CityLife

Must see: Ian Brown

Ian Brown

EVERYONE likes to go home for Christmas and share a little festive cheer with the family.

Well, Ian Brown – he’s gonna trump everyone’s plans for turkey with the trimmings and three generations of the family. Because he’s back in Manchester to play for 16,000 of us...

“That’s right,” he laughs, “it’s only the week before Christmas so that will be a big party, yeah.

“I’ve got no plans for fire-eaters or jugglers or anything (what? Not even a big red Santa suit? Tut...). I’m just gonna get a lot of new songs out, ’cos I think a lot of these new songs sound great live, and mix it up with the best of what I’ve got.”

There goes Brown again, talking up his latest output. And why shouldn’t he? Because My Way, Brown’s sixth studio album recorded in London with Dave McCracken (who worked on Brown’s second LP), was released back in September and re-confirmed the 46-year-old’s position as a Top 10 proposition – a star in spite of the critics.

Few people saw it coming when the former Stone Roses frontman went solo in 1998, but if there’s one lesson that music has repeatedly proven true, it’s that you shouldn’t judge a frontman by his lead guitarist.

Only Golden Greats, Brown’s super-speedily rushed out sophomore record, peaked outside the Top 10. Music From The Spheres – Brown’s Magnum Opus, containing what remains his most indelible tune, F.E.A.R. – reached No.3.

And CityLife mentions this because if there’s been a track since that 2001 album opener that could rival its beauty then it’s My Way’s lead single, Stellify – a track he originally penned for umb-Rihanna-anna.

It wasn’t his first attempt at ghost writing. Frank Sinatra-inspired (and complete with Spaghetti Western-style twanging guitar) album track Vanity Kills was also planned for Kanye West but, when it was delivered too late, Brown took it back for his own record.

That incident birthed the album title – a double pun, says Ian, on Sinatra and Brown’s own self-assured method of doing everything his way.

'Benchmark'

Stellify, though, remained the song everything else had to live up to. “Stellify was like the benchmark for the album ’cos it was the first tune we wrote,” Ian explains.

“As we played that song I thought, ‘Wow, this is the first tune I’ve got since F.E.A.R. that’s up there with it’. I end every show with F.E.A.R. but now I’ve got a track that I can come on with after F.E.A.R.!

“That set us off then, we thought, ‘Right it’s gonna be a My Way album – I’m gonna write about my life in music.

“I’m gonna write about coming off the dole, going into music, what happened along the way’. That was my brief.

“Stellify was always the benchmark, but it was also the trickiest to mix and we had to do it about seven times to get it right.

“I’d been laughing at stories about Kanye West mixing his last tune 30 times, but I’m starting to understand how you can, so you can get it exactly how you want it.”

The record’s other benchmark was Michael Jackson’s Thriller. On the day Brown came to mix the record, Jackson died. “I took that as a good omen,” he laughs.

But it’s also an album that tackles some of the trickier topics in Brown’s past.

Its predecessor, The World Is Yours, took a global lyrical stance – expressing Brown’s bile about the Iraq war, attacking leaders of developed nations for walking us into crises with our hands over our eyes, and taking pot shots at hypocrisy.

And it’s not just on record he’s invited controversy. Brown is currently on bail accused of assaulting his Mexican model wife Fabiola Quiroz, but he also spent time in Strangeways following an air rage incident. For more positive reasons, his profile also earned a boost from his little cameo in a Harry Potter movie.

'Music and politics'

But My Way takes on a whole different fight with notable references to The Stone Roses.

‘Those are the days when we had it all/And these are the times I’ve got so much more,’ he says, twisting the knife (it would seem) in Always Remember Me. ‘Even though you did me wrong, still I wish you well/But by all means necessary you can go to Hell’, he barks in By All Means Necessary.

For a man who would happily put the word nostalgia on the expletives list, is lyrical sentimentality advisable?

“It’s not nostalgia to me, it’s my life and all things come around,” Ian says.

“I wrote about politics on The World Is Yours because I think solidarity of every kind is important, however that comes, be it music and politics.

“I think that no matter where you live in the world, we’ve got governments above us who control us, who we can’t control. We’re no different to the people in Iran or Israel and I think it’s important that we all link up and share everything, and music’s the best space for doing that.

“It crosses all borders, all languages, all genders, race, religion – it crosses all of that.

“There’s a point to everything and everything comes around in a circle eventually. By nostalgia I mean re packaging, remastering, reselling, squeezing a lemon,” quips Brown (and it’s hard not to read it as a sly dig at the massive, reworked box set of The Stone Roses debut album released to celebrate its 20th anniversary).

Brown only became involved in the project because the album’s original producer, John Leckie, invited him back into the studio. “That made me think about the Roses, as I’ve never addressed them in songs before.

“It was easy to talk about it – I feel great about the Roses, I don’t feel bad about it.”

But with the 20th anniversary looming, was that really the appropriate time to tackle those issues? “Oh yeah,” he smiles. “Everything’s deliberate.”

MEN Arena - December 19, 2009 - £26.