The Stone Roses (1989)

The Stone Roses is the debut studio album by the English rock band the Stone Roses, released on 2 May 1989 by Silvertone Records. It was recorded mostly at Battery Studios in London with producer John Leckie from June 1988 to February 1989.

Despite not being an immediate success, The Stone Roses has now sold over four million copies worldwide. The album grew popular alongside the band's high-profile concert performances, which also helped establish them as fixtures of the Madchester and baggy cultural scenes. Its critical standing also improved significantly in later years, with it now considered to be one of the greatest albums of all time. It was voted number 11 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000), and in 2020, Rolling Stone ranked it at number 319 on its updated list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".

Background

Based in Manchester, where the so-called Madchester musical movement was centred, the Stone Roses formed in 1983. Between their formation and the release of their debut album, the band had gone through different names and line-ups, trying out different sounds, and released several singles on several different labels.

Bassist Mani was a fan of producer John Leckie's work with the Dukes of Stratosphear and suggested the band work with him. Leckie found the band's demos for the album to be poor, noting that the tempos were too fast and there was too much reverb on the vocals.

The recording took place primarily at Battery Studios in London, with additional sessions at Konk, Coconut Grove Studios in Stockport, and Rockfield Studios in Wales. Leckie said that the band were "very well rehearsed" and that they "didn't seem to feel any pressure other than that they were a band making their first album and didn't want to lose the opportunity to make it good. So there wasn't any pressure to prove themselves – they knew they were good." However, in a 2024 interview, Leckie commented that the band and the material were still rough when recording began, and that "I had to rehearse them and rearrange songs, giving them intros and outros, and steady tempos."

Guitarist John Squire primarily used a Fender Stratocaster plugged into a Fender Twin Reverb amplifier and he occasionally employed Ibanez overdrive and chorus pedals. Mani played a Rickenbacker bass through an Ampeg SVT bass amp.

"I Am the Resurrection" was originally supposed to end with a loud, feedback-drenched coda akin to how the band performed it live, but Leckie advised them that it would sound "boring" on the album and that they should instead "do something melodic that people will remember."

Squire and singer Ian Brown were unhappy with the finished mix, wanting the bass and drums to be louder and the guitars to sound "more devastating". Leckie attributes this to the fact that Brown and Squire were listening to Public Enemy on "full blast" in the studio.

Music and lyrics

According to writers Sean Sennett and Simon Groth, the Stone Roses "virtually invented 'Madchester' and built a template for Brit-pop" with their debut album. The record has been associated with rave culture and dance music, although Angus Batey from The Quietus argued that it was a 1960s-inspired jangle pop album featuring little or no influence of dance beats or grooves, with the exception of "Fools Gold". According to AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine, the rhythm section of bassist Mani and drummer Reni played in a manner that was merely suggestive of dance rhythms, while Ian Brown dispassionately sang lyrics expressing arrogant sentiments such as "I Wanna Be Adored" and "I Am the Resurrection". In the opinion of Spin critic Andrew Unterberger, it sounded more like "an exercise in rock classicism", featuring accessible melodies like those of the Beatles and resonant guitars similar to the Byrds, along with "the cheeky (and quintessentially British) humor of the Smiths" and "the self-fulfilling arrogance of the Sex Pistols". The melody for the song "Elizabeth My Dear" was appropriated from the English traditional ballad "Scarborough Fair".