WHEN I am old and grey there are certain achievements in my gig going career I'll look back on and think "yes, I was there". In the space of three years I managed to see Oasis go from playing in the tiny back room of a pub to stepping on stage at Knebworth.
Around the same time I saw early gigs by Blur, Supergrass and Elastica and whenever I think of seeing Joe Strummer's last ever show just days before he died, I wonder how lucky I was to see such an amazing performer.
But the one I'll probably always dine out on is the mad four days when aged 16 I managed to see the Stone Roses three times. This weekend I'll be making it number four when I and 225,000 others make a pilgrimage to Heaton Park in Manchester, to witness the third coming of this most enigmatically brilliant of British bands.
Over the last few years the idea of any band actually splitting up for good seemed to have been consigned to the dustbin, but there was still something magically surprising when Ian, Reni, John and Mani sat down at that table in Manchester and announced that they would be healing some of the deepest hatchet wounds in pop to play a comeback whose ticket sales have astonished the music industry.
Before their secret gig at Warrington’s Parr Hall last month, it had been 22 years since the foursome last played together in the UK but far from being a blast from the past, the Roses' myth and reputation has spread to such a degree in that time that my companion this weekend will be my little brother who was five years old when their debut album was released.
So just why has this band, who only released two albums in their lifetime, created such an atmosphere of blind anticipation among not only those of my generation desperate for one more Indian summer of love but for those of my brother's age, happy to wear their Roses T-shirts from Topman?
It's hard to separate all this from nostalgia but for me there's something peculiarly evocative about the Stone Roses debut album.
Images of first day at senior school, of Italia 90, of long summer days going tenpin bowling, of buying a Joe Bloggs T-shirt and of the Berlin Wall coming down.
It was a happy, carefree time and as far as I can remember I was happy and carefree too and the Stone Roses provided the perfect soundtrack.
This was not the bedsit misery of The Smiths or the gothic angst of The Cure but instead the Roses' songs were full of optimism, positivism and even arrogance.
They looked great too – a vital ingredient to any truly brilliant band. From Reni's trademark fisherman hat to Ian Brown's famous bank notes T-shirt, this was a group you wanted to look like.
Everything about the Roses added to the myth and propagated the legend. John Squire's Jackson Pollock record sleeves gave them an art school chic you didn't get with the Wedding Present, their gigs were events taking place at huge venues and warehouses and not the usual toilets of the indie scene.
All this kept fans going through the lean years which were to follow that incredible debut album. As the Roses disappeared to spend, smoke and sniff their money, the revitalised indie scene they had helped create hit pay dirt when Oasis filled the sizeable hole they had left.
On their return in 1994, with the flawed but occasionally masterful Second Coming album, a catalogue of disasters and misfortunes befell the band from Squire breaking his collarbone falling off a bike, to the eventual departure of Reni and on to the dreadful death throws of the band at 1996's Reading Festival.
This ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory became a trait that the Roses have found hard to shake, but could this also be part of their mystical appeal?
Back in 1990 this was exactly what the Roses offered us. Like a naughty friend who leads you astray, me and thousands others will keep coming back for more, searching again for a time when the future was ours.
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