1. I Wanna Be Adored
2. She Bangs The Drums
3. Ten Storey Love Song
4. Waterfall
5. Made Of Stone
6. Love Spreads
7. What The World Is Waiting For
8. Sally Cinnamon
9. Fools Gold
10. Begging You
11. Elephant Stone
12. Breaking Into Heaven
13. One Love
14. This Is The One
15. I Am The Resurrection
They defined an era,
a culture, and ushered in the commercial resurgence of
British guitar music. Yet, frustratingly, they never fulfilled their enormous
promise or massive potential, dithering for a full five years on an
ill-fated, bloated and underwhelming second album, and ironically missing out
on the great mid-90s boom that was Britpop despite releasing Second Coming
just as it was about to take off.
No band of the last 25 years, not even Oasis at the height of their success,
ever made such an impact as The Stone Roses. Call it a fortuitous combination
of timing and talent, but the Madchester scene led by the Roses and Happy
Mondays not so much rearranged the music industry furniture as kicked down
its door and trashed the place with unrestrained, pharmaceutically-aided,
glee.
The independent scene of the 1980s had existed almost in its own vacuum, a
procession of jangly nobodies attemtping to emulate Manchester's other
greatest sons The Smiths, whose distinctive, innovative and charasmatic brand
of alternative pop would usually be the Indie crowd's only chart
representative. Until 1989, and The Stone Roses' debut, no guitar pop album
could hope to sell more than 200,000 - although Morrissey and co. mostly
enjoyed either #1 or #2 albums, their sales were largely confined to a loyal
fanbase and concentrated into a matter of weeks rather than months.
Intially, there was little sign that The Stone Roses would, or could, be
anything more than an excellent indie band, enjoying moderate commercial
rewards for their melodic, dynamic assimilation of chiming chords and
classical 60s vocal stylings. A succession of singles - Sally Cinnamon, Made
Of Stone, Elephant Stone, She Bangs The Drums - cemented their standing as a
band to watch, but the #36 peak for She Bangs The Drums was the apex of their
Top 40 achievements by the time the epnoymous debut album arrived in April
1989.
The Stone Roses' defining moment would come later that year with the Fools
Gold single, an awesome crossbreed of funky drumming, elastic basslines,
buzzsaw guitars and psychedelia. Storming the charts simultaneously with the
Happy Mondays' Madchester Rave On E.P., Indie-Dance was born. Fools Gold is
the one song, more than anything else, which sealed the band's reputation.
Included here in all its full 10-minute glory, Fools Gold still stands as the
high watermark of The Stone Roses' brief but glittering reign as the most
exciting, and important, UK band of their time. Without it, there is no doubt
that first album (which didn't even feature the track) would never have sold
in the such groundbreaking quantities, to become the first independent guitar
album to go platinum with in excess of 300,000 copies shifted in 1989 and
1990. Small fry in the post-Britpop world, perhaps, but a very big deal back
then.
If their rise to prominence had a degree of serendipity about it, the same
could not be said of what followed after Fools Gold laid the world at their
feet, there for the taking. One of the great "What If?"'s of rock history
remains that concerning The Stone Roses, and just what might have been had
the triumph of Fools Gold led to further glory rather than proved to be the
beginning of the end. When faced with the immediate task of a follow-up single
in the summer of 1990, a tune-free ramble titled One Love was the result.
Though it made #4, it's fair to say their currency was at such stratospheric
levels they could get away with releasing any old rubbish.
By the time of 1994's Second Coming, public disappointment over One Love and
the band's subsequent inertia appeared to be banished when the album's
introductory single Love Spreads debuted at #2. Truth be told, the
sub-Zeppelin riff-fest was hardly in the league of earlier Roses material,
and worse still, the album itself wasn't up to scratch either. Just two
tracks had any hint of the old magic - Ten Storey Love Song (a rehash of She
Bangs The Drums) and Begging You (Fools Gold Part 2), but even at its best
Second Coming was trading on former glories. Had the explosive Begging You
appeared as a single in 1990 or 1991, for instance, as opposed to 1995, there
is little doubt its chart performance would have been significantly better
than #35.
The Stone Roses had become victims of their failure to captilise on the
possibilities open to them, and it would prove fatal. It's no coincidence
that by 1994 another Manchester band loaded with a brazen attitude bordering
on arrogance, and blessed with a set of skyscraping rock anthems, would
effectively pick up where The Stone Roses left off. Oasis, however, while
avoiding the pitfalls of letting expectation become paralyzing, ultimately
lost their momentum as well, through the equally self-inflicted means of
alienating fans with too many below-par albums.
There have been several Roses compilations already, so why the need for
another?, one might ask. Well, The Very Best Of is the first to cover their
entire recording career, from the Revolver releases in 1987 and 1988, through
their Silvertone heyday, right up to their inglorious Geffen swansong. The
track sequencing leans heavily towards the first album, even going as far as
opening and closing in identical fashion (I Wanna Be Adored/She Bangs The
Drums; This Is The One/I Am The Resurrection). Recognition of their iconic
place in the Roses canon, or plain lazy? Perhaps a bit of both.
There is new and original sleeve artwork from Squire, in his trademark
Pollock-esque style, plus extensive liner notes. All the best Stone Roses
songs are present and correct, while no dubious remixes or crude edits rear
their head to ruin the show. The Very Best Of therefore has an air of
authority in its presentation, a sense that the job hasn't merely been left
to some hack at the record company.
Recently, founding member and main songwriter John Squire has hinted at the
possibility of a Stone Roses reunion, but whether the rifts which broke the
band up can be satisfactorily healed remains to be seen. The obvious
financial gains from any reformation could be a decisive factor, since
neither Squire nor singer Ian Brown have exactly set the industry alight with
their respective post-Roses projects. Mid-table solo success is all very
well, but The Stone Roses had the makings of Champions League glory, and they
know it.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
