Stone Roses Hit Political Brick Wall?

Lollapalooza ’95 and the Stone Roses?

To many pop watchers that seems like a match made in heaven: What better way, the thinking goes, for the touted English band to make its first U.S. tour?

Don’t look for it though.

Stone Roses manager Doug Goldstein believes his band may be excluded from the high-profile summer tour because of politics.

Don Muller, an executive at the William Morris Agency, is one of the founders and organizers of Lollapalooza, and he reportedly wanted to represent the Roses. But the band chose instead to sign with the rival International Talent Agency.

“The band would love to have an offer to play,” Goldstein says. “But I’ve been told that since I would not go with William Morris it’s probably a non-issue now. . . . And that’s no way to put together the real vibe of what Lollapalooza’s supposed to be.”

Muller says that the claim is “completely untrue” and insists that the Roses are still on the list of bands being considered. However, he says, he did tell Goldstein recently that the band’s request to be the show’s closing act couldn’t be honored because at the time the slot was being held for Neil Young. (Young suddenly withdrew last week from Lollapalooza to work on an album with Pearl Jam.)

This isn’t the first time that there have been charges of corporate politics leveled at Lollapalooza. Two years ago, executives at several record companies complained that the reason the bill featured several acts from the Sony labels was that Sony had hired former Lollapalooza organizer Missy Worth for an executive role.

And before that, some industry insiders believed that Warner Bros. gained an advantage after Warner-distributed American Recordings hired Marc Geiger, another Lollapalooza co-founder.

But Lollapalooza spokeswoman Heidi Robinson denies flatly that corporate politics have ever played a role in the tour’s selec tion process.

“The overriding thing everyone looks at is what’s best for the tour, what combination of acts will make for the best lineup possible,” Robinson says. “No one says, ‘Let’s put Sony bands on this year’ or ‘This year it’s William Morris bands.’ ”