Garner had always had the most exquisite taste in music and was frustrated that his skills on bass couldn’t match the sound he wanted to achieve. His creative contribution to the band, he felt, was negligible. He’d come up with the bass part for ‘All Across the Sands’, but more often Squire would write the bass lines for him. ‘Most of the songs were done by Ian and John. They’d write stuff at home or go somewhere to write and bring it in. But obviously no one was writing the drums, so Reni’s creative input is there. He’s doing the harmonies, he’s making all the songs sound better. If he was pissed off things were being brought into the room complete, he was still enhancing them. I didn’t feel like I was doing that.’
He also found dealing with Evans difficult. ‘Every week there would be a new crisis. It ground me down. There was so much shit going on behind the scenes. I felt the pressure piling on. I loved being in the band but I didn’t love everything that went with it.’ His frustration and doubt built up. The Roses were at the age where men share laughter rather than their problems. The band were aware Garner was struggling to keep up with them musically, but not how depressed it was making him. Garner was having some sort of breakdown.
The Roses would often meet in his city centre flat before rehearsals. One weekend, he’d been thinking. On Monday, ‘Ian, John and Reni came round and I said, I’ve got to talk to you,’ he recalled. He told them, ‘I don’t think I can do it. I don’t want to do it any more.’ And then he told them he wanted to leave, why, and how he felt. ‘It was fucking hard,’ he said. ‘I was really upset about it but I felt much better once I’d spoken my mind and got it all out.’
The band didn’t try to stop him and openly discussed with Garner who his replacement should be. Rob Hampson was the first to put his name forward for consideration. He was the Northern Soul-obsessed, suedehead scooterboy who had lived in the flat below Brown in Hulme in 1983. He was also a friend of the tour manager Steve Adge and had been to many of the Roses’ shows. The problem was Hampson had never played bass before. Nonetheless, Squire, Brown and Reni told him if he could learn the songs he was in. Garner even offered to teach him.
Hampson had not made sufficient progress to take the stage with the band for the three live dates Evans had organized for the Roses in July and August 1987. Instead they asked Garner to play. He agreed on the proviso Evans book no more dates. ‘It felt really weird, like going on a date with an ex-girlfriend. I didn’t really want to do them but I didn’t really want to drop them in the shit either.’
In July the Roses played Sheffield’s Take Two club. The band they were sharing the bill with had draped a Confederate flag across an amplifier. Brown took offence, demanding what he called the ‘flag of slavery’ be removed. The next date was at Liverpool Planet X where they played to no more than thirty people, followed in August by a slot at the Liverpool Sefton Park Earthbeat Festival. ‘We played on a hill that had a moat-style pond around it, and the audience sat on the next hill,’ said Garner. Brown tried to get closer to the audience, diving into the moat. After this final show with Garner, Brown – sporting a blond spiky flat-top to go with his Lydonesque stage stares – had to pull apart roadie Slim and manager Evans. Slim had enquired about wages he and soundman Simon Machan were owed. Evans had started shouting and Slim had gone for him.
Garner was glad to escape the chaos. The only thing that annoyed him was a response Brown gave to a question about why Garner had left. Brown thought it funny to imitate the Sex Pistols, who said they sacked their original bassist Glen Matlock because he liked The Beatles. Brown said the Roses had sacked Garner because he didn’t like The Beatles. ‘This appeared in the press,’ said Garner. ‘The first band I got into as a kid was The Beatles. I was obsessed with them. So I was furious, really upset.’
Rob Hampson appeared in one photo session with the Roses and was cast aside. Up stepped Mani, who knew Brown and Squire from the scooterboy scene in the early 1980s, and had played in The Waterfront with Squire and Couzens. He had also followed many of the early Roses gigs and was familiar with Cressa and the rest of the crowd. He would claim to have never played in any other bands before joining the Roses, and had just been ‘in my bedroom pogo-ing about with my tennis racket’. In fact, he’d played in not just The Waterfront but popped up briefly in bands such as The Hungry Sox, T’Mill and the Inspiral Carpets in a scene that centred on Clint Boon in Oldham. None of the bands had amounted to much at that time, and he’d had a few jobs, including one in an abattoir. Boon was now playing keyboards with the Inspiral Carpets and they were on the rise.
Boon had come across Squire and Brown at the Boardwalk and they told him they were looking for a bass player. The next day Boon bumped into Mani’s brother, Gregg, who told Mani. ‘I got hold of Squire’s number and called him up,’ said Mani. ‘I said, The job’s mine. They were sick of auditioning bassists and John sounded relieved. We should have come to you first, he said.’
‘I always knew I was the main man for the Roses,’ said Mani. He was a few weeks from turning twenty-five and gave up his day job to join. As a bass player he modelled his style on James Jameson, the uncredited bassist on most Motown Records hits in the 1960s and 1970s; Paul Simonon of The Clash; and Peter Hook of Joy Division and New Order. Mani said he always felt he ‘was playing catch up when it came to John and Reni’ but, as had happened when Reni joined, there was no discussion. He was in. Evans had no say and would always have trouble working out the band’s new member. The persona of a north Manchester scally was completely alien to him.
‘Andy Couzens had gone and now we were starting to shape songs,’ said Brown. ‘When Mani joined in 1987 it made us more musical. John and Reni had improved. I’d improved. But Mani was the final piece of the jigsaw and everyone around us knew it.’
‘We’d rearranged the songs over and over until we sounded like nobody else,’ said Reni. ‘Mani was crucial. He upgraded our potential. He was my perfect rhythm partner and great company. I got tighter on the drums and the bass lines got funkier.’ Mani called Squire a ‘Beatles head’ and said the guitarist turned him on to Hendrix, while Reni introduced him to Funkadelic, Sly Stone and Miles Davis. ‘Northern Soul was doubly important to all of us,’ Mani said. ‘You can hear it in the music.’
Mani’s impact and influence would go beyond the musical. He was still a Perry boy, with a classic long-flicked fringe, and his personality was infectious. He’d got the style and the cheek. He looked at the band’s image and told them, ‘You’ve got to look like proper scallies.’ Not only did the Roses begin to sound better after Mani joined, they started to look better too.
His first gig with the Roses has often been documented as 13 November 1987 at the International, three months after Garner’s last gig with the band, and the final Roses show of the year. The bassist, however, recalled debuting at the Birmingham Hummingbird to a small crowd. ‘The next night we played to 1,000 people at the International, then we went to Cardiff or Hull and played to about five people.’ This disparity in audience had not gone unnoticed in trendy Manchester circles, and it was becoming a joke that the Roses were being spoon-fed a crowd by Evans.
Mani was the right man in the right place at the right time. The night at the International would lead to the band being offered a deal by Rough Trade Records. Evans had shrewdly employed Lindsay Reade, the former wife of Tony Wilson, to help him manage the band, and it was she who had got the country’s premier indie label interested. Reade knew the music business, was sharp and well connected. She’d been invited to watch the band rehearse in the basement of International II and, despite her initial doubts, was won over when they played her a set that included most of the songs that would end up on their classic 1989 album.
Reade was also impressed by Evans’s charisma and cunning. ‘He was hell-bent on this band. Tony [Wilson] was a very driven man, but Gareth took the biscuit. He was a visionary in the sense he knew how successful they were going to be.’ Evans offered her 10 per cent of his and Cummins’s
cut of the Roses and she moved into his office opposite the International. The office had only one phone, but Evans played games in there as if it was a major outfit. ‘He’d be on the phone and ask people to hold, keep his hand on the receiver, and then go back to them after a few minutes to say he’d been on the other phone to the MD of EMI or whatever. It was showmanship,’ she said. ‘He would tell lies when there was no advantage to doing it. He just enjoyed it.’
Reade had taken a Stone Roses demo down to London to A&R people she knew, including a contact at Phonogram. Geoff Travis, the boss of Rough Trade Records, liked it enough to commit to a visit to Manchester to see them live. Rough Trade seemed the perfect home for The Stone Roses. The label’s most iconic band was The Smiths, who before splitting up had released four hugely successful albums with the label. It was at the centre of the UK’s largest independent distribution network, the Cartel. Travis had a long history in the business and also ran Blanco Y Negro, home to The Jesus and Mary Chain.
Travis arrived at the Roses’ International gig with Rough Trade’s other leading business figures, Jeannette Lee and Peter Walmsley, and they were all deeply impressed. ‘It was jam-packed and it was just sensational from the minute they played their first note,’ Travis said. ‘We turned to Lindsay after about ten seconds and said, We want to sign this band.’ Reade went backstage, after the show, to tell the band the good news. ‘You’d think they’d be over the moon,’ she said. ‘But this lot, it was like a damp squib. No reaction. Particularly John Squire, he looked like he just didn’t give a shit. I thought, Don’t you realize, this is your big moment – you’ve got the deal.’
The Roses took the train to London to meet with Travis. They met him at a pub opposite Euston station and spent a couple of hours sounding him out. ‘We talked about dance music, about Love, and about music we liked,’ said Travis. ‘Everyone was animated and it seemed to be a good conversation.’ Travis reiterated his desire to sign the band and felt they had come to a good understanding. He was so eager to get things moving that, before contracts were issued, he offered to pay for the band to make their next single. The Roses told Travis that they wanted to record ‘Elephant Stone’ and that they had already secured the services of New Order bassist Peter Hook as producer. Travis agreed.
It was Evans who had talked Hook into the job, after prompting from the band. ‘We had rated New Order’s dance tunes,’ said Brown. ‘When “Elephant Stone” was ready to record, we started to look for a good producer for a dance record and then we hit on his name.’ The song’s distinctive wah-wah-driven guitar riff had been inspired by the Happy Mondays, while Brown said the track was an ideal showcase for the talents of Reni. ‘We wanted people to hear what he could do,’ he said.
Hook had visited the International, and been supplied with free drinks all night by Evans, as his band mate Bernard Sumner advised him would be the case. He was not prepared, however, for Evans to next turn up at his house unannounced to ask him to produce the Roses. ‘I don’t know how he found out where I lived.’ Evans gave him a copy of ‘Sally Cinnamon’ and told Hook the band wanted their next single to ‘sound better than this’. New Order were four albums into their astonishing career, having just released Brotherhood, their third UK Top 10 album. Hook had heard about the Roses, was a pal of their roadie Slim, and knew the circle of girls that gravitated around Sue Dean. It sounded like fun and he was flattered, to some extent. Money wasn’t discussed.
Hook arranged for New Order’s engineer, Mike Johnson, to assist on the production of ‘Elephant Stone’ and booked studio time at Revolution in Cheadle, Stockport. He had never worked in this studio before, nor had he met the Roses until they showed up there to record. Reni was impressed to find Hook on the phone to Ian McCulloch, singer with Echo & the Bunnymen, making plans for a New Order and Bunnymen tour of America. ‘When we went in to record it, if anyone was being the rock star it was probably me; bragging and showing off,’ said Hook.
Hook suggested to the Roses that ‘Elephant Stone’ needed a break in the middle to open the song out and the band happily accepted his direction, even the inclusion of a sound created by banging a dustbin lid. Reni was one of the best rock drummers Hook had ever encountered, ‘as good, if not better, than Stephen Morris was in Joy Division. Reni’s drumming lent such a character and identity to the songs. Ian and John had got it with the melodies and lyrics but they were lucky to get Reni because he took them from being a traditional, normal rock band into the stratosphere with other great groups.’
Hook did have his reservations about Reni though, finding his strong personality overpowering, particularly in relation to recording the vocals. It had taken Hook a little time to get his head around Brown’s sound, but he had come to the conclusion that what he lacked in virtuosity, he made up for with soul. ‘He could reach you immediately as a person.’ Reni handled the backing vocals with great skill but ‘thought he was a better singer than Ian’, said Hook. ‘I think there was a struggle between him and Ian, more so than anyone. Reni was always in your ear, asking to sing, saying he could do it better.’
Hook had further problems with Reni when he refused to play sixteenths on the high-hat through the entirety of ‘Elephant Stone’ – ‘I thought it would make it swing,’ Hook said. So, after the basic song was recorded, Hook arranged for Shan Hira, the drummer of Stockholm Monsters, to play the part. He and Hira went to Strawberry Studios to add the overdub on Christmas Eve. ‘Shan’s playing away and I thought, Oh great, this is just what this song needed. And then over my shoulder this fucking head comes in: Hiya Hooky, Merry Christmas! I looked round and it was Reni. But he took it on the chin like a proper man and he said, Right, it does sound better, but let me in, I’ll do it better. He went in and played on it and he did do it better.’
Factory had never paid Hook for his production work and he was on £100-a-week wage with New Order. After finishing the recording of ‘Elephant Stone’, plus two B-sides – ‘The Hardest Thing in the World’ and backward track ‘Full Fathom Five’ – he was surprised and delighted when Evans peeled off £1,000 from a wad of cash to pay him for his efforts. The band, he noted, also took advantage of Evans’s largesse. ‘If Ian’s kettle blew up, he’d phone Gareth, who would buy him a new one and take it round,’ he said. ‘Mani would go, Oh, my hi-fi’s broken, and Gareth would buy him a new one and take it round.’
Squire delivered the artwork for the single to Geoff Travis at Rough Trade. It was his first Jackson Pollock-style effort, with an instruction for Letraset typefaces for the lettering: Grotesque 9 and Grotesque outline. Squire first became aware of Pollock’s abstract expressionist work while flicking through a Clash photo book. ‘Pennie Smith had made a comment about Jackson Pollock with reference to a photo of Paul Simonon, and how they used to drip paint on their clothes and on their guitars early on,’ he said.
When Travis received the finished mix of ‘Elephant Stone’, done at Hook’s own Suite 16 studio, he suggested, and the band agreed, that it needed a bit more work. Hook had sat in the Rough Trade office with Travis listening to the mix and was forced to agree, although the poor quality was down to cheap cassette tapes the tracks had been copied onto.
To remix the single, Travis booked time at Power Plant studios in Willesden, north-west London. A Power Plant engineer heard ‘Elephant Stone’ and tipped off Jive (Zomba) Records, a major pop label who were based in the same studio complex, to the potential of the Roses. When they next played live, in January 1988 at Dingwalls in London, Jive’s A&R staff were out in force. One of them, Roddy McKenna, arrived late but saw enough to make him want to pursue the band. He had a keen interest in dance music, while his superiors made sure he kept an eye on finding the ‘next U2’.
McKenna arranged to meet Evans in Manchester privately, to discuss his interest. Evans turned on the charm and McKenna came away not only with the impression that it would be a ‘real blast’ working with him but also with the knowledge that nothing was yet signed with Rough Trade. Mc
Kenna also picked up on the fact that Evans was devoted to his son, and on subsequent visits to Manchester he always brought a gift for Mark – a single, CD or a T-shirt. It was this gesture, more than anything else, that would have an influence on Evans’s sudden volte-face regarding Rough Trade.
The Roses, unaware of Evans’s clandestine meeting with McKenna, were already talking up ‘Elephant Stone’ now that demo tapes of the single were circulating. They were featured in an article in Dave Haslam’s Debris in December 1987 where ‘Elephant Stone’ was described as having ‘golden melodies, a harder sound than “Sally Cinnamon”, brilliant beat, and sparkling, crystal candy guitar’. The article was written by Andy McQueen, who worked at Eastern Bloc, a record shop that would soon overtake Piccadilly Records to become Manchester’s key music outlet. In it, McQueen mentioned how the city’s tastemakers were still split over the Roses, citing City Life’s omission of ‘Sally Cinnamon’ from the magazine’s 1987 end-of-year Top 40.
‘A lot of bands in the city dislike us because of the way we are,’ said Brown. ‘All we are is a big local band, we’re not known nationally. So you get “the inflated egos of the Stone Roses” and we have got inflated egos – that’s an important part of being a good group. I don’t want to slag anyone off but you don’t hear people going, God, I hate The Railway Children, because they’re not the sort of band you hate, whereas I think we are, because we’re of some value.’
The photograph in Debris was of Squire and Brown, separated by a Pollock-style paint-splattered guitar in front of a similarly decorated giant backdrop. It was the work of Ian Tilton, who had been introduced to the band by Sounds journalist John Robb. Robb, like McQueen, was another major local supporter of the Roses and, badgered by Evans, he wrote the first lengthy feature on the band for Sounds, which appeared in January 1988. In the interview the band said they were thinking of calling their debut album Bring Me the Head of James Anderton on a Plate (Anderton was Manchester chief of police), and Brown named the Happy Mondays as the ‘best group in Manchester’.
The Stone Roses: War and Peace Page 13
