Sunday 17th December 1995 - Aberdeen Music Hall
You cannot overestimate how massive The Stone Roses are/were in Aberdeen. When the announcement was made in July 1995 that they were playing 2 gigs in Glasgow and 1 in Aberdeen, no-one could believe it - they were playing here. Not even in the biggest venue but certainly the best.
The queue for tickets was unbelievable. Our lot were the first outside Aberdeen Box Office (next door to the Music Hall, incidentally) at about half eleven pm (the doors were due to open at 9am) but by 4am there were hundreds of people waiting to make sure they got their hands on some. The cops were asking us who the hell The Stone Roses were. They couldn't believe they'd never heard of a band that caused this much fuss.
The local newspaper ‘Evening Express‘ carried on the front page the following day a photo of us queuing up with the headline "Why Stone Roses grow on you“. After that it was a case of waiting for December. The old bootlegs were getting more airplay the closer we got to the date. Pessimists saying that it would never live up to the hype that was being created locally and then the day came. I've never seen an atmosphere like it at a gig in my life (I've been to a fair few).
When the lights went down and the intro to Breaking Into Heaven was on, everyone was screaming the place down. Then they appeared (Ian Brown wearing an Aberdeen FC sunhat) and the Music Hall went berserk. The whole place was bouncing. Even up in the seated balcony everyone was on their feet. Squire's guitar rocked the joint, even Ian's voice sounded brilliant aided with the backing vocals of 1,500 others.
They were all very receptive to the reaction. Mani got involved in some football banter "Thanks for Alex Ferguson" which started a huge ‘Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Aberdeen‘ chant only to be drowned out by the intro to Love Spreads. Brilliant.
They came back on for an encore of I Am The Resurrection in their dressing gowns after which Ian screamed “Thank You, Scotland rules, you're fucking rocking." Then he threw Robbie Maddix's drumsticks into the crowd. This, of course was their first time in Scotland since Glasgow Green and they seemed to enjoy themselves (more so than at Sheffield Arena, which I also went to).
Afterwards, everyone I spoke to talked about how the Roses had exceeded all expectations. They were phenomenal that night. It all fell into place. Me and my mate managed to get backstage somehow and met the band (except for John Squire who Mani said was "Away being shy somewhere").
Tapped a bit for a joint off Ian Brown and spilled Mani's beer which capped off one of the greatest nights of my life and that of a thousand others.''