It was twenty years ago this May that The Stone Roses seminal, debut classic was released. Twenty years later – 14 years after the band have split, yet another re-release/compilation of the album has been released onto an already over familiar market. This is the fourthtime the album has been re-released now, with the 20th anniversary album offering very little that know-one has heard before – only one song in fact – Pearl Bastard! What more could possibly be squeezed out of the Roses legacy – what will they do for the 25th anniversary – include song lyrics of Brown from when he was a toddler, add a demo of squire auditioning for the cub scouts! – how far can they milk this thing!!!
Of course its all in the hands of Sony BMG – although they’re just one in a-long line of record companies to suck the life out of the small but influential back catalogue of the Roses. In addition to the four releases of the first album and the Second Coming we’ve had; Turns into Stone, The Complete Stone Roses, The Remixes, The Very best of The Stone Roses and
Discover The Stone Roses. All of them feature pretty much the same content, although we still haven’t had the Essential Stone Roses or The Greatest Hits.
Maybe the record companies feel it is their commercial justification due to the album not performing brilliantly when it was first released – it only reached 19! In fact the chart positioning of many of the Roses singles didn’t fare as well as one might think – One Love was the highest, which placed at number 4! It might suggest that the Roses were ahead of their time or that they were never really a mainstream commercial product, either way their legacy has by far transcended their commercial impact, even though it’s proved that you can get blood out of stone.