Stone Roses

Various bands have grabbed me by the ears over the years.



In my mid-teens, I got totally and obsessively into The Beatles. I could sing every nuance and "huh" and "hey".

Then as I got into my late teens, I went down a fairly typical stoner route of Floyd/Led Zep/Doors etc. Then I met Dave, who got me into more Avant Garde stuff (at least to me and my small town circle of mates). A mix of old stuff like the Velvet Underground and 13th Floor Elevators, and contemporary things like Julian Cope, REM, Camper Van Beethoven, and Pixies.

And Stone Roses.

I don't remember the exact occasion, but I know how it must have been.

We'd have been out to the pub (Probably the Greenland Fisheries Hotel) and would have come back to Dave's house and exchanged pleasantries with his mum and stepdad, really wanting them to go to bed so that we could start skinnning up. I'd get all blissed out on the sofa while Dave put some sounds on his high spec turntable. I know that the first time I heard it, I was instantly smitten. I'd have demanded to record it onto a cassette, and I played it on my walkman, pretty much every day as I cycled the ten miles to work or college or whatever it was I was doing then. It was 1989 or 1990. I was 21/22 years old.

Now 20 years have gone by. Stone Roses are reforming. People are striking their enthusiastic/cynical (delete as appropriate) poses on the discussion boards I visit.

Personally, I don't really care. I never got to see them live. I could never have afforded to buy a ticket for their famous Spike Island gig, and although I've seen that gig billed as "The woodstock for the baggie generation", the people I know that went to it weren't all that impressed with it at the time. So nothing has changed. I still can't really afford a ticket, although Manchester is not too hard to get to from Wirral.

But wow! It's 20 odd years since I sat on that couch, all blissed out, while John Squire's chords rolled over me, under me, and through me. Half my lifetime.

A generation earlier, the young adults  were being wow'ed by Sgt Pepper's lonely hearts club. I wonder how they felt in 1987, when the lyric, "It was 20 years ago today" caused a resurgence in interest.


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