THE STONE ROSES’ SECOND COMING
1989’s The Stone Roses was the eradefining classic that promised a new dawn for British music. Then the group escaped their label, sacked their madcap manager, signed a new £4 million deal and released its notorious follow-up… five years later. Having battled impossible expectations, the loss of drummer Reni and a terrible lack of communication, a slow and public demise awaited.
“We might not have all travelled on the same bus,” they argue, “but we were musically red hot.”
Ian Brown: We figured that, because we’d come from nowhere and made such a big impact in a short time, that was going to carry us through. We never thought that it was all going to slip away and go pear-shaped, at all.
John Leckie: The first session for the album was actually when we recorded [1990 single] One Love in 1990, at Rockfield. There was a feeling of total possibility when we went in. They wanted to have a big successful record, but there was always so much else going on [the group were prevented from recording until they broke from their deal with the Silvertone label and signed with Geffen in May 1991; they also dismissed manager Gareth Evans in February 1992]. They needed a manager, a focal point to keep them in order, and a producer, and an A&R man. If he’s not there, bands go off on fucking tangents.
IB: All of a sudden, you’re a pop star and everyone loves you, and you start giving respect to each other and stop being so hard on each other, and we haven’t got a manager. Looking back now, I can think, “Well that was a big fuck up on our part,” but at the time we had just got rid of one manager and we were in no rush to get anyone else in.
John Squire: I did become a father, a long-term relationship broke down… those were things that went into the music [Squire wrote nearly all the songs on Second Coming]. And maybe that was something that Ian had a problem with: some of the realism, I suppose, from my life, not his… I suppose it’s a lot to ask somebody to act out your roles, within the context of a pop group.
JL: It should, of course, have come down to the songs, and the songs never came. They might do a jazzy space jam with Reni, they were forever exploring, but not suddenly finding new nuggets. People say Ten Storey Love Song is great, and Breaking Into Heaven could have been a great song, but it was broken up and fractured. We spent ages doing Begging You and I thought, “This has nothing to do with the band.” With Reni you’ve got the greatest drummer who ever lived, and it was just an experiment with looping, really.
Nigel Kerr: I was in touch with [tour manager] Steve Adge, and I used to have a phone call every month or so to find out how things were going down in the studio. Generally speaking, there was nothing, and it just sort of ground on for years, in different studios [the Roses recorded at Rockfield in Monmouth, used the Rolling Stones’ Mobile in Ewloe, Wales, among others].
JL: I was spending all this money, £2,000 a day. I’d tell the band, and they’d just laugh and look at me, vacantly. When I called Gary Gersh at Geffen to give him an update, he’d be, “John, that’s great,” and I’d say, “Yeah, but nothing’s getting done.” I was the first person to desert the ship [at Rockfield, in July 1993]. I’d done all I could. They got Paul Schroeder down and, after he left, Simon Dawson.
IB: What the fuck were we doing spending 15 months [in Rockfield]? When we first met John Leckie, he said, “Never spend more than two weeks in a residential, because you’ll go insane.” We spent 15 months in one. Crackers. We spent £250,000 on recording an LP.
“WHAT THE FUCK WERE WE DOING SPENDING 15 MONTHS IN THE STUDIO?” Ian Brown
JS: I always think of the Rockfield session as the place where the rot sets in. That was when it became an uphill struggle. Prior to that it was slapdash, and fits and starts, but in some respects that’s the way it had always been. It was only when we dug in and decided that we weren’t leaving until we’d finished…
Terri Hall: I got the call: “We’re ready.” The radio premiere of Love Spreads [released on November 21, 1994] was quite a big event. There was still that energy and enthusiasm, but I was talking to individuals, it wasn’t me talking to ‘The Stone Roses’. I didn’t think they’d manage whatever was coming in terms of promotion, so in a moment of madness I said, “Let’s just do the Big Issue,” which got me into trouble with magazines and journalists. They were attacked by the press, yes.
It was a great album but after five years [Second Coming was released on December 5, 1994] a record is going to be an anti-climax, whatever it is.
JL: When the album came out, I thought it was all bits and pieces, and I still do. They could have made three albums in the time it took and toured the world. Or given all the money to charity and recorded it on a fucking cassette.
TH: Then Reni left on the eve of the tour [in March ’95]. It was, “Shit! We’re only just starting, and already one of the wheels has fallen off.”
NK: There was maybe five minutes when there was the possibility that the tour wasn’t going to take place. It was pretty last minute that Robbie [Maddix, drums] was called in. He did a sterling job and without him that tour wouldn’t have happened. They said to me these big American managers were looking to move in, the guys that managed Guns N’Roses, and they didn’t want any of that, so they asked me to go on the road with them. I was the ‘Agent/Responsible Adult On The Road’. The opening show was in Oslo [April 19, ’95]. Did the band smash guitars? I don’t remember that.
IB: The world tour was great, you know – we hadn’t played in five years and now we were playing all over the world, which is what we’d always wanted to do. You watch of some of them ’95 shows – we were fucking right on it. We might not have all travelled on the same bus, but we were musically red hot on them stages.
TH: They were booked to headline Glastonbury [on June 24, ’95], but I wasn’t getting any response from them, so I flew out to San Francisco on my own money. It was all fine, and in the hotel, I saw this bike in John’s room. He said, “I’m going out on my bike, tomorrow, do you want to come?” I said, “Not in these hills.” The next evening, the tour manager calls and says John’s in hospital [Squire broke his collarbone in a mountain bike accident]. The NME said they pulled Glastonbury because they bottled it,
which was not the case. I said, “I want an X-ray to send out as a press release,” which was a very beautiful Stone Roses moment.
NK: There were some great shows when they got to the UK [in November 1995]. At Manchester Apollo, a very young Robbie Williams, looking worse for wear, was backstage. So were Oasis, saying, “We are the two biggest bands!” I’m pretty sure I knew that this was going to be it. They were doing it because they kind of had to. I think it was just naturally falling apart, then. They were older and their priorities were different. I’ve seen it many times, it wasn’t unique to them.
TH: The band would leave a city in the tour bus and John would get in my car. I remember him saying,“This isn’t sincere, I’m not going to do this any more.” And you’d go, “Don’t be ridiculous, think about your fans.” There was no row, no fireworks, just this terrible, tragic drifting.
When they did finally break [Squire’s last show was at Wembley Arena on December 29], I remember saying to Ian, “You and he weren’t talking, why are you so surprised?” And he said, “Well that’s just John. He’s a bit of a moaner, he keeps himself to himself.” I remember thinking, “What the fuck?” It’s like the wife leaving and going, “I hate you,” and you go, “I hadn’t even noticed, you’ve just been there all the time.” When they put their statements out, it was like being a divorce counsellor. John’s said something very loving about the band. Ian’s was angrier. I put John’s out on April 1.
JS: I was relieved to get out of that situation when the tour finished. And when I started thinking about music again – writing, playing, thinking about who I was and where I was up to, being a member of The Stone Roses didn’t fit in with that… at the meeting at the lawyers [in March ’95], the drummer mentioned Van Halen’s success without some guy who left.
IB: We’d done all this grafting and 12 years of work and this kid’s left the group – hang on, why should he pull the rug out from under my feet?
I want to keep making music. We’re going to carry on the whole spirit of the thing as the new Stone Roses.
Aziz Ibrahim: I was helping out with demos, originally, because they couldn’t get hold of John. I admired the buzz and the success, but I only got to know the Roses’ music when they said, “Will you learn the set?” I learned it in a week, by ear. They gave me a DAT of a live show and the albums, and as I did that, the respect started to build. I didn’t have any training for what I experienced when I joined. If Ian and Mani say they want to work with me, it’s my choice to say yes. The rest is politics, history and legacy, which is to be respected.
NK: After John left, they did four dates in 1996. I suppose they wanted to because it was going to be a reasonable pay day, but there was no satisfaction. I think most of the time I was wishing it was gonna end quickly, do you know what I mean?
TH: At the Reading Festival [August 25, 1996], the press conference was just embarrassing, awful. I thought it was an attack on John Squire. Aziz said to Steve Lamacq, “Man, I was born to be in this band.” It was a proper Spinal Tap moment when he said, “It took me five minutes to learn the songs.”
AI: I was an idiot at that time as well. I reacted the wrong way, like I’m supposed to be as boisterous as everybody else, and be the Manc.
TH: Then, later, someone said to me, “You’re gonna have to go to the dressing room, because there’s a problem with the dancer.” The dancer?
I guess it was a female Cressa, I dunno. And that lovely kid Nigel [Ipinson, keyboards] was going, “Put your hands in the air!” No! This is The Stone
Roses… I went back to the guest area and there were journalists looking at me. “Yeah, I know.”
AI: My memories of the gig are being very busy. I’ve got through this without making any mistakes and without looking stressed. I did really enjoy that experience, but there are always truths behind criticisms, and I think we all could have done better. I can empathise with people. They were never gonna get what they wanted, which was John Squire and Reni on that stage.
IB: My only experience and memory of the show was 60,000 people with their arms in the air. I didn’t see anyone walking away in floods of tears. Then, I heard the cassette of that gig, and I was in a different key to the rest of the group, and then the next week when I heard the reviews, I had to accept that we weren’t going to be allowed to carry on. People loved me and people thought I was a legend, but that was all I had. I didn’t have anything to show for being the singer of The Stone Roses [he announced the end of the band in October 1996].
AI: In all honesty I didn’t want it to go on. To join an iconic band, to try and replace someone who’s such an integral part, you just can’t. You can be yourself – I’m a Pakistani Muslim south Asian male from a council estate in Longsight, Manchester, and my perspective is, “Will this white world give me a chance to show what I can do?” And I got completely annihilated by the press. But I think I still would have chosen the same thing, because it taught me so much.
John Squire was speaking in 2004: thanks to John Harris for the quotes. Ian Brown interview from 2006. Hear Aziz Ibrahim’s new single The Key Of 3 at aziz.co.uk