Squire Boys

I DIDN T get the name of the Geffen A&R person I was speaking to beforehand, but whoever you are, thanks a fucking bundle. Assured by her that John Squire is his usual perky self , I go into our tjte-a-tjte expecting the conversation to flow as freely as seminal fluid at the inaugural Spice Girls wankathon. As it turns out, the former Stone Roses man is a veritable sloth in the verbal department which one suspects may have something to do with the inhalation of a certain naturally-grown yet illicit substance.
That s a very serious accusation, he deadpans. Ask anybody who knows me and they ll tell you I ve always been 100% law-abiding.
Not wanting my day in court, I ll take his word for it. As difficult as it is to drag quotes out of him John Squire is the first person I ve met who talks in slow-motion it s obvious that he s tickled pink to be embarking on a fresh musical adventure.
It s great being in a band that talks to each other face-to-face rather than through lawyers or managers, he says, alluding to past estrangements. The Roses started off as a gang of mates who wanted to make music but, towards the end, there was hardly any communication. Artistic or otherwise.
Also great the g-word is a staple in Squire s vocabulary was going into the studio and feeling that raw enthusiasm again. Compared to Second Coming which was too disjointed to enjoy making Do It Yourself was this massive surge of creativity with everyone determined to make it a fucking classic. We recorded the whole thing in, what, six weeks which was partly down to Tony Visconti doing his headmaster bit I want you in at 9 o clock in the morning and woe betide you if you ve got a hangover. When you re making a record, there has to be a certain sense of discipline or otherwise you disappear up your own bottom.
For those of you who lead sad and sheltered lives, Squire became that bloke who used to be in The Stone Roses in early 1996. Pressed for specifics, all he s prepared to say today is: It got to the point where it stopped being fun. I know that s a clichi but I m a musician, not a businessman. I actually, make that we needed a new challenge. There was a period when I thought, God, have I made the right decision , but it didn t last long.
Elsewhere he s spoken of leaving the Stone Roses at about five o clock and finding my first member (of The Seahorses) by about nine. It felt fated.
Wanting to drop out of sight for a while, Squire debunked to the decidedly un-rock n roll environs of York where he happened upon 21-year-old bassist and goatee owner Stuart Fletcher. The recruitment of 25-year-old singer Chris Helme was equally spontaneous Squire spotting the Kevin Keegan lookalike in full-on busker mode outside the local branch of Woolworth s.
The rather more epic quest for a drummer which included the placing of an ad in Hot Press ended with the arrival of a tape from the soon-to-turn 27 Andy Watts. I mention these ages because at 34, Squire is almost old enough to be their Dad.
Nah, I was older than seven when I started shagging, he laughs. The reason they re all younger than me, I guess, is that I didn t really want to work with any names. I had all manner of offers, direct and indirect, to join existing groups but I wanted the evolutionary process to be natural. A lot of the successful musicians I know are cynical and jaded, whereas these guys just want to get out there and do it.
Apart from videos, that is. We shot one yesterday for Love Is The Law which involved jumping into the sea and it was me who had to lead by example and go in first. I tell you, it was bloody freezing! Chris had to spend quite a long time in a bath of dead mackerel so, as you can imagine, we re giving him a pretty wide berth today.
What about that Hot Press advert (unbeatable value at #27.50 per column inch plus VAT @ 21%)? Had he seen The Corrs and thought that all Irish drummers look like that?
To be honest, it was a case of me having a lot of Irish friends and thinking if we got someone from over there we d probably hit it off okay. We auditioned a few people from Dublin and other places I can t remember their names but none of them was quite right.
Weighing in at a substantial seven-and-a-half minutes, Love Is The Law is all jingly-jangly pop one moment and raging heavy metal the next. A bit too schizophrenic, methinks, for daytime radio airplay, but you have to admire the genius behind a line like She was a Romo slapper and we always tried to get her pants off when she phoned. Rather than indulging in a spot of U2-style teasing, Squire opted for the track as lead single because it perfectly summarises what Do It Yourself is all about.
It s a good pop guitar record, he states matter-of-factly, which is what I m best at. I ve never got on too well with computers and there were times when the Roses were a bit too dancey for me.
While Geffen who, lest we forget, coughed-up $20 million for their services handed the rest of The Stone Roses their P45s, a cursory demo listening session was all the label needed to decide that Squire was worth keeping on the books. A further mark of the faith they have in him is that at no time did the accounts department suggest he check out Beck.
There was no need cos I was listening to Beck anyway, he laughs. Odelay is one of the few rock records I ve heard recently which uses loops and samples constructively rather than gratuitously. You expect the guy to be completely off the wall but far from it. I ve met him a few times and he s very straight-laced.
Given all the time and money they d invested, I wasn t that comfortable about telling Geffen I was leaving the Roses but they were great about it. Once they had a rough idea of where we were heading, they left us to it which is quite rare these days.
This self-determination extended to the hiring of production legend Tony Visconti, a man who in his younger years pushed the fader buttons on such landmark records as The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust and Bolan s Boogie.
Even though one of the last albums he did was with The Moody Blues, we decided to risk it, Squire says mischievously. The clincher was that I wanted to use strings which is one of Tony s specialities.
The idea of going to Los Angeles was to remove ourselves from the day-to-day distractions we d have had at home. I like the light and space in LA. I wouldn t particularly want to live there but over short periods of time, I find the industriousness and constant visual stimuli they have there very inspiring. The mud-wrestling s great as well!
Apart from taking six weeks rather than five years to assemble, how did Do It Yourself compare to the making of Second Coming?
Like I said earlier, Second Coming seemed to drag on forever. We were all sleeping at different times, going off to the pub when we should have been in the studio and generally not behaving like a band. There were several occasions when I just wanted shot of it. Y know, it s only half-finished, but let s get it out!
The longer it dragged on, the more pressure we put ourselves under. How on earth do you come up with a record that justifies having five years spent on it? It can t be done.
As well as their own self-doubts, they also had the inkies on their case, with the NME even sending a covert team to peep through the windows at Rockfield Studios. The Seahorses Californian sojourn was far less stressful, with Squire describing their 28 days in the sun as frighteningly fast and thoroughly enjoyable. It sounds like all the band members are pulling in the same direction. I felt cheated, actually. I m used to labouring.
One of Do It Yourself s most talked-about tracks is Love Me And Leave Me which was co-written one very drunken night with Liam Gallagher.
He phoned and invited me round to Patsy s house in St. John s Wood after last year s Cup Final, he explains. I wouldn t exactly say that we co-wrote it. We were messing around when he came up with a melody for this lyric well, single verse I had, then we got pissed and I finished it off later. He s heard the finished product and he loves it.
Surprisingly, Do It Yourself s most obviously Oasis-y moment isn t Love Me And Leave Me but Blinded By The Sun , a Zippos-in-the-air anthem which after a rather limpwristed first 45 seconds breaks into the sort of chorus that the word big was invented for and then soars to a showstopping climax on the back of Tony Visconti s expertly-arranged strings. If the words Champagne and Supernova spring to mind that s because they should.
As messy as their disintegration was, let s not forget that the Roses debut album was one of the few 80s records that genuinely deserves to rub sleeves with the Pet Sounds and Sgt. Peppers of this world. If Squire was to rewind through his eight years with the band, what would his favourite moment be?
Getting dragged out of bed by the police at Rockfield after mounting our commando raid on the Revolver offices, he says after a pause that isn t so much pregnant as a mother of five.
That was worth every penny of the compensation we had to pay em! n
The Seahorses join Beck for his Heineken Green Energy show at Dublin Castle on May 3rd.