Ian Brown - Biography
By Eric Brightwell
When The Stone Roses fizzled out after only releasing two albums, few would’ve guessed that singer Ian Brown – famously described as sounding like “a man shouting into a bucket” and nicknamed King Monkey for his simian appearance – would emerge as the band’s chief talent except, probably, for the self-assured frontman himself. Sure enough, he went on to achieve the greatest artistic and commercial success of the ex-Roses over the course of five rewarding solo albums that have produced twelve Top 40 hits. Although sometimes mocked in the music press for his baked mysticism, conspiracy theories and controversial statements, he’s inspired a legion of imitators (Liam Gallagher, Richard Ashcroft, Tim Burgess and Mark Bluetones, to name a few) who’ve copied his hair, his clothes and his stage presence with varying degrees of success. Though less well-known in the US, his songs are routinely feautred on popular television shows like Kitchen Nightmares, Top Gear and especially the CSI franchise.
Ian George Brown was born 20th February, 1963 in the village of Howley in Cheshire. His father, a joiner, and his mother, a worker in a paper factory, moved the family (also including a brother and sister) to Timperley when he was a baby. After first attending Heyes Lane Infant and Junior School, he attended Altincham Grammar School, where the devotee of Basil Brush, Bruce Lee, George Best, and Muhammad Ali fan met Jon Squire, who happened (it turned out) to live a few doors down from the Brown family on Sylvan Avenue. The two became friends and shared the music they love, with Brown favoring The Angelic Upstarts, Sex Pistols and Slaughter & the Dogs, and Squire championing The Beach Boys, The Beatles and The Clash.
After attending his first show, a Joy Division gig at Bowdon Vale Social Club in 1978, he and Squire formed The Patrol in 1979 with Brown on bass, Squire on guitar, and their friends Andy Couzens and Simon Wolstencraft on guitar and drums respectively. They recorded The Clash-influenced “Jail of the Assassin,” “Too Many Tonnes” and “25 Rifles” at the Pluto recording studio where Brown and The Patrol’s roadie, Pete Garner, sat in on The Clash’s recording session for “Bankrobber.” By 1981, The Patrol had added covers of “Johnny B. Goode” and “Stepping Stone,” to their repertoire and they performed a series of gigs in youth clubs and other music venues, most often joined by Corrosive Youth. They played their final gig at the bandmates’ school, South Trafford College, in 1981. After graduation, most of the band went their separate ways although Brown and Squire moved to Hulme, where they met a local scooterboy, Steve Cressa. Brown soon sold his bass, bought a ’66 Lambretta J 125 and became a scooterboy, riding with the Chorlton Gladiators scooter gang and attending Northern Soul all-nighters.
In 1984, Brown saw an ad for an anti-heroin benefit stating that the organizers were looking for bands. Brown reunited with Squire, Couzens and Garner. After placing an ad for a drummer, they recruited Alan “Reni” John Wren. John came up with a new band name - The Stone Roses, who went on to become one of the most beloved bands in rock history. Twelve years and two albums later the band split up after Squire quit shortly before embarking on their ill-fated 1995 UK tour which ended in the band’s demise. Squire, Mani and Reni were all amazingly talented musicians. On the other hand, Ian Brown was not known for his skills as a musician, having most famously played tambourines, maracas and bongos.
His first solo album came out two years after the Roses broke up with the February release of the lo-fi, self-financed Unfinished Monkey Business (1998 Polydor). Although reviews were mixed, it silenced most naysayers and reached number four. Joined by Mani, Reni, and later Roses replacements Nigel Ippinson, Aziz Ibrahim and Robbie Maddix, in addition to featuring “Ice Cold Cube” (a track debuted at the Roses’ disastrous final gig), it looked on paper like a continuation of his old band. Indeed, half the songs seem to be attacks on Squire but rather than bogged down in bitterness, the collection has a revelatory and defiant tone. In October, Brown was charged with air rage after reportedly saying that he’d chop off a flight attendant’s hands if she didn’t quit waving them at him. As a result, he was sentenced to a traumatizing four months at the notorious Strangeways prison where he declared himself a Muslim to get better meals. Before Christmas, Squire sent him a box of Maltesers with a note attached reading, “I still love you.”
After his release from the clink, Brown focused his ire on the judge, flight attendant and the court system that locked him up despite his protestations of innocence. Though the album that followed, Golden Greats (1999 Interscope), included its share of jailhouse rock, for the most part it’s a warm, hazy, e-tinged neo-psychedelic dance classic. It reached fourteen on the charts and on the 7th of December, Brown married his fiancée Fabiola Quiroz, in Mexico.
In 2001, Brown released slick, calm and lush Music of the Spheres (Polydor) which reached number three. The Spanish language “El Mundo Pequeno,” one of the many highlights, was written for his new son, Emilio, born in 2000. The clever and insistent “F.E.A.R.” was a hit inspired by the Autobiography of Malcolm X and won a Muso for best single. Every song was remixed by U.N.K.L.E.’s James Lavelle and released as Remixes of the Spheres. To promote it, he agreed to answer any question posed by fans for £15 each, the proceeds of which were donated to the charity SightSavers, for whom each answer funded eye surgery for a third world cataract sufferer.
Two years later, Brown contributed a volume to the Under the Influence series of compilations and, after befriending director Alfonso Cuarón whom he met through his wife, appeared in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban as a Stephen Hawking-reading wizard who magically stirs tea. In 2004, he sang vocals on U.N.K.L.E.’s “Reign” and in September released the politically-charged Solarized (2004 Fiction). Not a radical departure from Music of the Spheres, it expressed concerns by now familiar to fans albeit occasionally with a more muscular, occasionally Arabic sound and featured a cameo from Noel Gallagher.
At the 2006 NME awards, Brown was awarded for his "Godlike Genius” and in October he headlined the two-day Rockit Hong Kong Music Festival where he was praised in the South China Morning Post and other media. The following year saw him gathering a superstar lineup for his next album with The Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones and Paul Cook, Happy Mondays’ Paul Ryder, The Smiths’ Andy Rourke and rap producer Emile (C-Rayz Walz, Ghostface Killah, Cormega, Obie Trice). He even tried to enlist Paul McCartney but he was too busy. The resulting album, the string-laden, dub-inflected The World is Yours (2007 Universal), was released that September. Led by the anti-war single “Illegal Attacks,” a duet with Sinéad O'Connor, the album reached number four and Brown was given a Q Legend Award.
In 2008, Brown announced through Myspace that he and Dave McCracken were planning on recording a new record in Japan the following March for probable mid-August release, followed by performances at the Leeds and Reading festivals almost immediately afterward.