The resurrection of the Roses

The Stone Roses reunited in 2011. Photo from stoneroses.org

An announcement made this week revealed that a long awaited, much disclaimed rumour has finally seen the light – the return of messyrs Brown and Squire along with Mani and Reni to boot.

After years of throwing to-the-grave insults at one another while Mani has been going around as a Mother Teresa type figure between camps trying to patch it all up again The Stone Roses have decided to call it quits and pick up the phone.

This news is not difficult to accept when put in its context. John Squire’s career as a visual artist has hardly ignited the world, despite some inspired Middle Eastern-style patterns on canvas shown at a recent East London exhibition, while The Seahorses disappeared into 90s mediocrity before you could work out any of the Roses related anagrams of their name – in the same way that the Stone Roses might have gone if they had continued on their slippery slope after 1995. Mani can’t really be expected to pay the mortgage as a bit-part bass man in Primal Scream and he has been one of the biggest driving forces in rallying his old band back together. And what happened to Reni? I can’t see him living out the rest of his life in a council flat in Salford, bequeathing a dusty scrapbook of pictures and NME awards on the mantelpiece to his grandchildren. Ian Brown of course has molded himself a successful solo career playing his former group’s Greatest Hits at his shows and tatttooing the three stripes of Adidas into the minds of a young generation unwillingly caught up in the decaying hype of Roses mania.  Yet it wouldn’t surprise me if he ever considered remitting his differences with his old band mates before while still playing encores of I Am The Resurrection.

An outsider of the music business for over a decade, Squire has been nonchalant towards the subject of the past at the best of times, recently declaring that “music is for young people”. So why should they risk diluting their legacy of energy and attitude inspired by The Clash and acid-house for a big pay off? Maybe there’s some unfinished business there after all. But it’s probably more to do with money. The number of pedestals their first album has been placed on has made it near impossible to avoid. The Stone Roses now have to accept that it is something they’re stuck with for the rest of their lives.

Many bands from that era have already reformed after long or short break-ups: The Verve, Blur, Pulp, The Pixies, My Bloody Valentine and Chapterhouse (not counting untold more) all made brief appearances so the timing is right then for the Mancunian outfit to reunite. Even after selling hundreds of thousands of albums in the nineties and headlining Reading that isn’t enough to sustain a musician some fifteen years later. The tough times of the recession have seen former band mates now more willing than ever to put their differences aside to pay the bills. The serious drug problems are now a thing of the past (can’t afford it anymore). The guitarist was only joking when he said he would never work with the talentless f****** c*** again. Oh look we’re popular in Japan now, thanks internet. The way things are looking at the moment The Smiths will no doubt be next on the list of big reunions.

The music industry is just as responsible for these reunions as it desperately seeks ways to make money, partly due to the sinking ship scenario which some believe the internet is accountable for, so a rising demand for a nostalgia circus seems to fit the bill. “We are running desperately low on talented new acts and we need some entertainment to fill the arena domes. Bring back that band from the eighties, the one with those vibrant young female backing singers, maraca player who handed out ecstasy to the crowd and a free styling rapper on stage. (Do you want to..?) No, we just want the band, thank you.”

For the right money you can get whoever you want to play whatever you want almost exactly as they did in the first place. Even the haircuts have survived intact apart from Mani’s shocking ponytail. Seeing the band rattle through their classics will no doubt be an opportunity for the younger fans to see what they’ve only heard about in legend and older heads to take pills for the first time in over a decade. But this time with old sagging faces playing the songs like they were supposed to sound back in the day. John Squire now looks a dead ringer for Dot Cotton and Ian Brown has and always will sound like a concrete mixer. The fact that these groups seem to fit in with so seamlessly with today’s music scene sadly says much about how far it has progressed since the early 90s as it does about our want it all-want it now greed culture and obsession with the past. None of the reformed groups mentioned above have so far taken any serious steps towards making new records (bar The Verve) so it doesn’t exactly inspire anything other than a marketing opportunity – a day out in Hyde park to coincide with a singles compilation. But most importantly – where are the acts that are breaking through now? The ones who today’s generation of fans will care enough about in 20 years time to demand tours. Maybe they’ve already been curtailed by the amount of attention directed towards the past.