A year ago, John Squire quit the band that had once made him a star. With the Stone Roses he had become the most celebrated guitarist and songwriter in England. Yet when he officially announced his departure from the Roses, he immediately felt “a sense of relief, like I’d been living under this cloud and hadn’t realized it until just that moment.”
That night he met a bassist named Stuart Fletcher, with whom he would form a new band, the Seahorses. “I took it as a sign,” Squire says. “It was the first of many fortuitous moments that accumulated over the next few months.”
With head-spinning rapidity, Squire recruited a band of anonymous musicians (Fletcher, singer-guitarist Chris Helme and drummer Andy Watts), whipped up 11 songs and recorded an album, “Do It Yourself” (Geffen).
“My dad used to say, `Do it yourself and do it properly,’ ” Squire said. “I had the title before I had written the album. The idea being that you can shape your destiny, you can rearrange your world. And I have.”
At 34, Squire exudes a softspoken modesty that suggests he’s far humbler, and far less bitter, than one might suspect from a rock star who has seen fame from both sides of the divide.
The Stone Roses’ 1989 debut album was a blissful pop bombshell, and it was followed by a 10-minute mix of the single “Fools Gold” that captured the vibe of the dance-happy, ecstasy-obsessed “Madchester” scene. For a couple of years, the Stone Roses could do no wrong — the Oasis of their time, if you will.
Then it all came crashing down. Five years passed before the Manchester quintet would resurface. “We spent four years walking to the studio, and one year making an album,” Squire says with a rueful chuckle. “The first thing that stuck in our throat was our original contract, which at the time was standard in England. It allowed that we would receive no royalties from the sale of CDs (as opposed to vinyl albums). A judge agreed with us.
“Geffen (Records) put up the money to fight the court case, and the payoff was that they got the chance to sign the band. But all that money was detrimental. We sat back and waited for things to happen. Our biggest failure was not realizing how important momentum is to a rock band.”
When the Roses’ Geffen debut, the modestly titled “Second Coming,” finally surfaced in ’95, it offered soggy, run-on guitar noodling in place of the concise songcraft of the debut. A subsequent American tour made a more glaring flaw apparent: Singer Ian Brown couldn’t carry a tune across the hallway, much less belt it out with enough authority to mollify an amphitheater full of screaming teenagers.
“Looking back, that album was a bit overweight and could have stood some creative editing,” Squire says. “And the title managed to offend a lot of people. It was meant to be self-effacing, but nobody took it that way.”
With “Do It Yourself,” Squire returns to the tighter pop songs of the Stone Roses’ debut, with an added dose of flash. The guitarist’s plumage — a stunning array of fills, riffs and countermelodies — is displayed subtly, tastefully, within the context of the songs rather than as an ego massage. In combination with Fletcher’s fluid bass work, Squire’s virtuosity makes “Do It Yourself” a brilliant guitar-pop record. It’s fleshed out with string orchestrations by producer Tony Visconti, who underlines the sublime melodies of tunes such as “Blinded by the Sun.”
What holds the album back is the tentative drumming of Watts, who joined the band only a couple of weeks before recording sessions began last winter in Los Angeles. But Squire says the band has toughened up considerably with live dates in Europe, and also suggests that the traditional sonic boundaries set on “Do It Yourself” will be broken on subsequent releases.
“I felt it was important that this album sound like a debut — quickly written, with a bare minimum of fuss,” he says. “On the next record I’m looking to use the studio a bit more as an instrument. For now, beats were secondary to the songs, but that won’t always be the case.”
He says that he likes much of the electronic music that permeates the European rave scene, and says he has agreed to work on a new Prodigy track that calls for a guitar part.
“I feel that we’ve achieved something on this record,” he says. “But this is not my last destination. It has been a very fast year, and I want to keep pushing it as far as I can.”
The Seahorses headline Tuesday at Metro.
The big Mac reunion
Fleetwood Mac’s most celebrated lineup (Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, John McVie, Mick Fleetwood) has gotten back together with a well-orchestrated lineup of media events: an MTV special of their reunion concerts to air at 9 p.m. Tuesday, a souvenir album of those live dates, “The Dance,” due out on Aug. 19, a home video on Aug. 26, and a 40-date American tour set for fall.
The Mac 5 have shoved aside the differences that prompted Buckingham to quit 10 years ago, but the MTV concert and album offer precious little in the way of new music or revelatory reshapings of the ’70s hits — just like the Eagles, who pulled off a similar “comeback” in 1994 before going their separate ways. What is apparent is that the songs of breakup and reunion not only have worn well, but carry a new resonance in light of recent events.
McVie says the door is open to future collaborations among the five, but don’t bet on it. After collecting a big paycheck, Buckingham will likely beat the retreat to his home studio to complete work on his years-in-the-making solo album.
