The Stone Roses live Berlin 95 Double 12"

	£		85
	$		113

The Stone Roses live Berlin 95 Double 12"

The Stone Roses – Live at Berlin Metropol 25/05/95
A cracking boot capturing the Roses at war

There are polished live albums, there are great live albums, and then there are boots that capture something far more interesting: a band in a particular moment, with all the cracks, tension and magic left intact.

Live at Berlin Metropol belongs firmly in that third category.

Recorded during the Second Coming era, with Robbie Maddix newly installed behind the drums, this double-12" boots catches The Stone Roses in transition. The old band is still there — I Wanna Be Adored, She Bangs the Drums, Waterfall, Made of Stone and I Am the Resurrection remain in the set — but the atmosphere is very different from the dreamy confidence of their first era.

This is a heavier, stranger and considerably more volatile Stone Roses.

And Ian Brown sounds like he couldn't give a fuck.

Ian Brown: singing or simply surviving?

Brown's vocals are perhaps the most fascinating — and divisive — aspect of the recording.

He's frequently flat, occasionally way off the expected pitch and seemingly unconcerned with giving the audience the sort of technically polished performance you might expect from a frontman. On Tightrope and I Am the Resurrection, in particular, there are moments when you can almost hear him wandering around the melody rather than actually singing it.

Is he doing it deliberately?

Probably not in the sense of consciously deciding, "I'll sing this note flat." But there's certainly something deliberate about his attitude towards singing. Brown doesn't appear interested in smoothing out the rough edges. He delivers the words with that trademark detached, almost conversational coolness and lets the songs fend for themselves.

It's strangely compelling.

There's a feeling that Brown is simply going to wade through each song on his own terms, regardless of whether the melody happens to come along with him.

And yet that apparent indifference creates one of the record's greatest strengths.

Because the band are bloody good

While Brown sounds like he's wandered in from another room, the band underneath him is actually remarkably tight.

Robbie Maddix was never going to be Reni — and trying to replicate Reni would probably have been a thankless task anyway. His drumming is heavier and more direct, giving the older material a different physicality. Mani remains the steady presence, while John Squire is absolutely magnificent.

Squire, in particular, sounds like a man with something to prove.

His guitar playing is enormous throughout the recording. On I Am the Resurrection, he tears into the extended section with the sort of confidence that makes Brown's casual vocal performance seem even more bizarre. Begging You and Driving South are similarly muscular, pushing the Roses firmly into the harder, psychedelic-rock territory of Second Coming.

It's almost as though there are two performances happening simultaneously.

Ian is performing The Stone Roses as an attitude.

Squire, Mani and Maddix are performing The Stone Roses as a band.

And somehow, they meet in the middle.

The old Roses meet the new Roses

The setlist makes the contrast particularly striking.

One minute you're hearing She Bangs the Drums and Waterfall, reminders of the impossibly cool band that had conquered the world five years earlier. Then you're plunged into Breaking into Heaven, Tightrope, Begging You and Love Spreads.

The difference is enormous.

The first-album songs have been stripped of some of their delicacy and given a much harder live edge. Meanwhile, the Second Coming songs sound increasingly natural in this environment.

Good Times is a particular highlight, while I Am the Resurrection remains the big statement — even if Brown's vocals occasionally sound like they're being beamed in from a different gig.

But that's the appeal.

This isn't a band attempting to reproduce a glorious past.

They're fighting with it.

A band at war

That's ultimately what makes this such an enjoyable boot.

There is tension everywhere.

The new drummer is filling Reni's seat. Squire's guitar is becoming more dominant. The Second Coming material is demanding a different sort of band. Brown seems almost determined not to behave like a conventional rock singer.

And yet, underneath all that, the chemistry hasn't completely disappeared.

In fact, there's something wonderfully defiant about the whole performance.

The Stone Roses sound like a band who know they're being scrutinised, know they're not the band they were in 1989, and aren't particularly interested in reassuring anyone about it.

The sleeve itself adds to the charm. Your copy is a handsome four-sided, coloured-vinyl double 12", with suitably bootleggy artwork and a tracklisting that gives you a superb snapshot of the period. One small historical wrinkle: the sleeve gives the date as 25/05/95, whereas the Berlin show is generally documented as 25 April 1995, so the date printed on the record appears to be an error.

But that hardly matters.

This isn't a record to buy for immaculate fidelity or faultless vocals.

It's a record to buy because you want to hear The Stone Roses caught in the middle of the storm.

John Squire is firing on all cylinders. Mani is holding the centre. Robbie Maddix is proving that this new version of the band can actually work.

And Ian Brown?

He's just Ian Brown.

Barely interested in your expectations, occasionally miles away from the correct note, and somehow making the whole thing sound even more like The Stone Roses.

A rough, strange, occasionally shambolic and thoroughly exhilarating document of the Roses at war. A cracking boot.