Albums That Changed Music: The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses

the stone roses are one of the most important british bands of all time their fame and influence is based almost entirely on the manchester band's self-titled debut album which was released in may 1989 and is still considered one of the greatest british albums of all time [Music] [Applause] during the 80s the manchester scene was dominated by bands like the smith's new order and the fall formed in 1983 stone roses drew on these influences as well as the indie dance scene that was emerging in the city and on the island of ibiza in so doing the stone roses became one of the originators of the cultural and musical movement that became known as mad chester the stone roses also strongly influenced brit pop and dj and dance culture the manchester scene and the stone roses drew on indie rock acid house rave music and 60s psychedelia and pop music with the release of their album the band was seen as a breath of fresh air and the band members as the epitome of cool suddenly a degree of instrumental prowess was no longer regarded as suspect the band members also retained regular guys image that meant people could imagine them as next door neighbours after a decade dominated by largely programmed pop music featuring synths and drum machines the stone roses put rock and music played by humans or more traditional instruments on the map again all the while retaining a link to electronic dance music their debut album became a huge influence on an entire generation of young british bands and musicians including oasis the happy mondays in spiral carpets the charlatans 808 state the verve and many many more some of the enormous impact of the ban was reflected by the new musical express the leading british music magazine at the time in 1989 the stone roses won four readers poll awards for band of the year best new band album of the year and single of the year the latter was for the song falls gold which was not on the original album but was included on later versions released at the end of 1989 fool's gold is built around a loop of a drum sample from the james brown song the funky drummer and it became the blueprint for british dance music in the 90s so how did four young and unknown mancurian upstarts managed to shake the foundations of music in the united kingdom and beyond bassist ian brown and guitarist john squire formed the band in 1983. ian brand soon switched to vocals drummer alan wren better known as renny joined in 1984 and basis gary mornfield aka manny joined in 1987. by 1988 the band had attracted interest from various labels and rough trade financed the recalling of the single elephant stone which was produced by peter hook the basis of new order he was unavailable to produce the plan album so instead john leckie was suggested he at the time had already worked with pink floyd xtc public image simple minds and the fall plus many others later in 1988 the band signed to the zomba subsidiary silvertone records which bought the tapes of elephant stone and released it as a first single in october 1988. recordings for the stone rose's debut album with lekki in charge started in the same month and lasted until march 1989. i had the call from jeff travis a rough trade and he sent me a cassette with a couple of songs and um when i phoned him back uh he said oh they've gone and signed to another company which turned out to be zombo records which was a dance label a big label and it wasn't silvertone because they weren't in they were an independent label but they were more known for dance and rap stuff and things and they had lots of money and anyway they gave the stone roses or they gave the manager of the stone roses lots of money to do an album um and they came back and asked me and i think i think they asked me because of the dukes of stratosphere you know they'd heard the dukes of stratosphere and they they'd ask me because of you know can you get us to sound like that kind of thing and i said well i don't know not xcc but they had the songs you know they were well rehearsed and um they'd been playing the songs live and uh it was you know it wasn't a difficult album to do it was no i i think it took us 54 days including the mix-in and the recording and everything for i don't know how many tracks there's 11 tracks and um every track's great two references that lekki and the stone roses shared were the band the dukes of stratosphere and a classic psychedelic folk pop album by love released in 1967. a favorite record for all of us really and me included when they asked me when i when i went for the audition they said what's your favorite record and i said love forever changes ah love forever changes and that was that they all agreed you know yeah that is one of the greatest records of all time in liverpool you listen to everyone even now they listen to love forever changes every day you have to listen to that and you know this part if you listen you know there's there's there's bits in the stone roses album in waterfall and stuff there's little doom godinga doing you know there's kind of little patterns that are homage to that reference to that you know recordings for the album started at battery studios in london which was owned by zomba and additional sessions took place at conch studios in london the gear used included an e-series ssl and studer multi-track tape recorders however conditions were not ideal and the sessions were moved to rockfield studios in wales as leckie explains we did the record at the record company studio so zomba records part of their deal is they had to record at their studio you know which was in london and on top of that they they because they were a new band they had to do night sessions so that we had to start at seven and so our hours were from seven till mid seven till ten seven in the evening until ten in the morning you know and of course everyone was knackered you know and the bands are in a hotel they can't sleep in the hotel you know um because you can't go to a hotel and sleep at seven you know um so um yeah it was difficult at the beginning and then we went to rockfield studios and cut most of the record there which was um which was really great you know i mean rockfield's uh uh almost i was gonna say it was my home you know but between rockfield and the sawmills they're the studios that i i i i like to use you know so you you like a residential studio somewhere you feel like everybody's just focused to make the record yeah yeah i do really yeah i've always had the best time and the best success in a residential studio rockfield is a legendary place in british music history the desk at that studio was a neve and lekki and the stone roses were joined by battery in-house engineer paul schroeder leckie explains that the stone roses were a genuine band you know what i liked about them i think is that they were four they were like john paul george and ringo you know they were four characters you know it wasn't like a singer with some band in the background it wasn't where you were focused on the singer each member was important you know um the the drama renny was probably one of the best drummers i've ever worked with one of the great uh shuffle thing you know he can do all kinds of stuff effortlessly effortlessly there's no click no click on that record at all on that stone roses album um we just went for the best takes and uh you know chose chose the best takes you know shifted around some of the arrangements got the right tempo you know just and again the singing you know ian brown often gets knocked for his out of tune singing but you listen to the record and i don't remember having any more problem with him singing than anyone else really you know do three four five takes comp the vocal drop in some things you know there's no auto-tune you know anything like that in an interview with the quietus in 2009 leckie added you can hear from the demos that the roses had all the songs all the lyrics were written they seemed to have had experience they were very well rehearsed and they wanted to try lots of things they weren't frightened what you hear is the band and that's the way i work really they play and i record songs and we enhance everything with overdubs and double tracking any number of different things you have to do a degree of arranging but that's part of the creative process they didn't seem to feel any pressure other than that they were a band making their first album and didn't want to lose the opportunity to make it good you know i'm not saying it was a normal sort of standard record you know it had its problems but you know we'd go back and redo things we'd go right through to a mixing process and everyone was saying it was great and then finally you say no let's go and record it again so like waterfall one of their tracks waterfall which is one of the classic tracks on their album beautiful recorded that three times you know we took it right to the mixing stage and then went to rockfield studios another studio and just recorded it again from from the beginning you know um every time it improved you know in the last track uh i am the resurrection which has uh they they were doing it live with just a freak out at the end so they would do the song and then play an instrumental what i call a freak out go crazy and stuff and storm off stage and leave the guitar feeding back and all that kind of thing and i'm like no no no let's this is a record you know we don't want just freak out on the record because yeah it's okay for the gig but let's arrange it so we spent three days in the studio when we should have been recording actually um making the arrangement for that whole end section which i think is three or four minutes of instrumental and it kept going on you know getting longer and longer according to leckie the entire album was recorded to two synchronized studer 24 trap machines so on 48 tracks with the tape running at 30 ips with no dolby in general he didn't run the tape until the arrangements were fully in shape and the band sounded really confident the drum sound of the stone roses often inspired by the kind of shuffle beat that was pioneered by john densmore of the doors was crucial most of the stone roses sound of the drums came from renny's playing he's a great drummer and that's what he sounds like recalls leki however the gear and the recording setup obviously also had an impact the rental company dream higher was associated with rockfield so the band always had a choice of gear several different snares and kick drums were tried with the smaller noble and cooly snare often preferred this would mostly be recorded with a short sm57 the kick might have had an akg d12 for the weight plus a sennheiser 421 for more slap and clarity leki tended to use neumann u87s for overheads and sennheiser 421s on the toms and an akg 451 on the hi-hat on some tracks kick and or snare samples were added and to get them onto the tape leki used an ams dmx 1580 that triggered a backwards copy of the live sample bassist manny played a painted rickenbacker 4005 which was recorded with a di and an akg d12 in front of an ampeg svt amp john squire played a gretch country gentleman from 64 or 65 with supertron pickups a hoffner t-45s and a 1960 fender stratocaster going through a 1982 fender twin reverb amp scar is known for using an array of guitar effects amongst them with the dallas arbiter fuzz face and an ibanez tube screamer ts9 leki records electric guitar cabinets with a short sm57 or a 58 though he prefers the 58 as he says the 57 has more top end an alternative mic he often uses is a neumann u87 he likes to place the mics close to the grill and slightly off-center to the speaker cone and then record the microphones flat unless there's a problem guitar parts were often double tracked with squire working out his guitar arrangements in advance on a fostex 16 track tape recorder lekki recorded ian brown's vocals using a shaw sm58 often with the singer in the control room in general lekki likes to use a mixture of expensive and cheap microphones on vocals the former being a neumann u-47 or a neumann fett 47 the latter a sure sm 57 or 58. leki notes that a vocal recorded with a 57 can often be fitted really easily into a track outboard used during the stone roses sessions included eq from ssl or poltech compression from dbx 160 and a yuri 1176 and several reverb units and at least this midi verb 2 was used on the drums in shoot you down and a lexicon pcm60 was always used on brown's vocals other reverbs that saw action were the ams rmx16 lexicon 480 l yamaha spx 1000 and an emt plate at the battery studios on bye bye badman the guitar was played through a revolving leslie speaker lekki also used sound effects from an emulator keyboard that worked with floppy disks uploading the sounds took ages to audition the stone rose's first album was wrapped up with mixes done in conch battery and abbey road lekki also mixed the peter hook produced elephant stone the album was released on may the 2nd 1989 with a cover designed by guitarist john squire the record initially only reached number 32 in the british charts and the critical and audience reactions were lukewarm with only the new musical express and melody maker immediately being enthusiastic the latter called the album godlike on august the 23rd 1989 the stone roses and john leckie went into the studio again to record a new single called what the world is waiting for the location was another residential studio sawmills in cornwall sawmill studio is very remote with access only via a boat or a footpath the control room had and still has an 82 channel trident series atb console and the music was laid down on a 24 track otari mtr 90 mark ii recorder by lekki and in-house engineer john cornfield the recording process for what the world is waiting for was similar to that of the band's debut album but they also worked on a b-side called falls gold which was radically different musically and required a different approach in the studio moreover the moment silvertone's a r man roddy mckenna heard fool's gold he declared it the a side the ban was not immediately convinced but history proved mckenna right fool's gold became the stone rose's most influential and acclaimed song we actually did the album in in sections we didn't go in and do the whole album we did four tracks at a time i was i was uh what you call it i was hired to do four songs and then they were approved and then i did another four songs and then another four songs and uh and then the album came out and they wanted a single and so we went to the sawmill studio and this was the only track that we'd done that um the the had a click i suppose it was done on the computer it was a loop and the demo was actually um ian and john had a uh what they call it a break beat record with just tracks of break beats you know and they they'd written this song this lick to the break beat but of course they they hadn't sampled it or edited it or anything because they didn't have the knowledge or the technology to do that so on the demo every time it came to the end they would lift the needle up and then on the next verse you know put the needle down and sing the next verse so [Music] i i don't have the original demo but it was really funny to listen to because you know they couldn't actually record the whole thing in one go it's very naive the whole thing but yeah so false gold again got longer and longer you know we we kept adding the sections on at the end and um and it's you know people hear it today it probably sounds a bit dated now you know but at the time it was fantastic the drum loop that the band used was a shuffle beat from a james brown track called the funky drummer released in 1970. the drums were played by clyde stubberfield it has become one of the most sampled pieces of music of all time it has been used by public enemy ll cool j run dmc the beastie boys and also ed sheeran and george michael at sawmills lekki and the band loaded the loop into an akai s1000 sampler they sequenced it using cubos in an interview in sound on sound in 2005 leki explained we spent ages tuning that loop trying to get the right tempo and generally fiddling about and we quite enjoyed doing that the song really didn't have any structure at this point it was kind of a verse chorus jam so what we did was lay down about five minutes of the loop onto tape before adding guitar and bass trying to determine what to put on without in destroying the vibe different ideas came up like the second base line that floats over the top of the main baseline then there was this idea of sticking on the one note e and then coming back to the loop again this gave us loads of possibilities which nowadays would be quite easy using pro tools but back then we had to imagine something cut the tape and then if we got it wrong cut it back again in a separate interview squire elaborated the construction of that single was completely different to anything we'd written before it wasn't something that was knocked out and arranged on an acoustic guitar then taken into rehearsals and kicked around with the drummer and a bassist i just put it on a porter studio started playing guitar over it the main riff was partly inspired by johnny cash's rockabilly plucking sound that muted guitar sound you get when you just play on the bass strings after 18 days of work at sawmills lekki tried to mix the track at battery studios in london together with paul schroeder they didn't get anywhere which lekki put down to them not having enough objectivity and the fact that more cooks in the kitchen often result in inferior meals leckie tried again alone on october the third and fourth in 1989 at rack studio three where he mixed both fool's gold and the b-side what the world is waiting for on an ssl falls gold was released on november the 13th with its full length of 9 minutes and 53 as a 12 inch vinyl record and on cassette a seven inch vinyl and radio version was also released with the song edited down to 4 minutes and 15. the us release of the album included a long version whereas the 1991 uk re-release of the album included the radio version fool's gold became an instant classic because it was the first time 60s psychedelic rock 70s american funk 80s british guitar pop and late 80s manchester acid house and dance music had been combined the dance influences in the stone roses music had until that point shown more in the feel of their playing and in the way they embraced dj culture fool's goal demonstrated that they were seemingly disparate musical elements that could co-exist and even enhance each other and the record became a blueprint for british music in the 90s and also had an impact in america would have been a year the record had been sampled for hit songs like what's it all about by run dmc and only your love by bananarama today all the different musical ingredients that make up fool's gold coexist quite happily but this might not have happened were it not for the stone roses falls gold was one of several elements that helped steer the stone roses and their debut album to become hugely influential another element was their legendary appearance at the music festival on spike island near liverpool on may 27 1990. there were thirty thousand fans most of them on ecstasy and the festival featured djs instead of support bands it was more like a rave than a rock concert and has been called the woodstock of the baggy generation baggy is a word for the british indie dance music of the late 80s and early 1990s which was closely related to the manchester scene the stone rose's debut album eventually went quadruple platinum in the uk and sold over 4 million copies worldwide it had a huge impact on the uk music scene in particular and was credited with setting the tone for british music in the 90s while the album never quite broke through in the us american critics also started to take note rolling stone magazine described it as a blast of magnificent arrogance a fusion of 60s pop sparkle and a blown-mind drive of uk rave culture all music had it about right when it called the album a two-fold revolution it brought dance music to an audience that was previously obsessed with droning guitars while it revived the concept of classic pop song writing the repercussions of its achievement could be heard throughout the 90s even if the stone roses could never achieve this level of achievement again in july 1990 the stone roses released their last single for silvertone one love which was also produced by john leckie however after this legal issues with the label stalled their career the band's second album the second coming was not released until 1994 and did not reach the heights of their debut and the band broke up in 1996. their reunion from 2011 to 2016 yielded two singles produced by adele producer paul epworth so end where we started the significance of the stone roses as one of the most important bands in musical history is almost entirely based on that first legendary album including the track falls gold those who know it will be aware of its qualities and its importance and to those that have not heard it go check it out thanks ever so much for watching i really hope you enjoyed that don't forget to leave any other suggestions for future videos any comments and questions you might have and check out the other videos in the series have a marvelous time thank you ever so much for watching and we'll see you all again soon so long farewell avidasan auto revoir adios adios farewell goodbye

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 15,940

Rating: 4.9662447 out of 5

Keywords: Warren Huart, Produce Like A Pro, Home studio, Home recording, Recording Audio, Music Production, Record Producer, Recording Studio

Id: NjDZhIxD58M

Length: 24min 43sec (1483 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 16 2021