It's the reunion everyone's talking about! Reni, Ian, Mani, and John, back together at last! But, morally speaking, is it the "right thing" for them to do? Are you having flashback eccie rushes just thinking about seeing them all on the same stage again, or are you furious that they're even considering it?Every music hack we know is scoring easy coin churning out nostalgic and anti-nostalgic platitudes and toadying to your overinflated sense of self-importance. So we created two journalists out of thin air to wrap the warm blanket of righteousness around you and whisper in your ear: "It's OK, baby, it's the world that's wrong."THEY ARE THE RESURRECTION: I'VE SEEN THE LIGHT
By John Maconie
I still remember the first time I heard the Stone Roses. I was at Spike Island. “This is brilliant,” I thought. “Much better than James, even. This could really change the world. It's what the world's been waiting for.”
My hunch proved true. Three weeks before they arrived, everyone in Manchester started wearing gray trenchcoats and listening to Joy Division, or trite Thatcherite pop like Spandau Ballet or Wham! You couldn't go five feet without meeting someone who was being oppressed by that witch Margaret Thatcher, and unemployment stood at 19 million: all of it in the north.
The Stone Roses changed all that, instantly. From then on, all Manchester's legion unemployed sought to wring the neck of their own joblessness by necking 19 eccies a night. The entire town started wearing afro-patterned pantaloons and hanging out at the Hacienda with Mike Pickering and Shaun Ryder (boy, the stories I could tell you about THAT guy), while doing freaky-dancing to bright, bubbly, beautiful, baggy music. Communism, not entirely uncoincidentally, soon fell.
It had happened: Manchester was finally the center of the musical universe, even if no one in America had ever heard of it. After the 'Roses, it wasn't just a town in the Northwest of England, it was a way of life—a way of life you lived in a town in the Northwest of England. They defined a generation, and every morning I woke up, yawned, stretched, and opened my eyes, glad to be part of a generation defined by big hats, big trousers, and The Word.
And yet… and yet their mission remains unfulfilled. We all know what happened next: fall-outs, fumbled follow-up albums, disaster at Reading, a generation's despair, dissolution.
If only they could have fulfilled that mission, I've often found myself wondering as I penned articles about them for various retrospective features in Sunday newspaper culture supplements. If only they could've been the same band but better. Which is why I believe passionately that what the world needs most right now is for an indie rock band from 20 years ago to re-form and play their greatest hits in front of an appreciative audience of nostalgics.
Whichever way you slice it, a reunion makes sense. In an age where politics is completely meaningless to the young, here are a band with something deeply political to say: War is wrong, vote Kinnock. In an age where massively hyped young bands tell everyone they're the greatest thing since sound began, get showered with money by record labels, then routinely release patchy, late, "will this do?" second records, here are the Stone Roses.
If you can't appreciate that these sugar spun sisters are a waterfall of pure musical goodness, then "bye bye badman" is all I can say, because this is the one, they're breaking into heaven, and their love spreads. The Stone Roses already defined one generation: now they're back to tell the next generation why the last generation was much better than their generation. Surely that's something we can all believe in.Fuck grunge.Upset and disappointed that this view of the Stone Roses reunion doesn't line up with your own? Don't worry! Reinforce your own pre-existing opinions and boost our page views in the process by clicking onto page two. Everybody's right on the internet.
THE STONE ROSES' THIRD COMING IS A COMING TOO FAR
By Stuart HarrisThey were the baggy boys who defined a generation. Four young bowl-haired, hollow-cheeked free radicals who flipped the finger to the man and made the early 90s come alive in a swirl of color, vibrancy, and radical freaky-dancing. Communism was falling. Dance and rock were coming together. And as I stood at Spike Island, doing the big-fish-little-fish to "She Bangs the Drums," I turned to Mike Pickering and Tony Wilson and said: “Guys, I really think these boys could be bigger than the House of Love. Hell, they could even be bigger than The Wedding Present.”That Monday, I immediately went down the Sounds office and told my colleagues that we ought to ditch the feature I'd written on Billy Bragg's latest Red Wedge revival and put the 'Roses on the cover instead. Imagine my delight when I found out that they already had. After the 'Roses, finally, it seemed dance and rock were united. After years of no one who listened to dance knowing what rock even was, and people who enjoyed rock regularly throwing bricks at people who liked to dance in the street, the funky-drummer beat of "Fools Gold" managed to instantly fuse the Israel and Palestine of our time into one pulsating, united tribe. But that was then. Does anyone want to see the Stone Roses now that their bloom has faded? Do we really want to see four wheezy, middle-aged men strutting and preening around the stage, telling the world that they wanna be adored? Do we really want to see John Squire playing the songs he wrote, owns, and for which people remember him? How dare these four men who made an album that people really like get back together and play said album for said people who really like it? Have they no shame? “Who wants to see these hypocrites taking the corporate coin to recycle old material about things that happened years ago?” as I said in my last MOJO retrospective spread on them ("The 'Roses: 22 ¾ Years On") a few weeks ago. The past—as I pointed out then—ought to be put in a sealed box and left in a darkened room, and no one ought to re-animate stuff that has already been codified and eulogized by the music press, because that means we will have to revise our opinions in the light of fresh information. They're now effectively writing a new chapter of the early 1990s. And it is retroactively changing the past; just like it did in Timecop. But did the 'Roses listen? They did not. Following years of being at each other's throats, they are now hypocritically sniffing each other's anuses. Now, famed socialist Brown will be grinning alongside his former foes, safe in the knowledge that he can afford a new sports car by selling out everyone's treasured past. How dare he decide to start being civil to the three people who defined his young life. Enjoy that Porsche, Ian, because you are paying for it with all of our teenage memories.Every time you press your foot upon the accelerator, you are squirting a fine mist of your generation's self-image into the combustion chamber of now, then setting it on fire with the sparkplug of revivalism. Are you made of stone, Ian? If you weren't, then you would stop killing our childhoods, and stop it now.
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By John Maconie
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By Stuart HarrisThey were the baggy boys who defined a generation. Four young bowl-haired, hollow-cheeked free radicals who flipped the finger to the man and made the early 90s come alive in a swirl of color, vibrancy, and radical freaky-dancing. Communism was falling. Dance and rock were coming together. And as I stood at Spike Island, doing the big-fish-little-fish to "She Bangs the Drums," I turned to Mike Pickering and Tony Wilson and said: “Guys, I really think these boys could be bigger than the House of Love. Hell, they could even be bigger than The Wedding Present.”That Monday, I immediately went down the Sounds office and told my colleagues that we ought to ditch the feature I'd written on Billy Bragg's latest Red Wedge revival and put the 'Roses on the cover instead. Imagine my delight when I found out that they already had. After the 'Roses, finally, it seemed dance and rock were united. After years of no one who listened to dance knowing what rock even was, and people who enjoyed rock regularly throwing bricks at people who liked to dance in the street, the funky-drummer beat of "Fools Gold" managed to instantly fuse the Israel and Palestine of our time into one pulsating, united tribe. But that was then. Does anyone want to see the Stone Roses now that their bloom has faded? Do we really want to see four wheezy, middle-aged men strutting and preening around the stage, telling the world that they wanna be adored? Do we really want to see John Squire playing the songs he wrote, owns, and for which people remember him? How dare these four men who made an album that people really like get back together and play said album for said people who really like it? Have they no shame? “Who wants to see these hypocrites taking the corporate coin to recycle old material about things that happened years ago?” as I said in my last MOJO retrospective spread on them ("The 'Roses: 22 ¾ Years On") a few weeks ago. The past—as I pointed out then—ought to be put in a sealed box and left in a darkened room, and no one ought to re-animate stuff that has already been codified and eulogized by the music press, because that means we will have to revise our opinions in the light of fresh information. They're now effectively writing a new chapter of the early 1990s. And it is retroactively changing the past; just like it did in Timecop. But did the 'Roses listen? They did not. Following years of being at each other's throats, they are now hypocritically sniffing each other's anuses. Now, famed socialist Brown will be grinning alongside his former foes, safe in the knowledge that he can afford a new sports car by selling out everyone's treasured past. How dare he decide to start being civil to the three people who defined his young life. Enjoy that Porsche, Ian, because you are paying for it with all of our teenage memories.Every time you press your foot upon the accelerator, you are squirting a fine mist of your generation's self-image into the combustion chamber of now, then setting it on fire with the sparkplug of revivalism. Are you made of stone, Ian? If you weren't, then you would stop killing our childhoods, and stop it now.