The Stone Roses

South Manchester

Ian Brown and John Squire met as children in Timperley, south Manchester. They went to the same school, Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, and shared the same obsessions: music, clothes, and the feeling that something was about to happen. Brown had the swagger. Squire had the talent. Between them, they had everything a band needed except the ability to agree on anything for very long.

The band went through several early incarnations and lineups before settling into the classic four-piece. Gary "Mani" Mounfield joined on bass in 1987, recruited from a Moston band called the Waterfront. Alan "Reni" Wren, a drummer of extraordinary ability from Gorton, completed the lineup. Reni was the kind of musician who made everything look effortless. His drumming was fluid, funky, and technically brilliant, drawing on Northern Soul, funk, and Led Zeppelin in equal measure.

They rehearsed at the International, a venue on Anson Road in Longsight. They played early gigs at the Hacienda, the Boardwalk, and anywhere else that would have them. They wore flares when everyone else wore drainpipes. They painted Jackson Pollock splatter patterns on their clothes and their equipment. They looked and sounded like nobody else in Manchester.

The Album

The Stone Roses' self-titled debut album was released on Silvertone Records in May 1989. It is, by any reasonable measure, one of the greatest British albums ever made.

Produced by John Leckie at Rockfield Studios in Wales and Battery Studios in London, the album fused jangly 1960s guitar pop with acid house grooves, Hendrix-influenced psychedelia, and a rhythmic swagger that owed as much to the Hacienda dancefloor as it did to the Cavern Club. Squire's guitar playing was dazzling: chiming arpeggios, wah-wah solos, layers of overdubs that sounded spontaneous but were meticulously constructed.

"I Wanna Be Adored." "She Bangs the Drums." "Waterfall." "Made of Stone." "I Am the Resurrection." The songs were perfect, and they knew it. Brown's vocals were understated, almost casual, as if being in the best band in the world was nothing to get excited about. The album reached number 32 on its initial release but never stopped selling. It has since been certified platinum multiple times and is regularly voted the greatest debut album in British music history.

The cover art, painted by John Squire, referenced the French tricolour and the lemon imagery that would become the band's visual trademark. Squire's paintings adorned every sleeve, every poster, every backdrop. He was as serious about the art as he was about the guitar.

Spike Island

On 27 May 1990, The Stone Roses played to 27,000 people at Spike Island, a flat expanse of land next to a chemical works in Widnes, Cheshire. It was supposed to be their crowning moment. In many ways, it was, just not in the way anyone expected.

The sound was dreadful. The PA couldn't cope with the open-air site. People at the back heard almost nothing. The logistics were chaotic. The weather was grey. By any objective standard, it was a badly organised gig with poor sound quality in an unglamorous location next to an ICI plant.

None of that mattered. Spike Island became a legend precisely because of what it represented, not what it sounded like. It was the moment when Madchester peaked, when the collision of indie guitar music and acid house culture reached its absolute zenith. Twenty-seven thousand people in baggy jeans and bucket hats, off their heads, dancing in a field in Widnes. It was ridiculous. It was magnificent. It was the most Manchester thing that had ever happened outside Manchester.

Brown stood on stage in a paint-splattered Pollock shirt, radiating the quiet confidence of a man who believed he was leading a revolution. For one afternoon in the summer of 1990, he was probably right.

The Wilderness

What happened next is one of the great tragedies of British music. The Stone Roses should have conquered the world. Instead, they spent five years fighting a legal battle with Silvertone Records and doing almost nothing.

The dispute centred on their contract. The band wanted to leave Silvertone for a major label. Silvertone fought to keep them. The case went to court in 1991, and while the band were eventually released from the contract, the injunction prevented them from recording or releasing new music for a critical period. By the time they signed with Geffen Records, the momentum had gone. The world had moved on. Grunge had arrived. Britpop was coming. The window that had been wide open in 1990 was closing fast.

The Second Coming was finally released in December 1994. It had taken the band over four years to record. The sessions at Rockfield Studios in Wales were notoriously slow and difficult. Squire, a perfectionist, laboured over guitar parts endlessly. The album was heavier, bluesier, and more technically ambitious than the debut. "Love Spreads," the lead single, reached number two in the UK charts. "Ten Storey Love Song" was as good as anything on the first album.

But it wasn't the debut. Nothing could have been. The wait had been too long, the expectation too enormous, and the world had changed around them. The reviews were mixed. The sales were respectable but not spectacular. The magic felt forced where it had once been effortless.

The End, and the Return

Reni left the band in March 1995, reportedly frustrated by the direction of the music and the dynamics within the group. Squire followed in April 1996, saying he had lost his enthusiasm. Without them, The Stone Roses were finished. Brown and Mani played one final, dispiriting gig at Reading Festival in August 1996 with substitute musicians before calling it a day. Brown later admitted it was a mistake to carry on without the other two.

Brown went solo and carved out a successful career in his own right. Squire formed The Seahorses, who released one album, Do It Yourself, in 1997 before splitting. Mani joined Primal Scream and spent over a decade as their bassist. Reni largely retreated from public life.

In October 2011, the original four-piece announced a reunion. They played three homecoming shows at Heaton Park in Manchester in June 2012, with 220,000 tickets selling out in 68 minutes. They headlined festivals and toured arenas. A new single, "All for One," arrived in 2016. A second, "Beautiful Thing," followed. Neither captured the lightning of the debut, but nobody really expected them to. The reunion was about the joy of hearing those songs live again, played by the four people who made them.

Their final gig was at Hampden Park in Glasgow on 24 June 2017. No announcement, no farewell statement. They just stopped, the way they'd always done everything: on their own terms.

The Legacy

The Stone Roses made one perfect album and spent the rest of their career trying to live up to it. That debut record changed the trajectory of British guitar music. It proved that indie bands could absorb dance culture without losing their identity. It proved that a band from Manchester could be as ambitious as anyone from London or New York or Los Angeles. It proved that arrogance, when backed up by the songs, wasn't arrogance at all. It was just confidence.

Without The Stone Roses, there is no Oasis. Noel Gallagher was in the audience at the International and at early Roses gigs around south Manchester. He has said repeatedly that The Stone Roses were the reason he believed a band from Manchester could conquer the world. The Verve, The Charlatans, and the entire first wave of Britpop owe a direct debt to what Brown, Squire, Mani, and Reni did between 1989 and 1990.

The places still echo. The International on Anson Road. The Hacienda on Whitworth Street West. Spike Island, still just a flat piece of land by the Mersey in Widnes. Heaton Park, where 220,000 people came to welcome them home. These are the coordinates of a band that changed everything, even if they only had a couple of years to do it in.

Four lads from south Manchester who believed they were the best band in the world. For one blazing, perfect year, they were right.