‘This Is The One’: The Stone Roses classic they feared releasing
When The Stone Roses released their 1989 eponymous debut album, it was rare to find a record that better encapsulated the post-Thatcherite era of working-class Britain. A soaring stylistic amalgamation of 1960s guitar pop and 1980s dance and acid-house characteristics, cut with a sprinkling of Smiths decadence, a dollop of neo-psychedelia and a side of hedonism, the Madchester masterpiece shot the four likely lads to national heights and influence—from the infamous Spike Island show to a coterie of sonically-adjacent bands (Inspiral Carpenters, Happy Mondays) surging to popularity in their wake.
With their debut album, Ian Brown, John Squire, Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield and Alan ‘Reni’ Wren found and fulfilled an unexplored sonic pocket—an anomaly of an accomplishment, with many contemporaries and next-gen acts taking a few albums to truly develop their identity. Alas, with legal adversities and second album syndrome, the Mancunian outfit never returned to the creative or commercial heights of their self-titled. Yet the album—and arguably its under-appreciated 1994 sophomore follow-up, Second Coming—is etched in UK music lineage, with a classic track list from ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ to ‘Fools Gold’, ‘Waterfall’ to ‘This Is The One’.
The latter song, which refers to John the Baptist’s proclaiming Jesus as the promised Messiah in its title—one of many Roses cuts drowsed in Biblical references—had a life of its own long before appearing on the ‘89-released album’s back-end. Rewind to 1985, and the band were trying (and failing, considering they chose not to release it) to write a debut album supported by the guidance and acumen of Joy Division producer Martin Hannett. The record shaped itself as Garage Flower, a disjointed work that was finally released 11 years later in 1996 without the band members’ permission.
Hannett locked the Roses in a room one tempestuous day until they wrote a song. The result was ‘This Is The One’, a track that became synonymous for its cascading vocal cadences, hazy guitar riffs and anthemic timbre. In its embryonic recordings though, it was different—faster, shorter, rawer, the composition of a band with promise and urgency but without a fully-formed sonic ethos.
And so it was placed on the cutting room floor, dangled in front of audiences in the years leading up to the release of the debut album, ‘This Is The One’ quickly became a fan favourite at live shows. And so when the band came to once again attempt to write their debut album—this time with John Leckie, the legendary producer and engineer who at that point already had a repertoire as wide-ranging as Roy Harper, Pink Floyd and The Fall—the track was revisited, reworked, and eventually became the soaring classic that found its home on The Stone Roses.
But again, this wasn’t without difficulty. It was the album track that “caused the most problems,” Leckie himself said in April 2000’s Q Magazine. “There was always a big question as to whether it should go on the record. It worked real well live, a bombastic thing that got faster and faster and was a bit Nirvana-ish. But we had to work hard on getting the dynamics right and making the speed changes work smoothly.”
The Nirvana comparison would—especially at the time—ruffle some feathers, given that grunge’s towering influence over Western pop culture in the early ’90s is seen by many as a primary reason for the domination of The Stone Roses and their contemporaries being so short-lived. But, although the tone didn’t perhaps fit the Roses brand, it’s in reflection a marker of the band finding the true essence of ‘This Is The One’, and a step in the process of an album with a legacy planted deep in the UK popular music canon.
