Made of Stone..
Normally I eschew stadium gigs. Big crowds, far away bands, big prices. But. The Stone Roses have always been a band I’ve loved since I was a young ‘un and I’d never seen perform. You see people saying they were going on Facebook get roundly lambasted, they seem to have that reaction from people. “Ian Brown can’t sing”, “It’s just a big pay day for them, it’ll be shit” – that kind of thing.
To be fair, that was my attitude – internally at least – when they announced their reunion tour in 2012 I shunned it, and was then really jealous when friends and family who went came back raving about it. So this time around I decided to bite the bullet – sure, it’s expensive, it’s a big impersonal venue and it’s going to be a very big and mixed crowd, but I was confident it would be worth it!
Ella and I started the day at Sam and Matt’s, fuelled by tea and bacon we headed up to Manchester in Ludo, aiming to arrive early at the hotel we’d booked (before we had the van!) in the hope of an early check-in. I’d hoped to hook up with Rich and Em once there but they’d already arrived and hotfooted it into town, whilst we were told that to check in early would cost a tenner, and there were no rooms anyway!