FEATURE THE STONE ROSES
The Stone Roses: Ian Brown, Mani, John Squire and Robbie J. Maddlx
The five-year tease is over —— the Stone Roses have found their voice again, and Scotland is swooning in anticipation. John Hatfield tracks down bassist Mani to ask if the band still have what it takes.
hypnotic groove of ‘Fool’s Gold’ pulse across the Barrowland and witness Ian Brown’s inimitable anthropoid shuffle again, nobody in Scotland will believe the Stone Roses are back.
Five years after the band’s epic concert at Glasgow Green, The Stone Roses’ Glasgow gigs sold out in less time than it takes to roll a spliff. Even so, doubting Thomases probably won’t accept the second coming is imminent. That is until John Squire’s spine-tingling voodoo guitar riffs pin-prick the back of our necks and Mani socks us in the solar plexus with bass-lines so solidly Spiralling you could walk up them. Only then will we know for sure
BThe List 15 Dec l995-ll Jan 1996
ntil we actually hear the darkly.
that Scotland is still on heat for the Roses after the most blatant coitus interruptus in pop history.
In 1990, the Roses were poised on the cusp
‘It’s not about wanking off over your chart position and crying because Shakin’ Stevens ls number one and Cliff Richard Is number two...
You won’t catch us studying the schedules to see it Blur are coming out this week so we can avoid them.’
of bigger-than-the-Beatles world domination.
refusing to support the Rolling Stones.
‘because they should be supporting us, not the
other way round’. They topped more polls than Tony Blair. pulled larger crowds than most football teams and split the record- buying public into two camps: those who thought their eponymous 1989 debut album was the most seductive, exhilarating 50 minutes ever laid down on vinyl, and those who hadn’t heard it yet.
Musical trainspotters and second-rate copycat bands of the baggy movement agonised over the Roses’ precise mix of rock. funk, indie, psychedelia and dance while the music press wrote itself into a slavering. blabbering, speaking-in-tongues frenzy. Melody Maker’s Bob Stanley was a typical disciple: ‘They sound like someone sneaked a tab in their Tizer . . . they sound like maybe