stoneroses1

Ian Brown

I smoked a joint with Ian Brown once. If my mum or members of the constabulary are reading this, I totally made that up. If not, it’s completely true.
It was around the time that he was launching his solo career. It was 1997 or maybe 1998 and Unfinished Monkey Business hadn’t arrived yet, but we’d heard it was coming. He was playing a charity gig at a club in London where I worked. Also on the bill was Jarvis Cocker and it wasn’t hard to see who the crowd favorite was: the gangly Sheffield girlyman was flavor of the year in Britain back then, and the people were more interested to stare at him Djing than to pay much attention to Brown.

Upstairs in the office it was a different story. We only cared about the guy that had persuaded us all to wear 60-inch flares 8 years earlier. We asked the Mancunian legend to join us all in a post-party smoke, and my boss began furnishing him with some brilliant faint praise.
“Ian mate, loved the first Stone Roses album.”
Ooof. A “your second album was crap” and a “we’re not interested in your solo career” rolled into one, and fair enough, the second Stone Roses album was crap, and we weren’t interested in his solo career. No wonder he was so quiet.
But Brown’s had six hit solo albums since then, and played Fuji four times. He’s 47 now, but he’ll always be the Elvis of the Madchester generation, and if he can stick to the good stuff , (“Can’t See Me”) and leave out the rubbish (“Just Like You”), it’ll be a hell of a show.
And if he’d like to return the favor and invite me back for a smoke after the show, I’m up for it.