The Stone Roses: War and Peace

by Spence, Simon

  There had never been this number of people on Spike Island before. The sun was blazing, the chemicals in the air adding an almost psychedelic Day-glo effect, and although it was only two o’clock in the afternoon, the crowd was already growing unruly. There appeared to be no police presence on the site, which explains why there were only four arrests all day. ‘The cops said to me, off the record, We’re keeping a very, very low profile but we’re here if you need us,’ Jones recalled. ‘All police leave was cancelled, they were out on the streets in Widnes but they didn’t come on site at all.’ The smell of hashish and marijuana and the visible effects of Ecstasy were everywhere. There had been no announcement of the running order for the day or even what time the Roses would play. The main entertainment came from watching those without tickets storm the bridges and fencing.

  Then, at the sound of a helicopter approaching, all eyes turned to the skies. The helicopter touched down backstage, bringing in journalists from the NME and Granada TV. A fraught Jones made it clear to Evans the helicopter could not be used again. The risk of a crowd surge was too great. ‘Nothing was really happening to entertain the crowd,’ said Jones. ‘The tide was still rising and I was worried that if the kids thought it was the band in the helicopter they would stampede.’ The band would have to arrive by car. By mid-afternoon the high tide had passed and the only danger now was the growing unrest and tension in the crowd as they waited and waited for the band. The sun was still high in the sky and there was little shelter. It was hot and dusty. People were parched and hungry. In total twenty-seven people were hospitalized but fortunately there were no fatalities.

  What was immediately apparent to the Roses as they arrived on site was that the band’s T-shirts were everywhere. Close to 30,000 were sold that day, although the band did not get a penny. There was also a huge number of people, as much as 30 per cent of the crowd, wearing what had become known as the ‘Reni hat’, after the drummer’s trademark bucket hat. The Roses were unaware that these were being merchandised too. The band ensconced themselves in the packed but sheltered backstage area, mingling with Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream, Shaun Ryder of Happy Mondays, Ian McCulloch of Echo & the Bunnymen and trip-hoppers Smith & Mighty, while carefully avoiding the mass media scrum.

  Reni, the band member whose dislike and distrust of Evans was most acute, was keen to collar his manager to ask about the sale of the hats. New Order’s Peter Hook was stood talking with Evans and Cummins when Reni confronted them. ‘Reni was fuming,’ said Hook. ‘He was shouting about the merchandising stalls selling the hats, What the fuck’s going on? Get out there and stop them. Gareth went, Don’t worry, I will get out there immediately, I’ll get the bastards. When Reni stormed off, Gareth turned round and said, You better take those fucking hats off the stall. It was Gareth selling the hats!’

  Out front, as late afternoon turned into early evening the atmosphere was severely flagging. Mapfumo and Sherwood had been and gone virtually unnoticed. The DJs were playing on a tall, scaffolding-clad construction set a third of the way back from the stage on the packed site, where massive speakers and the sound and light desks were also located. Paul Oakenfold’s set was cut from two hours to forty minutes to make way for Frankie Bones. ‘I didn’t say anything because I’d already been paid,’ said Oakenfold. ‘The Roses made it hard on their fans. You had kids turning up at 2 p.m. expecting the band to be on, and they had to wait until 9 p.m. And they’re basically indie kids, so they don’t want Frankie Bones playing house.’

  Bones’s set made what was starting to feel like a long day even longer. ‘It didn’t go down well,’ Dave Haslam said. DJs Haslam, Booth and The Spinmasters revived the atmosphere as the sun began to set. As the Happy Mondays’ ‘Step On’ blared out, a huge cheer went up from the crowd, and people raised themselves to dance. It was a rare sight to see seasoned clubbers rubbing their Michiko Koshino-clad shoulders with fifteen-year-old schoolboys in band T-shirts.

  Granada TV producer Steve Lock had flown back to Barton Aerodrome in the helicopter, picked up his car and driven back out to Spike Island for around 8 p.m. As he hurried through the entrance, he heard someone shout his name. It was Evans. He had sent Lock, who was on his own, two tickets and wanted to know if he had the spare ticket with him. ‘I’ve got a guy over here wants to buy one,’ he told Lock. ‘So he’s outside the Stone Roses’ biggest ever gig, just before they come on, touting tickets,’ Lock recalled.

  Despite the efforts of the Manchester DJs there remained an atmosphere of near exhaustion and ill temper among the huge crowd. The band huddled in the Portakabin dressing room, trying to get rid of last-minute nerves. It was 9 p.m. Time. ‘I was 100 per cent relaxed,’ Brown said when I asked about rumours he’d vomited just before taking the stage. ‘If all these people had come to see us, they wanted it. So why should I have been nervous?’

  And then they appeared on stage looking resplendent, nonchalant and ready to feed the 40,000; to turn every wrong to right.

  There is film footage of those opening magical, transformative moments; of Brown intoning, ‘The time, the time is now. Do it now, do it now.’ Film, however, could not capture the effect the band’s arrival had on the mood of the crowd; it was a jaw-dropping biblical reaction, of relief, amazement, worship and unadulterated joy. ‘It was like a massive pilgrimage to witness,’ said Roddy McKenna, the man who had been instrumental in signing the band to Jive/Zomba. ‘It wasn’t a gig – it was a statement.’ The resurrection of a day that for so long had threatened disaster began; the party was back on. The same camera that captured those opening moments also traced the Roses’ immaculate sixteen-song set that followed.

  ‘There’d been a kid there right from the beginning of the stage build who’d been putting his camera everywhere,’ said Jones. ‘I’d told him he couldn’t film anything on the day, but when the Central Music TV filming collapsed I went up to him and said, Right, you can film it all now.’ This footage has only recently been traced, although not yet released; when it is, it will render all further description meaningless. Brown has said that the Roses weren’t actually playing to the crowd, they were ‘just partying with them’: ‘We were just a very small part of a very big event, because it’s the people who make an event, it’s not the group. We get off on what they do and they get off on what we do.’

  On stage the band enjoyed a clear sound, and the buzz coming off the crowd spurred them on through their set: ‘I Wanna Be Adored’, ‘Elephant Stone’, ‘She Bangs the Drums’, ‘Shoot You Down’, ‘One Love’, ‘Sally Cinnamon’, ‘Standing Here’, ‘Fools Gold’, ‘Where Angels Play’, ‘Waterfall’, ‘Don’t Stop’, ‘Something’s Burning’, ‘Made of Stone’, ‘Elizabeth My Dear’ and ‘I Am the Resurrection’. The defining image was of Brown on stage holding a large inflatable world globe, which had bounced its way across the raised hands of the crowd towards the stage, fate providing the perfect symbol.

  The wind was now blowing wildly, and out past the hysterical front section of the crowd the band’s sound lost much of its potency. Some accused Evans of scrimping on the PA system, but the cause was more elemental. Noise limitations had been enforced, with sound-level meters deployed in eight spots on the site and in Widnes and Runcorn. The wind blew the band’s sound far and wide and the volume was louder in Widnes town centre than on site, exceeding the 97 decibels limit. It meant there could be no cranking up of the sound, and the more meandering parts of the Roses’ set suffered. There was also a curfew. Although Frankie Bones had promised ‘house music all night long’, it all had to be wrapped up by 11 p.m.

  There was no encore. Squire thought them corny, ‘proof rock music had become showbusiness’. Instead, as requested by Brown, Dave Haslam followed the band’s set by playing ‘Redemption Song’ by Bob Marley, and the evening climaxed with a fireworks display. Backstage the elated band was surprised to learn from their crew of the sound difficulties out front, as all they had felt was waves of love from the crowd. As the fans’ coaches p
ulled away, the Roses, their crew and scores of well-wishers headed back to Manchester club the International, also owned by Evans and Cummins, for an after-show party. ‘The only drink available was Carlsberg Special Brew,’ said NME photographer Kevin Cummins. ‘It was past its sell-by date and Gareth just wanted to get rid of it.’ Brown was huddled over a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon. Mani felt the band hadn’t played well. But there was a sense of relief it was all over.

  Reviews for the show, when they came, were mixed – in part because the band’s sound had been lost to the elements, but also because the cultural significance of the day was still largely unquantifiable. ‘It was the moment when everything that had seemed underground exploded into the mainstream,’ said Haslam. ‘Spike Island was a full stop, and there was a sense we were entering a new chapter which wasn’t going to be as good.’ Some journalists found the setting depressing. Bob Stanley of Melody Maker described Spike Island as a horrible field surrounded by huge electricity pylons, factories and chemical plants. ‘Your hair felt very odd and greasy, like it was totally coated with chemicals from the factories. The best thing about it was being able to say you were there.’

  I was, writing about the event for The Face. I was nineteen and no doubt being used by editor Sheryl Garratt to try to patch up relations between the band and the magazine following Nick Kent’s less than complimentary cover story on them earlier in the year. My article was another cover story for the band, under the headline ‘The Third Summer of Love’, although the cover shot was a debut for a teenage Kate Moss. I’d like to think it was my piece more than Moss’s cute, scrunched-up nose that led to the issue becoming one of the most iconic in The Face’s history. Sometimes you have to share the credit. The first Summer of Love – 1988, not 1967 – had happened in clubs. The second, in 1989, was about big raves in open fields. Spike Island was seen as an indication of where the phenomenon was heading for the third: festivals led by bands who fizzed with an energy unseen in rock since punk.

  Brown said at the time that the Roses’ future plans included London: ‘We were a bit disappointed with Alexandra Palace. We want to do a massive venue where no one has played before and where we can come on as late as possible. We want to get away with as much as the British licensing laws will let us.’ Rumours, emanating from the ever-opportunistic Evans, quickly spread that the band were planning a secret show for 100,000 outside Buckingham Palace. In truth the glory days were over: the monarchy was safe, a tour of America would soon be cancelled, and plans to record a new album in the summer abandoned. Nullifying court cases, creative collapse and management problems lay ahead.

  The last of the great rock ’n’ roll bands had already, stubbornly, vaingloriously and quite beautifully reached their peak at Spike Island. It was part of their everlasting mystique that no one could ever really figure them out, their sacrifices and their successes, just how they’d got here and where they were going. Even the band members themselves, over time, seemed to disagree.

  1.

  The Patrol

  It started with John Squire and Ian Brown forming their first band together, The Patrol, during their final year at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys in 1979 when they were both aged sixteen. Initially a three-piece with Squire on guitar, Brown on bass and fellow classmate Si Wolstencroft on drums, The Patrol rehearsed on Thursday nights in the back room of Wolstencroft’s parents’ house in Hale Ringway, a civil parish close to Manchester airport, situated between the notorious council estates of Wythenshawe and the leafy, well-to-do market town of Altrincham on the south-westerly outskirts of the city.

  Wolstencroft, who would go on to play drums in the original Stone Roses line-up, The Smiths and The Fall, had been in the same high-achieving school class as Squire and Brown since the age of eleven. He recalled that despite their rudimentary ability and equipment, including an amplifier Squire’s father had made, The Patrol made ‘a good noise’. He was closer to Squire than to Brown, having bonded over a shared love for The Clash’s 1977 eponymous debut. They had also shared Latin lessons and the distinction of being the first pupils in their year to be caned after being caught drawing graffiti on their school desks: ‘We got six with a bamboo cane off the deputy head.’

  Brown favoured the Sex Pistols and thought that their 1977 debut Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols ‘was going to change the world’. Although he wasn’t fronting The Patrol, who as yet did not have a singer, Brown should have been. He combined a keen interest in politics with a self-confessed ‘rebellious streak’ and an effervescent personality. He was a born showman, well known for standing in front of the class entertaining everyone with his impersonations of the school’s teachers. Brown was also, thanks to his study of karate, not to be messed with. ‘I saw him use it on this guy in the chemistry lab,’ said Wolstencroft. ‘It was pretty impressive. I remember thinking the guy deserved it. Ian gave him a good kung-fu kick to the throat.’

  Squire, although less confrontational, was no less defiant of authority. ‘I think he was the first kid in the school to play truant,’ said Brown. ‘And he did that by himself.’ He also had a recognized gift for art, which meant that while Brown and Wolstencroft got stuck into football during games lesson, Squire was encouraged and happy to stay indoors painting.

  There was a fourth member of The Patrol gang, Pete Garner, who, while not in this band, would play bass with The Stone Roses between 1983 and 1987. Although a year younger and at a different school from the other three, Garner had been close to them, particularly Squire and Brown, since the age of thirteen. He lived in Brooklands, Sale, a five-minute walk away from Squire and Brown, who lived four doors apart on Sylvan Avenue in Timperley, a pleasant village enclave of Altrincham.

  Garner shared the elder boys’ love of punk, and most days after school the gang of four could be found shooting the breeze at the local hot spot close to Squire and Brown’s homes. The allure of girls and cigarettes gave the spot, a bridge over a brook at the top end of Sylvan Avenue, a hallowed appeal. The small stream also signified the boundary between Sale in Manchester and Timperley in Cheshire. ‘When I first met Ian he told me he’d seen the Sex Pistols,’ said Garner. It was a lie, but an impressive one. Brown further impressed Garner with his copy of the eponymous 1969 album by The Stooges. Squire’s admiration for The Clash was self-evident: he played their debut album every day.

  For Garner the distinction in the personalities of Brown and Squire was clear. ‘Ian was in your face, charming, very confident, full eye contact, people liked hanging around with him and he was always blagging you a bit. With John you had to wrestle stuff out of him, he’d think about what he was going to say before he said it, but he turned out to be creatively brilliant. They were always like that.’

  Squire was usually known as John. Other people called him Johnny but never Jonathon. Brown was IBEX, a nickname that is used to this day. It originated from a fad at school where EX was simply added to the initials of your name. ‘I knew Ian had done karate,’ said Garner. ‘I think he was a black belt, but I don’t recall it being a big thing in Ian’s life when we started hanging out. I suspect as soon as music came in, it went out of the window. We became obsessed with music to the detriment of every other hobby we’d had.’ Wolstencroft, Squire, Brown and Garner were all from a similar background. ‘Ian and John lived in your bog-standard, post-war semi; pretty much all the houses round there were like that,’ said Garner. Or as Brown put it, ‘Poor, down to earth.’

  Brown, born in February 1963, had lived in Timperley since he was six. His family, including younger brother David, had moved the ten miles east from Warrington in 1969 following the birth of his sister Sharon. His father, George, worked as a joiner and the new house with a garden was something to be proud of. Family always came first for George, who instilled a firm sense of discipline in his eldest son as well as passing on his strong socialist beliefs. He was ‘a bit to the left of Arthur Scargill’, said Brown.

  Culture vulture Garner, a
fish out of water at the rough all-boys Burnage High School, recalled being introduced to Ian’s mum, Jean: ‘The first time I went round to his house, his mum was saying to him, You’re not hanging round with him, he’s bad news.’

  Squire had been born in November 1962 in Broadheath less than a mile away from Sylvan Avenue. His father, Tom, was an electrical engineer working at the vast General Electric Company factory in nearby Trafford Park. Tom’s record collection held a sacred place in the life of the house, and included jazz greats such as Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. There was also room for The Beatles, Elvis and Peggy Lee. ‘I didn’t hear a bad song until I left home,’ said Squire. His younger brother, Matt, was best friends with Brown’s brother David.

  Brown and Squire, legend has it, first met in a sandpit as young children in the fields near their home – and in all likelihood, with their families living so close to each other and the children so similarly matched in age, they did. It’s a hazy memory, at best, for both. Until punk brought them together they were not friends. They didn’t attend the same primary school, and nor after both passing their 11+ did they socialize much at Altrincham Grammar.

  ‘We became friendly at thirteen, fourteen,’ Brown said. ‘I started chatting to him and I took “God Save the Queen”, the first Clash LP and “One Chord Wonders” by The Adverts round to his house. He was into The Beach Boys and The Beatles. We were total opposites. I was very outgoing, the class joker, and he was the loner.’

  ‘Virtually everything we did together was related to music,’ Squire said. Before The Clash, The Beach Boys had been Squire’s great obsession, initiated by the TV advertising for the 20 Golden Greats album. It was, however, the Sex Pistols’ debut single ‘Anarchy in the UK’ in 1976 that made him want to pick up the guitar for the first time. ‘I think I was fourteen when I heard that and realized how electric guitars could be made to sound. I started pestering my dad for a guitar, got a paper round, started hanging around guitar shops on the way back from school. It was the next Christmas I got the guitar. I’d sit depressed on the windowsill in my bedroom with no amplifier, picking my way through “Three Blind Mice” on one string wondering how long it would take.’