The Stone Roses plus Shane Meadows, how does one apply any kind of rational critique to such a dream ticket partnership? It’s akin to writing about your football team winning the F.A. cup final (or the Super Bowl for our stateside cousins) and you have the best seat in the stadium. The script to the story in question is spread over the 20-something years between the original split and the reunion. Meadows describes, almost in tears how he had a ticket for the legendary “happening” that was Spike Island. He took some “dodgy acid” the day before the event causing such trauma that he gave the ticket away to some unsuspecting (but ecstatic) stranger. He spends the next two decades trying to come to terms with this as any “super fan” would. Then totally out the blue he is given his dream project of documenting the return of his beloved idols. It is hard to imagine bands that were producing great work at the same time that the rose’s eponymous debut was released being able to command the same reverence. There was New Order with Technique and Pixies with Doolittle (QRO Doolittle anniversary live review) to name but two. Neither of these great bands could come close to selling a quarter of a million tickets in half an hour as The Roses did for the Heaton Park shows.
We are treated to rehearsal room footage plus many intimate behind the scenes moments, revealing the band to be very chummy but focused on the task in hand. Much time is spent chatting to fans, new and old trying to distil the essence of what made them so special in the first instance.
The crux of the film is centred on the first gig at Warrington’s Parr Hall, where Meadows appears to be the archetypal boy in the sweetshop. He seems amazed that he has so many cameras, the ridiculous notion that the fans actually want to come and why the hell was he involved at all as he had never done a documentary before. The live footage from Warrington, other European warm up gigs and finally Heaton Park allows the music to shine through like a precious crystallised mineral. The main criticism is when the opportunity is spurned to get up close and personal when cracks began to appear at the Amsterdam gig. Alan ‘Reni’ Wren’s technical problems with his earpiece caused him to walk off stage curtailing the obligatory encore of “I Am the Resurrection”. Ian Brown returned to the stage to accept the hostilities from the crowd, calling Wren a cunt for walking off. At this point Meadows backs off to such an extent that he allows the rest of the warm up gigs to go un-filmed so scared that he is of rocking the boat. Wouldn’t it have been great viewing to witness Wren and Brown having a bust up, possibly coming to blows, but that was never going to be allowed to sully the legend of the magnificent four’s return.
Although they appear to be artistically redundant at this moment in time and if ultimately they decide to disappear for another 20 years; then again re-appearing to play the same material, they will have still made a lot of fans both new and old very happy.
