The Stone Roses reunion hoopla is pretty much over,
for the time being at least. A handful of festival dates remain to be played
and then we wait to see if the beast still lives thereafter.
The gigs they’ve played have left a legacy that
pretty much explains just why there is nothing quite like music to touch the
soul and either ignite it or leave it stone cold. Those that went offer war
stories of blessed out evenings, wandering down memory lane while
simultaneously being thrilled by a band supposedly on fine form. Those who have
only caught clips on youtube can only marvel at the never ending capacity of
Ian Brown to fail to find a tune, even with the help of a SatNav.
I passed on the Roses this time, partly because the
open air gig does nothing for me at my rapidly advancing age, mainly because I
wanted to leave my memories of them intact.
I was one of the lucky ones you see. On May 12,
1989, I saw them before the hype took over, in a tiny club, standing about twice
as far from John Squire as you are from the screen you’re reading this on. The
debut album was a couple of weeks old, “She Bangs The Drums” was still awaiting
release as a single. They were getting attention, people were talking about
them, but they were still a phenomenon waiting to happen.
There are plenty of bands who I listen to more often
than them, bands who I’ve seen in the flesh more often, but even now, 23 years
now, that gig remains one of my cornerstone musical moments. I doubt that Brown
sang any better then than he does now, as a band they were possibly less
accomplished than they are today after 20 years at their craft, but in that spit
and vomit club with sweat dripping off the ceiling, there was no doubting that
this was something incredibly special, that it was about to go over ground,
that nothing could stop the Stone Roses. Except, perhaps, themselves.
The following day, I got up early and went and
bought the album on cassette. I rarely did that, but I was driving somewhere
and I wanted – needed - to hear that record and hear it immediately, an emotion
that has only rarely been repeated since then. It didn’t disappoint then, and
it hasn’t since. It is a genuinely extraordinary piece of work, not necessarily
in songwriting terms although some of it is sublime, but in the creation of a sound,
an atmosphere. Like all great bands, they created a place where they and their
music existed, separate from the competition, however good their contemporaries
like the Mondays might have been. Madchester might have embraced them both, and
plenty of others, but the Roses were always apart from it, because they were
the special ones.
Not only were they good, very good, they had an
inherent understanding of how important it is to create an aura, a mystique, a
magic. They were ubiquitous for a spell in 1990, but even then, they kept a lid
on it. We didn't know everything therewas to know about them in mind numbing social media styled detail. We got fed fascinating snippets that left us wanting more, then the BBC Late SAhow fiasco and the paint job at Revolver which followed the bad boy
blueprint of the likes of the Stones, upped the ante still further. But they were more than that.
They penned songs with titles like “What The World
Is Waiting For” and “I Am The Resurrection”, when Brown spoke to the press on increasingly rare occasions, it
was to tell them that his band was the most important in the world, and they
moved from clubs to events, Blackpool, Ally Pally, Spike Island, Glasgow Green. Above all,
they had the music to back it up, but only together. There was something about
that foursome, like Morrisssey, Marr, Joyce and Rourke, that just worked to
perfection, a blessing that they later took for granted as the band fragmented.
But for those 12 months, they were the greatest game
in town and, had they called it quits before the trials and tribulations of “The
Second Coming”, they would be in the pantheon, but the gradual unravelling tarnished the golden days.
And that’s why I didn’t go this time and haven’t
experienced a single pang of regret. In my mind, they are still that group from
1989, and that puts them up there with the very, very best. That’s the way I’m
keeping it.
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