What do you do when your band - The Stone Roses and 'most important in the world' - falls apart ? Join a supergroup ? Do a Bernard Butler ? Not if you're JOHN SQUIRE. No sirree, you head to York, form THE SEAHORSES with lads you see playing in local pubs and set about taking over the world again. JOHNNY CIGARETTES collars the marine foursome to get the whole story. Best fishes: KEVIN CUMMINS
"Excuse me, someone just told me you're the guitarist from The Stone Roses," gasps an awestruck young woman as she hesitantly leans over the table towards a mop-haired young man quietly sipping a Jack Daniel's and Coke in the corner of a dingy York pub.
"I still listen to your first album on my way to work every day. I've loved your music for so long…
"…Are you still going ?"
John Squire's face is expressionless as he softly replies, "No. But I am."
If The Stone Roses were the soundtrack to a generation, don't think there's a sequel to be written. But if it's going to take some kind of genius to follow a legend, then John Squire is surely up to the task. The past was theirs but the future's…
Yeah, anyway, for the moment we're here in this small, unassuming but suitably wrapped-in-history provincial town to bring the chequered story of one of the most important figures in modern British rock music up to the present day.
As he sits statesmanlike in the snug, thinking of higher things, three local lads gleefully bathe in the beer and bedlam of a small-town Saturday night, enjoying their new-found notoriety. Because Chris Helme, Stuart Fletcher and Andy Watts are almost famous now.
They're the other Seahorses, and York is theirs and it owes them a living. For the years they spent in frustration and penury, in underachieving bar bands, in the forlorn hope that someone somewhere would one day recognise their talents beyond the gig listings of the local paper.
How that someone turned out to be John Squire is a highly unlikely, almost romantic story, which started, spookily enough, the day his departure from the Stone Roses was announced to the world.
Stuart Fletcher was only playing as a last-minute stand-in on bass for The Blueflies. John Squire was only there to have a drink with some mates and lie low while the Roses story broke. And when John approached him after the gig to ask for a tape, he didn't know him from Adam. Likewise, when singer Chris Helme was approached by a mate of Squire's guitar tech and asked for a tape while busking outside Woolworths one Sunday afternoon, he thought he'd be offered a working-men's club gig or something.
And, while for most people it would be the equivalent of having a kickaround in the park and being approached by a man in a grey overcoat and asked to play for Manchester United, Chris and Stuart remained admirably under-awed by it all, auditioned, rehearsed and flew off to LA to record with Tony Visconti like it was another day at the office. Drummer Andy Watt, meanwhile, joined the fray later, on the recommendation of the other two and, even now, seems by far the most nervous and unsure of the three. Politely described as 'shitting himself' by Tony Visconti during the album sessions, he nevertheless now seems as much at home as the others.
"John said it felt like The Seahorses had always been there to him," recalls Andy. And yet, some of us can't help remembering another band he was in…
"DID YOU think it was all falling apart ?" he asks, apropos of nothing much when we're casually talking about the latter days of the Roses.
Well, no. Not at first, any road. It just seems, in retrospect, that The Stone Roses bottled it. Like they wouldn't, couldn't and daren't live up to their reputation. The continually cancelled gigs, the half-arsed excuse of a home video for 'Love Spreads', the first, lame-jokey pictures, the say-nothing interview with The Big Issue, and the (in)decision to lob the album out in the full flood of the Christmas rush - it all pointed to a band determined to make 'Second Coming' a non-event.
John Squire takes one of many long pauses for thought.
"I take the point, to an extent, but putting the album out at Christmas was just because it was ready. We just thought the idea of timing it to have a Number One was cynical music-biz bollocks. And I still stand by the decision to give the first interview with The Big Issue. That was a noble gesture. And just meeting blokes on the street who made a fortune, saying 'Thanks for giving us the best week we've ever had' was worth it for me. As for downplaying our return, we probably forgot how to present ourselves after five years away. We didn't know how to appear cool and accomplished. And we probably didn't care."
So where did it all go wrong ?
"I think until Reni left it was business as usual. We locked ourselves away, an insular unit, ignoring everyone else. But when Reni left, the chemistry wasn't the same. That's not down to Reni being any more special or important than anyone else in the band. If any one of those four had left, it would have had the same destabilising effect."
You get the feeling he still doesn't know quite how it all fell apart with the Roses. And yet, it was increasingly obvious that he and Ian Brown were seriously estranged, and that the musical weight of the band was increasingly resting on his shoulders, as the spotlight onstage invariably stayed on him rather than Ian, even though his own vision of The Stone Roses was slipping away.
"But it was never my band or my vision," he shrugs. "Although everyone tries to tell me that, and it's implied everywhere. Maybe I played a bit more guitar than before, but I wasn't bribing the lighting guy or anything.
"As for me and Ian, it's true there wasn't much communication. I'd write songs and then do the vocal melody on guitar and send it to him. But a lot of bands work like that. I was quite happy being in The Stone Roses, or I thought I was, until the end."
So, did you wish you could turn back time and do things differently ?
"I did during the time I was considering leaving, and immediately after. But now I see the Roses as something that led up to The Seahorses. No regrets now."
Such was the atmosphere of secrecy and mystery surrounding the whole situation, though, that most people on the outside were resorting to guesswork as to what really went on. Were there any major misconceptions ?
"No, not really. The only thing that surprised me was a few letters in the NME calling me a c--- for leaving. I was shocked by that. I s'pose I thought I was master of my own destiny. But even if I'd thought the fans were against it, it wouldn't have made a difference."
At which point, you kind of hoped that the Stone Roses would cut their losses and retain a certain dignity in the eyes of history. But no. On they limped, until a deeply ignominious - nay tragic - performance at Reading last year, when Ian, Mani, three session musicians and a truly excruciating dancer reduced grown men to tears. After they'd called Squire a c--- for leaving.
"I heard about the Reading gig. I read the block headlines, but I didn't wanna read it. Stuart read a few bits to me, so I got the general impression."
Did you want them to carry on ?
"Yeah I did. Definitely. Even after what they said about me at Reading. I mean, I knew there was no love lost, so I didn't exactly expect fond wishes from them."
Have you been in touch with any of the Roses since ?
"No. I've seen Reni a few times. I'm sure I'll see Mani again soon. If not at the match (Man United), then somewhere else. I'm glad he's got it together with Primal Scream. And I've heard he might be involved with a Man United record with Shaun Ryder and Joe Strummer, if they get to the European Cup Final."
Don't you fancy getting involved ?
"No chance ! I'll be steering well clear…"
So, ten years down the line - someone offers you $10million for The Stone Roses to reform ?
"No. No chance."
"OOOOOH YOU'RE famous now, aren't yer ! Can I 'ave yer autograph !"
Chris Helme's ex-girlfriend can't resist taking the piss as she passes a church courtyard where The Seahorses are being photographed. She is the sixth passer-by in as many minutes to recognise The Seahorses, and no-one has noticed John Squire yet.
"It's a small town," observes Chris. And yet there's something about John Squire, for all his elegant military-jacketed mop-top cool, that says the more you know, the less you need to show, and somehow exists in a self-contained world of his own.
But it takes one to know one. For all his apparently taciturn, soft-spoken aloofness, spend much time with John Squire and you'll notice he's much more open than you first assumed, something of a bar-room philosopher: you can imagine him having late-night conversations about the future of humanity in the next millennium, the possibility of alien life-forms and time travel, alternative medicine and the best choice for England centre-back. He also has a sense of humour that could politely be described as 'rum'. Maybe it's the way he arranges the napkins in the curry house into various disgusting shapes, makes saucy comments at the waitresses and discusses the merits of European hotel porn channels. Smashing bloke, though.
There are still remnants of the swaggering Manc attitude that characterised the Roses from the start, manifested in a sardonic wit, and the way he'll comment out loud on the dress sense of passers-by.
Of the other Seahorses, Stuart is the most obviously suited to the role. Just turned 21, he's the kind of bloke who remains resolutely unimpressed by Hollywood ("LA was alright. Birds were a bit weird, though"), who reckons he picked up a bass at age six, been playing in bands since 11, and says things like "Music found me". Even his uncle-rock wisdom beard reflects a man who reckons he saw it all before the age of consent. This is the man who plans to buy a customised amp in the design of a Benson & Hedges cigarette packet, complete with flip-top control panel.
Chris is more unassuming, his camouflage jacket and '70s footballer haircut reflecting a certain laid-back attitude to it all. Like the others, he recognises the won-the-lottery luck aspect of all this, but believes he has every right to be up there. And at the same time, he has the philosophical attitude of the seasoned musician who sees this as just another gig. Only bigger.
Andy, meanwhile, still seems a little unsure of his quarter of the group. You get the feeling he can't believe it's finally happening for him, and is convinced it'll all end in tears in a few months to avoid unexpected disappointment. He's the oldest of the three and the least garrulous, but you suspect he's just about managed to bond into a tight knit unit now.
But the question in most people's minds must still be… why three unknown, untried musicians, the first that came along ?
"It makes life simpler," reasons John. "It's a fresh start, and I'm enjoying it much more. Everything's happening so much faster than it ever did with the Roses. There's no committee, no ego war. It's just like 'Here's the job, let's do it. Right, what's next ?'"
You didn't fancy the John Squire Fretwank experience then ?
"No way. I hate all those high-profile guitarists. Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and all that crap - loads of instrumentals, bit of crap singin'. I'm into songs. And it's a convoluted way of going about it, but I write songs for the privilege of being able to play a solo or the accompaniment to that song."
What about the Johnny Marr/Bernard Butler route of going freelance playing on other people's records ?
"I don't think I'm a good enough guitarist to do that, even if I wanted to. It'd be very challenging, but I'm not interested in playing someone else's ideas. I'm happy to contribute to a band I'm in, but I'm not into piecework."
The most wishful rumours flying around after he left the Roses were that he would form some kind of supergroup. If not with Reni, Nile Rodgers and Robert Plant, then in a Black Grape stylee with a gang of old Manchester suspects.
"There was no-one around, really. Anyway, supergroups always seem to have a transient air to them. That's never appealed to me. The way The Seahorses is, it seems like there's more chance of it having a longer life.
"Having said that, it's not my 'vehicle'. I thought it might be that way for a while, but then it turns out that Chris is a great songwriter as well as singer, and we've grown together like a new band, not just me and a bunch of grunts."
Meanwhile, another songwriting contributor made his way on to the new album. On a song called 'Love Me And Leave Me', co-written by one Liam Gallagher.
"Yeah, I went round to his after the Cup Final last year. We wrote this song together and I changed the lyrics a bit, but it's basically the same song. Talking about supergroups, I would have started a group with Liam. But he was a bit busy, obviously. I'm sure we'll write more songs together, though."
Hence, perhaps, the appearance at Knebworth. Which all seemed a bit ghostly and incongruous, truth be told…
"I had diarrhoea that day. I was dead scared I'd be caught short while I was onstage or something. You could probably tell from my ghostly complexion.
"You couldn't really get a conception of how many people there was there, because it was just a huge mass. Spike Island with the Roses seemed bigger, because you could see everyone."
Will The Seahorses ever fill somewhere like Knebworth ? Or Spike Island, even ? Does John Squire care ?
"Yeah, I'm still very ambitious. I want the album to go to Number One. I'll be surprised if it doesn't. I've got nowhere to live at the moment, so the idea of a year-and-a-half on the road appeals to me. We might as well go all-out for it."
Considering the adverse effect fame and fortune appeared to have on the Roses, though, could the ever shy and retiring Squire handle the pressure of success again, especially in America ?
"It wouldn't bother me, it never has done really. I don't go to the pub every night. I don't socialise much. I s'pose I'm genetically predisposed to superstardom, in that sense.
"The only thing that freaks me out is the idea of being stalked. People following you home, ducking in and out of shop doorways. I can't handle that."
He should have fun in America, then, if he doesn't get shot.
"Yeah, that was a bit scary when we were in LA. We'd hear all these gunshots, and then turn on the telly and there'd been a drive-by on the street next to our recording studio. But I did love LA. It's a great place to be during the British winter. We spent two months there recording the album and it made me dead creative. I do a lot of painting, and the light and space gives me the right vibes for that. I wouldn't bother writing songs on a rainy day in York like this. There's lots of visual stimuli everywhere in LA, with all the hoardings and everything. That inspires me… I'd like to live somewhere like Southern Spain… Have you seen the last Star Trek film ?"
Ah. I should point out that he has a tendancy to digress slightly, Our John. Pauses between sentences sometimes turn into daydreams, and he'll start talking about Buddhism. Funny lad.
Ironically enough, though, for all this talk of LA and American daydreaming, much of 'Do It Yourself', The Seahorses' debut album, sounds decidedly English in tone, more reminiscent of an art-school or even music-hall tradition. Consider lyrics such as this, from the single 'Love Is The Law': "Mad Lizzie Crumb's blind cobbler's thumbs were a sight to behold / She was a rum old slapper and we always tried to get her pants off when she called". Or perhaps, from the perfectly LA-titled 'Suicide Drive': "Please may I leave the table, I don't think that I'll be able / To swallow your family values again today / 'Cos a giant squid has stole my wife and kids / Full story Hendrix (probably misheard, but makes just as much sense) ten pence off your Weetabix !"
Hardly "Only here to see if I can steal your soul", is it ? A little bird tells me that John Squire is a big Who fan, and this sounds like something from the surreal depths of a Townshend rock opera. Hmm…
Squire grins to himself. That's equivalent to a laugh for most people.
"What ? D'you think that's my new direction ? No, see people never understood that even when I was writing stuff like 'Drivin' South', I was takin' the piss. It was never meant to be a chest-thumping blues tune, it was a joke. Ring a toll-free number for the devil - it's got to be a joke, hasn't it ?"
Oh well. So much for the devil's music. Is this another attempt to deflate the faintly ridiculous myth surrounding the guitar hero ?
"Well, I can't take it seriously. I look in the mirror in the morning with a hangover, pissin' in the bog with me hair all over the place, lookin' about 50 and I don't see anything legendary."
Were you serious when you wrote things like "The Messiah is my sister", then ?
"Yeah, that was serious. In the sense that why can't Christ have been a black woman ? I've always been against organised religion."
Which brings us neatly round to 'Love Is The Law' once more. For those unversed in satanic literature, the title comes from a slogan of Aleister Crowley's (Infamous 1920s occultist - Paranormal Ed). What can it all mean ?
"I'm not a Satanist, if that's what yer thinkin'. I'm aware of Aleister Crowley's slogans and a bit about him, but I don't agree with that much of it. But 'Love Is The Law' is a worthy sentiment, and I identify with the thrust of his philosophy that's opposed to organised religion and Christianity. But to treat him as a great figure, or to replace organised religion with worshipping the devil is just as much nonsense."
So you're not a religious man, then ?
"Let's just say I'm prepared to change my vote at the last minute. I'm open to suggestion, if anyone's out there."
You suspect he likes his mysticism, though. A silver sea horse hangs round his neck, a magical symbol if I'm not mistaken. A marine biologist writes that the sea horse is the only species in the animal kingdom where the male gets pregnant. Is this a clue that there's more to John Squire's legendary powers than we first presumed ?
"I just kept seeing them everywhere. I dreamt about them a couple of times, then I went to this bar and they had cocktail stirrers in the shape of seahorses. I looked in a dream dictionary and it said, 'Symbol for travel and adventure'. Then I looked in an encyclopaedia and it said a lot of people think they're fantasy creatures. So they were ideas that appealed to me."
And the fact that 'The Seahorses' was an anagram of 'He Hates Roses', perchance ?
"No, I'm no good at Countdown. I never do crosswords. So is it an exact anagram then ?"
I rearrange the letters. It is. Oooer.
"Well, that's a hell of a coincidence, I suppose, but I don't hate the Roses. I'm proud of what we did, and our heritage."
So how do you see that 'heritage' ? Do you hear an influence in bands now ?
"Well, not specifically, but I think we were a ground-breaking band. At the time we were first releasing records we were seen by a lot of people as these bizarre oddities from outer space.
"I think it brought guitar music back, in that basic style of bass, drums, guitar, and idiosyncratic singer. I don't think that was acceptable ten years ago. Certainly not in the mainstream. I s'pose the people who were listening to that music have now become decision-makers.
"It's more human, innit ? I don't think there's a more expressive instrument than the guitar. Maybe people are clinging to that organic, human feeling more towards the end of the millennium. The age of being in love with technology has passed."
And yet, this is the man who, with the Roses, married mesmerisingly expressive guitar music and funky-drummer dance beats on 'Fools Gold', as ground-breaking a record as any the Roses made. And yet on 'Second Coming', and even more with The Seahorses, that dance influence seemed to have been abandoned as a passing whim.
"Well, what is dance music ? I mean, I've seen some great dancing to Led Zeppelin's 'Rock'n'Roll' in a Mexican bar in LA. Fools Gold wasn't that enjoyable for me, because the beat was a sample. Technically it was good and on record it sounds great, but I'm into live music and it wasn't tribal and organic enough for me."
What I ask him what records he was listening to during the making of 'Do It Yourself', he mentions PP Arnold, strangely enough, but claims that he's rarely listened to any new music, even during the Roses, to remain focused on his own, presumably timeless, musical instincts. Which is also what Brett Anderson of Suede has said. Can they by any chance be related ? And are there any recent records John Squire has liked ?
"I like the new Suede album. My little girl loves it. She plays recorder round the house to it, just playing one note all the way through it. I like Richard Oakes' guitar playing. Must have been a tough gig to step into Bernard Butler's shoes so young.
"I like Radiohead's last album, and Beck, but they're a bit too obvious to mention. And I like the new Charlatans album. I only first heard 'em on the last Roses tour. I'm always like that because I resist listening to something I'm being told to like. I only heard Nirvana after it was all over, and Oasis at Earls Court was the first I'd heard. I have to go out and discover it myself, like I used to when I bought second-hand records when I was a kid. But now everything's in the charts as soon as it comes out, so it's a bit difficult."
FOR ALL his apparent reserve and unimpeachable solipsism, when you see John Squire with The Seahorses, you know he's in a band. You know he's the leader, a figure of calm authority to whom the others will inevitably look for approval at times. But he's also one of the lads, one who'll come out drinking and who'll be an acknowledged part of the merry throng just by way of the odd sarky quip or 'Did you know ?' muse-worthy sage comment. To all appearances, he's back in a gang again. But can anything ever recapture the same feeling of his original gang ? Now he's seen it all once, can he get the same buzz as he did at the peak of the Roses ?
"I've already achieved it. The Greenock gig and the Viper Room gig were a better feeling than I've had for years of being in a band."
Can The Seahorses make records as good as the Roses ?
"I think we already have. I listen to this record and the Roses and I prefer this. It's a simpler record, but I think it's a better one. 'Second Coming' was too long. I can't listen to more than 45 minutes in one sitting. And I like this record 'cos it's got three of Chris' songs on. That makes it more interesting for me."
You'll probably beg to differ when you first hear The Seahorses' album, chiefly because it's not the swaggering, Cantona-chested anthem (Put it away, man - Red Scum-Hating Ed) fest you associated with the Roses. It's a lighter, more song-based affair with a lot more surreal humour, and, ironically, with not half as much of John Squire's guitar lick-spittle splattered over it as 'Second Coming'. But once you've got it straight in your head that this is a different band, 'Do It Yourself' will grow on you in just the same way as 'Second Coming' did. Particularly impressive are Chris Helme's songs, 'I Want You To Know; and 'Blinded By The Sun', and the Liam Gallagher collaboration, 'Love Me And Leave Me', which recalls, possibly intentionally, early-'70s Lennon solo stuff. Then, assuming the single, 'Love Is The Law's classic Squire riff and anthem-u-like chorus have already rented space in your head after a few listens, the most heartbreaking song is 'The Boy In The Picture', which sounds like an open letter from Squire to his boyhood self.
In many ways, it sounds like most debut albums - simple, accessible, upbeat, a plain statement to the world. And, as such, it's undoubtedly a success. So has John Squire any grander visions for the future of The Seahorses ? He smirks to himself once more.
"I had a perverse vision… that because I wrote so much material as a result of leaving the Roses I'd have to disband this group immediately after this album in order to keep writing songs ! But no, I'm being extremely cynical. I want to make this work. It is working."
Blissfully oblivious to such mildly disturbing thoughts, the other Seahorses' night has barely begun. Chris is off to a party, and Stuart and Andy to a club where they will be besieged by all those tenuous acquaintances from the days when they were mere mortals, and not magical creatures of fantasy symbolising travel and adventure. And male pregnancy. Meanwhile, John Squire will retire to his bed and a spliff, at the terrifyingly sensible hour of midnight. You suspect he will sleep soundly tonight because he's looking forward now. An illustrious past was something to be proud of, and if the future's not all his, his shares in it are looking very healthy indeed.
Back To Media 1997