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Thirty- five minutes of backwards songs.

This mix occurred to me a few weeks ago when I posted David Holmes’ remix of Andy Bell’s The Sky Without You, a remix of the opening song from Andy’s 2022 solo album Flicker. Reversing the tapes and playing them backwards is an age old technique- The Beatles used it in 1966 on Rain and then perfected it on Tomorrow Never Knows (although both of those merely contain backwards elements/ instruments- most of what’s included below is entirely backwards). They went the full hog on the white album with Revolution 9. Those backwards noises- the sound of cymbals splashing in reverse, the trippy whirl of guitars backwards, the weird throb of bass- are all very evocative and possibly suggest too long spent in the studio, indulgence maybe, but when done well are superb. I’ve loved it as a sonic whoosh, an aural WTF?, since my first exposure to The Stone Roses and their B-sides in 1989 and Don’t Stop. This mix will I suspect be an opinion splitter- you’ll either roll your eyes and quietly close the page and go elsewhere for your Sunday morning music fix or you’ll love this. I’ve played it through several times and each time can convince myself it’s the best Sunday mix I’ve ever done. 

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• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You
• The Stone Roses: Simone
• The Clash: Mensforth Hill
• The Stone Roses: Previously Unheard Backwards Track 3
• The Stone Roses: Full Fathom Five
• Andy Bell: The Looking Glass
• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You (David Holmes Radical Mycology Remix)
• The Stone Roses: Guernica
• The Stone Roses: Don’t Stop

The Sky Without You opens Flicker, Andy Bell’s solo album. It was a deliberate nod to The Stone Roses, Andy looking backwards to Don’t Stop and the B-sides of Elephant Stone, Made Of Stone, and She Bangs The Drums. Most of the rest of Flicker is fully crafted, ‘proper’ songs, from the lovely Something Like Love to the wistful Way Of The World. Halfway through, the start of the second disc on the vinyl version, is another backwards track, The Looking Glass, Andy’s voice, guitar and what sounds like some organ fed backwards through the looking glass. I’m guessing it’s one of the songs from Flicker flipped. 

Simone is Where Angels Play played backwards and for many years was only available as the B-side of a U.S. import version of I Wanna Be Adored, which found its way into U.K. shops in 1989. It was buying this 12″ single for this one song, a 12″ priced at £5.99 (a huge amount for a 12″ single then) that made me realise I was in deep. Where Angels Play was the ‘lost’ song from the golden period of 1989- 1990, the song that didn’t make the album but was often bootlegged live. It was eventually released on a 12″ of I Wanna Be Adored, put out by Silvertone as a money spinner when the band and label were in dispute- a dispute that led to a court case that led to the band signing to Geffen and to the end of the group ultimately.  

By the time The Clash had committed themselves to an album which would comprise six sides of vinyl  and to having six songs for each side, they were in very deep indeed. Studio experimentation, Joe’s lyric writing bunker, and hours through the night of recording dubs and versions with Mikey Dread were the order of the day. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- London Calling may be their ‘best’ album, punk purists will go for the debut, some of the class of ’78 will always argue for Give ‘Em Enough Rope, but Sandinista! is where the true, questing spirit of The Clash is to be found. It’s a treasure trove and as Joe says in Westway To The World, it’s ‘a magnificent achievement, warts and all’. Mensforth Hill is Something About England played backwards with studio chatter at both ends. ‘Shall we do another one then?’ asks Joe at the end. Yes please!

Previously Unheard Backwards Track 3 is She Bangs The Drums played in reverse- it came out as an extra on the 20th anniversary release of The Stone Roses (the one with the lemon shaped USB stick- no, I didn’t buy it). 

Full Fathom Five (a nice coincidental link to Duncan Gray’s album Five Fathoms Full that came out last week) is Elephant Stone backwards (the Peter Hook produced version of Elephant Stone, so if you can reverse the reversed version, you’ve got Hooky’s mix of the song too). I think this is a little more than just flipping the tape round- Ian’s vocals are unclear but recorded and dropped in forwards. Full Fathom Five is the name of a 1947 Jackson Pollock painting, one of his earliest drip paintings, a masterpiece, and a clear influence on John Squire’s Roses sleeve art from this period. 

The Sky Without You has already appeared once here. For his Radical Mycology Remix David Holmes took all of Andy’s backwards Roses swirl and took it further, adding forwards drums, a blurry sunny day feel and sirens. One of my favourite records of recent years. David’s name for the remix came from some mushroom based experimentation he undertook during lockdown, dealing with some growing up in Belfast related PTSD

Guernica is Made Of Stone backwards with Ian singing a new vocal forwards- ‘If you wanna hurt me stop the row’ (or similar), can be made out fairly clearly. This one feels like a step towards Don’t Stop. You can imagine them in the studio with John Leckie working their way through the songs backwards, hitting on certain ones, trying new vocals, flipping parts around and eventually getting it all together when they reversed Waterfall. There was an interview with Ian and John in ’88 or ’89 where they said they used to drive out the road under the flightpath at Manchester airport (I know exactly which road they mean too), sit on the bonnet of the car and wait for the jumbo jets to take off over head, and then try to replicate the roar of the engines with their reversed tapes. Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso, depicting the Spanish town that was obliterated by the Nazi’s Condor Legion, Stuka dive bombers deployed to aid the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. 2024; see Gaza.

A Spanish Civil War Sunday mix anyone?

Don’t Stop is more and more, as each year passes, the highlight of The Stone Roses debut album- don’t laugh- the one where the experimentation, delight in backwards tapes, a modern psychedelic guitar band was fully realised. Reni’s drums and Ian’s vocals are both forwards, recorded over Waterfall played in reverse. There’s more to it than just reversing the tape- the guitars are slowed down, sounding like an actual waterfall, and the fade in has been added from elsewhere. Things are out of sync. The flow of the backwards guitars and bass, bubbling, lightly drilling, is a rush and Reni’s cowbell tapping away gives so much. John wrote the lyrics by listening to Ian’s vocal for Waterfall played backwards and then transcribed what Ian’s blurred voice seemed to be suggesting.Ian then sang them- the lyrics are among the best too- ‘hey blues singer/ just the guitar/ from the top/ what can I steal/ what can I feel/ I wake/ ease into my heart/ one of us/ don’t stop/ isn’t it funny how you shine?’. Andy Bell used this technique on Flicker. Which is where we came in….

V.A. Saturday

Jon Savage is a writer who fully deserves the status legendary attached to his name- since the early days of punk he chronicled the music and the subculture, a  writer and journalist who knows his stuff and who cares. His Sex Pistols book England’s Dreaming is probably the definitive account of account of UK and US punk and his oral history of Joy Division, This Searing Light, The Sun And Everything Else,is the best account of that band’s trajectory and story bar none. He has had for many years a sideline as a Various Artists album compiler, including some VA albums that have had repeat plays round here over the years: Fame- Jon Savage’s Secret History Of Post Punk 1978- 1981 and 1966 Jon Savage’s The Year The Decade Exploded are both Bagging Area favourites and his recent one, Do You Have The Force? Jon Savage’s Alternate History Of Electronica 1978- 1982, is a genre busting, futuristic compilation that finds proto- electronica in Throbbing Gristle, Soft Machine, UFO, PiL and The Flying Lizards among others. 

In 2015 Caroline True Records released Perfect Motion: Jon Savage’s Secret History Of Second Wave Psychedelia, 1988- 1993, a treasure trove of the period across four sides of vinyl, a snapshot of guitar bands, pop acts and dance music that to Jon, was what the title suggested- a new wave of psychedelia. Jon found it in Shack, The High and The Stone Roses (for this release the head spinning track Full Fathom Five, Elephant Stone played backwards, named after a Jackson Pollock painting), he found it in Deee- Lite, Pet Shop Boys, 808 State and Joi, he found it in Saint Etienne and Electronic and he found it in ‘the scene’s resident genius’, Andrew Weatherall (Clock Factory by Sabres Of Paradise, Andrew’s remix of Sly And Lovechild and his production on Screamadelica, in this case Slip Inside This House, Primal Scream’s cover of a first wave of US psychedelia band, The Thirteenth Floor Elevators).

Full Fathom Five

Jon takes some delight I think in stretching the boundaries of the genre he’s compiling, in finding what he’s looking for places some people wouldn’t. His latest compilation for Caroline True Records, out at the end of last year, is titled Jon Savage’s Ambient 90s, a concept and compilation that’s very up my street. True to form Jon stretches the definition of ambient so far it almost snaps the fabric of music to pieces, but it all makes sense too. In 1992 Jon started sending articles to Jockey Slut, fired up by the new music being made- ‘a new way of looking at the world, a new language’, he said at the time. Jockey Slut were more than happy to publish 2000 words on the importance of Aphex Twin by the man who saw Joy Division at the PSV. 

On Ambient 90s he compiles tracks by William Orbit, Aphex Twin, Underworld (Blueski from Second Toughest In The Infants, three minutes of Karl Hyde’s blues guitar looped and distorted), Sandoz (Richard Kirk from Cabaret Voltaire), React To Rhythm’s Intoxication (a huge progressive house track with a vocal sample whispering, ‘this works almost instantly’, a track so rhythmic and thumpy it can’t be really called ambient but let’s go with it), U-Ziq and several others. It closes with this by Biosphere, a 1994 release by a Norwegian artist on a Belgian label that starts out with background noise and acoustic guitar and floats away on ambient waves, synths and washes of sound ebbing and flowing as the acoustic guitar keeps time. 

En- Trance

An Alternate History Of The Stone Roses

Last weekend I heard the second song by the pairing up of John Squire and Liam Gallagher, a song called Mars To Liverpool. I heard the first, Just Another Rainbow, a couple of weeks previously. They both sound like I thought they would. 

While out riding my bike on Sunday morning, having just heard Mars To Liverpool before leaving the house, I started thinking about The Second Coming, the second Stone Roses album, the much delayed and highly anticipated follow up to the band’s debut five years earlier. I’ve changed my position on The Second Coming several times and currently think of it as a handful of good songs surrounded by a lot of sub par filler. Tensions that developed during the recording of it broke the band apart, Reni leaving in 1995 and Squire in ’96. They stopped talking, rarely in the same room at the same time, four men on four different drugs with no one to tell them how to fix it. I wrote a post here many years ago where I opined that, rather than going too far with The Second Coming, actually they didn’t go far enough- they should have created a full on psychedelic rock experience, handed all the tapes over to Future Sound Of London or The Orb and told them to pull it into one seamless piece of music, forty minutes long, the promise of the first few minutes of Breaking Into Heaven (burbling ambient field recordings, fragments of guitar squiggles and studio experiments with Reni’s percussion coming in before it breaks into the guitar heroics of the song) turned into the full album, the best bits of the album mixed together in a sonic Stone Roses stew. I still think that could work. But while riding my bike through the lanes of Cheshire I began imaging an alternative history of The Stone Roses, one where they didn’t blow it but actually followed through from the high watermark of 1989/90…

… a few weeks after the Spike Island and Glasgow Green gigs in the summer of 1990 Ian, John, Mani and Reni meet and sack manager Gareth Evans. They confront record label Silvertone about the highly restrictive contract they signed a few years earlier. Silvertone boss Andrew Lauder meets his lawyers who advise him the contract is a restriction of trade and very harsh, that a judge will find for the band and he’d be better to cut his losses now. The band settle quickly and start looking for a new label. US giant Geffen have promised millions but wiser heads around the band prevail. ‘Forget the money lads’, you’ ll make money anyway, go for the songs, make the records’, friends tell them and for once this most strong-headed and willful of groups agrees. Creation are interested but the band meet Jeff Barrett from Heavenly and like his talk, the promise of complete control and the young Heavenly label’s outlook. A few months later The Roses are in the studio and in early 1991 release a 12″ single, Ten Storey Love Song, the chiming guitars harking back to the debut but with a more muscular bass and drums backing. The 12″ rides high in the chart and a short UK tour in spring ’91 sees the group rapturously received by their fans. 

By now the weight of recording a second album weighs heavily on them but the recent run of singles- Fool’s Gold/ What The World Is Waiting For, One Love and Ten Storey Love Song- shows them a different way to work. ‘We’re gonna release some singles and EPs’, Ian tells the NME, ‘one after the other’. Autumn 1991 sees them record another EP, John’s predilection for heavy Led Zeppelin style guitars and riffs all over the tapes and songs. Heavenly link them up with Andrew Weatherall and in 1992 an EP of Weatherall produced songs, the Led Zep riffing underplayed now, plus a remix hits the shelves, the chiming 60s psychedelia of the first album now expanded by Andrew’s singular remix vision of the early 90s. 

Following the success of the EP the band are tight, spending time with each other and enjoying each other’s company. Creative juices flow, Ian and John writing together daily. They meet Brendan Lynch, then recording with the about to be reborn Paul Weller and he produces several songs, three of which come out as a 12″ in ’93. They have side stepped the nascent Britpop stirrings of Blur, Oasis and Suede and now look to expand in other directions, the less tribal, more genre hopping world of the mid 90s pulling them in other musical directions. Ian eases up on the weed, John eases up on stronger stuff, clarity prevails. Hit and run recording sessions, working quickly with different producers is working. They stop overthinking and start enjoying it. A session with Goldie takes Reni’s drums to completely new spaces. Heavenly’s connections with The Chemical Brothers opens doors and minds and the band spend several weeks in the studio, Ed and Tom flitting between their own sessions and those with The Roses. A stockpile of songs is built up, a four track Chemical Roses EP seeing the light of day in summer 1995, a few weeks before The Chemical Brothers’ Exit Planet Dust comes out. Blur and Oasis argue about the number one slot with two average songs, but The Roses are streets ahead, making mid 90s dance/ guitar crossover psychedelia, pushing boundaries as they once did with Fool’s Gold. They still miss out on headlining Glastonbury, John breaking his collarbone, cutting short an otherwise successful tour of the US. An invitation to headline Reading the following year is turned down- the group have reverted to their stance of only playing shows on their own terms. ‘We don’t want to be part of somebody’s else’s gig’, John says, the truculent interview technique of 1989 resurfacing. Instead they do a tour of seaside towns, fifteen dates in the summer of ’96, starting in Bridlington, then heading down the east coast and round the south coast, several dates in Wales, and then Blackpool, Southport and Morecambe, ending in Barrow. 

In autumn 1996 they spend a few weeks in the studio with Portishead’s Geoff Barrow and while not much is achieved two new songs are finished, one a dusty, cinematic trip hop groove, Reni and Mani looped by Barrow. The process of write, record and release 12″s and EPs works, the pressure of recording an album lifted and the band free to follow their noses. In 1997 Steve Hillage produces several sessions and though only a few songs are released everyone enjoys the sessions and the liquid, fluid but focussed psychedelia is well received. Several more songs sit in the vaults. 

In 1998, they falter but pick up with a tour of Europe and then record an EPs worth of songs with Mick Jones (The Clash/ BAD), Mick encouraging them to play facing each other, bashing out several songs of loose, ramshackle but melodic guitar pop. John declares that no more than two guitars are on any of the songs, hardly any overdubs and most of the songs sound like the work of a single guitar player. He switches from Les Paul to Telecaster and the thinner sound suits him and the new tunes. Mani helps Primal Scream out with some bass for their Vanishing Point album. In return Martin Duffy plays piano and keys with the Roses and another set of songs are recorded. 

As the millennium approaches the group see what they’ve achieved and eye the new century with a feeling of ten years of success behind them. They record some more songs, the influence of The Beta Band showing, Ian and John and Ian and Reni’s occasional combustible disagreements quickly solved by Heavenly’s laid back approach to managing the group. Mani and Reni find new inspiration in Neu! and Can and the band hit the studio again, Michael Rother (once a resident of Wilmslow so no stranger to north west England) at the controls. The Roses go kosmische, John playing in straight lines rather than blues, Reni in the motorik groove, his shoulders rolling as he plays.  

As New Year’s Eve approaches plans are afoot and on NYE 1999 drinkers at Chorlton Irish Club are bemused when a truck pulls up in the afternoon and three men begin hauling gear in. The Stone Roses turn up and begin playing at 8pm, opening with I Wanna Be Adored and then flitting between the songs from the debut album and the dozen single and EP releases since summer 1990. They finish at 9.30pm by which time word has spread and fans are arriving. Packing up quickly they head to Sale and set the gear up again in the scout hut at Raglan Road, the venue where John and Ian first played together as The Patrol in 1980. Simon Wolstencroft is there, manning the door with Cressa. Fans arrive, first come first served, about one hundred packed into the scout hut, sweat already dripping from the walls and ceiling. At 10.30 the band appear and begin to play, shimmering dance rock, motorik grooves, light headed psychedelia, backwards songs, and chorus heavy guitar pop. They finish with a cover of White Riot, John’s guitar squealing its last as the clock strikes midnight. 

They release their second album the next day. In typically Roses style they mess it up- it’s New Year’s Day in the year 2000, no record shops are open. When fans finally get the album (unburdened by a heavy and ludicrous name like The Second Coming, it is titled Angry Young Teddy Bears) they find it is a triple disc record. Inside the gatefold is a piece of paper announcing the end of the group. They have nothing more to do. The album contains some of the songs released over the previous ten years and many unreleased from the various sessions, songs recorded with and produced by The Chemical Brothers, Brendan Lynch, Geoff Barrow, Mick Jones, one from a session with Lee Scratch Perry that no one can remember much about, two with Jagz Kooner, several with Steve Hillage and one ten minute epic with Michael Rother. The third disc contains a previously unreleased Weatherall remix from 1991, a Sabres Of Paradise remix from 1996, and a dubby, horn- led Justin Robertson remix. On the final side of the album is a twenty three minute track, the fruits of two different sessions joined together by John Leckie, the first ten minutes the result of a collaboration with Bjork and Graham Massey, John’s guitar and Mani’s bass and Reni’s drums locked in a vaguely 808 style groove, while Ian and Bjork sing a duet. In the second half of the song, Jah Wobble’s bass appears and Mani and Wobble trade rubbery basslines, the drums and FX pedals spiraling around, while Ian whispers sweet nothings about space exploration, conquistadors and new centuries. Sinead O’Connor is on backing vocals. The fade out is a long languid groove that could happily go on forever.

A few weeks after the split there are rumours of a series of dates in Scandinavia but nothing happens. All four men are seen together socially, friends still and happy to leave the music industry behind, having achieved what they set out to- play gigs, make records, look good, give journalists a tough time in interviews, do it on their own terms. After all of that, from the halcyon days of 1989 when they broke through, and their constant desire to keep reinventing their sound through to 1999, there’s nothing left to do, nowhere left to go-  they’ve done it all. 

Breaking Into Heaven

More Bands In Places They Shouldn’t Be

Following my two previous posts in this series, the first here and the second here, today I offer you some more television appearances from bands whose pluggers and record labels booked them onto tv programmes that may in retrospect have been a little ill advised. The mid 80s was a golden period for this sort of thing with bands miming on lunchtime television, early evening chat shows and children’s tv in order to shift more singles.  

In October 1985 Prefab Sprout appeared on Hold Tight, filmed and broadcast by one of Scotland’s regional independent broadcasters. The actual appearance was at Alton Towers, the Staffordshire theme park. Prefab Sprout are playing their classic 80s single When Love Breaks Down. It doesn’t look especially warm. The crowd are seated in a temporary seating, swaying on demand and largely out of time. Paddy McAloon attempts to hide his embarrassment behind a pair of aviators. The band spend much of their time concentrating on remaining steady on the swaying, springy platforms. 

On 5th January 1980 The Clash, who famously refused to do Top Of The Pops because they wouldn’t mime, were appeared on TISWAS, ITV’s Saturday morning kids tv show.  The four members are interviewed by Sally James and offer a copy of London Calling as a prize for a lucky viewer. Sally keeps talking, presumably in an attempt to make sure no one swears. Topper is clearly stoned. At two minutes thirty nine seconds Paul leans over to spit on the floor in front of a group of small children. It’s all over fairly quickly, probably to everyone’s relief. 

In 1990 Ice T appeared on BBC2’s art programme The Late Show. Nothing that incongruous in some ways- it was an arts programme after all- but somehow Ice T, at that point the leading exponent of gangsta rap, guns, chains and women in tiny bikinis, appearing on a fairly staid and stiff arts programme more used to hosting panel discussions of the writings of Salman Rushdie, is all kinds of dissonance. In this section, closing the programme, Ice T does Lethal Weapon. His rapping, done live, is flawless and the sense of LA menace is palpable in front of a completely, sterile empty BBC studio. 

The show was already a music lover’s dream, if not for the right reasons. In November 1989 The Stone Roses were riding the crest of a very large wave and pitched up on The Late Show midweek, an accident waiting to happen. The programme went out live, Tracey MacLeod introducing the fourpiece playing Made Of Stone live, the band looking impossibly cool and sounding on it as well. As they hit the first chorus John Squire’s guitar hits the BBC’s noise limiters and the sound cuts out suddenly. Drummer Reni begins giggling. Ian begins to ask questions. Tracey returns to the camera and apologises, moving on to the next item (about photographer Martin Parr). ‘They ask you to come and then they mess you about’, Ian complains behind her. ‘We’re wasting our time lads’, he goes on, and then louder, ‘Amateurs, amateurs’. It is brilliant TV, and let’s be honest, much better and more memorable than if they’d just played Made Of Stone. 

Forty Minutes Of Justin Robertson Remixes

A few of Justin Robertson’s early 90s remixes today, chunky beats and tempos, samples and trumpets- lots of trumpets- and indie bands transformed into dancefloor monsters. Ideal for the spring sunshine that has finally arrived this weekend in this part of the world. 

Forty Minutes Of Justin Robertson Remixes

• The Sugarcubes: Birthday (Justin Robertson 12″ Mix)
• The Stone Roses: Waterfall (Justin Robertson’s Mix)
• Bjork: Big Time Sensuality (Justin Robertson Lionrock Wigout) 
• Lionrock: Packet Of Peace (No More Fucking Trumpets)
• Yargo: The Love Revolution (Justin Robertson’s Scream Team Remix)
• Inspiral Carpets: Caravan (No Windscreen Mix)

Justin’s remix of Birthday by The Sugarcubes turns singular Icelandic post- punk oddness into seven minutes of dub loveliness. Released on vinyl in 1992 along with remixes from Jim and William Reid and Tommy D.

I was of the opinion once that remixes of songs by The Stone Roses were totally unnecessary. I’ve come round to some of them, not least this remix of Waterfall, Reni’s drums replaced by a skippy drumbeat, some echo- laden cymbal splashes and Ian’s voice sitting above the music with John’s guitar drizzled on top.

Big Time Sensuality was inescapable in 1993, not least in Manchester’s clubs and bars, and enjoyed every time. I met my wife on the dancefloor at Paradise Factory dancing to it. Justin’s remix, in his Lionrock guise, was a big hitter too, a slo- mo groove, with those massive trumpets and Bjork’s barely contained sense of gleeful abandon.

Justin, Mark Stagg and rapper MC Buzz B were Lionrock. Packet Of Peace was their 1993 12″. The remix here is Justin’s own Lionrock remix of Lionrock and clearly by the title,  he’d had enough of his signature trumpet sound by this point. I can keep enjoying those trumpets ad infinitum.

Yargo were Manchester’s best kept secret, an urban funk/ soul/ blues group graced by the honeyed voice of Basil Clarke who are probably best known for their song of the same name being the title music to Tony Wilson’s Other Side Of Midnight, a semi- legendary music programme from the late 80s (which The Stone Roses appeared on, playing Waterfall- see above). The Love Revolution came out as a 12″ in 1990 with co- vocals by guest singer Zoe Griffin and samples the drums from Fool’s Gold. Yargo’s 1987 album Bodybeat is something of a lost classic. The follow up, 1989’s Communicate, didn’t manage to crossover outside Manchester but is (again,) one of the period’s lost gems. As is this remix

I posted this Justin Robertson remix of Inspiral Carpets a couple of weeks ago, a 1991 acid house banger complete with the ‘you play consciousness expanding material’ vocal sample and general ’91 madness. A numbered 12″ vinyl release in a run of 10, 000. 10, 000!

Not All Roses

I’m interrupting the regular Saturday Theme series this week for an account of an event I went to on Thursday night, an event which started only two hours after the announcement of the death of the Queen (which had some strange parallels that occurred to me as I walked home). Dave Haslam- DJ, writer, journalist, man abut town- has been writing a series of mini- books over the last few years, published by Confingo, an independent publishing house based in West Didsbury. The books fit in your pocket and are a quick read, more an essay than a full length book and in Dave’s words ‘tell stories that haven’t been told’. All You Need Is Dynamite deals with a terrorist cell based in Moss Side in 1971 linked to the Angry Brigade. Another deals with Sylvia Plath and the few weeks she spent in Paris in 1956. We Are The Youth tells the story of Keith Haring’s adventures in New York’s nightclub world and Searching For Love deals the truths and rumours concerning the six month period Courtney Love spent in Liverpool in the early 80s. His latest book is called Not All Roses, the life and times of Stephen Cresser aka Cressa, the man who was the fifth Stone Rose, an ever present in their live performances and photo shoots in the 1989- 90 period, where the band went from being local heroes to a phenomenon. Dave has arranged a run of A Conversation With Cressa events, one being up the road from me in Stretford at head, a bar in a former bank on the Chester Road facing side of Stretford Arndale. 

Cressa has quite the story to tell and over a series of interviews and conversations Dave pulled it together. Cressa grew up in Firswood, a mile north of Stretford and became a member of the Happy Mondays road crew, a Hacienda face, the man who danced on stage with The Roses and operated John Squire’s FX pedals. In the mid 90s he tried to get his own group- Bad Man Wagon- off the ground and failed trying (Dave said in his intro this was almost what the book was about, the band that didn’t make it whose story is as interesting as the ones that did). More recently Cressa became homeless and addicted to heroin, begging on the streets of the city centre and this is where the public conversation begins, Cressa speaking openly, honestly and passionately about the situation he got himself into. Cressa is a livewire, Dave asking questions, being the butt of the jokes at times, steering Cressa back towards the story and keeping the freewheeling conversation on track. 

Cressa talks of his first musical experiences, albums by The Stranglers, and the time in the 80s when he first encounters and becomes friends with the people who would several years later become magazine front cover stories. On scooter club runs he meets Ian Brown and John Squire and they become firm friends. At the Hacienda, at a time when a crowd of two hundred people was considered a good turn out, he meets members of Happy Mondays and starts to go with them when they play gigs outside the city, the man in the back of the van who eventually gets paid to carry amps and instruments into and out of gig venues. He speaks warmly about Derek, Shaun and Paul Ryder’s dad, the man who was the band’s one man road crew. He talks about John Squire giving Cressa the job of operating his guitar pedals, a job that seems unnecessary in many ways as most guitarists operate their pedals themselves with their feet- he thanks John for doing this and says that when it came to it there was no choice between staying with the Mondays and joining the Roses, it was The Stone Roses every time. Cressa introduces them to some of the musical influences that would hone their sound, 60s psychedelia, Jimi Hendrix, The Nazz, The Rain Parade. The three way friendship between Ian, John and Cressa comes across as the glue that held the group together in the late 80s. He then talks about how after the gig at Glasgow Green, 9th June 1990, that was it- the band stopped functioning. No more gigs, no more records for five years and Cressa suddenly out of the set up. 

As well as the heavier serious stuff- heroin addiction, homelessness, generation defining guitar bands and the way that they blew it after having it all- Cressa, emotions always close to the surface, is also witty, sparky and warm, still able to talk affectionately about the good times. He appears with The Stone Roses on Tony Wilson’s late night, north west only music programme The Other Side Of Midnight, the band’s first TV appearance with the group in their cocky prime playing Waterfall, their dreamiest moment. Cressa by this point is wearing flares, a sartorial pioneer of the bell bottomed jeans in Manchester. In the clip the rest of the group are cool as you like, looking like a 60s/ late 80s street gang, but definitely not wearing flares. Cressa is dancing behind John’s amp, doing the loose limbed rolling shoulders shuffle, his wide legged trousers hidden from view. Six months later, as Cressa grins ruefully at Head, they were all wearing them, Ian in famously 22″ bell bottomed jeans. 

There was an interview in the NME around that time, when The Roses were making their seemingly effortless ascent. In ’89 they often came across as a political band, talking about lemons as protection against CS gas as sued by riot police, the Paris riots of Mai ’68, anti- monarchical and anti- establishment. They placed great store in being against the monarchy. In the interview they talked about the ravens at the Tower Of London and the myth that if the ravens leave the tower, England would fall. Ian (or John) mentions wanting to be at the Tower, shooting the ravens. The interview then goes onto the subject of trousers and their width- in the 80s flares were a big deal, they had been so unfashionable for so long that wearing them was a statement. ‘Flares’, one of them says in the interview, ‘are as important as England falling actually’. 

Their debut album came out in early May 1989 and they toured extensively to support it, Cressa there every night, part of the gang, the man who gave them a strong part of their look, dancing away behind John Squire. When you flipped the record over, side two opened with this.

Elizabeth My Dear

And here we are, several decades later. 

Scooters, flares, homelessness, heroin, cough medicine, the Festival of The Tenth Summer, albums by The Stranglers, the Hacienda, Bez, Joe Strummer… you can find it all in the book here priced only eight pounds. 

Another former Stone Rose present at Head was Andy Couzens, another man who suddenly and unexpectedly found himself an- ex Stone Rose. Andy took his guitar and went off to form The High. I had a brief chat with him, told him how much I liked his records and said I saw The High play at Liverpool Poly in 1990, a gig he said he remembered. Talking to Dave afterwards we both mentioned the Newcastle gig on the same tour where singer John Matthews was taken ill and Cressa, by this point touring with The High, was persuaded to go onstage and fill in on vocals. The gig ended in what the NME described as a riot. They never quite got the sales to match their still wonderful sounding 1990 debut album, Somewhere Soon, a record with three shimmering guitar pop singles in Box Set Go, Up And Down and Take Your Time. This song, chiming guitars and reverb soaked vocals, is one of the period’s lost gems. 

Take Your Time

I Hear My Song Begin To Say

Ten years ago last night I found myself standing in the packed Parr Hall in Warrington along with about one thousand other lucky souls watching the return of The Stone Roses. In November 2011 they announced their reformation at a press conference and then three sold out shows at Heaton Park in June 2012. Suddenly, on the morning of 23rd May 2012 they dropped word that the first 1000 people who arrived at the Parr Hall booking office with a piece of Roses memorabilia (a record or CD or a t- shirt) would get a wristband to the warm up show. If there’s one thing the group excelled at first time around it was creating an event, gigs that were out of the ordinary (Blackpool, Spike Island, Ally Pally), a group capable of doing something  a little different (blowing the sound up live on BBC, throwing paint around the offices of their former record company, signing to a major label and then seemingly doing nothing for five years). The gig at Parr Hall fell into that kind of territory, for sheer unexpectedness if nothing else. 

I was at work and for some reason got home fairly early, opened the email, got changed and straight back into the car and drove over to Warrington, not expecting to get a wristband but at least giving it a go. I parked up near the centre of town and crossing a square heading towards Parr Hall a man younger than me, heading the other way, spoke to me as we passed each other- ‘the wristbands have all gone mate’. I nodded and said something in reply. Then he said, ‘I’ve got one but can’t go. Make me an offer’. I paused for thought, wondering what he thought was fair/ derisory. I had no cash on me so it would involve a trip to a cashpoint whatever I offered. 

‘Twenty quid?’ 

‘Done’.

And with that I got the cash, handed it over and he wriggled the wristband off his wrist and I slipped it on to mine. 

Standing around the square outside Parr Hall I had a slight sense of disbelief that it was actually happening, that this was some kind of elaborate prank. The pubs around the square began to fill up, people standing outside in the warm May sunshine. It occurred to me that almost everyone waiting to enter the hall had no idea at all when they woke up that morning that they would be seeing The Stone Roses that night. It seemed unreal. I texted a couple of people and then bumped into one of my brothers and his then partner, both with wristbands. Across the square I spotted friend of the band, journalist and Membrane John Robb plus former dancer/ FX man Cressa. It started to seem more likely this was actually happening. The hall doors opened and we filed in. No support band, a DJ spinning house records. The crowd downstairs nodding heads and beginning to shuffle and jig about. The room was full of expectancy, a buzz you could feel. When the DJ played Strings Of Life the energy levels rose again, the crowd upstairs on the balcony bouncing. A camera crew (Shane Meadows it turned out) moved around the room. On stage, a familiar looking drum kit, twin bass drums with lemons printed on the front, a bass amp covered in Toby jugs and guitar amps to the right. The Supremes’ Stoned Love began to blast out of the PA and eventually a roar as four middle aged men took the stage, Mani entering like he’d just scored the winner at Wembley, John Squire with his face semi- obscured by his fringe and heading for his guitar, Reni in a home made head dress taking his seat behind the drums, and front and centre Ian Brown, pink Stone Roses t- shirt and jacket, waving and telling everyone to put their phones away, ‘You’ll miss making the memory of this while you filming this’ or words to that effect. Shane Meadows film (Made Of Stone) caught their arrival on stage and the audience reaction, and then the beginning of I Wanna Be Adored. It captures it all very well. 

They played for just under an hour, the set largely based around the first album and the surrounding singles and B-sides, kicking in with the long bass- led intro to I Wanna Be Adored and Squire’s liquid guitar lines drizzled over the top. As the bassline bumps along the crowd started to bounce with it, instantly picking up on what was happening. At the end of the song, as it faded out in a wave of guitar noise, Ian waved to his parents sitting up in the balcony, a huge grin saying ‘look, we did it, we’re back’. Then it was straight into Mersey Paradise ,the sun dappled psychedelia of 1989 spinning round the by now manic, hyper crowd, the song and crowd surfacing together to sing the refrain, ‘you see it in the sea/ river cools where I belong’. A singalong, beefed up Sally Cinnamon. The epic cool guitar lines of Made Of Stone. The bedsit indie of Sugar Spun Sister and Where Angels Play. It all seems like a dream now- never mind that it was ten years ago, the fact it happened, in a small venue like the ones they played back in ’89, seems unreal (moreso given the next time I saw them was with 80, 000 other people at Heaton Park and the one after that in a football stadium- they’d given up on out of the ordinary venues by 2016, taking the safer route). Reni’s drumming was less fluid and rolling than it had been back in the late 80s possibly, the drums being played harder and with more punch- two bass drums would do that. Mani was grinning throughout the set, his basslines a key part of so many Roses songs. Squire his familiar inexpressive self, peeling off guitar lines and riffs nonchalantly as if thinking bout something else entirely. Shoot You Down was a pause for breath, the bouncing up and down calming a little for the hushed singalong part, the crowd caught somewhere between disbelief and delirium. Only two songs from The Second Coming made it into the set- Tightrope, subsequently dropped (Ian found it too hard to sing apparently- you can probably insert your own joke here), and set closer Love Spreads. In between the twin highlights of the gig songwise- the dizzying, bouncing, spellbinding psychedelic guitar pop of Waterfall with the crowd singing the guitar line to accompany Squire as he plays it during the end section of the song and then She Bangs The Drums, Mani’s instantly recognisable bassline driving the song, guitar chords sprayed out, drums punching along and Ian grinning this way through. They finished with Love Spreads, just eleven songs in under an hour, no Fools Gold, no I Am The Resurrection, no Elephant Stone or This Is The One (all played later on during the massive reunion shows). They had to keep something in reserve I guess. No encore either, lights up straight away and everyone spilling out into the Warrington night, pinching themselves, hugging, unable to quite believe what they’d just seen. I stood waiting for my brother to emerge and a group passing by invited me back to theirs (I didn’t go by the way)- it was that kind of night. 

She Bangs The Drums

A month later they played Heaton Park, three nights of 80, 000 people, all sold out, with full support line ups and fireworks at the end as Resurrection faded out. It was good fun, the band played really well and gave a full set, with a fifteen minute version of Fools Gold, the song twisting and turning itself inside out, and the traditional set closer of I Am The Resurrection with the full on extended funk/ rock outro.  The whole thing felt like a celebration. It was great for people who didn’t see them first time round to get the chance, a chance for others to relive the glory days of youth (which I suppose is what heritage rock is really or at least partly for), good for the band to get a payday (after being screwed over by Silvertone on album sales especially). At one point at Heaton Park I turned around to look behind me (we were fairly near the stage). There must have been 60, 000 people behind me, stretching all the way back as far as the fence hundreds of yards away. I wondered how much they were getting out out of it, whether seeing bands in big fields where you end up watching the screens as much as the stage, is ever that good. I’ve no doubt that seeing them at Parr Hall took the edge of Heaton Park for me- it was good, I wouldn’t have missed it, but Parr Hall- the unexpectedness of it, the intimacy, the excitement and energy of the crowd and the band- was something else. I hope that doesn’t sound elitist, or ‘I was there and you weren’t’- it’s not meant to. I know I really lucked my in to Parr Hall, I could easily have not passed the man who sold me the wristband and moped around for a while before either driving home or deciding to stand outside the venue and listen from there, almost but not quite at the gig.