The Stone Roses

33⅓ Main Series #33

by Alex Green

The Stone Roses shows a band sizzling with skill, consumed with drive and aspiration and possessing an almost preternatural mastery of the pop paradigm. This book explores the political and cultural zeitgeist of England in 1989 and attempts to apprehend the magic ingredients that made The Stone Roses such a special and influential album.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography, Journalism

140 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Alex Green is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Emergency Anthems, as well as the novels The Adventure Teen All-Stars, Malraux and the Midnight Organ Fight and The Heart Goes Boom. He's also the author of The Stone Roses, which is part of the 33 1/3 series on seminal rock and roll albums. He is the Founder of Stereo Embers Magazine and the host of the weekly program Stereo Embers: The Podcast. A native of California, Alex currently teaches in the English Department at St. Mary's College of California, where he also served as the Distinguished Visiting Writer in Non-Fiction in 2011.

IG: @emberspodcast

Reviews

[Heather Powell Browne]

I am in love with a pocket-sized novella. We don't know yet where we'll live but we are sure that we will be very happy together.

Several months back I received a copy of Alex Green's contribution to The 33 1/3 Series, The Stone Roses. For those uninitiated into this fantastic little series, it is essentially the zenith of musical dorkitude: entire books that look song-by-song at a seminal album. I had not yet found spare time to crack open Green's mini-tome on the messiahs from Manchester, but finally when I settled into my seat on the airplane to go to San Francisco (very close to a large neighbor in 12E who was seat-dancing to Arabic music, complete with hand motions) I pulled it out of my bag and settled in.

By the third paragraph, I was hooked -- already laughing out loud at the flawless way that Green captures the everyday and crystallizes it into something fabulous. His ardor and undying passion for The Stone Roses and their 1989 self-titled debut album is evident in each chapter, on every page. This is an absolute must-read (even if you have no idea who The Stone Roses were or why they were important).

[Tom Boniface-Webb]

Gotta say, I really love this series of books. This book appears to be one of the earlier ones, critical analysis has been partly swapped in favour of personal connection to the record, which doesn’t spoil the read in any way, just takes a different approach.

For a record that means so much to so many people from a particular place and in a particular time, bold approach to follow the view of an outsider (writer is American), but that just proves the universal appeal of the record and allows a different perspective to the one explored many times already.

[Keen Reader]

There’s no doubt that The Stone Roses debut is an important and hugely influential album. But it’s also an over rated one. Although there are some great highlights on here, I think it's just too uneven and inconsistent as an overall album. The Roses were never one to shy away from self-indulgence and that is evident in here, with one of the tracks merely being one of the other tracks played backwards, and we’re talking about a song which goes on for more than five painful minutes. (they did this again elsewhere too!).

With this being an American author, he obviously focuses on the American edition which included, the beautiful “Elephant Stone” and later “Fools Gold” which don’t appear on the UK version which I bought and most Brits would be familiar with. At times this album bubbles over with warmth, melody and invention and really pulls you into some lovely places. The quality, talent and charisma is there, but also so is the laziness. “Elizabeth My Dear” is pure filler and “I Am The Resurrection” is far too long and is like a fat, long-winded man at the party who just won’t shut up and leave.

Overall Green proves he can write really well and this is easily one of the better offerings in this ongoing series. He shows an impressive knowledge of the related music, culture and politics of the time – even if he sometimes gives the impression that Thatcher only impacted England rather than the whole of the UK during her reign.

[winter ʚ^..^ɞ]

4.5 ☆

nearly perfect non-fiction that gets kicked down a few notches by green's occasional cringe-inducing indie boy manic-pixie misogyny

[Spiros]

A nice track-by-track insight into the nuts and bolts construction of a seminal album, sprinkled with some nice personal anecdotes. On a personal level I have to confess that for an embarrassing number of years I thought that the song "Don't Stop" was just the extended tail end of the song "Waterfall".

I take a bit of an issue with Green's blanket disparagement of "Second Coming". Sure, it's not nearly as well constructed as "Stone Roses", but very few albums (almost none) are. I feel like Shaun off "Shaun of the Dead", as he and Ed are chucking vinyl at zombies in their back garden: "Stone Roses?"
"umm..." "It's 'Second Coming'." "I LIKE it!"
In my ranking of Manchester bands, I have Stones Roses and Oasis in a dead heat: each band produced two really good albums, which I would rank: "Stone Roses", "(What's the Story) Morning Glory", "Definitely Maybe", and "Second Coming". Oasis going on to produce a decades' worth of forgettable albums subsequently doesn't move the needle, as far as I'm concerned.

[Petty Lisbon]

I only mildly know this album but I enjoyed learning about the 80's British counterculture scene. Maybe I'm rating the album more than the book but it was a pretty good length for learning about the music without getting too personal about it.

[Shant]

I'm surprised I liked the book as much as I did. I seem to be the only person without a polarized opinion on the Stone Roses. I liked how he talked about the political context of the songs and the cultural context (is that the right phrase?) for the band.

[Patrick McCoy]

The Stone Roses by Alex Green is, so far, one of the best books from the 33 1/3 series by Continuum Books. I think a lot of it has to do with his style which is personal, passionate, engaging, witty, as well as informative. He loves music and knows a lot about it and demonstrates that music can carry very deep personal associations as well. But occasionally it can transcend emotional associations and predictability and become a sort of personal classic-this album is one of those for him. I think this album has stood the test of time very well, but I'm not sure I can say the same. It is by far the best thing from the late 80s Manchester scene in my opinion, though. So it is befitting that these personal links be explored as well. I think he does a particularly good job of providing the context from which this record was made as well as the context of what it was in relation to other driving forces of music-particularly independent (alternative) or what was then known as college music. I know and understand these references, because Green is the same age as me we and, generally, listen to the same music. However, he was much more passionate and willing to shell-out the cash for the music he needed. For example, he mentions how The Stone roses bridged the gap between indie rock and the rave dance culture. As he states, there was an absence of dance music among what he calls the Westgergians (a truly fitting title for the indie rock guys like me-I didn't really "get" dance music until I came to Japan in 97', but I still profess to be mainly a Westbergian). This was demonstrated by one of my old room mates, who worked at the college radio station DJing and reviewing records for them, put on what I imagine to be either "Elephant Stone" or "I Want To Be Adored" when his roommate burst into the room shimming to the record.

He basically does all this by writing, in essence, a separate essay with a different theme for each song along with a prologue and epilogue. These sections are complete with fitting epigraphs from various sources (songs by Elvis Costello and The Smiths, literary quotes-from Goethe-Byron-Wilde, sound-bites from The Stones Roses and Noel Gallagher). Furthermore, he provides the history of the Manchester scene and the rise of rave culture which begat and influenced this record. He also gets a variety of musicians to make observations about the band and the record (from obscure bands that I used to listen to like The Woodentops, The Mighty Lemons, and Posies). A very enjoyable and nostalgic read-highly recommended.

[Elliot Chalom]

There are a lot of ways that authors approach their subject matter in the 33-1/3 series. Many aim to canonize the album by showing it as a metaphor or statement of a broader thesis. Some get really deep into the music in a way that only a professional musician could. Some kind of veer away from the album and tell more of a story about the band generally or a time period or, well, anything else.

In his book about The Stone Roses' incredible self-titled 1989 debut album, Alex Green takes the approach that I probably would if I got my chance to write about one of my favorite albums of all time. There's an introduction, an epilogue, and in between 12 'chapters' each covering a song on the album. It's that simple. Green is a HUGE fan of the record and he's not ashamed to say it (over and over again). Good for him! That's not to say that he doesn't put in some hard work. He conducted interviews with musicians and journalists from the era, did his research, and analyzed every song down to the most minute detail. But at the end of the day Green is a gushing fan. And that made me love the album so much more. Highly recommended for any fan of the album.

[Wade]

The books in this series are hit-or-miss and it’s really more based on the author than the subject matter. Fortunately, the author on this book (Alex Green… a guy I had never previously heard of) is really great. He’s fun to read, he actually has a solid sense of humor that had me laughing out loud a number of times (be sure to read all of his footnotes), and he does what I want out of the books in this series: He takes you back to the time and place when the album was being made (as well as the time and place in his own life when this album invaded his life) and he walks you through the story. I think this album really is one of the most special albums from the past three decades and Green proves a worthy storyteller for this timeless work of art.

[Geoff]

Saw the movie - Made of Stone recently, so I finally dove into this book about the Stone Roses first album. It's a fun little read about the band, the state of British music at the time, the frailties of the music industry, the marvels of a well-crafted album that still hangs together, and a little bit of nostalgia for how it used to by mixed with some grudging empathy for what could have been.

[Alice Handley]

Thanks to this chucklehead I like this amazing album just slightly less.

[Manon]

keeping it lemon

[Greg Moore]

There's enough research collated here to make this an interesting read for a casual fan of the album who may not have had much of the context in which it was created or released, but Green occasionally veers pretty far off track, spending too much space on topics whose connection to the song in question seems tangential at best. Much of the chapter on "She Bangs the Drums" is dedicated to explaining Thatcherism, which was interesting to me as someone only vaguely aware of the term, but the song's implied connection to Thatcherism is unconvincing:

"'She Bangs the Drums' with its defiant, lippy tagline of, 'Kiss me where the sun don't shine / The past was yours / But the future's mine,' comes off as a rallying cry for governmental change that not only prefigured Thatcher's departure a year later, but joyfully anticipated it. "

Does it? I feel like the quoted line could be directed at anyone about anything. Green himself then admits that the political read may be "nothing more than misguided revisionism," but then goes on to say, " but in light of the political situation in England, where the denouement of the Thatcher years was on its way, the end of the song's big chorus, which gushed, 'There are no words / To describe the way I feel,' is a clear call for jubilation."

Is it? I feel like that line is pointedly and explicitly not a clear call for any specific feeling, let alone a reaction to any specific current event. Maybe you had to be there?

Similarly, the "Sugar Spun Sister" chapter is all about English football and regional pride, all seemingly to make the point that the Stone Roses were "confident" and that "confidence can be found everywhere in this track." I guess? Again, the football stuff was kind of interesting, I'm just not sure why it was in this chapter or this book. Green himself also seems a bit overconfident in his matter-of-fact interpretation of the song:

"…many have theorized '(Song for My) Sugar Spun Sister' is about a relationship with a prostitute, and with lyrics like:

I've paid
For fifteen or more,
But my guts
Can't take many more

And:
Well she hates
All that she does,
But she gives
It all that she's got

it's hard to think otherwise.

Is it? I'll grant you it's *an* interpretation, but it could just as easily be a song about a drug dealer, or a literal candy vendor at a fair, or uh I dunno, any girl with a shitty food service job (and her angsty (or "confident"?) admirer). But Green runs with the prostitute read for the remainder of the chapter as though it were verified canon.

Anyway, even Green's sometimes dodgy math served as motivation to think more deeply about these songs than I otherwise would have, and I think that's the real value of this series. These books force you to engage with these albums more mindfully, much like the vinyl experience itself.

[Brian Kelly]

Somewhere between three and four stars, but when in doubt, be generous. It’s fun because his appraisal is based on the original American version of the album, meaning Elephant Stone is in there, just as it was when I heard the album for the first time as an American high schooler a decade later.

The essays occasionally belabor elements of his personal life that don’t quite deliver…but at other times they’re funny, and I think that’s the way this series ought to work: personal and sure, a tad indulgent. The idea is to articulate what an album means to us. And this one is as meaningful as it gets for the author, and for me. A pleasant day’s read - and then I listened to the album on my evening walk to cap it off.

[Desmond Brown]

I love this series of books, but you have to just accept that there is no template, that each is the vision of the individual author, and mileage varies. There is always the question of 1) what the album means to you, and 2) what it means to the author, and what he wants to talk about in the book. I like the Stone Roses, just not as much as this author. So I found this book tedious. The connections he draws to the political climate and events are limited and superficial, although to be fair that is not really the main purpose of the book. Just a fan going on about his favorite group. Which is fine, just not for me.

[Phil Greaney]

It was fine. I mean, it's not great - it is (inevitably) hagiography mostly, offset by some calculated and largely irrelevant observations which tries to balance the saintly tone, such as West not thinking much of the early output (nothing too controversial there) - but you learn some interesting stuff along the way. It's supported by dozens of interviews and lovingly put together, so you might like it more than I did. My favorite track btw is 'Made of Stone', which could well be on my Desert Island Discs list...

[T.J. Gillespie]

If this is your favorite album of all-time, you will love this book.

Is this my favorite album of all-time? Yes.
Did I love this book? Yes.

In the final epilogue, Green writes: "When we return to our old favorites we find that either we're not there for the music anymore or the music isn't there for us. And so the question really becomes a simple one: do our favorite albums lapse into obsolescence or do we?"

With this album, we transcend that problem.
Five stars.
This is the one I've been waiting for.

[Gary Fowles]

Deeply average. Here’s your chance to dive deep into your favourite album of all time, and you piss that opportunity away with personal anecdotes about your college years. Thin on actual facts, I feel this album might have been better tackled by someone British, since a fair bit of time is spent unpacking certain aspects of British culture that really don’t need explaining.

Oh well.

[Timothy Minneci]

A well-research deep dive on the band that connects late 80s Madchester and the 90s Britpop scene. More personal asides and indulgences that I would have preferred, but the number of interviews and amount of research more than makes up for it. Would have liked a little more info on the actual recording process from John Leckie's perspective.

[Adam Shaw]

I could have done with less coverage of the stories I’ve read about before and more writing like this: “In some cases, when we return to our old favorites we find that either we're not there for the music anymore or the music isn't there for us. And so the question really becomes a simple one: do our favorite albums lapse into obsolescence or do we?“


The album gets 5 stars, obviously.

[Isaiah Espinoza]

These are often about more than just the music. This one is no different. Half music history half nostalgia trip down memory lane as the author reencounters memories associated with songs and realizing the meaning to lyrics he had listened to in a whole new light.

[Brianna Westervelt]

The author lovingly weaves his own personal memories of the album with the overarching cultural history and making of the album.

[Ted Gurley]

This is Why I Read The 33 1/3 Series

Never paid much attention to The Stone Roses until this slim volume. As I read and listened, it became more appealing with each listen. Greene’s epilogue and take on what happens to our favorite music over time is brilliant.

[Larry Green]

I loved this! Never heard the band but I've read all of Alex's other books and this was great. Now I love The Stone Roses!!

[Brian Kovesci]

Good book in the series. Green wrote about the band, where they came from, their struggles and how they were perceived both at home in Manchester and in the US.

[Germaine De]

Love the roses, loved hearing their story

[Kevin Linsey]

This man is passionate about the Stone Roses. I learned a lot. Great book, glad I purchased it.

[Aaron]

Wow, this author LOVES The Stone Roses. While there is some very good history and audio analysis, Green spends a little too much time discussing his own teen obsession with them.

[George]

Feels like a pretty standard approximation of the album. It just made me want to listen to the music, which is no bad thing I suppose.