Who would be in a band? In rock, most narrative arcs end badly. Break-up, breakdown, death and dishonour are the results artists can usually hope for. If musicians are lucky, the ignominy will be cushioned by a luxuriant mattress of acclaim. If they are very lucky indeed, there will also be the warm duvet of cash. Most bands get neither. Mancunian dreamers the Stone Roses very nearly foundered on bad deals before being rescued by the Geffen label, making a flawed second album and bitterly unravelling, feeding one of British pop music's most fertile legends.
Before their current reunion tacked a new chapter on to a cautionary tale, the Stone Roses came to a miserable stop in 1996 at the Reading festival. Half the classic line-up weren't even there – no Alan "Reni" Wren on drums, no John Squire on guitar. I was one of the thousands of fans who walked away in disgust at the thudding and caterwauling that constituted the band's appearance. It was a dreadful coda to a dream in which the Stone Roses – cleverer, better-looking and more musically sophisticated than the Happy Mondays – helmed a revival in British music where the haziness of the 60s lent a beatific air to the ecstasy-driven revolutions spilling out of dance music and into the wider culture.
Some cried that night, some jeered; most of us made our way to see Underworld in the dance tent. Anything would have been better than listening to the rump Roses sound, while pyres of plastic beer cups filled the air with substances less noxious. It is little surprise that the band's current long-awaited European tour has already been marred by squabbles. Singer Ian Brown called Reni a "cunt" on stage in Amsterdam. The question now is no longer whether will they record any decent new material, but will they last until their Manchester dates at the end of June.
As one of British rock's great lessons in how not to run your affairs, the Roses are no strangers to extensive retrospectives in the rock monthlies. Journalist John Robb's is the most notable biography. Former Roses tour manager Steve "Adge" Atherton is rumoured to be writing his own book; his testimony is absent here, as are direct interviews with Brown, Squire and bassist Gary "Mani" Mounfield.
The Stone Roses: War and Peace sets out to hymn the Roses and tut at their industry tribulations once again, this time with great access to Reni, the band's funky drummer, a reclusive figure who remains pivotal to their sound. Legions of old bandmates are called upon to chart the band's beginnings, in fascinating opposition to Factory Records and Tony Wilson's monopoly on the Mancunian scene. And while there is not much sense of the band's inner artistic motivations, War and Peace is rich with context and who didn't pay what to whom.
Author Simon Spence used to be called Simon Dudfield, and, as Madchester took hold, he was writing for NME and the Face. He was at the band's era-defining Spike Island gig, he saw them at London's Alexandra Palace, and he recounts the expansion and contraction of each of the band's flare measurements with great acuity. At one point in 1989, Ian Brown goes down from 24-inch flares "for that slight swish" to a more manageable 21 inches (p139).
In the absence of three of its stars, the secondary research does the heavy lifting. War and Peace really comes into its own as an almost wonkish account of the ludicrous business practices that derailed the Roses. Bogged down in legal battles, they never recovered the momentum of their classic first album and its slinky standalone follow-up single, Fools Gold. Their second album, The Second Coming, never regained what time and court battles had sapped from the foursome.
To his credit, Spence has kept the company of lawyers and former record company bosses to explain in forensic detail exactly how dreadful the deals struck by the band's management were. The view from the American industry is particularly illuminating. The Roses famously never broke America, partly by design, partly by default. Gareth Evans, their larger-than-life manager, demanded their first gig be at Shea Stadium. Tours were booked, then cancelled.
To one romantic view, the Roses were creative lions led by incompetent, venal donkeys. Spence, for his part, also acknowledges the part the musicians' personalities played in their plight. They didn't read the small print; factionalisation got in the way of an equal split. Their sense of the grand gesture frequently defied good sense. According to one former lawyer, John Kennedy, one US label wanted to sign the band on Concorde. The band were keen to board the flight, then, halfway across the Atlantic, refused to sign. (The deal never happened.)
Just as his portentous title clunks slightly, Spence's transparent fandom can let his good material down. "The set list was now shorn of all their aggressive early material and packed with definitive masterpieces" is the kind of writing you hope not to read in a grown-up music book.
As the feted ghostwriter of Andrew Loog Oldham's memoirs, 2Stoned, one of Spence's claims comes as a serious shock. "[Michael] Jackson had DiLeo, the Stones had Andrew Loog Oldham, the Pistols had Malcolm McLaren – and the Stone Roses would have Gareth Evans. Incredibly, given the competition, history would judge Evans as the most astonishing band manager of the lot." Incredibly, indeed, given that wheeler-dealer Evans was instrumental in signing the Roses to Jive/Zomba via de facto indie label Silvertone on contracts that were so skewed against the band even jaded music business lawyers were shocked. Evans himself was on an extortionate 33.3% deal – a figure substantially less amusing when the band hit trouble than it had been when they laughingly signed up.
Even though Spence never interviews him directly, he displays a strange fondness for the former club owner and bullion dealer, prone to peeling notes off a wad that was padded with newspaper. Perhaps Evans's biography is next. War and Peace, meanwhile, might have been better served by a different title: "Fool's Gold".
