The Stone Roses - 30 years old

[tory]

30 years old in May. There hasn't been a British guitar album to match it since. Perhaps Radiohead were more experimental and forward-looking, perhaps Oasis had more traditionally anthemic moments, perhaps Blur more quirky nous, but none have matched it for assured, chromatic brilliance by musicians of rare talent. It was my generation's "Forever Changes". 

[Reactionary Rage]

One album. It doesn't seem like much to build a legacy on although they did have some great singles and b-sides of course (enough to fill up another 40 minute record) but it's one fuck of an album!

I think what ultimately separates them from what followed is the rhythm section, Reni in particular and a general lightness of touch and groove that was largely beyond the bands that followed. Squire's guitar playing is a delightful throwback to an earlier age as well. Some really lovely solos and moments of Byrdsian fluidity.

I think crucially as well it starts and ends very strongly. Two great bookends. You can build something very powerful if you get such moments right.


I went to see them on the reunion tour at Glasgow Green. I'd taken a fair bit of speed so I was quite buzzy, chatty and open. Hugs with strangers, people passing joints around, young and old - the record has clearly crossed the generations - and interestingly perhaps, what looked like almost a 50/50 split between men and women in the crowd. A very warm, convivial atmosphere. Middle aged nostalgia? Sure but one that certainly warmed my cockles that night.

[Reasonable good Nick]

Despite being absolutely the right age for it (I turned 16 in May 1989) I actually missed out on The Stone Roses completely at the time, because I was into metal and didn't really take notice of anything that was happening outside of that.

I mean, I'd heard of them, and I started noticing that summer that more and more lads I knew were growing their hair into the regulation bowlcuts or curtains and wearing flares and psychedelic hoodies, but I probably didn't actually hear it until a couple of years later.

So it's never had quite the significance for me that it obviously holds for an awful lot of people of my generation. While I liked them and it just fine, they've never been a band that I loved.

So I feel a little dislocated from the nostalgia and reminiscences of those days. And the effect of that is hugely increased by living in south Manchester, where for a lot of people The Roses are a religion second only to Manchester United in their affections.

[Deleted]

There are only two bands that I've really fallen in love with as an adult the same as I did when I was a teenager.

Nirvana and Stone Roses.

[Deleted]

Jan 18, 2019 17:43:20 GMT sloopjohnc said:

There are only two bands that I've really fallen in love with as an adult the same as I did when I was a teenager.

Nirvana and Stone Roses.

you were a teenager in the late 80s early 90s?

[Deleted]

Jan 18, 2019 17:45:25 GMT bungo the mungo said:

Jan 18, 2019 17:43:20 GMT sloopjohnc said:

There are only two bands that I've really fallen in love with as an adult the same as I did when I was a teenager.

Nirvana and Stone Roses.

you were a teenager in the late 80s early 90s?

I was a teenager in the mid to late '70s.

[Deleted]

Jan 18, 2019 18:27:04 GMT sloopjohnc said:

Jan 18, 2019 17:45:25 GMT bungo the mungo said:

you were a teenager in the late 80s early 90s?

I was a teenager in the mid to late '70s.

had you down as late 60s - early 70s.

[dipstick]

Jan 18, 2019 11:11:04 GMT Reactionary Rage said:

I think what ultimately separates them from what followed is the rhythm section, Reni in particular and a general lightness of touch and groove that was largely beyond the bands that followed. Squire's guitar playing is a delightful throwback to an earlier age as well.

The live performances of the time validate this. Ian Brown goes for the swagger and stance of a lead singer, but those live performances show how out of tune he is. The songs still sound pretty good and it comes from that rhythm section.

[Deleted]

Jan 18, 2019 18:32:16 GMT bungo the mungo said:

Jan 18, 2019 18:27:04 GMT sloopjohnc said:

I was a teenager in the mid to late '70s.

had you down as late 60s - early 70s.

Had you behind the woodshed giving you a good switchin'

[loveless]

It broke semi-belatedly in the States (something like 9 months later when "Fool's Gold" was released and tacked on to the album as a bonus track). I certainly played it plenty at the time, and it captured something of my own "things I wanted from music then" (even the inclusion of "Don't Stop" - a backwards version of "Waterfall" - spoke to something playful in me, to my own adolescent feelings of "Why aren't people my own age trying to make Revolver?"). The sunny melodicism of the whole thing, the murky, swirling psychedelic touches, a certain charisma - probably a light that needed switching on at that point in time (even the whole Jackson Pollack aesthetic was crucial - stories of these guys getting locked up for "art terrorism"...honestly, these touches were a lot of what I WOULDN'T get from a band like Oasis 4 or 5 years later).

Hindsight is inevitable - there are uneven elements to the whole thing, sonically it suffers from arriving at a certain period in the history of recording (it lacks a certain presence, as does a lot of music of the time), not every song is a masterpiece...

BUT...

Something like "I Wanna Be Adored" is deeply evergreen. To this day, I periodically rediscover that one by chance encounter, and fall in love all over again every time.

It is often the nature of things that the impact and prominence of a thing gets shoved out of the way by something else (by the time things like the pre-Loveless MBV eps, Bandwagonesque, or the first Suede singles were here, the Roses would have been moved further and further back into the closet...and their belated followup was as clear an example of "too little, too late" as there would ever be), but...eventually, that isn't going to matter. It's increasingly my view that you don't have to do a thing more than once - our thread about these acts who make one masterpiece and then disappear...you wouldn't NEED them to do it twice, right?

[Deleted]

I was wondering when When I Was Born for the 7th Time came out by Cornershop. It had to be around the same time, but the Stone Roses and that album were perennial go-tos for a good while.

Both bands had lots of promise, but couldn't subsequently deliver.

[oh oooh]

hell's bells

[fange]

Jan 20, 2019 13:38:47 GMT loveless said:

... sonically it suffers from arriving at a certain period in the history of recording (it lacks a certain presence, as does a lot of music of the time)...

That's something i've certainly felt ever since it was released. The sound of the record is, at least to me, nothing really special; the drums don't leap out at you like they do from a Stevie Wonder late-60s single, the mix doesn't fill you with wonder like something off Sgt. Pepper's would. But despite that, Leckie and Hook did a pretty fucking good job of capturing what in hindsight was clearly some alchemical shit going on with these guys in '88-'89. Was it a fortunate case of stand back and just let them pour forth? Or were their production decisions - or even non-decisions - a crucial part of what came about? I don't know - but i'm fucking glad it got put out the way it was, because i wouldn't change a thing.

[oh oooh]

Bummed is much more exciting.

[fange]

Jan 21, 2019 7:47:38 GMT oh oooh said:

Bummed is much more exciting.

I love a lot of Bummed, but sonically i wouldn't call it THAT exciting either; like loveless says, it was something that lots rock records at the time had in common. The guitars on something like 'Performance' are a joy, but the drums have always sounded a bit muffled. In fairness, while i'm not in love with the production it takes little away from the FEEL of the songs, that sort of wildly sneering hedonism that the Mondays captured at their best.