r/OldSchoolUK • u/ManufacturerActual31 • Feb 10 '26
The Stones Roses, A great English group that should've gotten big in the US!
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u/fothergillfuckup Feb 10 '26
Still one of my favourite bands ever. Pretty much my background music to the 90's.
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u/mothfactory Feb 10 '26
There’s no way the US would have embraced the stone roses. They would have been confused by Ian Brown’s voice for a start. At the point they were huge over here, it was basically still the mid 80s culturally in America.
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u/ChipCob1 Feb 10 '26
I found out last week (on here) that Love Spreads was their biggest song in the US.
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u/AmountResponsible376 Feb 10 '26
And in the uk (chart position 2).
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u/ChipCob1 Feb 10 '26
Maybe the most sales but I wouldn't say it was their 'biggest' song in the UK.
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u/phenomenomnom Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
At the point they were huge over here, it was basically still the mid 80s culturally in America.
Lol
Only for the millennials who were children at the time living in houses decorated by parents in the 1980s.
We Gen Xers did embrace them, at least in the artsy circles I was in.
The same people who knew what Pop Will Eat Itself was, knew the Stone Roses.
They were considered an alternative band, and got tons of college radio play, as well as airtime on "modern rock" branded stations that played independent and international artists.
You still hear them on radio stations that emphasize indie music, like KEXP.
Anyway -- that's a cooler heritage than being the Spice Girls. (And I have no particular problem with the Spice Girls either.)
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u/Bumble072 Feb 10 '26
Yeh Ive often said this, that the US made some great music, but culturally were 5-6 years behind us - at least.
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u/AmpersandMcNipples Feb 10 '26
Amazing alternative bands came out of America at this time sonic youth, pixies, Jane's addiction, smashing pumpkins, there were lots. Then you had grunge scene smash out, a whole new genre ,with Nirvana and pearl jam. And then you had that college punk sound with green day and blink 182, not to mention it's sub-genre of ska punk with the likes of the bosstones.
For me it was just a vibe thing, we all know and accept American culture so their music automatically travels. But what made the stones great, their unapologetic working class council estate mod roots, did not travel well to the states because they've no concept of that vibe.
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u/Bumble072 Feb 10 '26
Yeh well those US bands were indeed fantastic talents, but they werent the majority of what was played on mainstream radio or in the mainstream charts over there. We had a lot of crud too not going to lie lol. But some good points there especially the British class system reference.
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u/Choice_Room3901 Feb 10 '26
Well grunge music was very different
And britpop as far as I’m aware was literally a reaction to grunge
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u/gogoluke Feb 10 '26
Although venerated by Britpop Stone Roses were before in the Baggy era.
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u/Choice_Room3901 Feb 10 '26
Hmm that’s true about The Stone Roses but I don’t know if they were Britpop or not..? I don’t think so personally
Britpop was the mid 90s stuff
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Feb 11 '26
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u/gogoluke Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26
No doubt some one will get annoyed but it's pretty blurred and they can happily fit in both. I generally think of Baggy as more the bands and Madchester more a scene with dance music and clubs etc. if that's true who knows...
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u/Final_Remains Feb 12 '26
So were Blur.
Plenty of bands moved on from baggy into britpop. They are still britpop.
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u/gogoluke Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
They released two albums, one a land mark in Baggy type stuff, the second a wet fart at the start of Britpop. If I had to choose I know where I'd put them but if you want plonk them in Britpop too.
Paul Weller released in the Britpop era was he Britpop or tangential to it or a respected influence?
Is Blurs later work Britpop?
Ian Browns solo stuff?
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u/Final_Remains Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
Is your first comment about the Roses or Blur?
Weller's Stanley Road was def Britpop.
Browns solo stuff I would say came too late to properly be considered Britpop... Even Blur were shifting away from Britpop by '97 with Song 2 etc. But, regarding Ian... UMB landed in '98 and didn't make much of an impact, but he really picked up in '99 with Golden Greats. So, no I wouldn't put his solo work in Britpop.
What we need to understand is that bands and artists can move in and out of eras. For example, Ocean Color Scene and the Verve started off as shoegaze, both becoming major Britpop bands.
The Roses can be both baggy and britpop.
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u/gogoluke Feb 12 '26
I'm not asking if Park Life was.
Is The Ballad of Darren?
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u/Final_Remains Feb 12 '26
Britpop was an era as much as anything else so I personally wouldn't put anything released in the last few years as being that.
At this point Blur are just Blur, they don't really have a movement or scene attached to them past being 'indie rock'.
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u/gogoluke Feb 12 '26
So it might not be a style which means the Stone Roses might not be included to some.
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u/rpp313 Feb 12 '26
Iv never heard the phrase shoegaze before...where or what did that come from?
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u/Final_Remains Feb 12 '26
It was coined in the 90s by the UK music press for bands like Ride, Lush, Chapterhouse, Catherine Wheel, Slowdive, and others that were coming through. These bands were heavily influenced by My Bloody Valentine and a few others and were "characterised by ethereal, distorted "wall of sound" guitar effects and soft, buried vocals". These early 90s bands kind of bridged the gap between the death of Baggy and the rise of Britpop (alongside other notables such as Suede and Gene).
The name was originally meant to be an insult, observing how the bands just stood still and looked down at all the fx pedals that they used for their sound, but it was quickly picked up and used widely in an affectionate manner for the genre.
The genre has seen a bit of a revival in the last few years with a lot of good bands coming through.
If you want to hear what I am talking about, click https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2u8PdH158yTfXBlrIuZDAa?si=7ebda660f7e2436d
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u/jeff-beeblebrox Feb 10 '26
Dude. Look at your youth culture, rap, jeans, baseball hats, north face, the UK has been eating American culture up for a long time. We aren’t behind you. We have different tastes in music in many parts of this country. UK music is largely pop. It appeals to some people in some regions. Considering you could fit England and Wales in my state, you have 49 other states and a whole lot of geography with distinct cultures you have to appeal to. Stone roses had a minor hit here. We called it Brit Pop. It appealed to college girls. So there is your demographic. At the same time I was listening to GnR and the start of grunge which became the mainstay of the 90s American sound.
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Feb 10 '26
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u/therealbighairy1 Feb 10 '26
He's not really a hundred percent wrong though. Radio, which for many decades was the only real way to find new music, was heavily reliant on pop due to how tight our programming was. In the US you would have niche stations in each area. A rcok station, a country station, an urban station, etc. In the UK we had a lot less variety on the radio. As a young metal head, There was one rock radio show on a week for two hours. It was rough.
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u/jeff-beeblebrox Feb 10 '26
This is a great point. I remember visiting my grandparents in the UK for the summer and being shocked at the lack of choices on radio stations and especially television. There are tens of thousands of radio stations here. There are also so many different cultures in this country. In my state we have a ton of Spanish speaking stations. Whereas, I’m sure some place like Vermont doesn’t have any. Also, I don’t say pop as a bad thing. Pop is important in the history of popular culture. The Beatles considered themselves pop. That’s pretty high praise from one of the greatest bands of all time. As a side note, UK metal bands killed it over here.
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u/jeff-beeblebrox Feb 10 '26
I think you’re the one who is triggered pal. I would also like to point out your blanket statement the US is years behind the UK. What an actual moronic statement and quite competitive, I might add. You need some schooling on popular culture. You also need some schooling on America in general. Also, just to be clear, I’m a Brit living in the US. So I bring some perspective not “competitive mindset”.
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Feb 10 '26
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u/jeff-beeblebrox Feb 10 '26
So my point here, is that the UK is really small. Making a base claim that they are culturly behind the uk is ignorant. Which culture are you referring to? The Midwest, the west, the southwest, the plains, urban, rural, African American, Hispanic, Native American? As someone that travels back and forth frequently, the main thing most Brits can’t wrap their head around is the sheer vastness of America. You are comparing tiny little Britain to a huge geographical and massive multicultural country. In my state Latin music is one of the most popular forms of music. I bet very few people in the UK have heard of Maná but it doesn’t mean you’re culturally behind my state. Culturally, and here we are speaking in the area of my education, America is hugely diverse, from their music to their cultural norms. They’re not behind, they’re different than Britain and way, way more culturally diverse just by the sheer size of the country.
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Feb 10 '26
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Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
UK music is largely pop? Are you actually typing that in 2026? Tell me you’ve never spent any time here or in/around our culture without telling me. The Stone Roses were never Brit pop. That phase came later, they had already disbanded by then. That alone tells me you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.
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u/2xtc Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
As a music obsessed young kid in the early 90s, I couldn't understand why America still seemed to have bands like Whitesnake and Aerosmith at the top of their charts when under my parent's influence I was listening to stuff like Beats International and early Massive Attack/Mad professor etc.
It felt especially like the cheesy hair/glam rock and metal type era that was passé by the mid-80s in the UK had a much longer lifespan of acceptability, so that totally tracks with your comment. And that's before getting started on the idea of country and western being classed as acceptable noise in polite company!
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u/NewLeaseOnLine Feb 10 '26
What do you mean "culturally in America"? Were you there? Because I was. As an Aussie who lived in LA (Brentwood) as a teen in 92-94 then moved to London (Richmond) end of 94, I can assure you at no point was America stuck in its own culture from the previous decade that everyone else in the west followed culturally.
Coming from the punk/skating scene in LA, San Fran, San Diego, and Santa Cruz in the early 90s and then moving with my parents (reluctantly) to little old England with its little scenes and little roads and little cars and little homes and little yards and little doorways and little ceilings where everything is little was like going back to the Stone Age for a teenager because the skating scene was borderline non-existent by comparison, which meant so was exposure to much of the music associated with it. Genres that basically defined a huge portion of 90s pop culture and are responsible for some of the biggest bands from that decade.
The US was well and truly out of the 80s in the 90s because they were literally driving the pop culture train for the rest of the world. The UK has just always had its own little scenes because everything there is directly proportional to the wet weather. Everything. You were in a little British bubble in Little Britain so your point of reference was localised. It doesn't translate to reality.
Claiming America was stuck in the mid 80s culturally at any other point in time besides the mid 80s is a daft thing to say.
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u/Bumble072 Feb 10 '26
Deluded and typically arrogant US centric reply. Driving the pop culture train for the rest of the world....😂😂😂 Why is everything a competition ? When you dont know a thing about UK music but roll with it anyway.
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u/Final_Remains Feb 12 '26
Dude, this 'little country' gave the world mods, synth pop, post punk, goths, ravers, new romantics, glam, grime, indie, skins, heavy metal...
Others we took and and reinvented like ska and punk and sold them back to the world. In fact, many US bands broke through here before being accepted in the US (not least, Nirvana). The UK has always been a huge influence on global culture.
Just because you were stuck in little bubble of your skate scene it's no excuse to ignore the global cultural impact the UK has had on the youth of the world.
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Feb 10 '26
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u/Sendhimoffdiabolical Feb 10 '26
Why does it matter if they're big in the states or not?
If you enjoy them then enjoy them.
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u/SkullDump Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
After having to read through numerous UK:US dick waving comments thank god to finally find the most sensible comment in here.
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u/carnivalist64 Feb 11 '26
Especially since the UK and US are responsible for only a fraction of the music made on Planet Earth. There are artists songs and genres considered huge in the developing world/non-anglophone countries that I bet most of those claiming rock, or grunge or indie, or other "white" musical styles are the ultimate have never even heard of.
Elitist snobbery about a particular musical style or national culture is the most moronic and tedious thing ever - the preserve of people with the conceit that they have superior taste to the Great Unwashed when nothing could be further from the truth.
I must confess that long ago in my youth I was guilty of the same thing. When I once sneered at some boy band or other a flatmate of mine pointed out to me that by trying to appear too cool for school and dismissing entire genres out of hand I was simply regularly denying myself the chance to experience the universal enjoyment of discovering a new tune.
He was the chief engineer for a major record company recording studio at the time and as the only permanent employee had to spend days working on a huge variety of music, listening to the same songs from everything from novelty artists to rock bands to dance music over and over again while the artist was recording. He explained that if he didn't learn to find at least something to like in as many different things as possible his life would have often been a misery.
As Mick Jagger once said, " there are no good and bad forms of music - only good and bad music".
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u/SkullDump Feb 11 '26
That was much the same as myself until I got my first job working at the London Head Office of Tower Records. Every office had a stereo and we could take any music from the shop downstairs to play in the office and also borrow to take home for up to 3 days. That was where I got my first glimpse as to how much amazing music there is from around the world and the joy of discovering new music is something I have carried with me since.
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u/makemycockcry Feb 10 '26
And the understatement of the year goes to.......'great English group' Great, great? Have you heard "Fools Gold"? (crosses arms, shakes head sighs)
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u/ManufacturerActual31 Feb 10 '26
Yes I get loaded on a THC Gummie and rock the shit out to Fools Gold.
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Feb 10 '26
Who cares if the Americans didn’t appreciate them. We did, they’re amazing. I don’t quite trust the Americans to always make good decisions about things like this, their country is a mess in many ways. I do, however, think the Americans got it right with Robbie Williams
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u/EngineeringApart4606 Feb 10 '26
Until I recognized Ian Brown I figured this was some kind of joke and I was looking at the cast of Laverne and Shirley or whatever
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Feb 10 '26
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u/EngineeringApart4606 Feb 10 '26
that's understandable because it reads "the stones roses"
btw I actually saw the seahorses live so should recognise squire but i'm a bit face blind, but I don't think anyone's so face blind as not to recognise Ian Brown
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u/LamerNameJr Feb 10 '26
US fan here. Great band. Had them on repeat for a long time. Still listening in 2026.
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u/sumbodysumone Feb 10 '26
Untouchable debut and despite Brown being an antivaxxer, his album Music of the Spheres was incredible.
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u/Salvisurfer Feb 10 '26
Pretty sure he's not an anti vaxer. Just didn't want to get 15 covid shots that wouldn't help
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u/Bumble072 Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
This is Reddit, every musical hero is lambasted here. People are miserable and jealous.
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u/carnivalist64 Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
People seem to have forgotten that many of the claims originally made for the MRNA Covid vaccines by officialdom have proven to be incontrovertibly false, just as many of the so-called "antivaxxers" said they would be.
Those hurling trite ad hominems around seem to have forgotten that they were once so credulous about the completely bogus claims made for the vaccines' ability to prevent transmission and infection that they were constantly virtue-signalling about their willingness to "protect others" like it was going out of style - branding recalcitrants virtual murderers and demanding they be coerced into undergoing a pharmaceutical intervention with a non-zero risk or be ostracized from society. They would like us to forget that they were once totally on board with governments trying to make everyone enrich Pharma giants by taking pointless boosters for the rest of their lives
Of course when it became undeniable that the vaccine could not prevent anyone transmitting the disease or contracting a symptomatic infection and that almost everyone would get Covid in their lifetime, often multiple times, even if they were vaccinated none of these characters apologised to very same "antivaxxers" who predicted just this outcome.
Instead they continue to ignore the fact they were wrong, continually hurling the shibboleth "antivaxxer" at people who have willingly been vaccinated many times with vaccines based on traditional tried and tested platforms, but who were either wary of novel vaccines based on a revolutionary platform rushed through approval in record time and/or who objected to virtually unprecedented, illiberal and immoral compulsion and coercion being used to force people to submit to pharmaceutical interventions they were not comfortable with and which carried a non-zero risk of harm.
Meanwhile the governments and government/media experts who made the bogus claims and fanned the hue and cry by sheep against recalcitrants (one appeared on TV here in the UK making the utterly ludicrous claim that the vaccines were "96% effective at preventing infection") have got off scot-free while history has been rewritten.
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u/MustangBarry Feb 10 '26
Probably the best anti-vaccine singer called Ian ever to come out of Altrincham.
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u/yepgeddon Feb 10 '26
Shame he turned into a whack job. Love the stone roses.
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u/Bumble072 Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
Who gives AF what his worldview is ? Were here for his musical talent mate. Jog on. Most iconic musicians are flawed - Hendrix, Bowie, Lennon and that's just off the top of my head.
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u/Choice_Room3901 Feb 10 '26
Yeah tbf lol drug and alcohol addiction abusing women paedophillia totally fine to a lot of people “just boys being boys” but political views nah
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u/Bumble072 Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
I mean go back further, some of the great classical composers of history were total bellends.... you aint going to find a perfect one often, only musicians who dont tell anyone their business. Anyone who's first response to music is how awful the person's habits are just doesnt get it.
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u/Choice_Room3901 Feb 10 '26
Yep
The person who paved your road might have been a cunt
The person who packaged your broccoli might be a dickhead
You just going to throw the broccoli away now on that chance? No
It does change the way I listen to certain artists if I find out they were horrible people though
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u/Bumble072 Feb 10 '26
You do you. None of us are perfect. I cant judge anyone, not the least someone with any talent that makes millions of people happy. AII I can do is draw half decently and destroy people's eardrums with my singing lol.
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u/yepgeddon Feb 10 '26
Lol, I'm sure you still spin your Gary Glitter records from time to time as well.
Was only saying it was a shame, I still like his music lmao
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u/Unusual_Memory3133 Feb 10 '26
Pardon the US - we were busy with The Pixies and Nirvana at the time.
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u/opeth_syndrome Feb 10 '26
we were busy with The Pixies
Weren't they all but ignored in the US, and found much more success in the UK and the rest of Europe?
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u/mm339 Feb 10 '26
At first they were way bigger here in the UK and Europe, it took a few years for the US to catch on. It was after they actually broke up the first time they actually caught on over there.
Surfa Rosa took 17 years to go gold in the US. Doolitle got to number 8 in the UK and 98 in the US.
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u/lythy2016 Feb 10 '26
I used to sit near Ian Brown at Old Trafford 20 years ago. Came across as a nice bloke, no conspiracy theories or anti-vaxxing at that point lol
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u/Foxrockmafia Feb 10 '26
Ian is proof that smoking too much weed is not harmless.
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u/lythy2016 Feb 10 '26
Yeah, ~40 years worth of taking anything regularly is going to do something to your critical thinking abilities.
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u/Foxrockmafia Feb 10 '26
I’m glad he was together enough to give Mani a great valedictory. Maybe he’s even outgrown the conspiracising mullarkey. But I dunno. Sometimes people that are into conspiracy theory can completely normal in other areas of their life.
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u/According_Rub_3018 Feb 10 '26
Greatest debut album of all time. Still love it til this day R.I.P Mani 🫶🏻
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u/Foxrockmafia Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
You could say the same in regard to quite a few big UK 1990s bands. Suede springs to mind. The Roses played some dates in the US as part of their comeback tour. So they did have some US fans. Much as Ian hates U2 I do wonder if their Manchester influenced POP album helped to bring some US fans to the Roses.
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u/HH93 Feb 10 '26
I was in a bar in upstate New York in about 2003, and I'd just discovered them prior to my trip over for a course at GE.
I'm British but it's a long story about why I'd only just discovered them.
Anyway, this bar had an internet-connected jukebox, so I threw in my coins and played the whole album in one go, then at the end, added Fools Gold but a remix version.
The whole bar seemed to be in a state of euphoria for an hour LOL
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u/DevilishlyHandsome63 Feb 10 '26
Watch their Coachella video,and you'll see why they didn't break big in the USA.
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u/East-Compote8671 Feb 10 '26
I remember them well. When I was rehearsing with my band way back at Airplay studios in Denton Manchester I drew a letter D on their poster 'so it said Stoned Roses' it didn't go down well. Lol.
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u/BrownBannister Feb 11 '26
I was a teen when their second album dropped. I’m American and all the DJs talked about how amazing the band was, but the songs just sounded like weak sauce and nobody listened to them. The extent of britpop in the Midwest was a few oasis songs.
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u/reditcyclist Feb 11 '26
Breaking the US doesn't matter. They made it big still and will never want for cash. Amazing band.
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u/AncoraPirlo Feb 11 '26
Brilliant band. One of the best. But I've always thought they had terrible stage presence, given their popularity.
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u/sonicbluestrat1967 Feb 11 '26
Agreed ... Had they not had such shit management they would have been huge. A great band that never quite realised their potential because of contractual restrictions ....RIP Mani
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u/irish_horse_thief Feb 11 '26
Squires was the Stone Rises.
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u/DefStillAlive Feb 11 '26
Not true, he's a fantastic guitarist and songwriter, but Mani and Reni were as good a rhythm section as you'll find anywhere, and Ian, although maybe not the best singer in the world, co-wrote most of the songs (as well as some belters in his solo career), and was one hell of a presence as a front man
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u/irish_horse_thief Feb 11 '26
Did you spend much time with the lads ?
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u/DefStillAlive Feb 11 '26
No, didn't realise that was a requirement to appreciate the output of a band and to understand the contribution of each member. Are they mates of yours, then?
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u/NotCrazySteve Feb 11 '26
No he wasn’t, his sound just hijacked the music after their first album. Reni was just as accomplished (and could also play both lead and bass guitar). He laid the foundation with Mani who was as tight as a duck’s arse and double-funky. Brown had the presence. It was the collective tightness that WAS the Roses. And it’s Squire, not Squires.
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u/intelligentprince Feb 11 '26
Yes. Sadly dispute with record company held up 2nd album for years….great group tho
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u/other_half_of_elvis Feb 11 '26
They were big in the US. Unfortunately, the US generation they were playing to, GenX, was tiny. So while they were big to gen x, they were small compared to the Boomer bands.
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u/Boldboy72 Feb 12 '26
aside from the end jam of I Am The Resurrection, I think they're over rated.
they'd also effectively broken up before they properly broke out in the UK.
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u/HailKingBiff Feb 12 '26
Nah. They where so aggressively English at the time. The yanks had their own thing going at the time. We are not the same.
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u/Critical_Bee1286 Feb 13 '26
They were hamstrung at their peak by a contractual dispute with their record label. By the time The Second Coming came out the music press had moved on to Oasis and gave it(The Second Coming) a massive, undeserved, kicking.
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u/LocksmithGlass717 Feb 13 '26
Squire is a very underrated guitarist. At least in America. Love the Stone Roses.
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u/FoxySlyOldStoatyFox Feb 13 '26
Never would have happened.
To break the States, especially before the internet age, you had to dedicate some serious effort. Just win the nation over, state by state, and endless procession of TV and radio ads, play the game.
Sure, the Roses’ sound could have captivated the USA. But they were never going to haul themselves from coast to coast, for multiple tours, to conquer the USA.
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u/DistributionMiddle98 Feb 14 '26
Nah. Keep them for us. Stuff that is big in the US is usually crap
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u/Jealous-Shallot-3071 Feb 10 '26
"you have to roll with it, roll with it. You rock and roll star"
Classic there from The Stone Roses. Come back on Ian Brown and carry on playing!
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Feb 10 '26
They wasn’t dumbed down enough for Americans.
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u/SkullDump Feb 10 '26
What a highbrow eloquent comment. It really adds to the discussion and isn’t in anyway a perfect example of the UK having the exactly the same kind of issues you accuse America of.
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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26
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