Tuesday, October 18, 2011

"I don't need to sell my soul..."

So, by the time it became official there was no surprise left: The Stone Roses are coming back.

There's two sorts of reunions; the ones where the band who returns is picking up where it left off; a split which left things hanging, a sense of unfinished business.

And there's the other sort. The sort where the band hope we forget that they'd given up flogging the dead horse.

New material? Really, John? Are you telling us you had songs that were just so good they were beyond Chris Helme's vocal range?

In all the time since the Roses split up, there's been an ongoing debate between people who would have quite liked to hear the band play the songs again, and people who knew what that meant. Nowhere have you come across people who wondered what sort of third album the band would have made.

Maybe it'll be amazing; maybe the magic didn't vanish around the time they flung the last can of paint round the Silvertone offices.

But for now, the future seems to be little more than a man in a beanie hat bellowing "Manchester Vibes In The Area" in a human face, forever.


4 comments:

PeterD said...

I know we have all gotten a little old in the intervening years but I dont really know what to say about this picture.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/56134000/jpg/_56134112_roses2011_464getty.jpg

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

It's even crueller the way it appears in The Sun, with a photo of them underneath from when Ian Brown was actually quite gorgeous.

James said...

Good lord, who's that second from the left? Has John Squire taken up ventriloquism?
"What's that, little Mark E Smith? You want to sing a song for the boys and girls?"
"Yes!"
"But we haven't got time!"
"Oh ngo! I gon't want to go gack in the gox-ah"

Anonymous said...

Regarding the photo above, I'm a little tired of that sort of body fascism. The boys are hitting fifty, what do you expect them to look like? That's what most people hitting fifty look like without great lighting or carefully chosen, airbrushed photos. I like the photo and it's honesty. It is what it is without any pretense, just like the Roses always were.

As for this ridiculous idea of artistic purity, as though never getting back together will somehow ruin a (quite frankly ridiculous) mythology that has built up over the years, I have three words for you: get over it. Life is too short. Quite frankly, I'll be following the reunion like a giggly fan boy. And if the live shows and new material aren't quite up to muster, then I'll just shrug and go back to that first album.

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