THE STONE ROSES
Somerset Pilton Playing Fields
AND DID that band in ancient times, play upon England's pastures green ?
Weeks ago, when the hushed word first reached favoured few that The Stone Roses were to play The Pilton Village Fete as an apology to Michael Eavis for pulling out of Glastonbury, they found themselves complicit in the best kept secret of the summer. One whisper out of place, one word in print, and the show was dead.
So lips were sealed and, as the date approached, all the wishful thinking began to accrue some credence. Check the symmetry. This is where the best festival season in living memory began, burned under the Glastonbury sun, tinged with disappointment that John Squire's cycling fall should have robbed us of our climax. What more fitting way, then, to end our great outdoor adventures than to return to the scene and witness reparation ?
Check the zeitgeist. What more fitting gesture, in this week when the Britpop elite put their amusing inter-band bickering behind them and came together for charity, than the Roses playing for free so that all funds raised should go to helping local amenities. Surely there could be no more apt a Britpop gesture than The Stone Roses making The Kinks' 'Village Green Preservation Society' a reality.
It almost made too much sense. It couldn't really happen. Or could it ? Playing a marquee on a playing field to a gathering of locals and wide-eyed pilgrims there was something very Roses in the idea. Not just a gig, you understand. An event. Maybe. Just maybe...
The truly eerie thing about the Roses is that there appears to be some uncanny method behind their chaotic lethargy. An intangible aura surrounds their every action (and inaction) as if they were born with a divine right to get out of gaol free, to get away with murder. And no matter with which divinity they've made their deal, it's consequence is an anticipation that borders on yearning. It would be just like them, the spawny gits, to retrieve their bruised reputation with a gesture like this.
Driving down these darkening lanes, the overhanging hedges assuming spooky shapes in the gathering dusk, the heart quickens at the thought, the worry: will they really show ? And the very fact that our usual acquaintance with this route involves creeping along behind the wheel of overheating car at five miles an hour while tribes of itinerant festival-goers straggle the roads towards Glastonbury and tonight there is no-one just adds adrenaline to the occasion. This is not just a journey, not just a gig. This is a quest. And what more fitting site for the return to British soil of our conquering heroes than Pilton, in the shadow of the tor, King Arthur's reputed last resting place. The Stone Roses as The Holy Grail ? Such fanciful thoughts fill the mind as suddenly, out of the darkness, lights !
A makeshift car park in a meadow. Several hundred cars already here. Something must be going on. At the wicker gate into the playing field, a folding table, a cash box, an ink pad and stamp. "Eight pounds please. Anyone got the right money ?" And Jean Eavis, Michael's wife, greeting each new arrival in person. Her first words: "They're here !" As if even she can hardly believe it.
There's the tent, bar at the back, stage at the front. There are about 1000 of us and Dodgy have just come off stage. It's a balmy night, a night for dreaming under the stars. The intro tape. A churning, submarine sound.
And there they are. Mani's out first, punching the air, hair grown down past his shoulders. Robbie's behind the kit. John Squire plugs in. Feedback. In his leather cap he resembles the '70s Nick Kent elegantly skinny. And then Ian Brown saunters on with no ceremony and wraps the microphone lead loosely around his neck.
That's the other thing about the Roses. They intuitively understand that, after all the anticipation, play it down. What's all the fuss, folks ? This is truly cool. Ad so is the opening triumvirate 'I Wanna Be Adored', 'She Bangs The Drum' and 'Waterfall'. Dynasties have risen and fallen since these songs were last played in this country, diseases have been discovered and cured, and yet they still communicate spiritually with the crowd in a manner that most other bands are destined forever to envy. They are more than mere songs, they are greeted as affirmations, as if they have the power to lift life onto a higher plane of being. Everyone that's everyone - is smiling.
And this is despite the fact that Ian Brown sings like he's shouting into a bucket. Another mystery. Is the fact that he isn't getting any better down to sheer inability or just another facet of the legendary arrogance that sets the band apart ?
Whatever, Brown is torturing these songs. Which is a shame because in all other ways they are brilliant. Robbie Maddix has powered them beyond baggy into a new territory that shall henceforth be known as cool prog. Mani has risen to the challenge and grown muscles on his grooves. And John Squire is, quite simply, a revelation, coaxing each song to take wing, teasing out the ghosts of guitar heroes past, extravagant, exotic but, crucially, always dead on it.
Whether it's providing the charge to establish 'Ten Storey Love Song' and 'Driving South' as worthy claimants to the same rarefied adulation as 'Made Of Stone' or sitting to coax sweet-scented beauty from the acoustic 'Your Star Will Shine', Squire is the man. Brown may be the face, but Squire is the authority, the talisman that makes this band timeless. They play 'I Am The Resurrection' and it feels like it.
They play 'Elizabeth My Dear' and the local nutters who have climbed to the top of the main tent poles sing and cheer every word. They play the wretched 'Daybreak' and we go to the bar. They play something new that might be called 'Angel' and it is 'Stairway to Heaven' and Squire is Jimmy Page and grey-haired farmers play air guitar and headbang.
This is very strange and very joyous and very special. The Stone Roses are nearly as good as we wished them to be. Grandchildren will hear tales of this night in the far off future and, even if the words don't make much sense, the look in the eyes of the narrator will surely say this was magic.
Steve Sutherland
Back To Media 1995