Stockholm, 4am: the amateurs are going to bed. Not so The Stone Roses, who are timbering up to go out and dance… like fish! Having conquered their homeland, Britain's toppermost rock ensemble are now preparing to take on the world. And you're up the back of the tour bus with Adrian Deevoy…
Centrifugally pinned back in his seat by the swirling sound of The Misunderstood at a not altogether understandable volume, Ian Brown swigs heartily from a flask of tawny Swedish spirit. Debonairly dabbing mouth-on-cuff, he peers out at the still Stockholm night from his band's hermetically sealed - and herbally piquant - tour bus and just manages, "Top drop of rum, that," before the lively beverage begins to work its white hot passage through his unsuspecting solar plexus. "Fuck me!" says The Stone Roses' enigmatic singer, slamming the bottle down on to his knee and clutching at his narrow chest. "Rocket fuel or fucking what!"
Patiently applying a well-practised tongue-tip to a third Rizla paper, the soundman - around whose shoulder Brown's arm is draped - regards the waif-like spokesperson for his Scallydelic generation with brotherly affection. "Pouf," he says and polishes off the 80 per cent proof grog without so much as a wince.
"Christ, I wouldn't like to be your insides with all the stuff flushing around 'em," mutters Steve Cresser, the Roses' non-stop onstage dancing roadie, nodding towards the soundman's stomach. Then he reconsiders, "…actually I wouldn't like to be your insides under any circumstances."
The Scandinavian trip is a low-profile four-date warm up for their mini-Woodstock Spike Island experience at which they will entertain 30,000 raving persons with their cockle-warming cross-pollination of dance and rock music.
"We played in Sweden right back in the early '80s when we just started," recalls Ian Brown, a handsome chap with matinee idol cheekbones and huge swivelling brown eyes. "The four people who came to see us seemed to enjoy it." He laughs quietly, making the sort of noise normally heard emanating from large, exhausted hounds. "There just wasn't anything about when we started in the early '80s," he continues, raking his fingers through his much-emulated shagged-out hairdo.
"It was really shit then, music, wasn't it? So we thought we'd do it ourselves. John started getting good on guitar, but he couldn't sing. I was a mate and I could sing so I did. Realised we needed a good drummer. Got one. Played a few gigs, made a few bad records, realised that we had to learn how to make songs rather than just noises. Started writing songs. And here we are. Actually," he adds by way of a poker-faced footnote, "I think John's got a real gift. He just holds the guitar and lets his spirit play it."
Although this would be difficult to prove without a full chemistry set, John Squire's guitar playing does verge on the inspired, melding liquid runs rarely heard outside the Fillmore with the choppy wah-wahed sound musicologists have come to associate with Starsky And Hutch car chases. Squire himself is an unnaturally quiet character, preferring the almost imperceptible 'neath-fringe peek to more conventional modes of communication. But it is in this way that Squire - who's responsible for the band's "out-and-out Jackson Pollock rip-off" artwork - makes the band's creative decisions. In the dressing room in Lund, a college town in southern Sweden where the band are playing a small club, Squire disinterestedly flicks through a new band photo session until he alights upon one shot that opens the adrenaline flood gates and ignites his limitless imagination. "That one", he says.
Gary "Mani" Mounfield - who can, at times, be slightly more enamoured with life - seizes upon two photos, one a collection of cocky heads-tossed-back pouts and another of four glum lads with eyes downcast. "That's the story of the court case in a nutshell, isn't it?" he laughs. "First we're all, Come on your honour, send us down, do your worst! Then it's, You, The Stone Roses band, have been sentenced to six months. Oh fuck!"
The Roses' courtroom drama (which cynics say has sustained public interest in the band during a creatively infertile period) is neatly summed up by Ian Brown. "Some bloke from our old record company released an old single we didn't want releasing to make a few quid out of us and he ended up with paint all over his car… somehow."
Curiously, the less-than-Manson-esque crime has now been referred to our learned friends at the high court. "It might not be a bad idea to send them down," suggests a passing roadie. "At least they might get on and write some new songs."
Twenty minutes after The Stone Roses are due on stage in Lund, they locate a suitable "soup shop" in the old town, a 10-minute walk from the concert venue. It's an amusing sight as the band - without a watch or indeed a care between them - shamble into the upwardly mobile, mildly pretentious Swedish beanerie. In a country where everybody seems blond, tanned, preposterously well-preserved and turned out, The Stone Roses make a pale and interesting contrast. In fact, the piano player all but stops. Sauted herrings remain unmasticated in open mouths and gravadlax perch unattended on wooden forks, dripping dill mustard on to the pastel pink tablecloths.
"Smart gaff, this," says Ian, beaming at the slack-jawed customers, his over-long waterproof trousers noisily buffing the stripped pine floor. John studies the restaurant's paintings in which all the daubed women appear to be exposing sections of their chests. "I detect something of a breast theme," he says. "Yeah, tits everywhere, man," Mani concurs intellectually.
A waiter of pugilistic aspect eyes the band uneasily as Ian romantically flambes a sugarcube over a candle and presents it to John who, in turn, tucks into the burnt offering with knife and fork. The waiter shifts his bulk awkwardly, flexing his leg-like arms as, for reasons unknown, Ian deliberately misses his mouth and pours his coffee over the table. He finally snaps as Brown saunters into the kitchen area and steals a piece of lettuce. He rushes over and strikes a macho pose over the foursome. "This is a restaurant," he booms, twitching with anger. "Behave yourself!"
"I were just off anyway, mate," Ian smirks, munching contentedly. "Relax." The band fall silent. Hands deep in pockets, nodding farewells to the bemused clientele, Ian shuffles out.
By the time the band return to the Lund concert hall, the 700 paying customers have been standing on the dancefloor - there is no bar as this would mean age restrictions - waiting for their underground English heroes' set to commence for over two hours. As the band scuttle in through a rear entrance a muffled chant can be heard permeating through the building. Although filtered through the randomly melodic Swedish accent, it is just decipherable to the trained ear: FUK-IN BAS-TUDS! FUK-IN BAS-TUDS!
"The punters," explains the group's agent a trifle unnecessarily, "are not happy." Ian's suggestion that they leave it for another hour before taking the stage is met with the uncomfortable thing that is "a severe bollocking". The agent later apologises to each member. "My problem was, I was getting it in the ear from the promoter and all I could say was, I know that they should be on stage but they've buggered off for a bleeding bowl of soup."
The band shrug off the knuckle-rapping with their characteristic combination of charm, cheek and curmudgeonly muttering. "The boss shouts at the husband," Mani improvises philosophically, "the husband beats the wife, the wife screams at the kids, the kids kick the dog, the dog bites the postman, the postman doesn't deliver your giro…"
"Exactly," says the agent, looking deeply puzzled.
In the dressing room, the band engage in the time-honoured last-minute preparations that pop groups have made since the champagne bottle first cracked across the bows of the good ship rock 'n' roll. Cresser tries to limbo dance under a chair, Ian stuffs his pockets full of cherries, John busies himself with an elaborate hay fever cure and Mani has a wee in the sink.
It is 10.20 when the band eventually appear on stage as silhouettes in a cloud of dry ice that would make any Swedish steam room proud. Sadly, the concert calls for liberal use of the word "rusty". The band have not played live since their Alexandra Palace extravaganza seven months ago and it shows: intros require jump-starting, backing vocals slip into the realms of pain, the foldback well, doesn't, and nothing quite seems to gel.
John Squire, standing head down at the corner of the stage like a guilty schoolboy, coaxes the regular Hendrix-derived selection of sounds from his guitar, Mani reliably pumps out his rubbery Beatles bass lines and drummer Reni clatters about his kit like a three-armed Keith Moon but somehow the three elements refuse to hang together.
To top it all Ian Brown is in a near-psychotic state of mind. Loping rhythmically about the stage like a monkey at a discotheque, he stares into space, mouthing incomprehensible thoughts which are clearly being express-delivered from another dimension. He occasionally rolls his eyes back into his head in a frustrated attempt to lose himself in the music. When this fails, as it invariably does, he crouches and mischievously surveys the audience in the predatory style of John Lydon.
The previous evening in Copenhagen he had repeatedly asked the confused crowd, "What're y'doin'?" some 20 times, until even the roadies - all long time acquaintances of the 26-year-old singer - were exchanging concerned glances and the telephone numbers of bespoke straight-jacket tailors. Tonight, though, more than anything, Brown appears professionally bored.
"When we're good," he says later in a penitent half-whisper, "I'm totally at ease - with the situation, with myself. You buzz off the music and float off in your own bubble. When we're not good I get bored and I can't get into it. I refuse to fake it, so I come across as a bored, snotty, lazy twat. Too bad. Why fake it?"
And this from the man who, with towering immodesty, will regularly tell you that The Stone Roses - who have refused support slots with everyone from The Rolling Stones to New Order 'cos they should bloody be supporting us" - are the best group in the world. At least.
"Aye," he says breezily regaining his monumental confidence, "but we weren't tonight, were we? Tomorrow'll be top, though."
Tomorrow is Stockholm, a larger more prestigious show with an estimated audience of 3,000. Wide-eyed and restless, none of the band sleeps on the 10-hour journey, preferring instead to watch - for the sixth time - the almost uncomfortably gritty Northern drama Rita, Sue And Bob Too and re-runs of '70s Ali-Frazier fights. "There were something about Ali when he was young," says Brown, who, it has been said, shares a lot of the young fighter's sassy arrogance. "He just… shone. Really sad, though, the way he just… went. Shame that, 'cos he was so strong. I like to read about strong people like Ali and Malcolm X, used to really like Bruce Lee, Martin Luther King and Pete, although I've never hero-worshipped anyone like musicians or anything. I've had a lot of respect for people but I've never idolised them."
Upon arrival in Stockholm at 10 the following morning, the band all head off to bed, discussing as they go, an English father and two be-flared teenage sons who follow the group around wherever they play. "The funny thing is," laughs Brown, "someone asked 'em what their mam thought of them going away all the time like that and they said, Oh she doesn't mind, she's off with the Mondays. She's a massive Happy Mondays fan."
The Happy Mondays are the only band, the Roses believe, worthy of sharing the same sweetly pungent air as themselves, although this, they insist, has nothing to do with them both coming from Manchester. "It's only a place," says Reni. "People make too much of it. Regionalism is dangerous - like racism, isn't it?" Ian Brown declines this opportunity to repeat his Timothy Leary-like one liner, "It's not where you're from, it's where you're at."
So keen are the Roses to play down their Manchester roots that they refused to appear on the recent Madchester TV rockumentary on the city's so-called scene. "Good job too," says Mani succinctly. "It were shite!"
Backstage at the Stockholm concert, the individual group members use their pre-show time prudently. Mani sits on a small steel trolley and Reni pushes him around the room shouting, "Top crack, this!" Ian alternates between slurping some pale liquid cauliflower concoction (it transpires that he eats very little apart from soup and fruit) and puffing on a crudely handcrafted roll-up. John mooches about not saying anything.
A ping pong table acts as a minor distraction until it comes to everyone's attention that Mani plays to Olympic qualifying standards. In the light of this revelation it is swiftly reinvented as an uncomfortable post-modern sofa and a flat surface upon which the beloved hay fever preparation - the pollen count must be up - might be safely ingested without any spillage problems. Strangely, the venue ("Big place, isn't it?"), the soundcheck ("Shit") or the imminent gig ("Should be OK tonight") are barely discussed. Talk, instead, is of post-show carousing, clubbing and ascending to that holy place where you can claim, without fear of contradiction, to be "off your fuckin' face."
"Is Anyone out there… made of Stone?" asks Ian Brown making a tongue-in-cheek arena rock reference to their anthemic scarf-waver of the same name. In keeping with the tradition, the Swedish crowd roar in the affirmative. "Are you?" asks Brown perplexed. "Are you really, though? Are you? Really?"
The Stockholm show is, in Roses parlance, "top". Brown shimmies centrestage singing like an angel, Reni and Mani lock together as if separated at birth and even Ian's extravagant notion that John is but a vessel for some greater force seems to hold some water. Gear-changing effortlessly between deceptively sweet and jangly calls to insurrection and ferociously funky love songs, The Stone Roses, live and on form, are quite formidable. Banging a pair of bongos and claiming, coyly enough, to be the resurrected Christ, Ian draws the show to a close. The crowd want more but, like Joy Division and New Order before them, there are no encores.
Back in the dressing room, Ian immediately heads for the sauna and reappears unclothed 10 minutes later a little flushed but evidently content. Having modestly donned a towel he natters amiably with some fans. Even John, in an unprompted bout of post-gig jubilation, admits that the show was "All right really." Mani begins to seriously prepare for a night on the town, dousing himself with fragrant toiletries and painstakingly re-adjusting his pony-tail. Reni gives it some smooth with a Swedish girl, wondering if she might find the time to show him some interesting local sights in the morning.
With hygiene none too prominent on the agenda, Brown methodically wrings out his stage clothes and puts them back on. Clutching a bottle of brandy and smoking like a lifer, he settles down for "a bit of a chat", something he infinitely prefers to The Official Interview. "Artificial situation, an interview, isn't it? Don't feel comfortable with it. Some people are just doing it to get £30, but we do it because you need people to know about you, don't you? We're selective, we're particular, we won't talk to just anybody. We turn loads of people down. Maybe the reputation for the interview technique comes from the way conversations we've had with people have turned out. People analyse and look too deeply into what we do. If something's there I'm not always going to say, Right y'are, there is something in there. I don't like people who ham it up and rabbit on about themselves. I don't particularly enjoy talking about myself, I'd rather talk about what someone else is up to, where they're at, what they see."
He takes a large draught of brandy, lights another Embassy and continues.
"I'm somehow always getting people to participate rather than spectate. You've got to try and get through these conventions. It's not easy. It's not meant to be easy. If it was easy you wouldn't have to be special to do it. Anyone would do it. I'm not interested in being spectated, I'm interested in the group being a catalyst to spark things and if we come on stage and there's an atmosphere in the building then it's up to us to sustain it and if there isn't an atmosphere then we have to create one. Do it. Don't say it, do it. That's why we don't rabbit on and on because at the end of the day you have to get on with it."
The Stone Roses are a very self-contained, headstrong group. Deceptively "together".
"We're men on a mission," he laughs drily. "We're aware. We've known each other a long time. That helps, I suppose. I've known John since the sand pit, when we were four. Never fallen out since then."
Are you conscious of the image you project?
"Not really bothered. Couldn't give a shit." He then back-pedals. "Well, we care and we don't care. We don't think about the image we put across. Honest. I just try and be myself for as many hours of the day as possible. I'm conscious of not wanting to slip into ego-trip territory which, from an outside point of view watching groups come up, is easy to do. If that happened I'd just sack it because you stop achieving anything."
How will you recognise that point when it arrives?
"Because I know that I've got friends who'd give me a slap around the face. Kick me arse. Behave, you know. It's the easiest thing in the world to just sink into it. We just came to rock 'n' roll and all that bollocks."
But isn't this exactly what the nascent U2 said before they went on to "invent the blues"?
"But it was always in their heads from the start, wasn't it?" he argues patiently. "You could tell. It was all they ever wanted. I'm sure you have to work at it. You've got to make sure you don't turn into a twat. But there's a big difference between rating your songs and yourself as a band and thinking you're a messiah, a righter of wrongs."
If I might quote from your song, I am the resurrection and I am the light.
"Irony, mate," he laughs then continues at a tangent. "There's no spirit in music at the moment, that's why we're head and shoulders above everything else because we've got spirit. But it will happen. It has to happen, doesn't it? There's always someone somewhere who realises that it has to happen and gets off their arse and does it. I'm hoping that in two or three years' time we'll all be buzzing because there'll be so much to see and do and be part of it."
Are there any parallels between yourselves and the Sex Pistols?
"I'd like to think we have a similar spirit," he enthuses. "At the time, even though you were 13, you could see the difference between a band like the Sex Pistols and anything else because they were real. They weren't like pop stars - let's have an autograph. You thought, He's just a lad like me. It was really exciting when that happened. Everyone was into it mainly due to the Bill Grundy show I think. We all thought it was excellent someone swearing on the telly at tea time and hardly any of us had seen the show so there was that added bit of mystery to it."
As talk turns to Jimi Hendrix it seems natural that John Squire should join in the conversation, or at least sit in the same room.
"I remember the first time I heard Jimi Hendrix," says Ian. "Wind Cries Mary. Top. I remember trying not to like it because that were the thing then, not to like Jimi Hendrix. Then I thought, Well if I like it, all that stuff must be bullshit. But then they were right about some of those bands, Bread and The Eagles are still pretty horrible."
"I remember thinking the drums were too quiet," says John quietly, "but that's because I was into punk."
Have they any thoughts on The Byrds to whom they are frequently compared?
"I listened to them a lot after loads of people said we sounded like them," admits John. "I like them but I find them a bit samey. But I'm like that with most things. There's not many people you can listen to and they vary their music enough to sustain your interest, is there?"
Bob Dylan?
"I can appreciate his historical importance," says John, "but I can't get off on him."
"It's too angst-ridden and self-analytical and introspective," complains Ian. "It doesn't mean anything to me. Even the songs that are supposedly designed to give people strength don't work because they're kind of pompous and all about himself. They always sound better when they're recorded by other people, Bob Dylan's songs."
There is, is there not, a similar degree of navel-contemplation to be found in Stone Roses' compositions (all credited to Squire/Brown)? A pause.
"Not bothered…" they mumble in unison.
And so to the golden future The Stone Roses believe is rightfully theirs. How do they intend to keep a rein on this apparently inevitable success?
"Just say no," sniffs John. "It's what we've always done. People suggest all these stupid things and we turn them down. It's simple. You've just got to remain in control of your own instincts and show people you've got the bottle to do what you want every time."
Next month The Stone Roses make their maiden voyage to the Americas. How do they expect the country to react to them?
"Hard to tell, isn't it?" shrugs Ian. "Never been there. Heard there's a lot of major league bullshitters there. But we've run into that already. America isn't that big a deal to us. It's as important to us to be big in Halifax, Moscow, Stockholm as it is in New York. As long as people appreciate what we're doing. Turn on, tune in and don't drop out."
At this poignant juncture, the tour manager arrives to inform us that the bus is revving and we are duty bound to "do" Stockholm.
Aboard the coach, between mouthfuls of liver-shrivelling bootleg rum, the slender selection of nightclubs on offer is earnestly considered above a high-volume Nowhere Man ("Nice one"), Jumpin' Jack Flash ("Ace tune"), The Byrds' Chestnut Mare ("Cracking") and The Misunderstood's I Can Take You To The Sun ("Top!"). Upon reaching a satisfactory decision, the bus is stopped and the 20-odd members tumble out into a club where, at midnight, Mary Coughlan has just completed her set.
Brief sabbaticals are taken on the dancefloor as the locals turn to examine these noisy English people who have now descended, kroner-handed, upon the bar. Why do they wear flares and expensive sports shirts and shout nonsense at each other? Why are they also so cheerful and how come their eyes burn so brightly on this dull Thursday evening?
"I believe in living for the moment," says Ian Brown, powdering his nose in the lavatory. "He's right," says Cresser, who hasn't stopped dancing since the gig. "Live like a saint in this moment of moments."
Just a few of these self-same moments later, eyes are cast heavenwards as Cresser and Ian dance precariously on a high balcony. More bizarrely, they are doing so to the staunchly unfashionable sound of Bryan Adams.
Arms aloft, Mani announces that Manchester United have won the FA Cup Final replay and beings an energetic lap of honour around the perimeter of the nightclub, singing the praises of the Red Devils. "But Mani," reasons a kindly roadie, "we support City."
"Where's your regional pride?" asks Mani, staring insanely. "If you've got no regional pride then you're… bum pup boom ti bum."
We never find out what those devoid of regional pride are as Mani, unfortunately, turns into a drum machine in mid-sentence and wanders off.
At 3am the die-hard (and probably die-young) members of The Stone Roses' entourage and a starry-eyed gaggle of fans are waiting outside a warehouse - in which, they have been flakily promised, a party is due to start - on the Stockholm docks. To kill some time and inject a little culture, Steve, the tour manager, spreads his arms and tells anyone who's listening that, in its time, this must have been the stomping ground - if that's the correct term - of a thousand happy hookers and as many horny-handed sailors. "Don't think I could manage that myself at the moment," the soundman confesses, his pupils the size of portholes.
Despite the bitter cold, the fact that everyone is wearing just loose T-shirts and this year's well-ventilated wider trouser and the ominous absence of even the loneliest of Twiglets, let alone a fully blown rave, the Roses posse are soon "rockin'".
Like a teenager who has just failed to keep his first skinful down, a young roadie is roundly ridiculed upon announcing that he's just seen the group's PR man projected on to a warehouse wall.
"You're friggin' hallucinating, you," cackles the tour manager. "Off your head."
Shamefaced, the roadie persists quietly. "I did see him. He were up on the wall. Honest."
"You want to watch what you're taking, you," warns the tour manager jovially. "You'll wind up with the Happy Mondays."
"Ecstasy! Ecstasy!" shouts Mani, who appears to have made a hefty down payment on a one-way ticket to Toytown. "We're gonna dance… like fish!"
And he does just that, cheeks sucked well in, arms flailing like a lysergicised Jacques Cousteau and feet paddling delicately on the dock concrete. In what seems like no time, everyone is executing some variation on the fish dance, hopping from foot to foot, giving it plenty of blissed-out nodding-dog head-dancing and allowing their mouths to hang open - presumably to allow the free-flow of plankton - in the attractive style that distinguishes a Stone Rose from any other species of this planet's inhabitants. Interrupting his trend-setting frug (which has since metamorphosed into a spastic breast stroke), Mani opens his eyes and points out, rather astutely, that "All we need now is some music." Not remotely embarrassed that they have, for many minutes, been indulging in an unaccompanied rug-cutting exercise, two fans open the boot of a nearby car, revealing a large ghetto-blaster (hastily re-christened a "dock-rocker") from which promptly pours the familiar ramshackle strains of the Happy Mondays' Wrote For Luck. The dancing reconvenes. The warehouse, however, remains resolutely closed and talk soon turns to Swedish girls, saunas and the customary sexual acrobatics discussed, but never performed, by road crews the world over.
By 4am the party that never started is over and the dock is all but empty. "Oslo tomorrow night," says Mani in a fleeting second of lucidity. "Oslo, li-lo, Hey Joe, coleslaw…" and settling on a comfortable freestyle, he embarks upon the long, dry swim to Norway.
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