Spike Island was only fourteen miles from Evans’s Cheshire farmhouse and less than seven from Warrington, the town where Ian Brown was born. ‘Spikey’, as it is known locally, is an almond-shaped, man-made island the size of ten football pitches, situated on the north bank of the Mersey Estuary and separated from the industrial town of Widnes by the Sankey Canal. In the late nineteenth century Spike Island had been the birthplace of the British chemical industry and a thriving industrial hub. By the mid-twentieth century the site had degenerated into an eyesore: a toxic wasteland of rusting factories, rail lines, abandoned canal and industrial dockage. Between 1975 and 1982 the island had been reclaimed as green space, but in 1989, despite Halton Borough Council’s best efforts, the landscape still bore the dark smears of heavy industry. Vast, foreboding modern factories dotted the horizon, including the mammoth Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) factory where caustic soda and chlorine were manufactured among huddles of fat chimneys belching out acrid smoke.
For Ian Brown, the location was ideal. ‘We wanted to do a gig on an industrial estate or an island. Because [Spike Island] was cut off and had been used for the Widnes Carnival before, it was spot on. Plus we wanted to play in the North-West, and because it was in the middle of Manchester and Liverpool it was perfect.’ Crucially for the Roses, it continued their policy of eschewing the traditional rock ’n’ roll circuit.
What Evans and Jones had in mind for Spike Island, however, far exceeded the parameters of the local annual festival held there. They were intent on attracting a crowd of 32,500, a figure that roughly equated to half the population of Widnes. The magnitude of what they were proposing would require thorough planning and large-scale construction, including the building of bridges, as the island presently only had one access point. They were also uncertain how the Licensing Authority would react to the idea of Halton Borough Council hosting what would in effect be the country’s largest rave to date. The widespread drug use at raves was front-page news, and hastily passed new laws had encouraged increasingly brutal crackdowns on the events, with unedifying TV footage of police, often in full riot gear, clashing with ravers.
The Roses were the British band most closely identified with this insurrection. Since their Blackpool show in August they had been on an unstoppable upward curve. The Alexandra Palace gig in November had coincided with the release of their hit single ‘Fools Gold’. After five years of effort, the Roses had arrived at a sound and look that had seen them elected as figureheads of a musical phenomenon dubbed ‘Madchester’. It was a scene that posited Manchester as the UK’s rave capital and swathed the Roses in an incendiary aura. Brown had fanned these flames with talk of revolution and his desire to see dead, by his own hands if necessary, the Queen, her mother and Prince Charles.
All of this and more had made the Roses the hottest, most notorious band in the world. Expectations for the group – who had declared an interest in playing a gig on the moon – could not have been greater. Yet, as Evans and Jones began to work their considerable charms on the licensing magistrates to allow for the Roses’ crowning moment, the band began their spectacular unravelling, which ironically would only further entrench their anti-establishment reputation.
On 30 January 1990 they vandalized the offices of FM Revolver, the label with whom they had recorded their 1987 single ‘Sally Cinnamon’. They were arrested the following day and charged with criminal damage, cutting short attempts to record new material. The highly publicized case would drag on until October, with jail time a definite threat. Behind the scenes, as yet unreported, the Roses were also becoming increasingly hostile towards their current record label, Jive/Zomba. Contract renegotiations had begun but the end game was far from certain. Both these situations, coupled with their new-found fame post-‘Fools Gold’, aggravated an underlying malaise at the heart of the band. They had no new songs.
The announcement of the Spike Island event, advertised as ‘Sunset Sunday’, served as a welcome distraction from the band’s doubts over their creativity, livelihood and liberty. A licence had been granted to allow the show to go ahead on Sunday, 27 May 1990, the day before a bank holiday Monday: ‘It was the coaches that did it,’ said Jones. The licensing magistrates’ main concern hadn’t been ravers, drugs or the counterculture sentiment the band oozed, it had simply been how to get all those people in and out of Widnes. ‘We said, Your honour, we’re going to bus them in,’ Jones recalled. Matthew Cummins, Evans’s business partner and the often overlooked man in the Roses’ management set-up, had come up with the idea to sublet the event to a sole coach contractor. In April, following a single advert in the NME listing the towns from where coach trips were available, the event sold out.
With the eyes of 32,500 fans and the world’s media soon to be upon them, a series of warm-up dates for Spike Island were seen as essential for the Roses. The band had not played live since Alexandra Palace six months ago. It showed. On 15 May Brown bewildered his band mates at a small venue in Copenhagen by taunting the audience repeatedly with the refrain, ‘What’re yer doing?’ The following night in Lund, Sweden, the Roses arrived on stage an hour late to play to an audience of 700. Brown, again, performed churlishly – like a ‘bored, lazy, snotty twat’, he later said. The next night in Stockholm, a city dear to the Roses as the base for a band-defining 1985 tour, the 3,000-strong audience saw the band recapture some of their elan and sure-footed magnificence. Post-gig, the tour bus vibrated to the sounds of The Misunderstood, the Stones, The Byrds and The Beatles.
Amid the revelry, there was no escaping the sense the Roses were as frayed at the hems as their famously voluminous jeans. Commenting on the criminal damage case, one of the Roses’ road crew was quoted in Q as saying, ‘It might not be a bad idea to send them down, at least they might go and write some new songs.’ The recording and mixing of a new single, ‘One Love’, intended to coincide with Spike Island, had already dragged on for months and would not be released until July. After a final warm-up show in Oslo on 19 May, the Roses returned to Manchester for the gig on which all their cards were now stacked.
Over the next six days, in glorious sunshine, Roger Barrett’s Star Hire team constructed one of the biggest stages ever built, put up the security fencing, the hospitality areas, and with the aid of the Royal Engineers built the bridges over the Sankey. No expense was spared on the extravagant stage lighting. The involvement of experienced industry events specialists Star Hire had allayed any lingering fears the local council had. On Evans’s insistence the facilities expanded to include a VIP area and a helicopter pad, as he intended to chopper in the band. ‘Gareth was very flamboyant with the whole thing,’ recalled Jones.
The band found themselves with little control over proceedings. Tensions had already surfaced over the pricing of the Spike Island tickets. The Roses had argued with Evans to lower the £14 price, and some tickets had been reduced to £13, but the band had no way of enforcing this. The ticket sales had generated approximately £400,000, the same amount the event was costing to put on, according to Brown, who told the press, ‘We’re getting nish [nothing].’
There was, however, money to be made – and a lot of it – on merchandising. That was controlled by Evans and Cummins, and it was no secret the pair were wildly unaccountable over this aspect of the Roses’ career. The company that produced the Roses T-shirts, New Line Promotions, were under the impression that for every 1,000 T-shirts they made officially, another 500 would be manufactured for unofficial purposes. Until now the band had shrugged off concerns over this. In the run-up to Spike Island, however, the Roses had suggested using an alternative outfit to control the merchandising for the event. Evans had gone against their wishes, and New Line Promotions were now producing thousands upon thousands of the popular Roses T-shirts for Spike Island.
Evans had also negotiated a £100,000 deal with Central Music to film Spike Island. The company planned to screen the show on British Sky Broadcasting and Central TV, and had set up an eight-camera shoot and
an outside broadcast vehicle on site. The band were unhappy with this arrangement and, artistically, they were concerned that they may not deliver a great performance. The Roses felt if the show sounded as bad as Alexandra Palace and was broadcast in America, it would dampen the demand growing for them there. Typically, they struggled to make a firm decision on the matter, and left Evans and Central Music hanging in the wind until the day when they insisted they would rather cancel than be filmed.
There was last-minute confusion over the support acts and running order for the event as communications between the band and Evans faltered. The Roses had made it plain they didn’t want it to be a Madchester festival. ‘The Happy Mondays, that sort of stuff, was definitely out,’ Jones recalled. The DJs that had supported the band at Blackpool and Alexandra Palace – Balearic innovator Paul Oakenfold, Haçienda DJ Dave Haslam and Manchester psychedelic favourite Dave Booth – were confirmed. Reni wanted a drum-based support act to feature too, and so the drum orchestra of the ‘Lion King of Zimbabwe’, Thomas Mapfumo – a Bob Marley figure in his home country and an outspoken critic of Robert Mugabe’s government – was booked. Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound System, featuring former Public Image bassist Jah Wobble and singer Gary Clail, were also set to play.
Evans had been scratching around as late as two weeks before for further entertainment. Barrie K. Sharpe, whose ‘The Masterplan’ was the hot club record of the moment, turned him down. Pioneering Chicago house DJ Frankie Knuckles was also suggested; he was revered by Manchester tastemakers, and would give the event club credentials. Evans, unfortunately, mistakenly called a different American DJ named Frankie. He booked Frankie Bones, who had played at the massive 1989 Energy event. Bones may have been the ‘Godfather of American rave culture’ but he lacked the cachet and finesse of Knuckles.
The day before, close to a hundred representatives of the world’s press gathered for a press conference at the Piccadilly Hotel in Manchester. The event was stage-managed by the Roses’ trusted PR man Philip Hall, who had persuaded them that this was the only way to deal with the massive media interest Spike Island had generated. Evans wanted the Roses to use the conference as a platform to attack the ‘anything goes as long as it makes money’ chemical industry and to make a stand against pollution. He wanted to speak at the conference himself, but John Squire firmly told Evans it was a no.
Muzzling Evans was easier said than done. He saw the opportunity to make money out of the press conference and asked the BBC and ITV national news crews to pay to attend. Even when it was pointed out to him this was an absurd demand, he would not back down and refused them free access. As a result the event was denied slots on the national news. Those that did find themselves inside the buzzing hotel conference room would never forget it. The press pack was split between those who adored the band and those who were deeply cynical about them. Parisian and Japanese journalists were in the former camp and asked reverential questions. They were interrupted by local stand-up comedian Caroline Aherne. The band knew her but pretended they didn’t, playing along with her assertion that she was a journalist. ‘I’d like to ask what I think is a really important question as well. What’s your favourite colour?’ There was tumbleweed silence among the media as the Roses stifled their laughter.
The Roses answered a few more questions politely but dismissed others out of hand, with Brown challenging the press to come up with better lines of enquiry. Already uncomfortable at being there, the band found being worshipped like this embarrassing and their answers grew more flippant and defensive. It appeared to many now that the band was on some sort of colossal wind-up. Frank Owen, reporting for American magazine Details, took the bait: ‘You’re behaving like pigs to these people. It’s the whole Manchester sarcasm shit. These people come all this way and you won’t answer the questions properly.’
‘I think you’ve got the right stick but the wrong end,’ said Brown. A member of the band’s crew interjected, ‘How do you think the band feel sat up there in complete silence with all you bastards staring at them, asking them fuck all? You come all this way, drink all the free beer and haven’t asked shit. You’re a bunch of wankers in whatever language you speak.’ A journalist from the NME passed a spliff onto the small raised stage, and some bloke who was already out of his head hijacked a microphone to protest at the arrest of a pal the night before. Brown encouraged him to speak: ‘That’s right, you tell them.’ Journalists from the Daily Mail and Rolling Stone were aghast as the bloke went on with his rant. From there, the conference descended into the type of confrontational and chaotic farce that could only serve to enhance the Roses’ reputation. Some local chancer took the opportunity to ask Brown about the tickets he’d promised ‘our kid’. Reni told him not worry, saying, ‘We’ll sort you out and your mum.’ It was hardly the sort of announcement the media were expecting. Evans rubbed his hands in glee; Hall smiled beatifically; the band trudged off.
The same day the Roses loaded their equipment from their rehearsal space at the International II club, a venue owned by Evans and Cummins, and jumped in the van to go to the soundcheck. Brown strolled around the site, happily chatting to gangs of local kids hanging about. When the police approached to warn the kids they shouldn’t be there, Brown grew agitated and had to be dragged away by a crew member. The organization of the event seemed to be slipping away from the band, and this, together with the disappointing press conference and the confusion over merchandising and support acts, added to a sense of foreboding that afternoon that Spike Island might become more Altamont than Woodstock. Hundreds of locals had already signed a petition in an attempt to have the gig cancelled, barges had been driven down the canal to try to knock down access bridges, and the drinks licence had only just been reinstated after having been revoked at short notice.
However, the band’s mood eventually lightened. The stage was vast and impressive, raised fifteen feet from the ground. The expensive lighting system hung like a giant mechanical spider above Reni’s drum kit, and huge white backdrops on which images of Squire’s artwork could be projected framed the band as they soundchecked. Here they were masters of their own destiny. As the band’s roadie Stephen ‘Cressa’ Cresser grooved behind Squire, the four musicians slowly cooked up a fluid and crystalline sound that seemed to make a mockery of the problems of the past few months, outlining what they were capable of and would now surely deliver.
There was a party that evening in Didsbury, a hip southern suburb of Manchester where the band, bar Mani, lived with their girlfriends in small flats or terraced houses. The party was full of local characters and went on into the small hours. The Roses had always liked to take chances, to see what they could get away with. But they were truly out on a limb with Spike Island. Half of the fun for the band had been in attracting the huge crowd. Now they would have to face it down. They had all dreamed of this moment, but the reality was daunting. Nothing was said, but they were nervous. Despite their outward nonchalance and reassurances from supporters that all they had to do was turn up, the biggest day of their lives would test to the limit the Roses’ famous steely resolve.
That morning, the national dailies salvaged what they could from the press conference. The Daily Star ran with the headline ‘Acid Band Insult PM’, quoting Brown as saying, ‘Margaret Thatcher should have gone up in the Brighton Bomb,’ Mani busied himself handing out free tickets to a stream of visitors to his north Manchester home. ‘Then suddenly I realized I didn’t have any weed and everyone I phoned up was already at Spike Island.’
On site Phil Jones was battling the first of a succession of alarming problems that day. The security firm booked for the event, Showsec, arrived late and had only sent half the number of men required. It was immediately clear they had misunderstood their brief. They’d been told not to let people with food in, to prevent entrepreneurial activity. They took this to mean all food and began confiscating individual sandwiches and soft drinks at the gates. ‘It was appalling,’ said Jones.
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ncidences such as this severely undermined John Squire’s enjoyment of the day, a day he would later claim he hated. ‘We had lots of rows with management before we went on and we were really angry at the way the show had been managed. It was supposed to be our gig, but the bouncers were taking food and drink off fans as they walked inside, which we didn’t want. They were pushing the ticket prices up and we found out they’d employed kids to clean up dirty needles and condoms after the show. It was horrible.’
The crowd was estimated at 40,000. On top of the 32,500 tickets sold, the guest list was close to 5,000, with at least 2,500 more managing to crawl under the site fencing. Evans, Cummins and Jones had not provided for such a huge crowd, and Jones has admitted to a certain naivety in their plans. The on-site food vans and beer tents were quickly identified as inadequate. Jones’s biggest concern, however, was the massive tide rolling down the River Mersey, a torrent that swept up huge waves and threatened to flood the island. ‘It was a neap spring tide. It was the full moon at the end of May, but none of us had spotted it. You could see this tide coming in and taking land off the island. It was half a mile wide. It was like a disaster movie.’ The deputy chief constable of Cheshire Warrington division was stood beside Jones on the stage, and warned him that if the Mersey rose another yard they would have to evacuate the whole area.
The Stone Roses: War and Peace Page 2
