The Stone Roses: Working-Class Heroes

As four members of the Stone Roses walked around a corner and onto Portland Street, one of the city’s main downtown roads, a group of perhaps 100 teen-agers began screaming.

But the screams weren’t for the Roses.

The Roses may be the toast of British rock, but they passed almost unnoticed as the youngsters--mostly 10 to 14--waited across the street for another group to come out of a hotel: New Kids on the Block.

Ian Brown, the Roses’ lead singer and chief spokesman, didn’t even seem to notice the commotion as he headed toward a favorite coffee shop.

“We’ve been called arrogant and difficult because we only give two- or three-word answers sometimes,” Brown, 25, said by way of introduction. “Maybe journalists are used to sitting down with people who compress their whole personalities into 10-minute interviews. We don’t do that. We are quiet people. We don’t shout a lot.”

Two topics they especially frown upon: the meaning of their songs and the Manchester scene. But they loosened up as the topic turned to their influences.

“The Sex Pistols meant the most because they made me think a bit,” Brown said, sitting with the others at a window table in the modest shop. “I was probably around 12, and it was great to be able to turn on the telly and see real people from the street, not some show business actors or robots.

“So I felt like cheering when the Pistols came along, because I wanted them to do well, and I knew they would because I had faith in them. Then the Clash came along at the same time and they were more of the same thing. It felt like there were a lot of people going to be doing it . . . a lot of us .”

Even though the Pistols were an influence, the main motivation for Brown and childhood chum John Squire to form a band was boredom.

The group, which also includes drummer Reni and bass player Mani, was formed in 1985, but spent almost three years working on its sound, which, on the debut record, combines the clean, jangly guitar lines of the Byrds and the mid-’60s psychedelic undercurrents of the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour” period.

The band’s debut album was a smash last year in England, leading to its sweep of the year-end readers’ polls in various British pop journals. The fast rise led to some suspicion of yet another hype from England.

Most British critics, however, have been enthralled with the Stone Roses. New Musical Express’s staff gave them three of the first four spots on its list of the year’s best singles. Q magazine, probably the most respected music magazine in England these days, also raved about the Stone Roses: “They’re a genuine natural phenomenon.”

The guitar emphasis on the first Roses album is reminiscent of the Byrds (and Squire cites the old Los Angeles band’s “Chestnut Mare” as one of his favorite records), but there is a sense of youthful wonder and desire that updates the sound convincingly. In the recent single “Fool’s Gold,” the band shows new influences: the harder guitar edges of Jimi Hendrix and some of the groove-conscious soul of Curtis Mayfield.

Just as the Pistols tried to bring rock ‘n’ roll back down to size after it had become bloated with veteran stadium acts, the Roses, too, seem to be trying to make the music more relevant to a new generation of fans.

“We got into (music) because we dreaded the idea of working 9 to 5 at something,” guitarist Squire said. “We would have been in a band even if this scene didn’t develop in Manchester, but it is healthy because the kids built it, and they made their own rules as they went along. It’s a new generation speaking.”

The Roses’ themes range from a yearning for identity (“I Wanna Be Adored”) to social comment (“Bye Bye Badman” is an attack on arbitrary authority).

Through it all, there is a sense of youthful independence. Sample lyrics from “She Bangs the Drums”:

Kiss me where the sun don’t shine

The past is yours

The future’s mine.