The Stone Roses: War and Peace
Page 25
Geffen A&R man Tom Zutaut visited Rockfield to check on the label’s investment. Zutaut had handled A&R for Guns N’ Roses since their 28-million-selling breakthrough album Appetite for Destruction in 1987. That group had a famously volatile inter-band dynamic, with rampant ego and drug problems. For Zutaut the unrest within the Roses would barely register. He was a Los Angeles classic rock man with long blond hair and deep knowledge of 1960s and 1970s guitar music. The Roses were cautious of his presence but he seemed to score with Squire over a shared appreciation of blues acts that had influenced the likes of Led Zeppelin, the Stones and Neil Young, particularly Mississippi Fred McDowell. Zutaut confidently announced to the press that The Stone Roses’ album would be released in spring 1994 and that a single, ‘Love Spreads’, was being considered for a Valentine’s Day release.
‘The new guitar-orientated direction of The Stone Roses will establish them on a higher international level,’ said Zutaut. ‘It is a sign of one of the world’s great rock bands reaching maturity.’ His approach to the record did not chime with the ‘dry, funky, Stevie Wonder sound’ Schroeder was attempting to exert on Second Coming. ‘Zutaut didn’t want me there,’ said Schroeder. ‘I got the impression he was trying to get the band to work with someone else. The American company wanted some big record producer.’
In December 1993, genuine tragedy struck the Roses when their new manager Philip Hall, who had been receiving treatment for cancer, lost his life to the disease. ‘That really took the wind out of everyone’s sails,’ said Schroeder. The Roses would dedicate Second Coming to Hall, whom Brown called ‘one diamond man’. In February 1994, after two more maddening months, Schroeder retired from the project to finish the record he had abandoned to produce the Roses – an album by his sister. He felt that Second Coming was all but finished, but Squire had now decided he didn’t like it. ‘John felt it was going in a completely different direction to what he had in mind.’ What was in Squire’s mind now was becoming increasingly difficult to tease out. If he’d been unhappy with the direction Leckie had been taking the band, then Schroeder seemed an odd choice of replacement. The ‘dry’ and ‘funky’ sound the producer had spent seven months working on would now be drenched in reverb and guitar overdubs.
Simon Dawson, Rockfield’s 33-year-old in-house engineer, took over as producer. He seemed more suited to Squire’s tastes. A life-long Monmouth resident, Dawson had worked at Rockfield since 1988 and with the Roses in a junior capacity when they had recorded ‘One Love’ there in 1990.
With Dawson at the desk the band would spend a further six months working on the album, adding two further tracks but essentially reworking what they already had down. ‘After such a whacking delay we thought, Why rush it?’ Squire said. ‘We were going to be criticized anyway, so we thought we might as well make a good album.’ Zutaut claimed the album’s ‘best work’ came in these final months and that the material had the ‘potential to put English rock ’n’ roll back on the map’.
The Roses knew the album recording had gone on for far too long, and the pressure to complete it was intensified by the worry another band might steal their thunder with a variation of their new sound. They thought that band would be Primal Scream, who released their long-anticipated follow-up to Screamadelica in March 1994. Give Out But Don’t Give Up had seen the Scream radically alter their course and pursue a similar 1970s-influenced blues-rock overload to the Roses. The album reached number 2 in the UK charts, but received mixed reviews – with the NME calling the band ‘dance traitors’.
Squire’s endless drive and determination to carry on working the record towards the sound he wanted was becoming even more obsessive and oppressive. His decision not to attend Hall’s funeral compounded the feeling that he wasn’t concerned about his band mates’ personal lives, and he picked up the nickname ‘Ice Cold Cube’. Reni was tired of re-recording parts he’d put down in some cases almost three years ago, expressing his frustration by playing in his dressing gown. His absences from the studio grew longer and would mean he had little input on the direction the album was now taking. ‘Bitterness crept in,’ said Brown. ‘But in a way Reni got enjoyment because he thought that John would have to come round.’ He never did. Instead, Squire grew increasingly resolute and consumed with picking apart the multitude of versions of the songs they’d already recorded, choosing which parts to use (and loop) from a bewildering array of recorded material. The fluency and texture of Reni’s contributions would be noticeably absent from the finished record.
Mani, suffering deeply from the loss of his father throughout the recording of Second Coming, allowed himself to be steamrolled by Squire’s single-mindedness. The album’s title was chosen by Squire, and leaked to the press, as another Geffen deadline was missed and sessions on the album continued into the summer of 1994. Brown admitted the band’s morale had hit new lows as Squire continued experimenting with the key the songs were written in, and indulging in adding guitar overdubs. With Dawson the band recorded, from scratch, a rockier version of ‘Love Spreads’, plus a new Squire song, the acoustic ‘Your Star Will Shine’. Squire was captured on tape exasperatedly teaching Brown the vocal melody to the song.
Brown too was now a father, and these final long months in the studio, ‘having to listen to twenty guitar tracks’, were a drain. Reni had bought him an acoustic guitar and Bob Marley songbook, so he could be more self-reliant, and in these final few months of recording, Brown came up with his own song, ‘Straight to the Man’. It was his attempt to rebalance the increasingly rock-orientated album and the last little bit of funk to be squeezed out of the band. Lyrically, also, it was a sharp reminder of what Squire was missing by cutting Brown out of the work he was doing.
In June the Roses gathered around a TV at Rockfield to watch Oasis make their debut appearance on Top of the Pops, with their second single ‘Shakermaker’. Oasis had recorded their debut album, Definitely Maybe, virtually next door to the Roses at nearby Monnow Valley Studio, a former Rockfield rehearsal space. Oasis issued proud proclamations that they were the Roses’ spiritual offspring, and Definitely Maybe would go to number 1 in the UK charts in August. Squire was impressed and continued to pursue more guitar overdubs on Second Coming, determined to prove who was boss.
In preparation for the Roses’ imminent comeback, Geffen suggested the band should try to secure new management to replace Hall. They put forward Peter Leake, the US-based English manager of The Waterboys’ Mike Scott and 10,000 Maniacs. He travelled to Rockfield. ‘I’d heard a little background that maybe there was strife within the band,’ he said. Arriving at the studio, he was surprised to discover all the band members had their own living areas, and found it difficult getting them all together. ‘But then when I mentioned it was actually my birthday, they all lit up and said, Let’s go down the pub,’ he said. ‘We had a great night.’ But he left the next day, citing other commitments. ‘I could also see it was going to be hard to break them in the US. There was tremendous expectation on behalf of the record company because they’d paid a huge amount of money.’
They had now been on Geffen for over three years. To an extent the label could afford to write off the Roses as the other acts on the label such as Beck, Counting Crows and Nirvana (despite the death of Kurt Cobain in April) dominated the American charts, and Geffen would post record gross profits of $505 million in 1994. Eddie Rosenblatt had become CEO and chairman after David Geffen left, and he remained eager to see some money back on his investment in the Roses. Zutaut had convinced him Second Coming could be a huge hit in America.
The Roses handed over the all-important final mix of the album to Bill Price, who had worked with Zutaut on the mix for the Guns N’ Roses’ albums Use Your Illusion I and II. Price had also produced albums for The Clash and The Jesus and Mary Chain, as well as co-producing the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. He was given a free hand on the mix of Second Coming, and loaded up the reverb, making the album sound bigger and r
ockier, more suited to American radio.
It may have been the most difficult second album of all time to record, but it was finished. Although Oasis could be seen as rivals to the Roses, the band had sparked a revival in the fortunes of guitar rock in the UK and made no secret of the debt they owed to their Mancunian forebears. Their rise to the top had also coincided with the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, which handed the police new powers to stop illegal raves, signalling a return to the underground for innovative dance music. The Roses had sat out grunge, and were coming back with a new sound that was as timely as it was mature and supreme.
Promoting Second Coming would be as fraught as recording it. Brown and Reni didn’t want to do any photographs or videos to promote the band’s comeback. Squire would use various clips from the footage he’d taken on his Super-8 camera over the years to make a video for the scheduled first single, ‘Love Spreads’. It featured Brown, Squire and Mani in death, chicken and devil costumes respectively and was the band’s best video to date, but deemed so low-fi as to be unfit for purpose by Geffen after it was refused by MTV.
Terri Hall, Philip’s widow, had honoured his wishes and taken on her husband’s PR business. The band failed to show for their first meeting with her, and she was tasked with managing the considerable flak that came her way as the Roses declared their intention to provide their first exclusive interview to the Big Issue, a magazine sold on the street by the homeless. It was a philanthropic move but one which upset the music press.
The band were keen to use the same radio and TV pluggers they had always used, the trusted Beer Davies team of Gareth Davies and his business partner James Chapple Gill. The company came up with some novel promotion ideas. BBC1’s Saturday football preview programme, Football Focus, agreed that they would film a five-a-side match of The Stone Roses v. Manchester United. ‘I remember hearing that [Ryan] Giggs was in the Man United team,’ said Davies. ‘I thought we could put a short press release out saying: The Stone Roses – play live on BBC1 at 12.15.’ In the final stages Squire said he didn’t want to do it, for fear the band would look stupid.
MCA Records, who owned Geffen and handled their product in the UK, insisted their own in-house TV and radio promotion team handle the record, however, to the disgruntlement of the band. MCA and the Roses was not a good fit. The major label made a show of delivering ‘Love Spreads’ to Radio 1 in a security van on 7 November 1994. The release of the single, however, was quickly and disconcertingly delayed until December. The band were unhappy with MCA’s campaign. The Roses wanted Beer Davies reinstated, and MCA backed down, but only to allow the independent company to do TV promotion.
As ‘Love Spreads’ picked up radio play, the date of former manager Gareth Evans’s wrongful dismissal claim was confirmed. It would take place at London High Court on 15 March 1995. Evans had employed a powerful lawyer from media and entertainment giants Harbottle & Lewis, and was portraying the band as serial contract breakers. The thought of going back to the High Court would hang over the band in the coming months.
There were no promotional copies of ‘Love Spreads’ available for review, but on 19 November the NME took the opportunity to put the Roses on their cover, using the 1989 Kevin Cummins shot of Brown taken in Paris, under the headline ‘Resurrection Kerfuffle! Where the hell have The Stone Roses been?’ There was no interview, no new photos, just fifteen NME writers offering their opinions on ‘Love Spreads’. It was a mixed response, with ‘pub Zeppelin’ and ‘anticlimax’ among the many negative comments. On 21 November the Roses did their ‘comeback’ interview with the Big Issue. Reni was notable by his absence, said to be ‘back in Manchester sorting something for his mum’.
‘Somebody’s going to make money off us coming back, so it was the best thing to do,’ Brown told the Big Issue. ‘The last time the NME had us on the cover it was one of the biggest selling issues of the year. We’d rather the money went to helping the homeless than into the coffers of a big organization like IPC [who owned NME and Melody Maker].’ Asked about the Second Coming album, Brown was typically bullish. ‘This is how we wanted it to sound,’ he said. ‘It’s much stronger and we sound like a proper live band. We like it, so there’s going to be plenty of other people who do. Whatever response it gets is irrelevant to us.’
The band’s long-time photographer Pennie Smith had taken the ‘comeback’ photo that accompanied the Big Issue piece. It was shot in Monnow Valley and featured the band up against a wall. They all looked healthy, not much different from how they had last appeared, except Brown, whose gaunt face was partly obscured beneath a baseball cap and behind cupped hands as he lit a cigarette. ‘The band dynamic was different,’ said Smith. ‘It felt wrong. The band got on because they didn’t really talk, and then they didn’t get on because they didn’t really talk. That’s the story.’
‘Love Spreads’ was released on 28 November and entered the UK charts at number 2. There was no further UK promotion. The band turned down Top of the Pops, and a week after entering the charts the single dropped to number 8. The album was released on 5 December. Other bands would have released the album in the New Year, when the charts were traditionally at their softest – and a number 1 slot virtually guaranteed. ‘We just thought the idea of timing it to have a number 1 was cynical music-biz bollocks,’ said Squire. ‘As for downplaying our return, we probably forgot how to present ourselves after five years away. We didn’t know how to appear cool and accomplished. And we probably didn’t care.’
On vinyl Second Coming came as a magnificent double album. The cover, by Squire, was an impenetrable collage of painted-over images, pasted on sewn-together rectangles of cloth. ‘A nightmare,’ he said. ‘It was not supposed to be that dark.’ The sleeve was rescued by the cheeky conceit of photographing the back of the artwork and the wire to hang it, and using that as the back cover. Again, there were no promotional copies of the album for review. Second Coming sold 100,000 in the UK in its first week, peaking at number 4, and quickly going on to sell 300,000 copies. There was high praise from the Guardian, Melody Maker, Select and The Face, but a smarting NME gave the album a mixed reception and it was panned in Time Out and Q. Melody Maker had the band on their cover on 17 December. There was no interview and the magazine was so desperate for copy they interviewed the Big Issue journalist who had interviewed the band.
In early January 1995 the Roses mixed and finished recording new B-sides for a second single from the album, which was scheduled for release at the end of February. They included a new Brown song, the sensual ‘Ride On’, plus a track attributed to Mani and Reni called ‘Moses’, a studio piece from Paul Schroeder’s time producing the band. For the A-side it was reported that the band were considering ‘Breaking into Heaven’ or ‘How Do You Sleep’, the latter having already been play-listed on Radio 1. ‘Ten Storey Love Song’ was, however, finally selected as the second single. In America, ‘Love Spreads’ was picking up radio support and slowly climbing the Billboard charts, and the album was scheduled for release on 16 January.
Geffen A&R man Tom Zutaut told the press he wanted an ‘organic, word of mouth’ promotional campaign in America. But Zutaut knew it would take more than that, and had introduced the Roses to a powerful manager, Doug Goldstein, who had managed Guns N’ Roses since 1991. It was Zutaut’s last act for the Roses, as he then left Geffen after almost fourteen years. Goldstein travelled to Manchester to woo the band, and was holed up in the Midland Hotel for days before the band finally agreed to meet him. When they did, he told them they were a ‘beautiful ocean liner without a captain’. He said he was their perfect manager because any problems they had he’d seen before with Guns N’ Roses. Goldstein was sharp, and thought the Roses were on to something with Second Coming. He found Reni ‘charismatic’, and Brown ‘intelligent, acerbic and hilarious’. ‘Their personalities got to me. I wanted to work hard for them because I liked who they were.’ He even laughed when Brown told him he thought Guns N’ Roses were the worst band in the world.
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Goldstein didn’t pick up on any negative vibe among the band, except with Reni. ‘Reni wasn’t certain that he wanted to take it on: a year and a half of being away from home and touring and promoting the record, having to do the interviews. He just seemed to be content with the way his life was running.’ But the Roses were determined to make it in America. ‘That was the goal,’ said Goldstein. ‘I felt like doing a festival tour across the UK and Europe would have been the best way to go, but that seemed to fall on deaf ears. The band wanted to come to LA and promote the record.’
Chaperoned by Goldstein, the band finally arrived in America for their first visit, unprepared and falling apart. They were interviewed on radio stations in LA, San Francisco, New York and Toronto. In the LA interview Brown made controversial remarks about the US army killing babies. In Toronto Brown and Squire made life awkward for DJ Kim at the CFNY station with their usual yes/no answers. The interview was open to the public, and the studio was jammed with fans lapping up Squire and Brown’s nonchalance. At Kits Live 105, in San Francisco, Reni took centre stage, cracking jokes, putting on accents and livening things up. Asked what he thought of America, he replied, ‘Very small, cramped.’
‘When we did the radio interviews they displayed this love-hate attitude towards America,’ said Goldstein. ‘We’d love to be accepted here but fuck you if we’re not. They had this don’t-give-a-shit attitude.’ Reni, said Goldstein, didn’t make himself nearly as available for promotional work as the rest of the band. ‘He just seemed to not want to be there. I felt like replacing Reni was the only way the band was going to be able to travel on.’
In LA the Roses re-shot the video for ‘Love Spreads’ with director Steve Hanft, who had directed ‘Loser’ – the breakthrough US Top 10 single for the Roses’ Geffen label mate Beck. The band performed as if live in the studio in front of oil-well pumpjacks, Brown now looking healthy, sporting a becoming plaid deerstalker hat. Reni looked less enthusiastic, Beck had a small cameo, and Squire memorably was shown playing his guitar while riding on a donkey. ‘Love Spreads’ would peak at number 55 in the Billboard charts.