This is a great point. In the same way, Nirvana never got to make bad records, get fat, be out of touch and reviled by nu metal fans.
iirc it turned out it wasn't Reni, just a sample of unknown origin they'd been playing to. So Reni's credited on Unfinished Monkey Business without actually being on it! Brown admitted later it was a cock up but he wasn't going to take cash off Reni.
I have heard some shockingly bad 1995 recordings. When I say "stubborn" and "Hungry", I don't always mean good. Sometimes I mean that they carried on roughshod over a legacy bludgeoning it with a determination to carry on whatever on the cost. There was a mini-UK tour mooted for late March (that was due to be announced in local press on the day of the show, where they'd just be an advert saying "The Stone Roses, Newport TJ's, tonight, £10 on the door") was pulled after the Ian/Reni argument, and Robbie was in the band one day after Reni dared him to get another drummer, in or around mid/late March. Three weeks after joining, Robbie was on stage with the band. No wonder the shows were often shambolic. The planned Glastonbury 1995 show would have really, really hurt their legacy to be honest. That explains why they knuckled down and a did a lot of rehearsing before Feile to iron out these embarrassing kinks. The singing on this link below is amateur hour at best.
I was there, and I have to say the Roses pulling out did lead to Pulp doing a tremendous headliner in their place. I was a Pulp sceptic, and had my opinion seriously changed. Jarvis had the audience in the palm of his hand that night. A classic Roses missed opportunity though.
Alternately, had Silvertone not happened and they actually been a functioning partnership, they could’ve had a Primal Scream trajectory: maybe not always hitting the mark but having a fascinating string of releases taking their sound in all kind of directions.
When the Rose's split in 96 similar to The Smith's their legacy just grew massively in the subsequent years ,they were the cool indie band that everyone in school and college like to brag about and it continued into the 00s .They were always top of the list of bands people wanted to see reform because they had created such an aura by never playing by the rules and having one of the best debut albums ever that a lot of people still buy and listen to even if they weren't around when it came out.I reckon had the original line up stayed together in the 90s and put out more albums they would have been bigger than Oasis who had taken the baton from them during their tumultuous period in 95/96 ,the biggest mistake they made was not following up the debut album quickly it took nearly 5 years by which time a lot of fans had moved on ,even Ian brown admitted that while the court cases were going on they should have put an album out and kept working instead of hanging around.
Those town halls sold out in minutes. Minutes. I know - I can still remember off by heart the phone number of the Wolverhampton Civic Hall I redialled about 100 times the morning tickets went on sale to get a ticket. They were bigger than town halls but playing smaller venues than they should have in 1995. 20 Arena dates would have more likely met demand than 20 town hall shows.
Though I do really like and enjoy Second Coming, I really wonder what a proper sophomore release 3 years earlier should have sounded like with everyone firing on as many cylinders as they could muster. Second Coming, I don't mind the style change as much as I do mind the lack of cohesion or momentum from the movement not being as prevalent....
Second coming should have been a third album people wanted the follow up to the debut to be similar and within 2 years they really dropped the ball by leaving such a gap ,I know some of it was beyond their control with court cases and record label disputes but had they had a good manager they could have got on with been a band and not have had to worry about outside forces messing things up for them,I know they wore out John Leckie who was the original producer on second coming as he found it very difficult to get them to focus and commit to recording so much so that he gave up and left. Geffen Records mistakenly gave them as much studio time and money as they wanted without giving them a deadline so they were constantly editing and scrapping songs and not turning up to the studio because nobody was cracking the whip.
I think we're overestimating how prolific The Roses were - they were slow at writing songs, and some of the material on S/T was 5 years old when that came out. If they wrote five songs a year, that was a good year. They didn't have the songs written to issue a second album in 1992, even if they had none of the court cases. The court cases killed the bands momentum, but didn't stifle their spartan songwriting abilities.
Apologies, I've not read much of this thread but wanted to chip in. I saw them in 1995 at Whitley Bay Ice Rink and I couldn't believe the outright crapness of the venue. They were musical gods in my 17 year old mind at the time and it was something of a let-down. In retrospect they played fine considering the loss of Reni but it wasn't what I hoped for. I was gobsmacked at their popularity in 2012 - their latent popularity was something to behold.
I'm in the opposite camp: IMO we were spared the soundalike follow up and got to go straight to the more daring departure.
I'll agree too that they were slow to write songs. I think that was proven yet again with the 2012 reunion when they released those few mediocre songs. Still, I like the straight ahead rockers on Second Coming a ton and are glad they were made in that era.
I saw Paul Weller at Whitley Bay Ice Rink in 1995 and couldn't believe how bad the venue was either. It's a long time ago now, but I seem to remember it not having a bar.
Ian brown is very prolific in his solo stuff he throws out albums every 3 years well up to the reunion he did and put one out last year as soon as the Roses were put on Ice again .I think the problem lay with Squire who was always fiddling with songs and scrapping them and getting Reni to commit to recording , that's what happened during The Second coming according to various sources which was covered extensively in Q magazine a few years ago .I reckon Ian Brown was eager for them to put out an album during the reunion but couldn't get the others to do it for whatever reasons,none of them have spoken publicly about it so maybe there could be a 3rd Coming.
Ian's quite prolific - Squire definitely isn't. I have the feeling the band were paralysed by performance anxiety around their own legacy and couldn't/wouldn't commit to releasing much as it didn't reach a self-imposed quality standard.
Well, so why did Ian write exactly one song for Second Coming, in 5 years? And the worst one on the album. If he's so prolific. Maybe he was just too far gone on drugs
The drop in quality from the Roses stuff to Brown's solo output is huge, it's a lot easier to write mediocre songs.
Ian usually writes to other peoples music. You're a bit ****ed if no one else wants to write with you. Solo wise, he has written a lot with Dave McCracken who is a producer/songwriter for hire who mostly works with pop acts. I thought their work together was incredible on Golden Greats with lots of interesting sounds, but everything since has been very straight and cookie cutter to my ears. I can't remember if I've referred to it on this forun, but here was also a song on one of the post-Music of the Spheres albums that was one of McCracken's song written for another act that was rejected - Ian just wrote new lyrics to it. UMB was half a great album albeit with poor production (the single remix of Can't See Me is great), and GG is stunning..... all the following albums are forgettable piss poor electronic pop/chart music for indie boys to my ears. Home Is Where The Heart Is and Always Remember Me are the only 2 songs that stand out for me from those albums.
Am I right in saying that neither Brown or Squire have written anything truly melodic/jangly since 'Second Coming'? Why ditch the format that you made your name on?
