Golden Brown

In an age when faceless dance acts and sickly sweet, sanitised boy bands are the new pop stars, modern music needs icons like Ian Brown. The former lead singer of The Stone Roses, Brown s band were instrumental in uniting dance and rock music under one baggy trousered groove in the late 80s.
Capturing the spirit of the times like no other act, their eponymous debut album, a succession of vaguely controversial, chiming, Byrds-inspired guitar ditties infused with 70s funk, was an often copied but never equalled work. The album and subsequent live shows, including now legendary appearances at Alexander Palace and Spike Island, further elevated The Roses and their gaunt faced front man to superstar status.
Although unwittingly responsible for making flares trendy again and for launching the short-lived careers of a whole host of indie dance skinny boys, The Roses effect on music was unquestionable. They put the groove into rock music via their obsession with legends like James Brown and Sly & The Family Stone, they added an identity to the nascent acid house scene and, with some help from The Happy Mondays, they even succeeded in making Manchester (aka Madchester) hip again. Then it all went terribly wrong.
In the space between their debut album and its successor, the disappointing Second Coming, the Roses fell prey to mismanagement, spiralling cocaine habits and, with John Squire s departure from the band, endless litigation. It s no surprise that the band s second album was a half hearted, shallow affair, or that soon afterwards The Stone Roses finally imploded. Indeed, the way the band fell apart shows that the rifts between the group s founder members made any further collaboration futile.
Well, the way that it ended wasn t funny, but it s more traumatic living on the tenth floor with three kids and being a single parent, you know, says Brown, quantifying the situation. At the same time, the fact that when the band ended, the lad that left, John, he didn t come round, he didn t give me ten minutes to sit down face to face, he just did it over the phone. I thought that was cowardly. I deserve more respect than that you know. We d hung about since we were fourteen, I d known him since the age of ten really, maybe younger. We d come from nothing and we d gone round the world, so to finish it like that was just cheap really.
While The Roses other members returned to semi obscurity Squire s solo career was a non starter and Mani has replaced his dubious DJing skills with a pad bashing stint in Primal Scream Brown still looks and occasionally sounds like a star. Sure, his debut solo album, Unfinished Monkey Business was a patchy effort as its author came to terms with working in isolation, learning the recording, production and programming skills that had been hitherto unnecessary. However, despite going back to basics, Brown was still fulfilling a prophecy that had prompted him to form The Roses in the first place.
It was a chance encounter with soul singer Geno Washington while Brown was promoting soul gigs in Manchester during his early twenties that originally inspired him to form a band. Yeah, I was 21 and he told me I was a star, Brown confirms. He didn t say you ll be a star when you re older, he just said you re a star now. And he told me that I should become a singer. That was in 1983, and I formed The Stone Roses a few weeks later.
It s poignant that, when describing what he does for a living, Brown chooses the phrase singer songwriter ahead of pop star . As he admits himself, I don t call myself a pop star because it s not a very cool thing to be really, is it? Mind you, it s better than being an ex pop star! I d take pop star over ex pop star. Still, I don t mind Ian Brown lookalikes you know. I m used to them by now. I d rather they looked up to me than Elton John.

Exacerbated by the acrimonious Roses split up, Brown s dislike and distrust of the music industry is legendary, as is his abstinence. A non-drinker and fervently anti-cocaine, which he refers to darkly as the powder , Brown paints a grim, almost conspiracy theory-like view of pop music s hidden machinations.
It was arms manufacturers that set up the first record labels after the Second World War, he reveals. Philips, they were the biggest arms manufacturers in the world, and they set up labels: the first producers and engineers were rocket scientists. It all comes from armaments; the whole thing is based on getting excess cash from young people. They clicked on that in about 1950 and it s still running, it s still got that stranglehold. I know the industry is corrupt: say you want young boys, if you re big and famous enough they ll supply it to you. I suppose I m part of it because I signed a contract and I do interviews.
Despite these misgivings, Brown has re-surfaced to deliver his second album, Golden Greats, which he started working on on Christmas Eve 1998, the day his two-month stretch in Strangeways Prison ended. Sent down for allegedly making violent threats to a flight attendant, Brown still protests his innocence. On a more positive note, the experience was also the inspiration for two tracks on Golden Greats, namely So Many Soldiers and the dark cello-tinged Free My Way .
Prison wasn t good , he comments, debunking the myth that fame made incarceration more tolerable. It wasn t good, I didn t like it. You re eating dog food, being banged up is no fun. I didn t actually say the words that they put me away for saying. I deny that I ever used those words.
In the old days, he continues, the prisoners would have gathered around and played music with cellos and violins on a Sunday. So I wanted to re-create that atmosphere on that track ( Free My Way ). On So Many Soldiers , I m saying that we shouldn t be so fast to condemn a young man because he s a villain or that he s a little gangster because he s not had anything to look up to: his father s got no work, his grandfather has no work. It s easy to condemn a young man, but you don t know what he s going to become.
Despite the inclusion of these darker moments, Brown s second debut album is a mainly upbeat affair, and, by his own admission, an attempt to fuse all the elements of modern music. With sounds as diverse as Argentinean trip hop ( Babasonicos ) and Fools Gold style wah-wah funk ( Love Like A Fountain ), Golden Greats employs the same open-minded musical attitudes that prevailed when The Stone Roses first came to prominence.
Well, I wrote that song ( Love Like A Fountain ) in 1993, he explains but when I was recording the LP I deliberately gave myself the brief to make it like the acid house days, where there s beats always running, and you hear all kinds of different music, but you get good quality sounds, be it guitars or keyboards, whatever.
It s an approach that sees Brown come full circle, revisiting the Roses fondness for dance rhythms and grooves. Embracing dance styles at home and in the studio, Brown used dance music-oriented equipment to record Golden Greats and also found time to record with James Lavelle s UNKLE project, do a cover version of Michael Jackson s Billie Jean I d actually like to do a Jackson EP: Beat It , Thriller , Billie Jean , maybe an old Jackson 5 tune. They re just great songs: when you break them down, they re great blues songs - immerse himself in reggae and continue his fascination with US hip-hop.
Citing Ghostface Killah, Dead Prez and Q-Tip as his favourites, he explains that the production on American hip-hop is so far ahead of the UK stuff: it s like an American boxer getting into the ring with an English boxer: one is much bigger than the other!
However, in between The Roses debut album and Brown s second solo work, modern music has changed irrevocably. Pop music has assimilated elements of dance music, or, in the case of Daft Punk, The Prodigy and Basement Jaxx, dance music acts have become the pop stars. Despite dance music crossing over into the realms of the mainstream, there are still very few examples of bona fide rock acts successfully incorporating electronic music into their sound. Anyone for Cornershop? Thought not . . .
To be honest, I don t think that many people have tried it, Brown answers. The Roses were like a rock band with a good beat, that was the main thing that set us apart, was that we had a beat. I don t know why more bands don t try to do rock music with a beat. It s either straight Beatles music or it s dance. I ve not heard many attempts to bridge the gap.
Ironically, it s been left to Brown to re-unite the dance and rock divide again. His re-appearance is more than timely, rising like a phoenix from the debris of The Roses spilt, an incomplete debut album and a spell in jail, to release an album full of acid house attitude and perform at this year s Homelands festivals in the UK and Ireland. If anyone can make guitar music sound funky in the middle of a dance event it s Brown, and the singer believes his headline slot at Homelands is a vindication of all the hard work he invested into his solo career.
I feels like I ve come full circle, he agrees. I did a UK tour in December, played all the same shows the Roses did in 1995. It took me four years to get back on to what I was working on in the past. It all comes to he who waits! I ve also made up with the past. I felt The Roses were great and we achieved success. When I started my solo stuff I had no idea how to go about it, so just getting it released was a success for me. It vindicates that all I had, after being put down all I had to come back with was my music and people love it so I feel doubly happy. When I went solo I had a blank piece of paper and I could have done anything. I could have died or risen and I feel like I ve risen.

It s rare that the music industry
gives an artist a chance to embark on a new career path, but Brown has successfully managed to re-invent himself. Certainly, financing his first record was a risk, and, while he seriously contemplated giving up music to become a landscape gardener I thought it must be a rewarding thing to live a simple life, grow flowers and take them to market he feels that his refusal to behave like a superstar has made it easier to deal with the pressures of fame.
I ve always been conscious of fame and its burdens: I don t see anyone whose made it that hasn t died or gone mad, he comments adding that I still get on the bus because I don t want my kids to have a BMW view of the world. I played in New York last year and they forgot to pick me up at the hotel and I got a bus down with the people who were going to the show. They couldn t believe it! Got on a bus and the bus was packed with people going to the show. What are you doing on the bus?!! You hear people complaining about the paparazzi outside their door but inside they really enjoy it. It s all about maintaining your freedom, happiness and increasing the peace, that s it.
Golden Greats is out now on Universal. Ian Brown plays Homelands Ireland, The Mosney Centre, Co. Meath on April 29th.