The Stone Roses: War and Peace

by Spence, Simon

  ‘These issues come out and destroy bands,’ said Garner. ‘That’s pretty much what happened. We had a rehearsal one day and there was an almighty kick-off. Andy and Reni quit and it was left with us three in the room, John, Ian and myself. I said to them, I think you’re really out of order because all along everyone’s said we’re all in this together, we’re all brothers. It soured everything and destroyed the idea of us as a single unit.’

  Couzens blamed Jones, who he felt was trying to take control of the band by divide and rule, and had misled Brown and Squire over how publishing worked. Nonetheless, he felt Brown and Squire had turned their backs on the contributions he and Reni had made. ‘Squire/Brown didn’t reflect the way we worked or had ever worked,’ he said. ‘As I’ve said, no Reni, no Roses. From a musical point of view, Reni’s a genius, inspirational in everything he does. And in the rehearsal room when we were working on stuff his ideas were brilliant. John and I always worked really well together. Sometimes just the two of us sat down to work songs out. It was an instinctive thing between the two guitars.’

  The residual resentment over the songwriting credits never completely went away, yet Couzens and Reni were finally persuaded to rejoin. ‘Reni and I had put so much work in up to this point, it was our lives, so you don’t want to walk away. But I did feel quite hurt by what went on.’ Then Reni acted the grown-up. ‘As things started getting more political it was Reni who sat back and started saying to people, Hang on a minute, we’re all in this together, aren’t we?’ said Jones.

  Before ‘So Young’ was released the Roses were back together for a gig on 4 July, with Doctor & The Medics in London at the Fulham Greyhound. The band didn’t get paid for the show after Reni walked into the manager’s office and pissed in his bin. Clive Jackson, the singer with Doctor & The Medics, said the Roses and their crew turned up for the gig in Couzens’ Chevrolet truck as a force to be reckoned with. ‘I remember the Roses’ lighting technician [Greenough] produced a great big sheath knife and started to cut a tin to put over the lights to create shadows,’ he said. ‘I could see how serious they were. Ian was confrontational on stage. It’s just that pose he had: I’m hard enough to take the entire crowd on. It was great to watch. There was an aura about the whole party – a sense that this is going somewhere.’

  ‘Being in the bubble I didn’t stop to think of how we appeared,’ said Garner. ‘We never went out to be intimidating, but because of the nature of the posse around us perhaps we did appear that way.’

  The band’s road crew would become integral to the legend of the Roses. Greenough operated the lights and Adge was the general ‘Mr Fixer’. Even now, playing a series of one-offs when they didn’t need a tour manager, it was obvious this would be Adge’s domain. Alongside these two was Slim, a former New Order roadie who shared a flat with Greenough. His real name was Paul Haley and he would form the backbone of the crew for the next three years.

  Slim was particularly impressed by Reni. ‘He was the first thing that opened my eyes to the band,’ he said. ‘When I saw him drumming in the band, I was like, Jesus, you’ve got a drummer here; the way he played it and changed it, did a bit of jazz, went into the reggae thing; his whole performance. Reni was a star, an entertainer in his own right.’ Even during soundchecks Reni would leave people with their mouths agape. ‘At these early gigs it was always Reni people would talk about afterwards, saying, Where did you find that drummer?’ said Garner.

  Steve Adge organized the Roses’ next show on Saturday, 20 July 1985 and it would go down in folklore. The ticket read ‘Warehouse 1 – The Flower Show’ and advised ‘11 p.m. till very late’. Admission was again £2. It was not the first Roses gig in their hometown of Manchester, but it felt, said Garner, like the ‘first proper one’. Adge had hired a disused British Railways arch near Piccadilly Station, on Fairfield Street. He told the authorities he was organizing a video shoot with a band miming to an audience. It was the first warehouse party in Manchester. The Roses’ crew helped to crudely whitewash the walls and build the staging. Bruce Mitchell from Manchester Light & Stage supplied the lights and PA. There was not enough power, so the ever-resourceful Greenough risked life and limb plumbing straight into a streetlight outside.

  ‘It seemed like an ace idea: rather than play the International on a damp Wednesday night, hire a venue that isn’t a venue, invite everyone you know, we can go on any time we want,’ said Garner. ‘We soundchecked and went back to Ian’s and then went back at midnight, so we didn’t have a clue whether there was going to be five people there or fifty.’ Although the exact location of the party was not revealed until the day, the first ‘Flower Show’ attracted well over the 200 people Adge had expected. He had timed the show to start late and had people handing out fliers outside nightclubs, so there was a mass influx from places like the Haçienda.

  The crowd was a bewildering mix of youth tribes. Among the punks, goths, Perry boys and skinheads, stand-out faces included Mani, Stephen ‘Cressa’ Cresser, Johnny Marr and Andy Rourke of The Smiths. Adge’s Hyde contingent mixed with people from Liverpool and the Swedish girls, who had been staying at Couzens’ parents’ house. There were no portable loos, bar, planning application, licence, or health and safety, just a little van making frequent trips back and forth between the venue and Spirit to replenish the cash-and-carry beer supplies.

  ‘The situation got a little crazy because they miscalculated as to how everyone would react,’ said Brown. ‘We went on stage just as the tension was about to explode and we managed to defuse the bomb with our set but it was touch and go for a while.’ The Roses went on at 1.30 a.m. and played their short set with an overwhelming energy, anger and excitement that left Reni close to collapse. ‘After the gig he had what was tantamount to a fit,’ said Jones. ‘We had to hold him down in the van. It was incredible, he was dehydrated and so hyped, he literally was shaking.’

  The party ended around 5 a.m. Adge lost over £200, but planned to organize similar shows on a monthly basis, each housed in a different location. For the Roses, the Flower Show continued to build the buzz leading up to the release of their debut single. ‘It was where we got our following,’ Brown said. It had been a huge success, allowing Jones to brag of the band’s policy of ‘playing secret dates as and when they feel’.

  Manchester was well served with independent publications such as Pulp, Muze and City Life, and, with the release of ‘So Young’/‘Tell Me’ imminent on 17 August, they were broadly supportive of the Roses – as was Tony Michaelides at Piccadilly Radio. Paula Greenwood interviewed the band for Muze. She was still working for Michaelides but was also now working at Manchester’s main independent record store, Piccadilly Records. She had been impressed by the warehouse show. ‘They created this whole thing around them that they were different from any other band in Manchester,’ said Greenwood. ‘They had that attitude that they were going to be massive and there was no doubt about it. Ian in particular was incredibly confident about their music and future success.’

  Squire had created the single’s cover art, a colourful collage structure made up of an assortment of broken glass and electronic innards. Inspired by the Sex Pistols’ sleeves, abstract expressionism and New York art, he wanted the cover art to be as dynamic as the music. ‘I knew exactly how it should look,’ he said. ‘If people know what you’re doing, what you think, what you sound like, then you should give them all of it yourself. You shouldn’t have other people doing your sleeves and telling you how your videos should be, dressing you. It should be you. It should be complete.’

  To support the release of the single, the Roses played two shows: at the Marquee in London and in Manchester at the Haçienda. On both dates they played with psychedelic revival band Playn Jayn. The Marquee was a venue they’d been banned from earlier in the year but ‘they didn’t realize the second time it was us again,’ said Garner. The Roses’ thirst for attention, specifically another incident involving Brown and the venue’s equipment, led to them being banne
d again. ‘How many bands can say they got banned from the Marquee twice?’ said Garner.

  Martin Hannett took control of the band’s live sound at the Haçienda on Thursday 15 August. Alongside the Haçienda regulars and the Roses’ small following there were many among the crowd eager to see if the band could deliver on the hype. Among them were pop band the Thompson Twins, who retreated to the basement bar as Hannett pumped the volume up to ear-splitting levels. ‘We used to finish with “Tell Me” pretty much all the time and that was Ian’s cue to jump in the crowd,’ said Garner. ‘He was in the crowd and there were a lot of people dancing and getting off on it.’ That night at least three major label A&R men attempted to beat down the Roses’ dressing-room door; none was successful.

  Thin Line had pressed up 1,200 copies of ‘So Young’/‘Tell Me’. Jones used 200 for promotion and the rest immediately sold out. Piccadilly Records sold 500 copies and many of the other 500 were snapped up in London by fans of Hannett’s work. Thin Line had splashed out on music press ads and Sounds gave the release a prominent push. John Peel played it on his Radio 1 show and the single had climbed to number 2 in the Melody Maker indie singles charts by September. But it was in Manchester where the single was the biggest hit, played in clubs including Cloud Nine, the Polytechnic Friday night disco and the Ritz, the city’s popular indie club where DJ John Gannon was a friend of the band.

  The Roses were not entirely satisfied with their debut. They were happy to have a record out, but the tracks had been in their set for almost a year now and they felt musically they had already outgrown them. ‘I never wanted to hear “So Young” again,’ said Garner. ‘I didn’t really like the vocal on it and there was no groove to it. It was pieces stuck together.’ Brown was delighted with the buzz the single created in Manchester, in the clubs and record shops, but said it was ‘dreadful angst-ridden rock … It wasn’t good enough; seriously, it was shit. We hated that record the day we heard it.’ For Reni, ‘it was alright at the time … We were all fresh faced kids. It was the first time we’d ever been in a studio and that’s how we were; it was powerful and raw. All our gigs were powerful and raw. All our rehearsals were powerful and raw.’

  By coincidence, or some said deliberately, Factory released the debut record by the Happy Mondays (an EP called Forty Five but more commonly referred to as Delightful) on the same day as ‘So Young’/‘Tell Me’. It was the beginning of what would become a long symbiotic relationship between the two bands. Initially it was the Mondays – already being promoted by Factory as ‘the Happy Hooligans’ – who exerted the greater influence. Inspired, Squire would soon invest in a wah-wah pedal that would affect the Roses’ sound dramatically. ‘The Mondays had a massive impact on the Roses,’ said Garner. ‘If you listen to the stuff the Roses were doing before the Mondays arrived, I think you can hear us change.’ There were many incongruent links between the two bands, but it was Stephen ‘Cressa’ Cresser who’d be the main bridge between the two groups.

  Cressa was now a regular face at Roses’ rehearsals, but as the Roses gigged sporadically, playing fewer than twenty-five times between now and the end of 1987, he also followed the Mondays, becoming a regular member of their crew. Cressa had been mates with Squire and Brown since their scooter days and had introduced the Roses to the Love album Forever Changes and other 1960s psychedelic rock acts. Alongside Cressa’s taste for psych rock, he mined deep into the American Paisley Underground scene (name-checking bands such as The Three O’Clock and Plan 9). On the contemporary British music scene, both Cressa and Squire rated The Jesus and Mary Chain.

  ‘They were a big influence, they really opened my eyes,’ said Squire of the Mary Chain. ‘They were like a reconnection with the music I’d initially got into. I could hear The Beach Boys in those chord changes and melodies. I could hear The Shangri-Las and The Ronettes and it made melodies – pop melodies – relevant again. After listening to the Mary Chain I found I could start to write proper songs. We had no pop sensibility in our music until I heard the Mary Chain; they showed me there was a way of combining what I loved about punk rock and what I loved about The Beach Boys.’

  The Mary Chain’s drummer, Bobby Gillespie, also fronted Primal Scream, whose debut 1985 single ‘All Fall Down’ had also made an impression on Cressa and Squire, who had seen the band play at the Haçienda. Cressa spent a lot of time at Howard Jones’s flat, digging through his records. ‘He’d be listening to Steve Miller, Todd Rundgren and The Byrds, and a lot of that stuff started to influence Johnny [Squire],’ Jones said. ‘They wore out my copy of Forever Changes.’

  Cressa was a regular at the Haçienda (the No Funk night on Tuesdays was a particular favourite), where he formed part of a small, stand-out clique that included ‘Little Martin’ Pendergast and Al Smith, who would also become a key part of the Roses’ crew. Along with Mike Pickering, Little Martin was an influential DJ at the Haçienda, and in August 1985 he hosted a night there called ‘The Summer of Love’. ‘Kaftans not compulsory,’ read the flyer. Acid, 1960s psychedelic rock, plus modern electro and disco, made for an alluring and pioneering night, three years ahead of the 1988 acid house/Ecstasy-inspired ‘Summer of Love’ in London clubs. Cressa, Little Martin and Smith were also ahead of the curve in sporting flared jeans. ‘Big ridiculous flares,’ said Garner. ‘It turned everybody’s heads.’ The Roses would become intrinsically linked to flared jeans during their 1989 heyday, but the genesis of the idea can be traced back to this period.

  The real pioneer of this mid-1980s flares revival was Phil Saxe, the manager of the Happy Mondays. With his brother, he ran a stall called Gangway on the market in the Arndale Centre in the city centre. Prompted by a request for flares from a gang of teenage girls in 1983, Saxe had sourced dead stock from firms like Levi’s and Wranglers. The Happy Mondays had been the first lads to pick up on the look, coupling 25-inch flares with paisley or flowery shirts and little goatee beards. Cressa had run with the idea.

  The style-conscious Squire paid particular attention to these developments. It was precision stuff: 18-inch Wrangler cords quickly became desirable, and the 25-inch flares passé – although this did not deter Cressa, who said flares represented ‘a philosophy’. Squire wore baggies bought from the Saxe brother’s new shop called Somewear In Manchester, which had opened in the Arndale in 1985. ‘They became the next big thing,’ said Saxe. ‘They were 16-inch bottoms but a bit baggy on the leg. They were the opposite of flares and the Mondays led the way with that as well.’

  5.

  Hannett

  Martin Hannett was a producer of immense vision and talent, with a repertoire of technological inventions in his arsenal. But his idiosyncrasies in the studio, ballooning weight and non-too-discreet drug addiction were having repercussions as he walked the fine line between genius and madness.

  The Roses recorded and mixed what was expected to be their debut album for Thin Line with Hannett at Strawberry Studios in Stockport during six sessions starting on 27 August 1985 and concluding on 1 September. The sessions started at 9 p.m. and would run until 9 a.m. when the BBC Philharmonic would arrive to begin their day’s recording. Hannett was not the easiest producer to work with at the best of times, but the Roses would experience a legend in near meltdown. ‘We caught Martin at the wrong time,’ Brown said. ‘He was a lovely, real nice man, but out to lunch. He was a good laugh but hard to work with.’

  It was difficult to understand for instance why he became obsessed with the way Pete Garner played the bass with a pick. Hannett spent an inordinate amount of time attaching a tiny little microphone to the bassist’s thumb to record just the sound of his plectrum hitting the strings. ‘He spent hours and hours doing that and then mixed it into one of the tracks,’ said Garner. ‘We sat back listening to the track and I said, Martin, I don’t know what you did with that thumb microphone but I can’t hear it. He said, Yeah but you know it’s there.’

  Hannett also insisted on cutting a hole in the roof of the studio to give him access int
o an attic room that he said had a ‘certain sound’ he wanted to capture. He had Slim, who was helping the band with their gear, hump up Reni’s drums, the required microphones and leads, and recorded Reni in the attic. Hannett continued to do so even as the noise leaked out over nearby houses and the police were called. Later, in the film 24 Hour Party People (2002), Hannett would be fictionalized recording the Happy Mondays’ drummer on a roof. In the studio with the Roses was the real source of the story.

  Hannett, whose productions of Joy Division were noted for the strength of their drum sound, spent much time securing the ambience he required to make the most of Reni’s contributions, which would dominate the album. He also had a peculiar way of recording the band’s guitarists. Hannett had Squire and Couzens endlessly play their parts, often hundreds of times. When they were exhausted he’d say, ‘Right, I’ll put the tape on now,’ leaving the guitarists incredulous. ‘Have you not been recording?’ they would ask. ‘No,’ Hannett would smile, ‘I was letting you get warmed up.’

  ‘Martin’s technique was to destroy you completely with relentless retakes,’ said Couzens. ‘His idea was that when he finally put the tape on the only thing that would come out of you would be honest.’ To an extent it worked and amid the walls of noise Hannett created with the Roses’ twin guitars, Squire showed off his growing technique on trademark solos and lead riffs. Many of Hannett’s disconcerting actions were all, perversely, down to his deep love of the Roses. He truly believed the album would be one of his greatest works. He told the band one track they were recording, ‘Trust a Fox’, frightened him with its aggression and intensity like no other band he’d ever recorded. Driven relentlessly by Reni with a harsh guitar sound and intermittent feedback, Brown’s vocals bit hard on the line, ‘I’ll cut your face up as soon as say hello’. ‘Trust a Fox’ was indeed the band at their most feral and potent in this unrefined stage of their career.