The Stone Roses are tipped for the top. JACQUELINE HARTE spoke to founder-members
Ian Brown (vocals) and John Squires (guitar) about their new album, and got side-tracked.

If the media is propaganda, The Stone Roses have devised their own means of dealing with it.
Their attitude stirs memories of Bill Grundy/Sex Pistols TV confrontations: insolent indifference, studied contempt for a particular line of questioning, blank uncommunicative response. They're awkward little buggers and it comes across as deliberate. "What, you mean we don't sit here ranting? I don't think we should have to analyse there's nothing worse than some unknown pretentious fucker going on about a song." Too true

Band talking is boring-I'm glad we agree on that. They've got more to say about interviews. "We like hearing what people've got to say about us. You've got to probe us and poke us and force us into saying things. Sometimes we go on for ages and sometimes we don't speak it depends what mood you're in, doesn't it? We don't feel we have to convince anyone we're of any worth 'cause we know we are. We don't have to sit here and explain our songs." Well, thank God for that. Once they've set me right on this point, Ian and John seem more inclined to be themselves, or a more acceptable version of themselves.

Recent music press darlings, until now The Stone Roses haven't needed any more adulation than their local following has given them and they've been 'big in Manchester' for quite a while. The time is ripe for a nationwide explosion and countrywide gigs have affirmed that people do, in fact, believe what they read in the papers. They've heard they're wonderful and they're going to see them in droves. And you can't say that The Stone Roses don't deliver the goods - recent gigs at The International 2 and The Hacienda showed that, for once, you really should believe the hype. The phrase on every music bizz hanger-on's lips; "This band are gonna be Big". So if, or when, they make it, is there any band on the Manchester 'scene' that they'd like to help out, to take up there with them, so to speak? "New Order".

I decide I like their attitude after all. Their arrogance is muted by refreshingly dry bursts of self-denigration they dismiss their old songs as "rubbish" and readily admit that in a few years they'll probably be saying the same thing about what they do now. "We say it already we just want to get onto the next thing," says John. Despite their reticence to dissect and my disinterest in dissecting what, after all, are "only pop songs", as Ian so rightly puts it, I can't resist asking them about 'Elizabeth My Dear', a song off the new album, (whose working title was, incidentally, reputedly 'Bring Me The Head of James Anderton') charmingly sung to the tune of Scarborough Fair'.

It evokes an atmosphere of old England shattered by the sound of a gunshot, evidently aimed at our revered figurehead. So here's the question they've been waiting for. Ian, if you got the chance, would you shoot the Queen? "Yeah, first chance I got," Has he really thought this through? John: "It'd make things worse someone else'd only take her place." Yes, he of the big ears and the questionable taste in women. Does he really think it'd be an achievement? Ian peers coyly through his fingers and sniggers: "The ultimate achievement." I sense a touch of the Bill Grundys again. So why isn't he a political activist instead of prancing around in front of an audience? His logic is irrefutable:

"Because there's more chance of meeting the Queen when you're in a pop band and then just before she goes to shake your hand, you whip it out." He acts out the scenario, pointing an imaginary gun at the cooker: "Blam!" John's a touch more serious about it.

"I see putting that song on the album as a weakness. We always said we were never gonna do it because, much as we disagree with the Royal Family, it's insincere to rant on about changing the system when you're in a band. If you really wanted to do it you wouldn't just write songs about it. You can change attitudes but it's so transitory. It's been going on on a big scale since Bob Dylan and no lasting change has come about."

Ian has no illusions either about the value of his own opinions in relation to anyone else's. "It's wrong that people do care about what you think just because you're in a pop band. Writing songs isn't important on a world level, they're only important to yourself. It's only a pop song, it's only a few words strung together." John adds: "Ian's only in the band to show off Ian Brown, vocals and jumping about. I think the songs are important, even on a world level what's important to mankind is only the sum of what's important to individuals.

Perversely, the conversation turns to The Bay City Rollers (most outrageous comment of the day by Ian: "Their music wasn't shit they've got good tunes").

Time to wave them on their way. Singing 'Bye Bye Baby' and "Shang-a-Lang' they trip off down the garden path on their way to greater things.