And as the needle hit the groove, my band – our band played the music we’d waited all our lives to hear. From the opening salvo of ‘I wanna be adored’ through the cry of ‘No words, to describe the way I feel’, the shot attack of ‘Every member of parliament trips on glue,’ onwards to ‘I am the resurrection’ and the wounded, heartbroken fight-back of ‘Don’t waste your words, they don’t mean anything to me’, music


born of


creating its own mythology. 7 out of 10? Dream on NME.


The Stones Roses in 1989 meant more to me than any band had before and if I’m true to myself, more than any band since. They were the very creators of myth and like all legends, bore more stories and half-truths around them as time took us ever further away. Spike Island drew a capacity crowd of 30,000 people, yet I’d wager that at least a million thirty-something’s swear they were there that day, with their hooded tops, 21 inch flares and bags of super strength old- skool pills.


Some of these half truths and myths are I confess, mine own. According to Wikipedia, the album was released in March (I always thought it was April, but have more or less confirmed was May 2nd - Ed) so I couldn’t have bought it on the day it came out. It wasn’t a lone, dawn, rail voyage to the capital but probably a lift up with my Mum on a Saturday afternoon. I wasn’t actually at the Hacienda but sat in my parents’ lounge,


9


watching them on TV appearing on BBC2 in a programme called ‘Snub’.


I wasn’t at lurid colours on my


revising for my GCSEs. The story about


this was a a street-love bitterness, the


crossroads with them, I was in Bridgend painting


jeans and the NME review is true


though, I know as I had it stuck on my bedroom wall for five years. The fact that The Stone Roses first album changed my life is true. The way that I listened to music blossomed, my view of grew, my first


real experience of


the teenage world love


happened and the will to believe that I would eventually be proved right continued to crystallise.


Ian Brown was once quoted as saying ‘If you walk down the street and little kids don’t laugh at you, then you’re doing something wrong’, and that was the Roses. Our gang, standing together beyond the crowd, taking on the world and for one glorious album, beating them all.


Chis Wit r he


NEW SINGLE – OUT APRIL 1st


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