Unfinished Business

If it wasn't for the fact that Ian Brown was centrally involved in one of the most important British rock bands of the past 10 years, you'd be hard pressed to find anything remotely iconic about him. He belongs firmly in the inarticulate-speech-of-the-heart camp - but the inevitable irony is that his presence in the Manchester band, Stone Roses, spoke eloquently to millions of people.

It isn't difficult to understand why. Simultaneously revitalising rock and dance music from both ends of the spectrum, the 1989 album The Stone Roses captured the power-based self-aggrandisement of the belligerent rock star lifestyle and imbued it with an almost religious dimension. It was for definite and distinct reasons that the record began with a song called I Wanna Be Adored and ended with one titled I Am The Resurrection.

Eventually, that same power diminished through fruitless wrangles with record company lawyers and managers, and although the band released a long-awaited follow-up (The Second Coming) in 1994, it just wasn't good enough to compete with the legacy of their unique debut.

In the meantime, former guitarist John Squire has formed The Seahorses, musically a poor and bedraggled relation to Stone Roses. Ex-lead singer Ian Brown has battened down the hatches, kept his nose clean, and waited for the air to clear. Dancing legs at the ready, he's approaching the next 11 months like a man who knows his time has come again. Onwards and upwards. Does he care about the albatross-like legacy of Stone Roses? As they say in Manchester - "does 'e 'eck as like".

"I don't feel that it's a legacy as such," he says, playing down the sound that influenced bands such as Oasis, The Charlatans, and The Verve. "Stone Roses were what they were. Unfinished Monkey Business is my own thing. The new album is terrific. It would have been better if no one had heard about it, if it had just appeared out of nowhere, but there was a lead-up of a couple of months and loads of press. Due to my history, the media wanted to know about me and my whereabouts. I suppose with the album coming out after so much hype it's a bit of an anti-climax - but I think it does its job, which is just to entertain."

Well, it does more than that, actually. On various levels, Brown's debut pro-actively competes with the Stone Roses sound. The first single from the record, My Star, Corpses In Their Mouth, and Ice Cold Cube (a nickname for John Squire) are as good as anything he's done before. Overall there is a polished eight-track demo quality to the record, something Brown apparently wanted above all else. There's also an unsureness about what he wanted to achieve with the songs in both the music and lyric department, an inherently obtuse factor that threatens to undermine the record as a whole. That said, when you can find it there is great rock music here. The stripped-down soundtrack to 1998 has begun. "I wanted the record to sound as simple as possible," Ian explains. "I also wanted to avoid studio trickery, expensive studios, and to approach the music in a more subtle way. I could have spent much more money on it, but I'm sure I would have been criticised for doing that. Simple - that was the way I planned it."

The record is unaffected, and appears to be directly connected with Brown wanting to remove himself from the epic sound of his previous band. "I had a definite idea in mind: to process the sonics of the record on a valve sound desk. I found an old valve desk that had been used to make some of the classic Trojan reggae records, and that gave me the exact sound I wanted. I wanted the music to sound quite basic, the melodies intact, but with warmth underneath."

Brown, understandably, is now tired of talking about his involvement with Stone Roses, but he knows he's never going to get away from it. His personal pop history is good for reference and business (unfinished or not), but not, apparently, for his social life. "I stopped going to clubs in Manchester because all I got was `Stone Roses this, Stone Roses that'. In the last couple of months I've done a lot of interviews and all they ask me about is Stone Roses. But I can't be too annoyed, because being in the band has got me here today. I was the Roses' biggest fan, and had great respect for what we did."

Were you aware of how crucial Stone Roses were, in terms of inspiration and importance? "I never sat and thought as to how important we were, puffing up my chest," replies Ian, "but I was aware that we were the only band around at that time doing anything of real value - and therefore the best. Now? I don't think anyone has come near, or bettered, Stone Roses. Not yet, anyway. But as I'm sat here now, there are probably a bunch of kids practising somewhere."

What is your opinion of the bands who borrowed virtually wholesale from the Stone Roses' blueprint and attitude? Brown's distaste for the meat'n'mash songs of Oasis is well known. ("Oasis are just babies pretending to be The Beatles. They're wasting our time," he told a UK glossy magazine some weeks back.) Has either The Verve or Oasis, who have graciously sung Stone Roses' praises, contributed anything new to the band's legacy?

"I don't feel it," he retorts, dismissing the very idea. "The main thing about the Roses was that we had a beat, a groove, a rhythm, and that's what people caught on to. The bands you mentioned," he says, not wishing to sully his vocal chords by actually naming them, "don't have a beat. They've got the same kinda melody as the Roses - a 1960s-type vibe - but they're missing the groove. They're missing out on the main thing Stone Roses was about."

Which was? "The groove. One that comes from the heart as well as the head."