By 1993, The Stone Roses had become this huge, beautiful cruise ship just floating about in the middle of nowhere with no captain,” Ian Brown later said of the four-year period of stasis that had followed their self-titled debut album.
Legal wrangling, the pressure to equal or better one of the greatest opening salvos by any band, an allegedly bone idle drummer and the small matter of being banned from releasing music… four years is a long time when you’re in your 20s. Even more so when you’re in the band that Brown once said should have become the biggest since The Beatles. They didn’t. The Stone Roses never came close to the euphoric brilliance of their debut. And they’re far from alone. Among those who never quite scaled the heights of album one, for various reasons, are The Velvet Underground, the Ramones, Television, Joy Division, Guns N’ Roses, The Jesus And Mary Chain, The Libertines and The Strokes.