The Stone Roses: War and Peace

by Spence, Simon

  While Squire promoted the solo album, a new Roses compilation album, The Very Best of The Stone Roses, was released in November 2002, making number 19 in the UK. This had followed an album of Roses remixes, The Remixes, which had reached number 41. Squire had not hidden his feelings for Brown, or the Roses, on his album, and the songs were easy to interpret as a gesture towards ending their long-running feud, and perhaps as a sign that a Roses reunion might yet happen. Squire was friendly with Mani, but had not spoken to Brown for seven years, nor to Reni since he’d quit the band. He admitted to being hurt the deepest by his falling out with Brown, and said reconciliation was long overdue. ‘I do not accept I was responsible for the break-up [of the Roses], if Ian is willing to stop saying that and accept that wasn’t the case, then I’m sure we can talk again.’

  To promote his solo album Squire took to the road and surprised fans by including a handful of Roses songs, including ‘She Bangs the Drums’, ‘Waterfall’ and ‘Fools Gold’, in the set. Squire recorded a second solo album, Marshall’s House, with each song inspired by and sharing a title with a painting by American realist Edward Hopper. The album failed to chart. He enjoyed more success as an artist with his first solo exhibition at the ICA in London in 2004, including his work which had adorned the Roses’ record covers. He also played live at the exhibition launch, his set featuring many Roses songs.

  The Observer Music Monthly magazine placed the Roses’ eponymous 1989 album at number 1 in their 100 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2004, and this, plus a best-selling double DVD, featuring the Roses’ 1989 Blackpool Empress Ballroom show and a compilation of all their video and TV performances, reinvigorated the rumours that the Roses would re-form. It was no secret that Squire’s manager, Simon Moran, now one of the UK’s leading concert promoters, held a torch for the band he’d promoted as a young man in Blackpool, and had an appetite to see the Roses reunite. The figure now being put on such a happening was £5 million.

  Hope that this might happen was soon to be blown away by Brown, however, when in the summer of 2004 he astonished a crowd of 5,000 at a National Trust benefit gig in Surrey by playing an entire set comprised of Roses songs: ‘I Wanna Be Adored’, ‘Sally Cinnamon’, ‘Sugar Spun Sister’, ‘Waterfall’, ‘Mersey Paradise’, ‘Made of Stone’, ‘She Bangs the Drums’, ‘Where Angels Play’ and ‘I Am the Resurrection’. He used members of a Roses tribute act, Fools Gold, to recreate the songs. Brown had never previously played Roses songs during any of his solo shows; the decision to do so, he said, was because of Squire’s playing of the Roses songs during his own shows, which he said Squire did out of ‘self-interest … He’s got no respect. He’s butchering them. I did it for the people. It felt great – they really are the people’s songs.’

  Brown was asked about the huge figures being offered to re-form the Roses. ‘It was never about money. It was about changing the world,’ he replied. So much love had been poured into the band that he couldn’t fathom why Squire had not called him in eight years. It was unlikely that Squire would now, after such an attack. ‘There’s a misconception I developed a monstrous cocaine habit and that destroyed the band, and Ian is responsible for that,’ said Squire. ‘So under those conditions, I can’t entertain working with him.’ Squire said he would ‘rather remove my liver with a teaspoon’ than re-form the Roses. He was tired of Brown blaming him, and hit back. ‘Ian blew it,’ he said, saying that it was Brown’s marijuana habit that had ruined the band, turning him into a ‘tuneless knob’ and a ‘paranoid mess’.

  In September 2004 Brown, now forty-two, released his most accomplished solo album to date, Solarized, which reached number 7 in the UK charts. A single, ‘Keep What Ya Got’, co-written with Noel Gallagher, went to number 18. He responded to questions about Squire aggressively. ‘He split up the best band in the country for what? He went on to do nothing, he must be bitter, seeing me steaming ahead. I announce shows and they’re [the tickets are] gone in a day. It must be killing the kid. He was the best guitarist of his generation. All I know is when he stood next to me he had pure success; since then, nothing. How can I be the villain when I was the last man standing?’

  But now Brown overstepped the mark, recording the Roses song ‘Where Angels Play’ as a B-side to ‘Time Is My Everything’, and his band butchered it on the BBC2 TV show Later with Jools Holland. Solarized was Brown’s first album to interest America, but dates there ended badly when in March 2005 he was arrested, following an on-stage fight in San Francisco. He was released without charge but his American career had failed to ignite. Back in the UK, his standing was at its peak. He played Blackpool Empress Ballroom, fifteen years after his triumph there with the Roses, and the set was studded with Roses classics. He was joined on stage by Mani to play ‘I Wanna Be Adored’. ‘The songs have bled into English culture,’ Brown told the NME, ‘like no other band but The Beatles.’

  In 2005, Squire, recently a father to twins, patched things up with Reni. The two of them met at an Arthur Lee show in Manchester, where Lee was recreating the Love album that the Roses had so loved, Forever Changes. Mani was also at the show and took Squire over to Reni. Squire now talked about making ‘a ferocious guitar record’ and then getting the Roses back together, suggesting they might play Glastonbury that summer as a replacement for headline act Kylie Minogue, who had pulled out due to illness. Mani told the Guardian that Squire wanted to make up with Brown, ‘hopefully have a natter and see what comes of it … It’s getting undignified,’ he said. ‘I’m determined to orchestrate the two of them being in the same room. I’d like to close the book properly.’ ‘Never say never,’ said Reni, but he didn’t think it would be this year. He was right.

  Brown dismissed the talk, despite the offer of $1.8 million for each member should they re-form. It annoyed him. ‘John bangs on about putting the group back together,’ he said, ‘why doesn’t he call me?’ Brown said they were too far apart musically. ‘We were like brothers once,’ he said, ‘and that spirit is what made us. Now the spirit simply isn’t there. I don’t see how we could recreate what we had. It would spoil everything by trying.’ Brown played Glastonbury solo that year, and Mani played with the Scream. The two briefly came together during Brown’s set when Mani joined him to play ‘I Wanna Be Adored’.

  The Greatest, a greatest hits selection of the finest moments from Brown’s solo career, was released in September 2005, selling over 100,000 and peaking at number 5. His attitude towards any idea of a Roses reunion remained aggressive, however. Squire had ‘stabbed me in the back’, he said. ‘Do you think if he was sat here now with his greatest hits, he would be talking about putting the band together? I don’t think he would. Fuck what he wants, I don’t care what he wants, he didn’t care what I wanted.’

  Brown signed a new deal with Polydor for two more solo albums. Upon accepting a ‘Godlike Genius’ award from the NME (who had recently voted the Roses’ 1989 album as the best British album of all time) in 2006, he said, ‘If I was in the gutter and my kids lived on the kerb, I’d go and get a job at B&Q before I’d re-form the Roses.’ Almost every British guitar band that had emerged of note in the decade, in particular The Libertines and Arctic Monkeys, made no secret of the fact the Roses were a core influence. Mani was now back attending to business with Primal Scream, as well as DJing and playing with Freebass, which featured three bass guitarists – himself, New Order’s Peter Hook and The Smiths’ Andy Rourke – and even he could now see no reconciliation.

  Mani took out his frustrations on the band’s infamous manager Evans. Having failed to ignite Oldham-based band The Ya Ya’s, Evans, with business partner Matthew Cummins, had realized a dream of building a golf course, near Warrington, called High Legh Country Park and Golf Club. He had also starred in a 2004 BBC3 documentary about the band, Blood on the Turntable. Brown had expected the show to make his blood boil, but still found that he had a soft spot for Evans, whose chutzpah was distilled in his pronouncement, ‘I am the Stone Roses.’ Mani did not share
Brown’s evaluation, and assaulted Evans at the annual Manchester-based In The City music business conference, organized by Tony Wilson. Paul Birch, the boss of FM Revolver, with whom the Roses had clashed in 1990 over the re-release of ‘Sally Cinnamon’, was also at the conference, and had told Mani about the £5,000 he had handed Evans just before the controversial paint incident.

  Now living in Wales, Evans was involved with a band called The Lizzies, and in 2006 he was attacked again at his home (where he kept a room packed with Roses ephemera, including guitars, photographs and T-shirts) in a brutal late-night assault. The 56-year-old was reportedly hit in the head several times with a blunt weapon and required twenty-eight stitches. ‘I could have died because of the blood I lost,’ he said. No arrests were made over the incident, which was said to concern issues unconnected with the Roses. Evans then fell out with Cummins over the sale of their Cheshire golf club. In September 2007 Cummins was found dead with a broken neck on the floor by an industrial bin at the club. The coroner returned a verdict of accidental death: Cummins had climbed into the bin, attempting to compact rubbish by jumping up and down on it, when the bin had started to roll, smashing into a wall.

  In 2007, Squire held two exhibitions of new artworks in prestigious London galleries, to much acclaim. He said he had given up on music: ‘I’m enjoying this far too much to go back to music.’ Brown had his fifth solo album out, The World Is Yours. It peaked in the UK at number 4 and featured former Sex Pistols Paul Cook and Steve Jones. On the album’s lead single, the strident anti-war protest song ‘Illegal Attacks’ (UK no. 16), he shared vocals with Sinéad O’Connor. The whole album was overtly political, and heavy on strings and hip-hop beats. Still the questions about the feud with Squire continued. ‘I’d have a Starbucks with him if he was buying,’ Brown said. ‘He better have some pretty good tunes, after this long, they’d want to be pretty great.’

  Mani was back with Primal Scream in 2008, with an album Beautiful Future, but had one eye on the upcoming lavish twentieth-anniversary edition of the Roses’ 1989 album, and was again hoping for a reunion. ‘Me, John and Reni are up for doing it and Ian just needs some working on,’ he said. ‘Next year is the ideal time.’ The rumour had been given some credence by a comment Squire had made after witnessing the 2008 Led Zeppelin reunion show: ‘It would be good to do something like that one day.’

  The twentieth-anniversary edition of the band’s eponymous album, released in 2009, came in many beguiling formats. Clive Calder had sold Jive/Zomba to BMG in 2002 for $2.7 billion, after success with Britney Spears, N’Sync and The Backstreet Boys. In 2004 BMG merged with Sony. This new release of the album was being sold on more favourable percentage terms for the band members. It had been a bitter pill that for twenty years the band’s most popular work was attached to a contract that had been described as the worst in history.

  The album made its highest chart position in the UK yet, at number 5, proving that the band’s popularity had not just sustained but grown in the thirteen years since they had split up. The album now featured in the ‘greatest ever’ lists of publications such as Time, Rolling Stone, the Guardian and Q, and had sold several million copies worldwide. The Daily Mirror reported that the Roses had re-formed – for a twenty-one-date tour. Squire, this time, stamped on the idea, and produced a metallic artwork on which he had scratched the words ‘I have no desire whatsoever to desecrate the grave of seminal Manchester pop group The Stone Roses.’

  Brown had a new album out, My Way, in 2009. It was his sixth. The title said it all, and he had little left to prove. Above all, he was still believable, empowering and bedevilling in equal parts. Tracks such as ‘Always Remember Me’ – on which Brown returned to sermonize on Squire and the Roses – ‘So High’ and ‘By All Means Necessary’ were profoundly emotional, quivering with defiance. After a decade of solo work, he was undefeated. My Way was pure gospel. The singer who couldn’t sing was all soul. The album was recorded at Battery Studios, where the Roses had made album tracks in 1989, with long-time collaborator Dave McCracken. Squire had sent Brown a song that he had considered including on the album. ‘It was pretty good, sounded nice,’ said Brown. But his son had said, ‘Dad, you can’t work on that, he sold you out, didn’t he? He left you for dead.’ Even Simon Moran – who as well as managing Squire also promoted shows for Brown, and had been the catalyst for the 2009 Take That reunion tour, the UK’s biggest tour to date – failed to tempt Brown with his calculations of the fortunes the Roses could earn if they re-formed. ‘It’s getting very boring now,’ said Mani. ‘I don’t know why they don’t kiss and make up’.

  Squire held a further art exhibition in 2010, and designed a series of book covers for the publisher Penguin. Brown took his solo act on the road, peppering his set with Roses tracks and playing in over eighteen countries. His relationship with his wife had broken down, and he returned, after almost a decade in London, to live in Manchester. He was writing songs for his seventh solo album, but admitted that, aged forty-seven, it was getting hard. ‘Life’s about ideas,’ he said, and wondered how many he had left; as an indication of that, he was considering writing his memoirs. Returning to Manchester had felt like ‘coming home’, and he and Mani enjoyed nights out on the town.

  Primal Scream were also looking backward in 2010, celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Screamadelica by performing the album in its entirety at two wildly successful shows in London. Mani talked about plans to take the album on the road in 2011, and also ended his association with Freebass, a band he described as ‘something to keep me match fit while the Scream were doing nothing’, after arguing with fellow band member Peter Hook on Twitter. Mani had accused Hook of getting fat off Ian Curtis’s blood money after Hook took to touring Joy Division songs, but quickly apologized. ‘I’m from Manchester and we’re a bunch of gobby bastards, so whatever I said that was just me being me,’ he said. ‘That’s what comes from spending time with the likes of Ian Brown and Liam Gallagher in the pub.’

  Reni remained a mystery. The man rated as the drummer of his generation, and one of the best of all time, had not released a note since quitting the Roses. In those almost fifteen years of silence, he had assumed the mantle of one of rock’s greatest recluses. He had contributed an intriguing, oblique poem to the band’s twentieth-anniversary release of the album that defined a generation, but had never publicly spoken about his time in the Roses, maintaining his dignity and privacy. Reni also had a stable and fulfilling private life, with no apparent craving to return to the limelight. He trusted few people, and although he had created an impressive body of artwork over the years, was uncertain about the prospect of exhibiting it. His own musical ambitions seemed abandoned. Offers continued to come his way, but ‘No’ had become his de facto position. Ironically, by doing and saying nothing, it was Reni who kept aflame much of the Roses’ mystique – and magic. His silence said that there was them, or there was nothing. And he would rather have nothing.

  18.

  Reunion

  On 11 March 2011, Squire and Brown came face to face for the first time in fifteen years. It was a bittersweet moment, for what had brought them together was the death of Mani’s mother. At the wake in the Nelson Tavern in Failsworth, north Manchester, they spent a couple of hours chatting. They were both forty-eight. They did not talk about re-forming the Roses, but it was the start of a chain of events.

  ‘They got on great, all very relaxed,’ said one of Mani’s old pals, Clint Boon, XFM DJ and Inspiral Carpets’ main man. ‘It was amazing,’ said Mani. ‘And somewhat bizarre. I’ve always wanted them to do it – even if the band never re-formed, I always wanted them to remake the friendship.’

  Three days later, Mani was back with Primal Scream as the band took Screamadelica around sold-out arenas for the rest of March. On 7 April the Sun printed a story under the headline ‘Stone Roses Resurrected’. It claimed the Roses ‘are getting back together’ after Squire and Brown had ‘buried the hatchet on one of the most bitt
er feuds in rock ’n’ roll history’. A source said, ‘Ian has been mulling over reaching out to John for a while now. A lot of water has gone under the bridge and everyone has grown up. It was an emotional reunion. There were no harsh words. It was a heartwarming breaking of bread. They had a lot to catch up on and have been in regular contact since.’ The only stumbling block, the Sun reported, was the ‘pinning down’ of Reni, ‘which is about as easy as trapping mercury’.

  Reni immediately and flatly denied the story. Although the Sun had not mentioned where Squire and Brown had established contact, Mani was fuming. ‘I’m disgusted that my personal grief has been invaded and hijacked by these nonsensical stories,’ he said. ‘Two old friends meeting up after fifteen years to pay their respects to my mother does not constitute the reformation of the Stone Roses. Please fuck off and leave it alone. It isn’t true and isn’t happening.’

  A week later, on 14 April, the Sun had more details about the whereabouts of the Squire and Brown meeting, and published a camera phone shot, taken by bar staff at the funeral wake, of Mani with his arms draped over Squire and Brown – the ‘picture every music fan wanted to see’.