Roses, the Charlatans (authors of the inescapable hit "The Only One I Know"), 808 State and, above all, Happy Mondays (later Black Grape), perhaps the biggest and most typical representatives of the bunch.

Baggy stands at the origin of a complex series of stylistic cross-contaminations and experiments which, over time, led to rock being grafted with elements drawn from house, techno and rave music, running from Underworld and Orbital through trip-hop, the Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim, and arriving at the more recent punk-funk revival of American bands such as LCD Soundsystem, !!!, Out Hud, The Rapture and Electric Six (not to mention the very recent breakthrough of the so-called "nu rave" scene of Klaxons, Shitdisco and Simian Mobile Disco).

The epicentre of the baggy scene was without a doubt Manchester (rebranded for the occasion as Madchester) and, in particular, a venue called the Hacienda, founded in 1982 by one of the most important cultural agitators of the Manchester music scene, Tony Wilson, already the owner of the Factory label, which in the late Seventies had released material by Joy Division, Durutti Column, Cabaret Voltaire and A Certain Ratio. The Hacienda was to baggy what the UFO Club had been to Swinging London during the Beat era: here flocked, eager to enjoy what was then being hailed as a new Summer Of Love, young people from every corner of England, sporting the typical look of baggy, low-crotch trousers and fisherman's hats (the so-called "Reni hats", after the nickname of the Roses' drummer) along with an innate inclination towards the new chemical drugs (anyone wishing to delve deeper into the overall evolution of baggy and, more broadly, of rave music and all the experiences connected to it, is advised to read English critic Simon Reynolds's essay "Generation Ecstasy").

Returning to "Fools Gold", one can immediately notice how the track marks a striking break from the Stone Roses' earlier output, taking shape as a lengthy suite that fuses the swaying, sinuous funk of Sly And The Family Stone and George Clinton with the acid psychedelia of Jimi Hendrix and the tireless, steady rhythmic pulse of club music. Ian Brown murmurs his chant-like, at times almost hip-hop, vocal, while Squire exhausts the resources of his pedalboard, weaving his darting guitar notes like the intricate details of an Indian tapestry, gradually settling into the geometric polyrhythmic weave laid down by bass and drums. The track, a sort of endless, visionary mental journey that intersects and overlays typically African-American motifs and rhythms with modern club culture, perhaps indirectly tapping into certain insights of composer Arthur Russell and Talking Heads, momentarily turns the Stone Roses into something like the heirs of fellow Mancunians New Order, crafting an innovative and thoroughly original prototype of danceable funk-rock that would later find an even more precise and effective formulation in Primal Scream's rock-dance masterpiece, "Screamadelica", in 1991.

Along the same lines is "One Love", a single the band released in mid-1990 (in December 1989, "I Wanna Be Adored" had come out exclusively for the American market, before being issued in England as a single in August 1991). The song (in truth a genuine jam session) continues and deepens the experiments just inaugurated by "Fools Gold", through the tangled lines of a ragged, slightly dazed blues that then unravels into a driving, danceable chorus, enriched as ever by the superb rhythmic frame provided by the Mani-Reni duo.

On 27 May 1990, a rave festival organised by the Stone Roses took place on Spike Island (in the Mersey estuary), drawing almost thirty thousand people and featuring numerous DJs on the decks ahead of the band's own performance. The event, which according to some accounts was plagued by serious amplification and acoustic problems, would soon pass into legend (it remained one of the last live appearances by Brown and co. for a full five years) and perhaps marked the peak of the Stone Roses' popularity, at a time when they liked to be accompanied on stage by dancer Cressa.

Meanwhile, tempted by the multi-million-pound offers from major label Geffen, the band tried to break the contract tying them to Silverstone, triggering a lengthy legal dispute that would dramatically delay the release of their second album. Silverstone, however, continued to exercise its contractual rights and put out new singles: the aforementioned "I Wanna Be Adored" and the subsequent "Waterfall" (December 1991) and "I Am The Resurrection" (March 1992). Eventually, the Stone Roses signed with Geffen on a four-million-dollar deal, and the troubled, never-ending recording sessions for the hotly anticipated second album resumed in June 1993 at Rockfield Studios. "Love Spreads" (which reached number 2 on the British charts, the Roses' highest chart placing ever) was the single tasked in November 1994 with heralding the release of the new album Second Coming, which hit the shops in December and was previewed exclusively by The Big Issue, the magazine produced by Britain's homeless.

Despite decent sales (respectable even in America), Second Coming never really took off, or at least it didn't become the success many had hoped for, partly because of its excessive delay in coming out, and partly because of the simultaneous commercial rise of countless bands directly inspired by the Stone Roses, who in the meantime were flooding an already thoroughly saturated market. Chief among them were Oasis, whose singer Liam Gallagher had decided to pursue a music career after attending a Stone Roses concert.

As someone wryly observed, Second Coming was less a second coming than a coming in second. The record indeed follows the tracks of a raw, hoarse blues-rock, thick-grained, dominated above all by John Squire's increasingly hard-edged, rasping guitar; Squire wrote most of the songs and arrangements. The sound comes together as a dense, clattering jam somewhere between the Allman Brothers, the Rolling Stones, electric-era Bob Dylan, Blue Cheer, Grand Funk and, above all, Led Zeppelin, stuffed with thunderous solos and lush layers of guitar. The single "Love Spreads" is highly representative of this approach, its overflowing squalls and whinnying guitar lines from Squire battering Brown's vocals with the waves of a hard-rock storm — truly jarring when set against what the band had written in previous years.

In truth, the album isn't even that irredeemably bad; what likely weighed most heavily against it and its misfortune were the disastrous tour that followed, the increasingly bitter and frequent internal rifts within the band, the growing drug abuse, a fragmented, at times downright sloppy production, and Brown's voice, often insubstantial and reduced to a thin, dissonant, annoyingly nasal and detached mutter.

In "Begging You" (released as a single in 1995) one catches fleeting glimpses of the sprawling soundscapes that recall the dancefloor crush of the baggy era; "Ten Storey Love Song" (released as a single in March 1995) revisits the band's tried-and-tested early pop style, drawing itself out into a lukewarm, well-crafted melodicism that has nevertheless lost much of its original magic; "Tears" skirts knowingly close to Zeppelin plagiarism, and even the other tracks, including "Daybreak" (co-written with Reni), "Tightrope" and "Good Times", while acceptable, hardly stand out for originality or for capturing the renewed spirit of the times.

The best composition thus turns out to be "Breaking Into Heaven", carried along by Brown's broken whisper and the wah-wah detonations of Squire's guitar, which perhaps delivers its most enjoyable flourishes right here, before a choral, psychedelic close crowns the song's build, easing it into a liquid fade-out.

In April 1995 the first blow struck the Stone Roses: drummer Reni, following repeated clashes, left the group (he would go on to pursue a string of inconsistent and fairly marginal projects, including the band The Rub). Session musician Robbie Maddix was brought in as his replacement. Starting with the Norwegian dates of the tour, the band also brought in the keyboards of Nigel Ippinson, formerly of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark.

In June, during the American leg, John Squire fell off his bicycle in California and fractured his collarbone. The eagerly awaited headline slot at Glastonbury was cancelled, and the spotlight instead fell on Pulp, crowning their simultaneous rise to success.

Meanwhile, the old label Silverstone put out a reissue of "Fools Gold" and the retrospective The Complete Stone Roses (a companion piece to "Turns Into Stone", released in 1992, a collection of B-sides and rarities dating from the period of the first album, recommended for anyone wanting to delve deeper into the Stone Roses' "musical workshop" during their period of greatest brilliance and inspiration).

On 25 March 1996 John Squire officially and definitively left the Stone Roses. His replacement was Aziz Ibrahim, formerly a guitarist with Asia and Simply Red, who made his debut on the Spanish dates of the tour. For a while there had even been talk of a possible arrival by Slash of Guns N' Roses, a hypothesis that was then flatly denied by the band.

The lowest and most humiliating moment came on 25 August in the lions' den of the Reading festival, with Brown unable to sing the chorus of "I Am The Resurrection" and getting drowned out by volleys of boos and objects thrown at the stage. All this for a band that just five years earlier had been almost unanimously regarded as one of the best in England. Mani's departure (he went on to join Primal Scream permanently) in October 1996 marked the official end of the Stone Roses.

Worth noting, to close, is the reissue (which even charted) of the first album in 1999, to mark its tenth anniversary, in an expanded edition including, among others, "Fools Gold" and "Elephant Stone", with the addition of lyrics, music videos and some photographic material; to this should be added the Remixes collection from 2000 and the summarising compilation The Very Best Of Stone Roses from 2002, which contains most of the first album, the major singles not included on it, and four songs from Second Coming — recommended for newcomers wanting to approach the Stone Roses' catalogue, which is in any case far from labyrinthine.

In 1997 John Squire formed the Seahorses, who in the first half of the year released the album Do It Yourself, on which he tried in some way to reinvent himself as a songwriter, riding the lingering wave of Britpop. In reality, the album retreads the well-worn paths of an all-too-predictable melodic guitar-rock, devoid of sparks or particular invention, falling into that strand the English press at the time liked to call "Noelrock", in reference to Oasis. The record nevertheless spawned several fairly successful radio singles, all marked by a certain catchiness ("Love Is The Law", "Blinded By The Sun", "Love Me And Leave Me", "You Can Talk To Me").

The band broke up in February 1999, and singer Chris Helme went on to found the Yards, who made their debut a couple of years ago with a promising first LP. John Squire, meanwhile, released two solo albums under his own name: Time Changes Everything in 2002 and Marshall's House in 2004, a more understated, personal affair in which the guitarist reworks and pays tribute to his main influences (from the Stones to Hendrix, by way of Led Zeppelin).

Of a wholly different nature is the fate of Ian Brown, who, judging by his four albums released so far (a fifth – reportedly involving Andy Rourke, Paul Ryder and, rumour has it, Paul McCartney – is expected by the end of this year), has surprisingly proven to be the true continuer of the story the Stone Roses left hanging after "Fools Gold".

The most important of his albums (as well as the most successful) is most likely the first, Unfinished Monkey Business, released in 1998, whose making involved Mani, Reni, Aziz Ibrahim, Nigel Hippinson and Robbie Maddix, all of them, to varying degrees, figures from the unforgettable Stone Roses saga (some of them would go on to take part in the tour that followed the album's release).

The album is marked by the heavy use of sampled backing tracks and highly danceable electronic rhythms, as suggested by the hit "Can't See Me", though more traditional, well-balanced compositions still manage to slip in, such as "Corpses In Their Mouth", which hints at Brown's unsuspected songwriting gifts, or the stellar sci-fi psychedelia of the lead-off single "My Star" (number 5 on the British charts, one of the best-known songs in Brown's solo catalogue).

In February 1999 came the single "Be There", a small masterpiece of gothic, obsessive trip-hop, born out of a collaboration with James Lavelle's Unkle project and accompanied by a video of unsettling beauty (the collaboration would be renewed in 2003 with the single "Reign", built on a more orchestral structure).

Also in 1999 came the second album Golden Greats, slightly weaker, but increasingly geared towards building a futuristic brand of pop, streaked with bright funky moods and faint hip-hop cadences (just listen to "Dolphins Were Monkeys" or the even more electronic "Golden Gaze").

In 2001 came Music For The Sphere, shorter and more compact, focused on the songs themselves rather than on effects and sonic experimentation (it includes, among others, "F.E.A.R", Brown's own favourite song, which he considers his masterpiece, the almost Floydian – Gilmour-era – "Forever And A Day", and the psychedelic Spanish-language ballad "El Mundo Pequeno").

The latest, still provisional chapter arrived in 2004 with Solarized, notable for featuring "Keep What Ya Got", co-written with his faithful disciple Noel Gallagher, the Spanish-tinged "Time Is My Everything" made in collaboration with Tim Hutton of Villalobos, and "Lonesight M13", which involved Aziz Ibrahim.

In 2002, meanwhile, the remix collection Remixes Of The Spheres had already come out.

Ian Brown's career was then briefly anthologised and summed up in 2005 by the compilation The Greatest, enhanced by the single "All Ablaze", which shows how the original, era-defining Stone Roses project of transplanting the great psychedelic journeys of the late Sixties into the pulsing, urgent rhythms of future dance music had not yet exhausted its extraordinary expressive possibilities.

A different story altogether is the project that in 2024 brought together Liam Gallagher and John Squire, a connection that stretches back a long way, all the way to the concert the Oasis played at Knebworth in 1996.

Squire himself, who thanks above all to the debut album made with his Stone Roses in 1989 had been one of the sparks that set off the explosion of 90s britpop , had voiced his disapproval of the movement that subsequently sprang up in its wake, making one notable exception precisely for Oasis, whom he considered the only band to possess that certain quid needed to make history.

It is no coincidence that, in that very same 1996, as a clear mark of recognition, the Gallagher brothers invited Squire on stage at their legendary Knebworth concert, letting his inimitable guitar shine on "Champagne Supernova" and on the cover of the Fab Four's "I Am The Walrus". It was precisely at that moment that the relationship between John and Liam began to settle into something lasting.

Mutual regard and ongoing contact grew more frequent over the years, with repeated public declarations of admiration appearing in the press, right up until those early days of June 2023, when a now-solo Liam once again invited Squire to Knebworth to join his band on "Champagne Supernova", just as had happened almost thirty years before. It was there that a reinvigorated Squire played Liam some unreleased material, confiding to the feisty former Oasis frontman that only his distinctive voice and charisma could finally give meaning to his compositions. Liam didn't need to be asked twice.

Squire carried on writing with renewed verve, long buried under layers of dusty boredom. The rest is all contained in the ten enjoyable tracks that make up this self-titled album, songs that go down with remarkable ease and carry the scent of nostalgia.

Bibliographical references:

M. Melissano: Guide Rock: Inghilterra. Editori Riuniti

M. Melissano: Brit. La nuova scena inglese. Castelvecchi

L. Bonanni: Gli Oasis e il brit pop. Come sentirsi vivi negli anni Novanta. Lo Vecchio

C. Villa: Brit pop. Piccola enciclopedia (1990-1997). Giunti

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