The Stone Roses (album)
The Stone Roses is the debut studio album by English rock band the Stone Roses. It was recorded mostly at Battery Studios in London with producer John Leckie from June 1988 to February 1989 and released later that year on 2 May by Silvertone Records.
"This Is The One" redirects here. For the Utada album, see This Is the One.The Stone Roses
2 May 1989[1]
June 1988 – February 1989
48:20
Silvertone / RCA (US)
John Leckie · Peter Hook ("Elephant Stone")
Despite not being an immediate success, the album grew popular alongside the band's high-profile concert performances, which also helped establish them as fixtures of the Madchester and baggy cultural scenes. The record's critical standing also improved significantly in later years, with The Stone Roses now considered to be one of the greatest albums of all time. It was voted number 11 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). It has sold over four million copies worldwide.
Background[edit]
Based in Manchester, where the so-called Madchester musical movement was centred, the Stone Roses formed in 1983. Between their formation and the release of their debut album, the band had gone through different names and line-ups, trying out different sounds,[3] and released several singles on several different labels. They recorded their self-titled debut album with John Leckie, a producer who had worked with Pink Floyd on Meddle.[4] The recording took place primarily at Battery Studios in London, with additional sessions at Konk, Coconut Grove Studios in Stockport, and Rockfield Studios in Wales.[5] Leckie said that the band were "very well rehearsed" and that they "didn't seem to feel any pressure other than that they were a band making their first album and didn't want to lose the opportunity to make it good. So there wasn't any pressure to prove themselves – they knew they were good."[3]
Music and lyrics[edit]
According to writers Sean Sennett and Simon Groth, the Stone Roses "virtually invented 'Madchester' and built a template for Brit-pop" with their debut album.[6] The record has been associated with rave culture and dance music, although Angus Batey from The Quietus argued that it was a 1960s-inspired jangle pop album featuring little or no influence of dance beats or grooves, with the exception of "Fools Gold".[7] According to AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine, the rhythm section of bassist Mani and drummer Reni played in a manner that was merely suggestive of dance rhythms, while Ian Brown dispassionately sang lyrics expressing arrogant sentiments such as "I Wanna Be Adored" and "I Am the Resurrection".[8] In the opinion of Spin critic Andrew Unterberger, it sounded more like "an exercise in rock classicism", featuring accessible melodies like those of the Beatles and resonant guitars similar to the Byrds, along with "the cheeky (and quintessentially British) humor of the Smiths" and "the self-fulfilling arrogance of the Sex Pistols".[9] The melody for the song "Elizabeth My Dear" was appropriated from the English traditional ballad "Scarborough Fair".[10]
Artwork[edit]
As with most Stone Roses releases, the cover displays a work by the band's guitarist John Squire, in this case a Jackson Pollock-influenced piece titled "Bye Bye Badman", which makes reference to the May 1968 riots in Paris. The cover was named by Q magazine as one of "The 100 Best Record Covers of All Time." In the accompanying article, Squire said: "Ian [Brown] had met this French man when he was hitching around Europe, this bloke had been in the riots, and he told Ian how lemons had been used as an antidote to tear gas. Then there was the documentary—a great shot at the start of a guy throwing stones at the police. I really liked his attitude."[11] The story was also the inspiration for the lyrics to the song of the same name.[11] The background of the piece is based on the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland; the band had visited the causeway while playing a gig at the University of Ulster in Coleraine.[12]
Release and promotion[edit]
The Stone Roses was released on 2 May 1989[13] by Silvertone, a division of Zomba Records created to work with "new rock" acts.[4] While by this time the Madchester scene had already attracted some coverage from music publications, The Stone Roses originally received little attention from both consumers and critics in the United Kingdom.[14] Bob Stanley from Melody Maker called it "godlike" and said the foundation of the music was John Squire's guitar playing, which he deemed "beautifully flowing, certainly psychedelic, there are elements of Hendrix (especially on 'Shoot You Down') and Marr (check the fade to 'Bye Bye Badman'), but the rest is the lad's own work".[15] In Q, Peter Kane was less favourable and felt that The Stone Roses was a promising album weighed down by "strangely monotone production",[16] while NME journalist Jack Barron wrote that it was merely "quite good" while giving it a score of seven on a scale of 10;[17] the latter magazine later ranked it as the second best record of 1989 in their year-end list.[14] In The Village Voice, US critic Robert Christgau wrote that the group was "overhyped" and no different from the numerous American indie bands, adding "what do they do that the Byrds and the Buffalo Springfield weren't doing better in 1967?" He concluded that "they're surprisingly 'eclectic.' Not all that good at it, but eclectic," despite some moments of good songwriting ("Bye Bye Badman", "I Wanna Be Adored").[18]
To support the album, the band played several high-profile gigs, including one on 27 February 1989, at what was regarded as the centre of the associated Madchester and baggy scenes, Manchester's The Haçienda nightclub. Andrew Collins wrote in NME: "Bollocks to Morrissey at Wolverhampton, to The Sundays at The Falcon, to PWEI at Brixton – I'm already drafting a letter to my grandchildren telling them that I saw The Stone Roses at the Haçienda."[19] The band's debut appearance on Top of the Pops in November 1989 helped the album receive more mainstream exposure.[14] The album eventually brought them nationwide success and soon the band, along with fellow Madchester group Happy Mondays, were perceived as one of the key acts of the baggy scene.[20] Their May 1990 Spike Island gig, organised by the band and attended by over 27,000 fans, also holds a formidable reputation. Critics have frequently labelled it the "Woodstock of the baggy generation".[21]
The Stone Roses has sold over four million copies worldwide, according to the 2006 book covering the album for the 33⅓ music series.[22]
In 1999, on the 10th anniversary of its release, a two-disc special edition re-release of The Stone Roses reached number nine on the UK Albums Chart. In 2007, a remastered version was released by Silvertone as a Carbon Neutral Entertainment CD (with tips about Energy Saving). In 2009, the remastered 20th anniversary edition was released in several formats: the standard 11-track album (with the bonus track "Fools Gold") on CD and 12" vinyl LP (the LP version includes a bonus one-sided 7" single featuring the unreleased demo track "Pearl Bastard"); a deluxe edition 2CD/1DVD set, featuring the album on disc one, a 15-track collection of unreleased demos titled The Lost Demos on disc two, and a DVD featuring a 1989 live performance titled Live in Blackpool; and a 3CD/3LP/1DVD collector's edition box set, which features:[61]
Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.[62]