After four solo albums Ian Brown is ready to celebrate the past - but don't expect a Stone Roses reunion just yet, he tells Kevin Courtney.
For many devout fans of the Stone Roses, the real second coming happened on July 25th, 2004, in a garden in south-east England. In the beautifully landscaped grounds of Claremont Gardens in Surrey, Ian Brown performed a set of Stone Roses songs for the first time in years, delighting and amazing 5,000 onlookers, and sparking fresh rumours of a Roses reunion.
In a three-acre amphitheatre by the lake, and backed by members of Stone Roses tribute band Fool's Gold, Brown performed I Wanna Be Adored, Sally Cinnamon, Waterfall, Made Of Stone, She Bangs The Drums and I Am The Resurrection, among others, and resurrected long-neglected Roses tracks such as Mersey Paradise and Where Angels Play. If Brown had stepped down to the lake and walked across the water, it couldn't have been any more miraculous.
Since the Stone Roses broke up in 1996, Brown has studiously avoided doing tunes from his old band, only tossing in the odd Roses classic if the mood takes him. With four solo albums under his belt, including this year's Solarized, Brown has never been short of songs to fill the set-list, and his growing army of fans don't seem to mind that Brown sticks resolutely with his post-Roses oeuvre. So when he plays no less than 10 Roses songs in one gig, you can see how fans would be shocked by this sudden baggy resurrection.
"I've not played them for eight years, and I felt they just needed dusting off," says Brown. "I'd never done Roses stuff along the way, because I wanted to establish meself as a music-maker in me own right, and now I feel like, I've done four solo albums, and I've achieved that, so I can take on the old songs now. I can go back, and they sound fresh. I wouldn't do them if they didn't sound fresh."
They must have sounded pretty fresh indeed, because Brown has kept some of them in the set for his current tour, which stopped off at Dublin's Olympia last Wednesday and Thursday and continues at the Nerve Centre in Derry tonight, the Ulster Hall in Belfast tomorrow, Dolan's in Limerick on Wednesday (15th) and Ten in Waterford on Thursday (16th). He's also doing the Heineken Green Room Sessions in Dinn Rí in Carlow on Tuesday (14th), so Irish fans will have plenty of chances to see Brown perform Roses-related miracles.
Brown compares his current band, which includes the two guys out of Fool's Gold, to P-Funk, the 1970s psychedelic soul collective led by George Clinton.
"We're just getting stronger and stronger. The more shows we play the stronger we get. I think we sound much more fluid than ever. We've put a lot of work into it, we've done a lot of practising, we're just improving, yeah."
Brown may have made peace with his past, and embraced the huge legacy of his former band, but don't expect a Roses reunion anytime soon. Relations between Brown and the band's former guitarist, John Squire, are still strained, former bassist Mani is still happily ensconced with those other baggy heroes, Primal Scream, and former drummer Reni now only wears his trademark beanie hat when he's pottering about in the garden. Besides, Brown has already dismissed the possibility, saying that no one wants to see "grey-haired, pot-bellied geezers". Which doesn't explain why Duran Duran keep pulling big crowds.
Amid all the excitement about hearing the Roses' back catalogue revisited, is Brown worried that fickle fans will ignore the body of solo work that he has been building up over the past eight years?
"No, me solo stuff goes down great as well, they go crazy if I drop F.E.A.R. or whatever it might be. The vibe doesn't change - they don't go crazy for just the Roses stuff, it's all the same. You know what, a lot of the kids that are into me now, they didn't even know the Roses. I mean, so many of them said they discovered me after me U.N.K.L.E. tune, Be There, or Dolphins Were Monkeys. They didn't know the Roses. Some of them were even apologising to me for not knowing the Roses. Some of the younger kids, I'm not being funny, but they're not really into The Stone Roses. They like Fool's Gold but they're not that into it. They prefer me solo stuff. The majority of the people who are into me records are between 16 and 24. They were like toddlers when the Roses came out, if they were even here."
SUCH THOUGHTS ARE forgivable, however, because Brown has truly moved on from his former indie-hippie incarnation; albums such as Unfinished Monkey Business, Golden Greats and Music Of The Spheres bear little resemblance to the music of Brown's former band. While the Roses were influenced by swirly Sixties jangle and Led Zeppelin, Brown's solo work is informed by rap, hip-hop, techno, soul and r 'n' b. He's worked with James Lavelle's U.N.K.L.E. project, and had tracks remixed by Nightmares On Wax. Collaborators on his new album range from Noel Gallagher to Tim Hutton of Groove Armada. The Merseyside lilt of old has been replaced by a gruff, tough Manc burr with a chemical edge. And the hippie smock and fresh, bemused demeanour has been replaced by army surplus chic and grizzly-chinned menace. Brown has grown up, and the nervous, insecure swagger has become the self-contained march of a man who knows where he's going.
"I was thinking, if only I had the knowledge then that I have now. I'm a stronger version of that person. I don't feel different, I feel the same, only stronger."
Brown lives in his home town of Manchester with his wife, Fabiola, their four-and-a-half year old son, Emilio, and Ian's other two sons, 13-year-old Frankie and nine-year-old Casey. When he's not on tour, he likes to bring his children to Old Trafford to watch Man Utd in action. "I wear me referee's outfit permanently," laughs the soccer dad.
He also brings the boys to see him play whenever he's doing a home gig, but the most memorable family outing in recent times was the most recent instalment in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The film's director, Alphonze Cuaron, is a good amigo of the Browns, and he cast Ian in a cameo role. For the boys, this was a true movie miracle.
"Me eldest is too cool for Harry Potter, you know, baseball cap on sideways, too cool for Christmas. But as soon as he got in there he couldn't take his eyes off the screen." But just as he's not planning to revive the Stone Roses, Brown's not planning a career in cinema either.
"I've got no ambitions to be an actor, no. I've had a few mad offers - I got an offer the other week, some French movie maker, but no. I enjoyed doing that for the laugh, but music's my thing."
AFTER EIGHT YEARS ploughing his own furrow, Brown is finally feeling that his time is now, and that the hard work and single-minded purpose is paying off. This is his biggest Irish tour to date, and in the new year he will tour in the US, where he's just signed a new deal, to consolidate his growing street cred across the water. He's also been commissioned, along with The Beastie Boys, Missy Elliot and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, to design a new Adidas Superstar shell-toe trainer, which will be unveiled in New York in February. Add in recent triumphant shows at Brixton Academy and Manchester Apollo, and Brown will have a lot to feel content about when he sits back and enjoys the three days off he'll get this Christmas.
"You know, at the beginning of the year, I did feel I was gonna get back all the goodwill I've put out over the past 15 years. And it's felt like that, and the shows have vindicated that. I think when you come out first, they love you and they put you up there, and then when you're up there, right, they pull you back down, but if you just keep doing your thing, keep going, eventually they just give up knocking you. It's like you get some respect for keeping on going, because they know you mean it."
Solarized is on the Fiction label