THE STONE ROSES
Sheffield Arena
HOLD ONTO your Bloggs-standard flapping flares, pop ravers for one particular Yorkshire hotel bar is tonight unwittingly playing host to the sort of scowling, scallywagging soiree that would have made grown E-dealers sob with joy half a decade ago: over at the bar stands a deadpan Shaun Ryder; by the roaring fireplace fidgets 'Little' Tim Burgess; and through the crowds of well-wishers and not very-well-looking hangers-on you can catch an occasional glimpse of The Stone Roses doing the social rounds.
Christ, you wait for the revival of the Madchester variety, and three of the buggers turn up at once...
Naturellement, neither The Charlatans' recent commercial renaissance, nor Ryder's revenge (see this evening's utterly chaotic and Kermit-less support act Black Grape) can compete with the quite crazed rehabilitation of the Roses. AWOL for the kind of period that makes Frank Butcher's Crimbo return to Eastenders (cheers) look like small soapy potatoes, they saunter back with a patchy second album which promptly goes platinum, ride out a legal dispute with their ex-manager, lose their drummer, fall off mountain bikes, blow out Glastonbury, breezily claim to be 2 million spondoolicks in debt to their record company and then decide to seal their first batch of UK dates for, ooooh, five years with a couple of unfeasibly large stadium-tastic shows. The guffawed words 'They're having a larf' and 'aren't they ?' spring not unreasonably to mind at this juncture. Hey ! Just say "FARRAGO !!!", kids.
And, quelle surprise, the actual gig is even more absurd. Like, it transpires that this is the kind of show where a mere ten minutes into proceedings 'I Wanna Be Adored', 'She Bangs The Drums' and 'Waterfall' have already run rampant around this most cavernous of prefabricated caverns and caused the most tongue-lollingly expectant of Stoners instant coronaries. Probably. Frankly, on a scale of one-to-up-yer-arse, this astounding, nay jaw-flapping, entrance makes Andy Cole's sixth minute blast against ex-employers Newcastle United resemble nothing more dramatic than a caress of the left buttock.
It's not just their cavalier decision to plunge immediately into past glories which delights, it's the sheer abundance of style with which The Stone Roses carry it off: lasers strafe the arena; bassist Mani gives the crowd his best rabble-rousing gesticulations; Ian Brown does his traditional nonchalant man-at-a-bus-stop-with-a-tambourine routine (perfected years before Liam Gallagher); and - here's the truly amazing bit - for a band whose janglesome sound once struggled to disturb the band at Dingwalls, The Stone Roses here sound frighteningly, exuberantly massive.
Blame John Squire. Dressing up like the Wallace half of Wallace & Gromit is obviously no hindrance to the man's musical dexterity, judging by the way his guitar sprawls, scrawls and generally falls about the place emitting the most dazzling, breath-defying blasts of axe-waxing brilliance since, ummm, it's bloody hard to remember when. It's Squire who bridges that vast chasm which separates the Roses MK 1988 from the current model - a gap epitomised by the careful placing of the empathetic 'Ten Storey Love Song', which fills in between the gorgeous initial burst of oldies and the subsequent bowl through the bulk of the second album. It's Squire who handles the potentially moshpit-paralysing 'acoustic segment' with gentle aplomb, notably on second-cousin-to-'Sorrow', 'Your Star Will Shine'. And it's Squire who drags the five-piece through the more grandiose follies of 'Second Coming'.
Live, the album may sound a great deal louder, but that doesn't necessarily mean it sounds any less like a muddled collection of extremely smart riffs seeking to impress their girlfriends by hanging with cool tunes like 'Love Spreads'. So to fit the part Squire switches from Marr's 12-string bars to the rock of Page's and unravels a stream of fretmungous consciousness; a screeching, riffing, groin-rumbling flow of wibblesome wonderment which now and again - none more so than during the exhaustive 'Breaking Into Heaven' - threatens to topple into the Spinal Tap realm of the marginally ludicrous, but is always pulled back from the edge because you're still marvelling at the fact that a man wearing a grandad shirt and a waistcoat can make that kind of noise. Yip, this is a squall...
... So, indeed, is a terrific, joyous, 'Made Of Stone', wherein Squire's immaculate machinations, protect Brown's increasingly nasal vocals. And by the time he is caught surfing the astounding wall of sound that is 'I Am The Resurrection' (wherein keyboardist Nigel Ipinson makes his present felt with a smashing housey break), John Squire has been transformed into the Pope skateboarding through the stratosphere, spraying clouds of glitter over all those who might have just dared to believe that, well, The Stone Roses live might just have been a bit on the crap side.
Not a bad gig, all told.
Simon Williams
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