LEMONS - PANINARO 006
WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS -
CREATE A REVOLUTION
A lot went down in 1968. George Best inspired Manchester United to a 4-1 victory over Benfica at Wembley. At the same time The Troggs sang Love is All Around as the war in Vietnam raged on.
Massive protests and demonstrations gripped London, Berlin, Paris, and Rome. Civil rights leaders Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were shot and killed, sparking violent protests in over 100 American cities.
Chicago police waded into crowds with truncheons beating and assaulting protesters.
At the Mexico Olympics, John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their fists in solidarity with black power. Defiance was in the air.
As unrest broke out worldwide, Lennon and McCartney were penning the Beatles song Revolution. At the same time, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were recording Street Fighting Man in London. A song that was banned from Chicago radio stations, who were worried about the possibility of inciting further violence.
At the time, Jagger stated, ‘It’s stupid to think you can start a revolution with a record. I wish you could.’
Years later, the Mai 68 Paris Riots’ graffiti and poster art would inspire the new Factory Records logo. And the month-long street-to-street fighting battle with Charles de Gaulle’s Government would inspire two young lads from the leafy suburb of Timperley, Manchester, to write and create one of the best debut albums ever.
Brown and Squire met in 1977 and bonded over The Clash and politics. Both became members of the Socialist Workers Party, raising money for the striking miners.
Their first band was called The Patrol, but with the addition of Alan Reni Wren and Gary Mani Mountfield, The Patrol became The Stone Roses. And these boys were going to take on the world.
Fast forward to 1989, the Berlin wall is losing bricks, and the Roses, under the production of John Leckie, were about to deliver a debut album in technicolour. A generation had awakened.
People like you. People like me. We now had a band to call our own. We were now walking to a different tune. A different groove.
The first thing that struck me about the record was the artwork. The spattering of paint. The Lemons. What’s going on here?
Self-taught artist and self-taught guitarist. John Squire was colouring in and painting long before he picked up a guitar. He failed his Art exam at school because he wasn’t into the ‘writing part.’
Squire created the artwork for all of Roses’ singles. Each had the same painting effect. Even the guitars were painted in this cool as fuck way. I had to know more.
In Squire’s own words, each painting was ‘a rip-off’ of artworks produced by mid-century American artist Jackson Pollock. To be honest, at age 16, I didn’t really care. These were better than Jackson who? These were on the front cover of a record sleeve ... and that’s all that mattered.
That one record sleeve gave me more education than six years of higher-grade schooling.
Jackson Pollock was an American painter and a central figure in the abstract expressionist movement. His action painting style and drip technique brought him fame, and he was cited as the greatest living artist America ever produced. He even gets a mention on the Roses B-side, Going Down - ‘There she looks like a painting, Jackson Pollock’s Number 5.’
In Factoryesque style, Pollock stopped naming his paintings, preferring to number them. Number 5 is his most famous, selling for $140 million in 2006.
The lemons. What’s with the lemons?
Ah, the three slices of lemon on the Roses album cover. Squire named that painting Bye Bye Badman. The Bad Man is a reference to Charles De Gaulle, and the Mai 68 riots were the inspiration for the song. You’ll also notice the red, white, and blue of the French Tricolore on the artwork.
The story goes that while hitchhiking around Europe, Ian Brown met a man who was involved in the Paris riots. As the French police fired tear gas at the students, to neutralise the alkalinity of the gas - the students sucked on lemons. Clever.
The man always carried a lemon and it became a symbol of protest. Of not bending your knee at governments, establishments, or monarchies. The track listing on the album is interesting. Track 5 is Bye Bye Badman, and track 6 is The Roses anti-monarchy song Elizabeth My Dear.
If you look at the first track on Ian Brown’s first solo album - Unfinished Monkey Business - his intro track is titled, Underneath the Paving Stones: The Beach. In French - Sous les pavés, la plage! A popular symbol and slogan of social change from that period in French history. One that nearly caused a revolution. Squire and Brown brought a little bit of Paris and the fight back to Manchester.
With the help of Acid House, The Happy Mondays, and The Roses, Mick Jagger got his wish, and with a couple of records, Manchester gave us our revolution. Maybe not a political one, but ‘definitely, maybe’ a musical one.
Thirty years on and the Roses have inspired Oasis, and The Verve. Their songs still echo around our generation. They gave us Spike Island, Glasgow Green, and The Blackpool Empress Ballroom. Then they gave us their own Second Coming with Heaton Park. And the slice of lemon. Well, that became a Roses icon too. Touché.
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Taken from Paninaro 006