A Look Back: The Stone Roses — The Stone Roses (1989)
The four guys from Manchester added the fist-pumping melodies to the “Manchester Sound.”
The four lads from Manchester added the fist-pumping melodies to the “Manchester Sound.”
I recall buying The Stone Roses debut album on cassette in 1989, giving it a listen and then shrugging my shoulders.
I dug it up after reading this article in Rolling Stone but it still didn’t register for me. It would take another year before I listened again.
And I only listened because I had the good fortune to fall in love with a girl who had impeccable taste in music. She put “She Bangs the Drums” on a mix-tape for me and this time my ears perked up. I dug out the cassette, listened, and from that moment on, I dug the band.
The Stone Roses:
Ian Brown — Vocals
John Squire — Guitar
Mani — Bass
Reni — Drums
The Manchester, England band opens their debut album with “I Wanna Be Adored” — the audio equivalent of a smoke machine announcing the arrival of the band. The Stone Roses arrived with equal amount hubris and talent.
Q: What band doesn’t want to be adored?
A: NO BAND!
Any album that begins by giving a shout out to one of rock and rolls greatest myths about selling your soul to the devil is both cheeky and bold — “I don’t have to sell my soul, he’s already in me”. In this case, it serves as a clarion call for listeners to serve the bands one clear goal — to be rock stars.
“Waterfall” is a nice nod to jangle guitar with a dash of psychedelia. Sounding as though the band owes as much to the Byrds as Pink Floyd. To be honest, that’s true of the whole debut album.
And that’s the sound that was coming out of Manchester as the Stone Roses were emerging in the late 80s. And much like their predecessors of different eras — Joy Division and The Smiths — the Stone Roses were the first band to break out from this Manchester era.
Staying true to the “rules of three” people finally began to take notice the “Manchester Sound.” This third time it was less punky or collegial and more bravado, baggy jeans and MDMA (ecstasy) — earning the city the nickname “Madchester.” The ecstasy may explain the extended trippy jams on this album. However, unlike their contemporaries the Happy Mondays or Inspiral Carpets, the Stone Roses had a better grasp on pop and rock history.
It’s that musical knowledge that allowed them to update the jangle guitar sound without diluting or destroying it — only modernizing it. And somehow making psychedelia palatable. “(Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister” is a fine example of the band’s ability to marry genres while nodding to the past and securely moving into the future:
“(Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister”
Her hair
Soft drifted snow
Death white
I’d like to know
Why she hates
All that she does
But she gives
It all that she’s got
Until the sky turns green
The grass is several shades of blue
Every member of parliament trips on glue…
By the seventh track (on the U.S. version), “Elizabeth My Dear”, Ian Brown’s singing will either appeal to you or it won’t. At the very least you may be scratching your head curious about his singling. However, don’t be fooled by his laconic singing. Sung to the melody of the traditional English ballad “Scarborough Fair”, the four simple lines in “Elizabeth My Dear” that Brown sings contain just as much venom and bite as the Sex Pistols “God Save the Queen”:
“Elizabeth My Dear”
Tear me apart and boil my bones
I’ll not rest till she’s lost her throne
My aim is true my message is clear
It’s curtains for you, Elizabeth my dear
Musically, Reni (Alan Wren) and Mani (Gary Mounfield) keep the music grounded on drums and bass respectively, the special sauce is guitarist John Squire. His guitar playing not only sits out front on the majority of songs (as one may expect from jangle) but it helps push Ian Brown’s economic vocals to another level. Is John Squire a revolutionary rock guitarist? No.
John Squire is one of the best guitarists of that era.
Towards the end of the album, it’s “I Am the Resurrection” that brings the foursome’s talented bouillabaisse to a boil. Reni kicks it all off, driving the beat, then Mani comes in laying a nice Bootsy Collins vibe before Brown starts singing with Squire laying down just enough nuance and color to suck you completely in. And then it all comes together for the exuberant chorus.
At about 4:00 the singing ends and an extended jam session for Reni, Mani, and Squire takes over — even without ecstasy, it’s good. That jam then segues into the last song “Fools Gold” (U.S. version).
It’s “Fools Gold” that has the Stone Roses doing their best “Manchester Sound” song. It seems as though the song was an added on after-thought. And maybe it was and even though it clocks in at almost ten minutes it’s not an awkward afterthought…musically it fits.
Critics in the U.K. and the U.S. didn’t initially get the Stone Roses…fans did. Accordingly, the band found success in the U.K. And then they found loads of legal troubles that can often accompany success. When they wanted to leave their original label (Silvertone), the got placed in a four-year musical purgatory while lawyers wrangled them out of their deal. The band eventually signed to Geffen Records (for an estimated 1 million U.S. dollars).
While the Stone Roses were legally exiled from recording it was their Manchester brethren Oasis stepped in to fill the void. Oasis leader Noel Gallagher said: “when I heard ‘Sally Cinnamon’ (1987 Stone Roses single) for the first time, I knew what my destiny was"…and thus baggy jeans and Gilligan hats went worldwide for a few years.
The Stone Roses legacy consists of two full-length albums, their debut, and the followup Second Coming, some singles, 12" releases, and a greatest hits package or two. But it began here, in 1989, with this album.
Critics eventually warmed to the band and this debut album has consistently ranked in the upper echelon’s of many “Best of” lists and even won a Mojo Classic Album award in 2010. In 2013, Oklahoma natives and critics darlings The Flaming Lips (and friends) paid homage to the album with an entire re-working of it called The Time Has Come to Shoot You Down… What a Sound.
The sound of the Stone Roses debut album, both the jangle and the psychedelia, may not be trendy now…but it will be again. If we know one thing it’s that music is cyclical. And when that happens, just as the Stone Roses borrowed from the Byrds and R.E.M., those bands will have the Stone Roses and this album to thank.
The Stone Roses debut album has certain elements of that era and the “Manchester Sound” but it sounds as good today as it did then.
Good music transcends time.
The Stone Roses would come to serve as an almost call and response on the mix-tapes my ex-girlfriend with the impeccable musical taste and I made for one another during the duration of our relationship. In fact, the relationship lasted about as long as the band’s recording career.
The Stone Roses lay dormant from 1997–2011 and then reunion rumblings began. After a documentary about the band re-uniting, The Stone Roses: Made of Stone, a couple of singles — “All for One” and “Beautiful Thing” — and some periodic reunion dates the band eventually called it quits in 2017.
In an interview with the Guardian in September of 2019, John Squire announced that the Stone Roses had officially disbanded.
Fittingly, at their final live show in 2017, Ian Brown said to the crowd: “Don’t be sad it’s ending, be happy it happened at all.”
That’s not just true for the Stone Roses…it’s true for love.