“Daddy, Who Were The Stone Roses?”

I’m of the age that grew up with the Stone Roses, but to be honest, I f**ing hated them when I was a kid. They were too slow for me, the clanking, tortured sound of a thought occurring in a mind too small to comprehend it. They were a band that constantly seemed as if they should be scratching their heads in confusion, not a band full of joy and spirit and energy and fizz.

But I could witter on all day about this. Instead, you should go and read this piece, by Sam Wolfson in The Guardian. He references how the members of my generation in the music media have clung to their own youths and ignored those that came after (pointing at the infamous Face cover up there in the pic), but also nails the whole thing in these short paragraphs:

The Stone Roses are my least favourite group out of the re-formed bands of recent years. To some they may be the euphoric soundtrack to a first pilled-up shag in a nightclub toilet. To me, they are Primal Scream in need of editing; a band with a couple of nice songs that go on too long. Their real legacy is this huge show on an island that wasn’t an island that everyone who was there says sounded awful. They are a live band most famous for being shit live.

So news of this reunion fills me with dread. Not because I mind if you read about their tearful rehearsal sessions in the Word and spend £84 on the special edition box set of their only good album. I don’t mind, basically, as long as this all stays in the realm of Radio 2.

But it won’t. Zane Lowe will do a three-hour retrospective, i-D will “look back on the highs and lows of their spectacular three decades in music”, and worst of all the myth will be perpetuated that musical brilliance can only come in their druggy, guitary Madchester mould.

That’s sharp analysis,  and with “a band with a couple of nice songs that go on for too long“, he even provides the perfect epitaph for a band that should stay dead.