Ian Brown’s Stone Roses led the small Manchester revolution of the 1980s, later nicknamed "Madchester."

The band (formerly Patrol, formerly English Rose) rose to prominence with a pop sound that was simultaneously danceable and atmospheric, equally indebted to disco, psychedelic rock, and dark punk, but above all rooted in youthful exuberance. While So Young (1985) was still raw and uncertain (noisy and neurotic), the sweet Sally Cinnamon (1987) and the tribal Elephant Stone (1988) clearly aimed to recapture the playful spirit of the Sixties. Early recordings resurfaced years later on Garage Flower (Garage Flower, 1997). The mixture ignited during the heyday of the rave scene, and the band soon became synonymous with that hyper-psychedelic era, even though there were groups circulating that were far more psychedelic or more techno. In a way, the Stone Roses represented the right compromise between all the tendencies of the moment: melody, dance, and ecstasy.

Neither the singer nor the guitarist could be counted among the virtuosos of their respective instruments. Ian Brown sometimes barely modulated his voice, at other times whispering in a trance-like state. John Squire rationed his guitar inventions, though he was by no means unaware of Jimi Hendrix. If the two leaders exerted minimal effort, much of the sound relied on the rhythm section, carried by Alan John “Reni” Wren (drums) and Gary Mounfield (bass), who were engaged in constant tour de force performances.

The album Stone Roses (Silvertone, 1989) effectively served as a manifesto for the "Madchester sound" and overflows with naive enthusiasm for the new "summer of love." Not surprisingly, it is full of references to the first "summer of love." The ballad I Wanna Be Adored, whispered in a melancholic tone over a hypnotic and slightly syncopated cadence, serves as the overture, but it is not representative of the rest of the album.
The record smells of the Sixties almost everywhere. She Bangs The Drums reprises the sunny exuberance of the Byrds’ "jingle jangle" on a strong danceable rhythm. The Byrds’ vocal harmonies instead permeate Waterfall, which gallops at a country-rock pace, adorned with psychedelic strumming, and Bye Bye Badman, even more hypnotic and cheerful. Again, the carefree California vocal harmonies of the 1960s populate Sugar Spun Sister (Beach Boys, Associations) and especially the martial Made Of Stone (Mamas And Papas).
The band’s crucial skill is the way the rhythm section deforms these simple melodies, transforming them into transcendent trance. It is primarily Reni who dominates the Stone Roses’ sound. Not only do his rhythms constitute the song, but his virtuosity colors it with psychedelic or even mystical nuances. Squire merely adorns his imaginative drumming with a ringing jingle-jangle. Brown’s sole merit is knowing how to sing a melody without going off-key.
Brown and Squire were above all skilled pop melody crafters: none of these tracks would have captured the spirit of the times if they weren’t, first and foremost, catchy.
Rave drugs take hold of the band on Don't Stop, a raga-like composition for distorted guitar with a galloping rhythm (a track Hendrix would have been proud of), in the epic crescendo of This Is The One, which exploits all the vocal experiments on the album, and in the rhythmic and harmonic quirks of I Am The Resurrection (eight minutes).
Yet that album already represents the past, not the present. The 1989 Stone Roses are those of the single Fool's Gold, a neurotic shuffle with whispered lyrics, tribal percussion, and frenzied wah-wah, and One Love, which on the B-side features a long avant-garde composition, Something's Burning.

The band had inadvertently sparked a massive commercial phenomenon and was overwhelmed by it. Confounded by the very trend they had helped create and entangled in a series of legal troubles, the group practically stopped performing.

Highly anticipated by the British media, the pompous comeback of Second Coming (Geffen, 1994) may lack substance, but it certainly has endless form. The new direction is well represented by the Southern boogie and the insinuating melody of Love Spreads, turning stereotypical signs into drunken dance. The rest follows these guidelines: whether drawing on the blues-rock school (the punchy, snarling Led Zeppelin style in Driving South and Good Times, the funky, loose Allman Brothers style in Daybreak), echoing the Beatles of Tomorrow Never Knows (Begging You) or the Beach Boys of Barbara Ann (Tightrope), referencing themselves (Ten Storey Love Song), or even the Led Zeppelin of Stairway To Heaven (Tears), sometimes in a manner that borders on brazen imitation.
Squire’s compositional maturity is at its peak: Breaking Into Heaven fuses Jon Hassell’s dreamlike world-music, Jimi Hendrix’s devastating guitar work, and elegant funky tribalism before sinking its claws into a soaring, old-school psychedelic chorus.
The guitar has become the group’s primary voice (Brown isn’t even credited among the songwriters). If Jimi Hendrix had lived in the rave era, perhaps he might have dumbed down enough to play like Squire.

Despite Squire’s more mature guitar tone, Brown’s more restrained vocalizations, and the greater fluidity of the rhythm section, the Stone Roses remain fundamentally a group of free-jam amateurs, now riding the wave of the 1970s funk/soul/boogie revival (Black Crowes and company). Their greatest merit lies in their ability to fuse the principal genres of rock hedonism: psychedelic rock, blues-rock, and disco-music.

Ian Brown's first solo album, Unfinished Monkey Business (Polydor, 1997), as confused and varied as it is, resumes the program that was interrupted after the Stone Roses' first album. With guitarist Aziz Ibrahim replacing Squire, Can't See Me shows what the band could have been at the crossroads of rock and roll and techno. My Star is a catchy single. As a "lo-fi" songwriter, Brown does have a modest appeal.

Following the single Be There, the album Golden Greats (Polydor, 1999) continues in that vein with Getting High (a world-music version of Led Zeppelin) and another bunch of subtle arrangements that recycle the principles of "Madchester"'s swirling psychedelia (Love Like A Fountain, reminiscent of Stevie Wonder's Superstition, and Set My Baby Free) at the border between bombasting hard-rock and trippy techno (Golden Gaze being fully on the techno side of the equation, thanks mainly to the producer). The latin Babasonicos and the atmospheric Free My Way bend the genre to disquieting effects.

John Squire, on the other hand, hired a new singer, Chris Helme, formed Seahorses and embraced the Brit-pop cause of his friends Oasis on Do It Yourself (Geffen, 1997). Overall, the results range from pathetic to catastrophic. The band is incompetent, the production is lame, the singer is barely above the average of a church's choir and, dulcis in fundo, the hit Round The Universe is suspiciously similar to the Monkees' Last Train To Clarksville. Songs like Happiness Is Eggshaped are concentrated of Merseybeat stereotypes. Vocalist Chris Helme leads the band through trite ballads like Love Me And Leave Me and The Boy In The Picture that mimick the introverted, soulful songwriting of a Paul Weller while maintaing the vocal harmonies and the spirit of the early Byrds. The band can do better. A more robust sound allows Love Is The Law to successfully wed Indian melisma and martial, psychedelic pace. I Want You To Know even winks at the Lynyrd Skynyrd. But these are drops in the ocean.

Ian Brown's third album, Music For The Spheres (Polydor, 2001), is even less inspired than the first two (which, at least, had a couple of catchy hits). The old trick wrapping lush strings around dance beats is developed in a not particularly innovative fashion in Fear. The Gravy Train is lazy lounge funk-soul. Hear No See No is typical of this production quality, not support by adequate songwriting.

Brown's erratic career continued with the even more erratic Solarized (2004). Erratic does not mean eccentric and certainly does not mean eclectic. Upside Down and Longsight M13 are the least erratic of the new songs, while the single Keep What Ya Got proves that the worst of Brit-pop never dies. Despite the wealth of guests, The World is Yours (2007) was not any better, nor was My Way (2009).

Squire released the solo albums Time Changes Everything (2002) and Marshall's House (2004), recorded True Skies (2002) with the band Shining, and later collaborated with Liam Gallagher of Oasis on Liam Gallagher & John Squire (2024).

Gary Mounfield died in 2025.