Gig review: THE STONE ROSES – Wembley Stadium, 17 June 2017

For a band that have still only managed to release two albums (and one of those pretty underwhelming), whose singer is hardly renowned for having the strongest vocals in the world, and whose members spent the majority of the past twenty-five years ignoring one another and doing other things the Stone Roses sure know how to fill Wembley Stadium and others like it.

Why? The answer is simple: they made one of the greatest albums of the late 80s, some would say of all time. Track after track on Stone Roses, the bands paint-splattered, lemon-garnished, debut album, are absolute classics to be played, sung-along to and celebrated again and again and again.

Combining jangly sixties-esque guitars, rhythms of the emerging dance scene and some youthful rock ‘n’ roll swagger and applying it all to some really well-written memorable songs the Stone Roses were an absolute breath of fresh air for guitar rock in the late 80s. Indeed, the band’s first album makes up most of the band’s set-list tonight, with ten of the album’s eleven tracks making it into the set.

A small handful of songs from their “difficult second album” make it to the set as well as a handful of early singles like the lovely ‘Sally Cinnamon’ and last year’s new single ‘All For One’ (their first in twenty years) which captures the mood in the stadium tonight and has clearly become a firm crowd sing-along.

However, from the moment they first walk on stage to play ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ to the last climatic strains of “I Am The Resurrection’ the whole show is pretty much a celebration of that unforgettable and seemingly unrepeatable debut album. Timeless classics like ‘Waterfall’, ‘Made Of Stone’ (up there with The Kinks’ ‘Waterloo Sunset’ for memorable rolling bass lines in my view), ‘She Bangs The Drums’ and ‘This Is The One’ all become glorious communal sing-alongs.

Ian Bown, John Squire, Mani and Reni pulled off a brilliant show tonight and there is rightly a huge amount of love for the Stone Roses in Wembley stadium tonight.

I’ve been to quite a few big Wembley Arena/Wembley stadium gigs over the years and as the crowds make their way along the overcrowded walkway to the even more overcrowded tube station it’s common for fair bit of of communal singing to break out.

Tonight, unusually, it isn’t a song from the headliners that rings out from the crowds but rather Oasis’s ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’. London has certainly been battered and bruised these past few weeks and perhaps needed a bit of Manc-flavoured love and solidarity sending its way. It got it tonight.

Review by Darren Johnson

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