THE TIMES 15th October 2002 Issue



Ian Brown, former Stone Roses frontman, tells our interviewer about the music, the madness and that spell in Strangeways


WHILE MANY A MAN'S reputation precedes him, Ian Brown's has virtually had its own career. As frontman of one of the most influential bands of all time, the Stone Roses, he was called the saviour of a generation but became a laughing stock when his band split acrimoniously in 1996. Since then his disinclination to do interviews seems to have served only as proof that he is the original sullen Mancunian, a media-hater still bitter about the demise of the Roses, an ageing star living on past glories.

So when a tanned and beaming Brown ambles into a Notting Hill café to meet me he has shattered most preconceptions before he's even reached my table.

In baggy black trousers and a fine-knit Armand Basi jumper, he orders "building site tea, dead shy with the milk", and admits he has chosen a café over a pub since he has been teetotal for more than five years now, after a bad hangover in New York forced him to kick the booze. "I was so ill," he cringes, "and you know when you say 'never again'? I lived up to it."

Coupled with a twice-daily routine of press-ups and sit-ups, Brown, 38, looks ten times better than he ever did in his Roses heyday.

Somewhat disappointingly, there's no trace of the legendary surliness either. Instead, Brown is chatty and charismatic, cracking jokes and telling me he's spent the morning making snakes from Playdough with his "really bright" youngest son, two-year-old Emilio. He knows what people think of him, but he's long since stopped worrying about it.

"Jealousy's the main thing in the UK," he shrugs, between swigs. "If someone's beautiful, they don't say, 'Isn't he beautiful?' They say, 'Isn't he a ****?' If someone's got a Bentley, they want to run a 50p down the side of it.

"They're always going on about how I can't sing, but if I can't sing, how come I've got a record (his recent album, Music of the Spheres) straight in at No 3 in the music charts? If you can't sing, you wouldn't get a record deal, would you? I must have something going on or people wouldn't keep buying my records. I mean, I'm not in magazines all the time, I hardly ever do promotion, I've never been on MTV."

Earlier this year, Brown was nominated for Best Male Artist at the Brit Awards. His three solo albums have been critically acclaimed and commercial hits, and his collection of remixed tracks, Remixes of the Spheres, hits the shops on the same day that The Very Best of the Stone Roses is released.

"I’m super-happy. I knew that the Roses were going to be something, really right from day one, but with me I had no idea how it would go. I never doubted it, but I didn't know what I could achieve on my own. I’m overjoyed."

His battle to forge a career in his own right has not been without incident, though. First, his plans were famously delayed in 1998 after a flight from Paris to Manchester when Brown complained the staff were rude and he became involved in an argument with a stewardess. He was later charged with threatening behaviour on board an aircraft and sentenced to 60 days in Strangeways prison, Manchester.

"If they’d told me I'd done six months, I would have believed them. A weekend feels like a fortnight. I'd always wondered what the inside of Strangeways looked like," he says, with a wry smile. "But maybe I should never have wondered. I know what real hunger's like now, 60 days with my belly hurting! The guys in there really looked after me too. They'd give me an apple or a newspaper; they were all like, 'What are you doing in here? You're not a criminal'. " Indeed, Brown has always maintained his innocence strenuously.

"It was a mountain out of a molehill," he sighs. "I know in my heart that I didn't commit a crime, I didn't even cuss anyone, but the pilot was a part-time magistrate so I think they used me as an example. I think that put a lot of people off me. People that don't know me think I'm some kind of loudmouth and that's so far from the truth. The fact that they put me in jail made people think I was a thug, but it kept me determined because I knew that I'd not done anything wrong."

Subsequent solo success, plus the healing passage of time, has recently made Brown re-evaluate his time with the Stone Roses, where it all went wrong and why the band took five long years to record a follow-up to their groundbreaking debut of 1989. The Roses, he admits, never fulfilled their potential.

"I know that the Roses should have been a lot bigger than we were. It wasn't meant to be. We could've gone a lot further than we did and we didn't, but I can't put my finger on why. I know we should never have had that five-year gap, we should never have spent that long making the record, but I don't know what I could do to change it; it just happened. We didn’t have a manager. We were all on different drugs, and by the end of the recording, we were all into totally different music, so we were never going to meet.

"I was into hip hop, John (Squire, the Stone Roses' guitarist) was more into Bad Company," Brown laughs, "so we were never going to meet."

But what was he actually doing during those five years? Brown grins.

"Smoking weed. Listening to people play guitars. It took me a year to get on the mike. Let's leave it at that."

After recent conciliatory comments from Squire, Brown's sworn enemy by the time their band broke up, the music press has been buzzing that a Roses reunion can't be far away. The singer is adamant that it will not happen.

"I can't see a day when the Roses would reform. I think every band has its own lifespan and we had ours, and if we blew it, too bad. I don't believe we should be given a second shot. I think most bands only re-form for the money, don't they? Like I say, I think we're all too far apart now. We were too close. We spent years and years in each others' pockets, now we are all men with families.

"I still see Mani (Gary Mounfield, the Stone Roses' bassist, now in Primal Scream). I kept in touch with Reni (Alan Wren, drummer), but I've not spoken to him for about a year. We had a bit of a fall-out last year. I mean, I have talked to them about doing more Roses shows but at the moment, everyone would be travelling separately and that's not what the Roses were about."

He realises that times have changed, too. The Stone Roses may have threatened greatness, but it was their direct descendants, Oasis, who delivered it to the world.

"I think early on Liam said his favourite people were me and his mother," Brown chuckles. "Whatever people think of Oasis, they really did it big and I'm really glad that we influenced them. I know that we never fulfilled our potential, but at least we influenced the biggest group out of England since the Beatles." He pauses, the famous Ian Brown assurance taking over. "But first is first and second's nothing and I still think the Roses were better than Oasis, but I'm glad we kicked the door open for them. I'm glad they took full opportunity."

He shrugs, tea drained and ready to go. If his role as rock’s ultimate survivor has taught him anything, it's never to get comfortable, always to keep one step ahead of everyone else.

"I still think about that lay-off with the Roses," he says as a wistful parting shot. "What were we doing? "I'm not getting any younger. You have to strike while the iron's hot. Don't stop, keep moving. I've got a beautiful wife, three beautiful sons, I've done three solo LPs that I never even dreamed about doing and I'm still selling out theatres in England. It's never easy, right, but I feel like I've got everything. No regrets."



Ian Brown’s album Remixes of the Spheres is out on November 4 on Polydor. The Very Best of the Stone Roses is released the same day on Silvertone



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