10 Greatest Ever Stone Roses Songs
The Stone Roses; sorting the Madchester band’s gold from the Fool’s Gold.
The Stone Roses should have been the biggest band in the world. They had the ambition and the talent. They certainly had the songs. On their 1989 self-titled debut album they fused a Byrdsian guitar jangle to fluid bass and intuitive drumming, welded that to an irresistible Mancunian swagger and alchemised the lot into something even greater than the sum of its parts. You felt ten feet tall just listening to it. The old guitar, bass, drums, vocals formula suddenly felt thrillingly new.
After that came a brilliant stand alone single(more on which later), before record company trouble, drug abuse and endless recording sessions for their second album killed all their momentum.
They returned in 1994 with an album that confused and underwhelmed. By that point bands like Blur and Oasis had followed in their wake and were seemingly delivering on the promise The Roses had squandered.
Soon drummer Reni quit, followed by guitarist John Squire. Singer Ian Brown and Bassist Mani struggled on but the band imploded after a notorious Reading Festival appearance.
With the group’s long, drawn out demise(and disappointing recent comeback singles) it’s easy to forget how utterly thrilling they could be. Here are ten reminders.
10. Elephant Stone
The Stone Roses seemed to emerge fully formed at the tail end of the Eighties but, as with so many great bands, they spent years toiling away in the wilderness, honing their sound.
In 1985 they even made an album, Garage Flower, with cult producer Martin Hannett. Mercifully it went unreleased for years and its double A side single went largely overlooked. This rough album, with Brown’s naive vocals, tinny productions and post-punk leanings, showed promise but would not have been the best first impression on the world.
Their next single, Sally Cinnamon, was sweet but third effort, Elephant Stone, saw the arrival of the full Stone Roses sound. All sparkly guitars and dance rhythms, the band sound supremely confident. The lyrics don’t kick in for nearly two minutes, The Roses happy instead to showcase their musicality.
When it does arrive, the vocal melody is so blissful and transcendent it disguises the romantic tumult of the lyric. The song’s protagonist stumbles from having, “burst into heaven,” to finding, “a hole in my dreams.”