The Stone Roses announce a big gig in a place no one's heard of, which makes it even more intriguing. Especially as 6 months previously they were playing tiny clubs in Reading and Walsall. Now I'm obsessed with the band. They were the most exciting band since The Jam. The Smiths were great, but The Roses spoke my language and looked sharp, cool. Morrissey is a lyrical genius but I like getting up in the morning, not lying about all fucking day waiting to die or get run over. Know what I mean

2004 was certainly a treat for those whose musical education took place in the late '80’s and early '90’s. Not only did the seminal Pixies stage a triumphant reformation, but the man who many saw as the leading figure of that era, Steven Patrick Morrissey, return from self-imposed exile in Los Angeles with the excellent You Are The Quarry.

In two albums and five singles Ian Curtis managed to bring us all into his world. I was about twenty when he died I loved Joy Division as did Bobby Gillespie. But could have Ian Curtis have lived with the massive success that was coming his way, if he hadn’t had committed suicide, who knows ?  But Dead Souls, Isolation and Decades best describe the world that Ian inhabited.
 
In addition, he also summed up the seminal Factory Records in many ways, somehow Creation Records managed to do this without anybody dying. Factory Records had a death in their history and Ian Curtis was their biggest star really and still is. Off the top of my head, I think there have been now four films about Ian Curtis and Factory Records that says it all.

“Well, it’s a good life and a good world, all said and done, if you don’t weaken’” states Arthur at the end of Alan Sillitoe’s novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. An angry young man, who works in a bike factory, resists authority, drinks too much and sleeps with the foreman’s wife. Yet after receiving a beating from his foreman’s brother and his friends, who happen to be soldiers on leave, Arthur questions his life waking up to the fact that to lead a fulfilled life you have to exercise self-control and strength.

In 1989, The Stone Roses were the biggest band in the UK, literally ‘splashed’ all over the musical press , as in the case of the NME cover of 18th November 1989, which saw  Ian Brown (vocalist) ,John Squire (guitarist) Reni (drummer) and Mani(Bass) all covered in paint, a tribute to Pop Art.

The hot sun is beaming down on the face of the rhythm guitarist playing onstage in Mexico in 1999. On occasions he gazes up to the sun, he is slightly blinded by its glare and he is annoyed that he has left his sunglasses behind in the dressing room but happy he is no longer a plasterer from Manchester.

© Words - CP Lee

In 1993 a man called Cliff Twemlow passed away. When he died at the age of 55 a whole mini-film industry died with him. But Cliff didn’t only just make films, he wrote the plots, scored the music for them and starred in them too. Oh, and he wrote paperback pulp novels as well. And before he made his own movies he wrote a couple of thousand tunes that were recorded and put out by DeWolfe Music. And he was a night club bouncer.