NME 24th September 2005 Issue



Tales From The NME Archive


Sunday, May 27, 1990
SPIKE ISLAND
The Stone Roses unify a generation in baggy trousers


In the summer of 1990 The Stone Roses were masters of all they surveyed, and for one special day in May, that kingdom was an industrial wasteland in the arse end of Widnes. Their one-off show at Spike Island would go down as their finest hour. Debut album 'The Stone Roses' had been released 12 months previously, and the string of singles, 'Elephant Stone', 'Made Of Stone' and 'Fools Gold' had made them Britain's favourite band.

Even before their five-year hiatus, The Stone Roses didn't believe in touring. "You'll never see us do a full-scale tour," Ian Brown said. "Four days in and you'd be like a cabbage, going through the motions."

Instead, they played a string of 'event' shows, culminating in a show at London's Alexandra Palace which - ironically - had been criticised for poor sound quality and lacklustre presence.

There was a feeling that the band had something to prove, and the 28,000 capacity Spike Island was to be the parting of the waves (quite literally; it wasn't actually an island at all but a peninsula) for the two tribes of British music fan who had become united under the Roses' singular groove: the indie kids and the rave heads. "I'm not performing, I'm just participating," Brown would say, summing up the spirit of the age. Nowadays he is 'The Greatest', but in 1990, humility was more typical of the singer than his tongue-in-cheek claims to be 'The Resurrection'. Acid house had brought down the division between performer and kid in the crowd, and before Britpop put them back up again, here was a generation of indie stars forced to adapt or die. Support bands would not be booked - instead DJs warmed up the throng to bolster the anti-star spirit. Not that they were above the odd grand gesture: the show was costing the band £400,000 to stage and they didn't expect to make a profit... something else they would have to get used to.

Before the show, though, was the small matter of taking on the world's media at a special conference held on the Saturday afternoon in Manchester's Picadilly Hotel. Press conferences are usually miserable affairs, but the combination of Mancunian swagger and a pissed-up press pack led to fireworks that made this one go down in history. On one side, a press pack fired up to discover whether the band could walk it like they talked it. On the other, a band smart enough to realise that the way to sustain a proper legend was to say not much at all. The whole thing descended into a slanging match, and exchanges like this were typical:

US Journalist: "Do you feel excited about all this around you?"

Ian Brown: "No, just bored. I'm waiting for someone to make me laugh."

US Journalist: "How do you feel about being commercialised? It seems to be against your will."

Mani: "Yeah mate, someone made me wear this (plain green sweater) and I didn't want to wear it. What the fuck are you on about?"

US Journalist: "How do you think American will appreciate your Manchester sarcasm?"

Reni: "With an American accent, I should think."

The following day, as 30,000 people bottle-necked through roads not built for that volume, it was clear to everybody present that this was a 'happening'. The press could have been a million miles away. Gates opened at lunchtime, but people arrived in the morning, starting their own raves before the real one began. When it did, the cream of acid house were on hand: Gary Clail's On-U Soundsystem (featuring one-time Lydon collaborator Jah Wobble), Paul Oakenfold, and to warm up for the main event, NYC DJ Frankie Knuckles, insisting "Manchester vibes in the area!"

Backstage, the slebs were out in force, a roll call of the northwest's usual suspects including Happy Mondays, 808 State, New Order, The Fall, The Charlatans, Ian McCulloch, Primal Scream, The Christians and Nigel Pivaro, better known as Terry Duckworth of Coronation Street. One unfortunate bizzy on crowd control duty was wearing uniform number 808. The band themselves flew in by helicopter (as did NME's James Brown) an hour before showtime. Just after nine, the stage filled with red light and billowing smoke, and Ian, in typically enigmatic form, spoke his only words of the evening: "The time, the time is now, do it now, do it now..." before tearing into 'I Wanna Be Adored' with a dictatorial swagger, never letting go until the final spazzout of 'I Am The Resurrection'. In the event, they didn't exactly pull off the greatest show of their careers, but it was the greatest night. With 30,000 people and high Merseyside winds, nobody who was there claims to have even been able to hear anything, let alone whether the show was any good, but Spike Island was a different kind of triumph; one of spectacle and spirit.

Obscure B-sides like 'Something's Burning' were played with as much vigour as shout-alongs like 'She Bangs The Drums' and soon-to-be hits like 'One Love'. Plus, the band's occasional freaky dancer, Cressa, was back on board.

NME's Roger Morton was impressed: "Satanic stadium Godhead is something the Roses could easily achieve, once they got their PAs sorted out, but that would be selling their souls to '60s showbiz devils, and the band have their own, participatory, '90s groove to follow. A more approachable, danceable, communal groove." The show climaxed with a £1,000-a-minute firework display as memorable as the performance itself.

Spike Island went down in history, the original 'I Swear I Was There' moment for everyone who was present and thousands more who weren't. The band's spokesman declared the event a massive success: "They really enjoyed it. It was an important show after Ally Pally, but they thought everything went really well from their side."

Superintendent Peter Lloyd telling NME at the time that "things went very well - everyone was in good humour". This was when the Hacienda was at the very end of its glory days, and the town's clubland was soon to descend into 'Gunchester' panic. But one local councillor even admitted: "It could have been a madhouse but in fact it was an island of sanity."

As Roger Morton concluded: "Two hours after the gig's finished the car park is still bottle-necked with traffic. But no-one leans on their horn. Instead, the fans turn up their stereos and stay cool. Some of them even get out and start dancing. Now if only they'd behaved like that at Altamont."

It was a good thing that Spike Island went down as a jewel in the Roses' crown: they wouldn't appear on a British stage again for five years.



Setlist:

I Wanna Be Adored
Elephant Stone
She Bangs The Drums
Shoot You Down
One Love
Sally Cinnamon
Standing Here
Fools Gold
Where Angels Play
Waterfall
Don't Stop
Somethings Burning
Made Of Stone
Elizabeth My Dear
I Am The Resurrection




What it meant to me:

Noel Gallagher,
Oasis
"Spike Island? A cultural watershed, great vibe, shit sound. A pity no-one other than the Fab Five got anything from it."

Lee Gale,
The Longcut
"I heard about it when I got into The Stone Roses when I was 15. I thought it must have been the biggest gig in the world."

Peter Hook,
New Order
"The Roses at Spike Island was a fantastic occasion that day. All the Manc heads were there, we had a right laugh."



Want more? try these:

Album: 'The Stone Roses' (Silvertone) Voted greatest album ever made, by NME writers, the Roses' 1989 debut set the standard by which all alternative rock would be judged. 'The Stone Roses' married '60s psyche guitars to acid house modernism and inspired a generation. And it didn't even have 'Fools Gold' on it.

Book: The Stone Roses And The Resurrection Of British Pop by John Robb (Ebury Press) John Robb was a music journalist in Manchester and documented every chapter of the Roses' saga. Also collecting published pieces from that period, this inside story remains the nearest thing to an official Roses biog.

DVD: The Stone Roses This DVD collects everything The Stone Roses completist could crave: Ian Brown's tantrum on The Late Show, '(Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister' live from the Hacienda, TV interview footage, live footage and home video. Wisely, it concerntrates on the early period.



What happened next?

+ The Criminal Justice Act was passed in 1994, handing police powers to stop illegal raves, forcing dance culture out of fields and into the mainstream.

+ The Roses took five more years to release their second album 'Second Coming'

+ A comeback gig at Glastonbury was pulled when John Squire broke his arm mountain-biking

+ Pulp took The Roses' slot at the last minute and became megastars

+ Reni left, followed soon by John Squire

+ After a shocking Reading appearance Ian Brown and Mani decided to call it a day

+ Squire went on to form The Seahorses with a guy he met busking outside Woolworths

+ Ian Brown went solo, releasing four critically acclaimed albums, as well as 'The Greatest'

+ Mani joined Primal Scream

+ Reni became a recluse

+ Stone Roses reunion? Watch this space...





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