Loaded February 1998 Issue



IAN BROWN IN STONE ROSES OASIS BABY COCAINE MONKEY SHOCKER



PLAY THAT MONKEY MUSIC WHITE BOY


Ian Brown, the artist formerly known as King Monkey, is back with a distant cousin on one shoulder and a large chip on the other.

"Stop it, Billy Bean, stop it! Stop biting the pop star!!" Blood and the spit of a crazed monkey drip onto the wooden floor.

"Get back in your CAGE! Bad monkey! Bad!"

The tiny squirrel monkey studiously ignores his handler, squeaks happily and clambers up onto the wounded pop star's shoulder.

"Eeep!" it says, "Eeeeeeep!"

"Don't worry about it, man," whispers Ian Brown as he hands the wayward ape a banana, "I've 'ah worse..." He holds up his other, unbitten hand to show the bloodthirsty furball his horribly crooked fingers.

"Look, I've got three broken knuckles where some gangster swung a metal bar at me head!"

"Eeep!" says the monkey.

Never work with animals or people who used to sing in the Stone Roses. One will start shouting phrases like "Oasis are PISS poor!" and "I'm on a one-man crusade to destroy cocaine!" and rant about the deeply unpleasant break-up of his band, and the other will try to sever your thumbs. Vicious finger-attacks aside, Billy Bean seems to enjoy Ian Brown's company, climbing all over him and happily shitting all down his back. Perhaps it's because this is the man who used to be known as King Monkey for his chimp-like stage lope and tree-swinging microphone technique. Or maybe it's Ian Brown's huge pop star presence. Ian Brown probably even smells like a pop star. Assuming, of course, that pop stars usually smell of monkey shit. Or maybe the monkey just likes Ian because Ian's in charge of the bananas.

As the bad monkey is soundly thrashed with a broom handle, we settle down for a chatter. Ian offers us a bowl of fruit and Loaded offers around the jungle juice.

"I don't drink," he says rather disappointingly. "I might have the odd brandy, but mostly it's just weed. No powders."

Buggar. Of course, now Ian's all grown up and starting out on his solo career with his cracking debut album, Unfinished Monkey Business, he can afford to stick to mushy yellow fruit. But there was a time when Ian Brown was the hollow-cheeked face of the E Generation, the slack-jawed king of the swingers. As the Summer of Love turned into the Autumn of Baggy, the Roses washed out their goth roots and triumphantly led the likes of T'Mondays, T'Charlatans, T'Inspirals and, erm, Northside, into the light with their brand of blissed-out funkadelia. Top one. Sorted.

The Roses: Ian Brown (vocals/monkey dancing), Mani (bass/vast flares), Reni (drums/Reni hat) and John Squire ('axe chores'/general moodiness) instantly became The Most Important Band In The World with 1989's blinding Stone Roses debut album... and then they blew it all by taking fiver years to record the rather lukewarm follow-up Second Coming and breaking up in a confetti shower of headline-grabbing surliness. Bad one. Downer.

"We was NEVER a goth band!" howls Ian indignantly, ignoring the rest of my incisive career assessment. "The bassist might have had long black hair and a frilly shirt, but I've never had crimped hair! Mind you, I did buy a Bauhaus single once..."

Your humble correspondent actually saw the Stone Roses in Manchester, circa 1986, and they played a suspiciously goth number called 'Misery Dictionary'. Three times.

"Ahhh NO!" he shrieks, making the monkey scamper up the curtains. "I remember that night. Before I went on stage, I had what I thought was a line of speed - but I swear it was heroin. Maybe that's why we played 'Misery Dictionary' three times..."

Happy days. So how did the Roses get from being ropey, drug-blind not-goths to being the most important band in the world?

"We got good," says Ian simply. "We spent four years in a cellar, playing together eight hours every day. Pure energy. And at the time, we definitely felt like the most important band in the world. Definitely."

Indeed, in Madchester and quickly all over the country, the Stone Roses changed the way people dressed, danced, played, and, oh, defrosted chickens, probably.

"We brought a new hope to the world," laughs Ian. "Seriously. Baggy was a load of kids who had been brought together by Acid House. It wasn't about all dressing one way, it was everyone together, it was the feeling that was important. Togetherness, man. Obviously Ecstasy helped that - it broke down inhibitions. The violence went from clubs overnight, and suddenly all the thugs' mouths were shut. Beautiful."

Not that it stopped all the naughtiness. In 1990, the band were arrested after they stormed into their first record company's offices, threw paint over everything and took pictures of their arses on the photocopier.

"We got fined £3,000 each," he smirks. "The judge said if it wasn't for our rock'n'roll notoriety he would have jailed us."

But Ian has always been involved with a certain amount of mischievousness, declaring in an interview in 1989 that being in a band was all about free drugs and free girls.

"It's true," he shrugs. "When you're in a band, everything's available. Girls throw themselves at you, kids give you drugs. But there's a down side too," he adds, pointing to his gaunt face. "I lost two teeth on that side. A kid smacked me in the mouth so hard there - Twat! - that two fell out on the other side. On top of that, four doorman beat me up last year. Kicked me 100 yards up the street. For everyone who loves you there's another one who wants to put you under. Take the rough with the smooth, man."

After the 'pure good times' came the long, long, LONG wait before Second Coming. What were the Stone Roses doing for five years? Having a lot of barbecues? Keeping exotic fish? Shopping for hats?

"Second Coming never took us five years, it took us 14 months!" lies Ian. "We were tied up in court until '92. And when we did start recording in June '93, John suddenly didn't want to work with us any more."

Uh-oh: the tricky subject of the Stone Roses split. A nasty business that, until now, Ian has refused to talk about. But now he's ready to spill it like a torrent of egg sandwich on a sickly car journey.

In a nutshell, it began immediately after Second Coming was released, when Reni left the band. Next, three tours and a Glastonbury headline slot were cancelled in quick succession. Finally, John Squire left to form The Seahorses and the remaining Roses flogged the dying nag all the way to Reading '96, where they were universally labelled as 'shite' when Ian failed miserably to stay in tune.

Surprisingly perhaps, Ian feels most upset for his mates Reni and Mani. "Ninety per cent of Second Coming sounds good, but Reni and Mani were cheated. John was doing 17 guitar overdubs on some songs, with the bass and drums right down. The biggest crime is that Mani and Reni still haven't been able to show their talent. He robbed them. Reni'd been threatening to leave for four years. He wanted to do it just to spite John, but he didn't wanna hurt me. I felt like doing the same."

But how come? What caused such huge rifts in a band that had always seemed such a close-knit gang? "Money and coke," asserts Ian with venom. "When Squire got into coke, it wrecked the Stone Roses."

Ah, yes. John Squire is quoted as saying he had "rather overdone" the Colombian snuff, and that, "There were too many drugs at the studio." Was this all true then?

"There was too much cocaine in his room," spits Ian contemptuously. "And up his nose."

And was it just him?

"Look, I think anyone who takes cocaine is a pussy," he rants. "Everybody who takes cocaine is a DICK! If you take cocaine it means you're an idiot, you've got no confidence, you've got nothing to say, you've got no self-worth, all you're doing is taking and you're giving nothing."

Ian is seething like a faulty radiator now.

"When you go in a room and everyone's on coke you can feel it as soon as you open the door. There's no love in there, no soul. When John did coke..." He stutters, his head throbbing like a Belisha beacon. "The soul drained from the Roses. I'd say, 'Are you on coke?' He'd go, 'Yeah.' I'd go, 'Don't talk to me, don't even fucking look at me.' The reason I'm still here now," he rubs his face like a seal eating fish, "I'm gonna finish coke. I'm on a one-man crusade to destroy cocaine.

OK, so then Squire packed up his swag bag and headed for the horizon. Next thing we knew, the rest of you were going down in flames at Reading.

"The vocals at Reading were terrible" admits Ian. "But at the time, all I saw were arms in the air and 60,000 smiling faces, I was so happy."

So happy, in fact, that three weeks later the Stone Roses finally split, with a statement that read: "It's a pleasure to announce the end of the Stone Roses..."

"It was a pleasure to step away from the music business - it felt great. I had no dough, but I felt great. I never got paid off that first LP. Everyone says how great it is, it made £50million or something, but we never got fuck all. So it means nothing to me. It's just music."

Just music my arse. Turn on the radio and you can hear bands as good as Oasis, The Charlatans, The Verve using the Stone Roses as a blueprint.

"Piss poor," mutters Ian. "All of them, piss poor. Someone's stood on a stage, pretending to be me? What the fuck's that? I think anything that's diluted is piss poor. When we started, we wanted people to see the band and be influenced enough to start their own thing, not to copy it. My family still laugh at Tim Burgess when they see him on the telly. They crack up seeing him do his dance and shit."

Liam Gallagher is, of course, the most guilty of, erm, aping Ian Brown, having modelled his entire life on King Monkey, right down to refusing to tour the States and wearing a star-shaped tambourine around his neck.

"I can understand it," says Ian generously. "Y'know, when you're a young kid you have heroes. And it's better than being influenced by Bowie or Elton John, innit?"

You must have met him though?

"Liam? Yeah," Ian smirks, "and I always tell him to keep off the coke, but he won't listen. That's my message to Oasis: stop taking the coke, get a life."

But do you rate Oasis?

"Nah, I think they're boring, they're like Status Quo. You know exactly what you're going to get. I think Oasis have set music back 20 years. Oasis are just babies taking coke and pretending to be the Beatles. They're wasting all of our time."

The one band Ian hasn't mentioned so far is John Squire's new band, The Seahorses. Does he rate them?

"No," he says without hesitating. "I feel sorry for John. He's been put in the spotlight with them buskers, it's not worked and now he's under pure pressure. And he's not a man to help anyone else. He's on his own."

I take it you haven't seen John since the split?

"I didn't see him then," he moans, exasperated now. "He didn't have the courtesy to come and speak to me. He phoned me up and said 'Ian, I'm a phoney, I'm jackin' it in...' So I think, ah, his head's fulla charlie, so I say, 'You're no phoney.' He says, 'No I'm a phoney!' On the phone! I persuaded him to chill out, think about it, ring me back in two days. Next day he's flown to London and announced that the Roses were finished."

In a bizarre twist, however, while Squire was getting a critical beating for the Seahorses, the Roses were getting back together to work on Ian Brown's debut solo album. Mani has described Unfinished Monkey Business as "back to the traditional Roses style, like the first LP. Ian lets the songs do the talking."

"I don't know how close it is to the first LP," shrugs Ian, clearly happy with the compliment, "but yeah, the music breathes on its own. It feels nice."

So is Business the second Roses LP that never was?

He nods. "It could have been. 'Fool's Gold', that time, that's what the LP would have been if John hadn't turned into a rocker."

Indeed, and while Second Coming was all about huge solos and 10 Storeys of tottering ego, Unfinished Monkey Business is relaxed, contemplative and subtle, with the emphasis on great tunes like the sparkling single 'My Star' and toothy-grinned positivity in lyrics like, "I see the sunshine in the rain."

"Yeah," he smiles. "When you live in Manchester, you have to."

So is Ian Brown's solo career the new resurrection? The Third Coming, perhaps?

"I don't know about that. I just felt like I still got music in me. Why should I give up just 'cos a kid's give up on me? I just want to keep movin', keep positive."

He picks thoughtfully at a bit of monkey shit on his cuff. "They do say your biggest enemy could be your best friend. But then your best friend shoots you in the back - that's when you find where you are, y'know?"

And off he swings, dodging the banana skins and looking for the dry cleaners.



IAN BROWN ON WAX

Monkey magic on vinyl, CD or cassette. Your choice, fur-face.

'Elephant Stone' (Oct '88): The Roses' third single, it introduced their trippy funk swoosh and widened the hems of a generation.

'The Stone Roses' (May '89): Utterly mind-blowing LP, voted best album of the decade in NME, features 'I Wanna Be Adored', 'She Bangs The Drums' and 'I Am The Resurrection' - every track a winner. Baby. And that's no lie.

'Fools Gold' (Nov '89): The single that took T'Roses to t'top, as they appeared on TOTP alongside T'Mondays doing 'Hallelujah'. B-side: 'What The World Is Waiting For'. Says it all.

'One Love' (May '90): Nothing to do with getting completely faceless on a cocktail of dangerous chemicals and hugging strangers in dark rooms. Nothing at all.

'Love Spreads' (Nov '94): The comeback single after the big holiday. Bigger than a buffalo filled with helium.

'Second Coming' (Dec '94): This flawed loafer of an album still includes some stonkers, including '10 Storey Love Song', 'Good Times' and 'How Do You Sleep'.

'My Star' (Jan '98): The Great Brown Hope makes his big comeback with a cracking single fuelled by spinning rockets.

'Unfinished Monkey Business (Feb '98): The new album, awash with great tunes, crazy weirdness and a song about lions. No mention of monkeys, except in the title.











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