15 April 2009

Richard Ashcroft on The Stone Roses

In this week's NME, 'Why I Love The Stone Roses' by Richard Ashcroft, The Verve (as it reads in the article).
The Stone Roses blew me away, right from the very beginning. People used to hand around bootleg tapes of Roses gigs in Manchester even before the first record came out - so when it did, everyone already knew the words. Not many bands these days have that sort of enigma to them.

Lyrically, they were striving for something so much bigger than guitar music was at the time. It was strange; there were a few girls at the front and the rest were lads, very hard, aggressive lads. This whole contradiction gave me insipration. I tapped into that aswell. When I go to a football game and a guy with one tooth and tattoos all over his arms stops me and says my songs changed his life, you realise the potency of this music. The Roses did that to people too
."
In another section, Kevin Cummins (photographer of the iconic image featured on the NME cover of the Nov 18th, 1989 issue where the Roses are covered in paint), mentions that "Liam Gallagher and Richard Ashcroft have said it was the greatest NME cover of all time. Richard Ashcroft said it defined his generation."