Why did it take The Stone Roses almost six years to arrive at ‘Second Coming’?
When The Stone Roses first emerged from the redbrick walls of Mancunian obscurity with their paint-splattered, citrus-soaked debut album back in 1989, they changed the landscape of grassroots indie music forever. When it came time to create a follow-up, then, the pressure was inevitably insurmountable.
It’s difficult to overstate just how impactful that debut album was back in the late 1980s. In one fell swoop, a group of ordinary blokes from Manchester seemed to unite every faction of music fandom at that time, gliding effortlessly from the dance-focused beats of the acid house rave scene to the underdog indie heroism that had dominated Manchester’s musical output for much of the decade. As a result, that album became an instant and colossal success, breaking into the top 20 of the UK album charts and setting the standard for the indie sounds of the 1990s.
When you create a masterpiece on your first attempt, though, certain expectations begin to surround you. Almost immediately after the needle drifted into the dead wax of their debut, The Stone Roses were already being hounded to follow up on their barrier-breaking excellence. However, it wasn’t until five long years later that a follow-up, Second Coming, was eventually procured, by which time it was almost bound to be disappointing in the face of mounting expectations.
Firstly, let’s get this out of the way: Second Coming is nowhere near being the archetypal terrible sophomore album it is so often presented as. After a five-year wait, yes, the album was disappointing for vast swathes of listeners, but on an objective level, the album features some of the band’s most innovative and ambitious songwriting, as well as some of their all-time most successful singles in the case of tracks like ‘Love Spreads’.
With that necessary defence out of the way, why exactly did Second Coming take so long to reach the airwaves? Expectedly, the reasons for its various delays were myriad, comprised of legal battles, a lack of motivation, and, in the case of John Squire, parenthood. “Well, what with all the time wasted by the court case, we didn’t actually start making the album until 1992,” Mani told The Big Issue around the time of the album’s eventual release. “And it was hard to get momentum for a while there.”
That particular legal battle revolved around the band’s old record label, Silvertone, over royalties and contract disputes. To cut a bizarrely long story short, the Roses wanted out of their contract with the label, and Silvertone retaliated by attempting to prevent the band from recording for anybody else. By the time that the court case eventually came to an end, siding in favour of the band, the members were understandably exhausted, which isn’t the best mindset to be in when attempting to create a second masterpiece.
Adding to that disrupted mindset, the intervening years had seen multiple people close to the band pass away, and Squire became a father; so, all in all, they simply weren’t the same band that they were back in 1989. “After such a whacking delay, we thought, ‘Why rush it?’” Squire said, explaining the band’s laissez-faire attitude towards the sophomore record. “We were going to be criticised anyway, so we thought we might as well make a good album.”
As the guitarist predicted, that criticism came through pretty quickly after the album hit the airwaves in 1994, with cries that it didn’t hold up to the quality of their debut. Still, The Stone Roses were firm enough in their self-belief to ignore the naysayers. “We make music for ourselves,” Squire declared. “We’re pleased with what we’ve done, so there ends the story. Anything else is a bonus.”
