7ish km - 39:38
Not going to write a great deal about running as I started writing this in my head on the way round...
The Stone Roses achieved something possibly never done before when they took to the stage at Heaton Park on Friday to a crowd of 75,000 of which I was one. A band from a previous generation had returned and changed the game. Everybody interested in music has an opinion pretty much either for or against the band and their return. The reviews have, overwhelmingly but not entirely, been positive by those who were there and the criticisms from those who weren't (why would you go if you didn't like them anyway?) were of the usual variety - "Ian Brown can't sing", "I watched it on youtube and it sounded terrible" etc. The key to this, of course, is that if you were there, at that LIVE event you experienced something pretty special.
I was there. It was special. I didn't get all emotional and nostalgic as I maybe had expected to. I cried when Brian Wilson took to the stage a couple of years back so I do have those kind of moments, trust me. It was special for many reasons. The Stone Roses were my absolute heroes, musically and sartorially, back from late 1989 to1995 and the release of Second Coming, which formed the soundtrack to my run today. I, like a lot of people, had initially been disappointed with the album although it undeniably had its moments. It seemed at the time like they'd missed the boat with their comeback and music and times had moved on. They looked and sounded a bit ordinary or predictable compared to the "four teenage Jesus Christs" of 1990. Seeing them at the T&C in Leeds, on the Second Coming tour was, surprisingly, amazingly good though. Reni had departed but Robbie Maddix seemed to be filling in fine and the sound was big, loud, rocky and tight. It is still in my top ten gigs of all time. I was a little, but not overly, heartbroken when it continued to fall apart though and John Squire left soon after. The notorious Reading Festival appearance may as well have been a different band. I'd lost faith before then anyway.
I did get a few palpitations as Stoned Love by The Supremes played at Heaton Park on Friday and it was obvious they were about to take to the stage. The big question was always going to be "will it be Reni?". A much publicised event from a few days previously had left the future of the tour and the band in doubt. They had played gigs since though so it seemed at least on the surface that it was all a storm in a teacup. The huge screens flashed an image of the man himself with his odd new headgear - a cloth dreadlock wig - backstage about to step on. They did. They played. The sound was pretty dodgy from the start and in the rare moments I wasn't singing along it was clear Ian was struggling to himself. No change there then. To be fair the previous times I'd seen them this hadn't even been raised as an issue in any media. He didn't sound like the records on which his voice was often little more than a whisper and had a fairly boomy, sometimes atonal sound but I always put it down to monitor issues or having to fight over the sound of the band. What the haters can't grasp though or refuse to accept is that for some reason he transcends all of his shortcomings. Like Lennon before him, who by many accounts was a pretty nasty piece of work but was able to still create something people connected with. If anything the criticism of Ian's voice has only caused fans to rally around him more and help him out.
They took about half an hour to warm up, sort the sound out and find a groove but when they did it was like the years fell away. Reni was astoundingly good and, although Robbie had done what now seemed a workman like job of filling in this was a completely different feel. Every song was loose and funky in places. John faced him regularly to bounce off him and he was just a whirl of arms and complex driving rhythms. I got into the band Can off the back of a review of Fools Gold that referenced them and there was definitely a healthy dollop of motorik incessance about the rhythm section but within the structure of pop and rock songs.
John had been my second guitar hero after Johnny Marr although even I had to admit his overstating of everrything on Second Coming fell well short of the subtle and intricate work on their classic debut. Constant soloing or flashy technique does not make sophistication. The band have quite possibly agreed on this point as, although there were plenty of extended "jams" at the gig there were only two songs from Second Coming - "Ten Storey Love Song" - a tightly structured pop/rock ballad and "Love Spreads" a dirty, Zep-esque, bluesy funk number on which, remarkably and brilliantly, Ian rapped over the end of. His voice never sounded better throughout the gig without the pressure of a tune!
As I began writing this I, perhaps somewhat bombastically, stated that they had changed the game. When they first broke through in 1989 it was the tail end of a decade of either shiny aspirational pop a la Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet etc or increasingly twee indie music which lacked any real courage. The Smiths had broken up in 1987 but there was enough of their sound in The Roses debut to bring a lot of their fans into the fold. When I first saw and heard the paint spattered first album I was reminded of not only bands like The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Smiths but also stuff I had grown up listening to - Simon and Garfunkel, Beatles, Byrds etc. It was a distillation of the past 30 years of guitar pop. And there was an arty backwards track on it. People now say they are and always were conservative and safe but, come on, a backwards song on an album of guitar pop? Not an obvious pitch for the charts is it? The crowd that followed them back then were not of the laddish shape that came through under the influence of Oasis (and who were, surprisingly, but thankfully absent at Heaton Park) but art students, first wave indie kids and intelligent folk with an increasing number of rave fans. They were not overtly laddish in their behaviour and espoused for want of a better phrase "Peace and Love". You did get the feeling they might pin you down with a gun to your head to get it though and the first album is peppered with an undercurrent of threatened violence but it's mostly politically charged. The front cover references the Paris student riots of 1968, Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns and the moddish styling of the 1960s in the black and white photos within. It is of the streets yes but let's face it the vast majority of "lads" don't spend the equivalent of a full time job every week writing and rehearsing songs which reference the bible and call for The Queen to be decapitated. The Gallagher brothers were/are pulling our legs. The Roses, on their return have, again moved the goalposts in terms of what a reunion is or can be. It does, beyond the scrutiny of the press, seem genuine. Ian and Reni, far from having fallen out, left the stage wrapped around each other in a brotherly hug. That was the moment I nearly cried. The music industry has changed a huge amount since 1990. Festivals that sprang up or grew in the wake of the independently organised Spike Island have now become overly-corporate and bloated with soulless "entertainment" acts. The decline of the record industry has left us with nothing new to shout about. It should really have been a much younger band creating the buzz these gigs did and, yes, dividing opinion as these have. Everything will now, in some small way or other, be a reaction to the return of The Stone Roses. They may well fall apart and never record a note but their eschewing of the vast majority of Second Coming and constructing a sprawling set around earlier material suggests they are aiming to recapture some of that original alchemy. They were much more than the sum of their parts at this gig and that is why they were special to begin with. There is a band that sounds like them and plays better live and has a singer that can hold a tune. They're called The Bluetones. Are they a better band? Would people get this worked up about them? No. I like The Bluetones. I love The Roses.
Oh and Second Coming. It does have its moments. "Begging You", their last single, is a beast of a record. The Prodigy playing Fools Gold in Hell. Not sure about the video though. Think they must have all given up by this point.
Begging You - The Stone Roses
