Ian Brown swaggered on stage at Dundee’s Caird Hall 15 years ago and proved why he became the most successful former member of The Stone Roses.
Shadow-boxing like a prize fighter, Brown packed a punch and the crowd were carried along with the mood of euphoria from the opening bass line of I Wanna Be Adored.
Brown performed on October 8 2007 to promote The World Is Yours, which was his fifth solo album since emerging from the break-up of The Stone Roses in 1996.
King Monkey’s vocal shortcomings on the live stage are well-documented but his performance and delivery were sharp at the Caird Hall that night.
Brown was written off in 1996
Mind you, Brown has a knack for defying expectation.
When The Stone Roses broke up in 1996 he was considered the least likely to survive in the music industry and he actually considered becoming a gardener.
Thankfully, he decided to embark on a solo career with his unashamedly raw debut album, Unfinished Monkey Business, which was followed by Golden Greats in 1999.
He confounded the critics – and it wouldn’t be for the last time.
Brown initially refused to perform any Stone Roses songs on stage but still managed to bludgeon his way through the rule book to fill his allocated time.
This often meant performing the same song twice to start and end the set or giving the Madchester stamp to covers of the Michael Jackson songs Billie Jean and Thriller!
Brown eventually amassed an impressive solo back catalogue including 2001’s Music of the Spheres containing the epic F.E.A.R. – which remains his best-ever song.
Solarized followed in 2004 and he began including songs from The Stone Roses back catalogue in his set lists in 2005, which cranked the nostalgia factor up a notch.
The World Is Yours album in 2007 earned rave reviews and found the master of the blurred beat turning his attention to the Iraq war and the plight of street children.
The Dundee leg of the UK tour was a sell-out.
Little wonder given the impressive set that saw Brown performing songs from his five solo albums alongside a sprinkling of classics from his Roses days.
Set highlights included F.E.A.R.
The audience lapped up solo favourites including Dolphins Were Monkeys, Golden Gaze and Corpses.
My Star, Longsight M13, Keep What Ya Got and F.E.A.R. were among the set highlights, although the biggest cheers were reserved for those aforementioned Roses tracks.
The Courier’s 2007 review of the gig stated: “It’s hard to imagine it’s nearly 20 years since the Stone Roses were shrugging off all-comers for the title of the UK’s biggest band.
“Almost as difficult to take in is the thought that their charismatic frontman Ian Brown has been recording on his own for a decade now, having just released his fifth solo album.
“Making a name for himself at the end of the eighties fronting era-defining Manchester band The Stone Roses, Brown has forged a respectable solo career since the band split in 1996.
“His live set included his new material along with songs from his entire solo catalogue, as well as the odd surprise from his time with the Stone Roses.
“In fact, he kicked off with I Wanna Be Adored, the opener on their self-titled debut album, and closed with a thundering version of I Am The Resurrection.
“Ian Brown can do no wrong in the eyes of his adoring fans.
“He is, indeed, resurrected.”
Brown followed up The World Is Yours with 2009 solo album My Way, which was influenced by the legendary King of Pop whom Brown had taken to covering.
“Thriller was our blueprint,” Brown told NME at the time.
“Every time we wrote a song we didn’t think was strong enough, we scrapped it.
“We mastered it on the day that Michael Jackson died too, so I’m taking that as a good omen.”
The album featured some of Brown’s best solo work with stand-out tracks including the lead single Stellify, Just Like You, In the Year 2525, Marathon Man and Own Brain.
Back to where it all started in 2012
Things took an unexpected twist in October 2011.
The Stone Roses announced they were reuniting for three comeback gigs in 2012.
All 220,000 tickets sold out in less than an hour and more gigs followed, including Glasgow Green in June 2013, plus they headlined T in the Park in July 2016.
On May 12 2016 the band released All for One, their first new single in more than 20 years, with second single, entitled Beautiful Thing, released on June 9 that year.
When the Roses played Glasgow’s Hampden Park on June 24 2017, Brown addressed the crowd with the statement: “Don’t be sad it’s over, be happy it happened.”
On September 16 2017 guitarist John Squire confirmed the band had dissolved.
Ever the workaholic, Brown returned to the studio and recorded his first solo album in a decade, which was entitled Ripples and released in February 2019.
Brown didn’t tour the album because of the pandemic and became an outspoken critic of lockdown restrictions, Covid vaccines and the wearing of face-masks.
He finally embarked on that long-awaited UK tour in September 2022, which prompted criticism in some quarters when he performed on stage without a band.
He found himself trending on Twitter following that opening night in Leeds.
Brown sang his live vocals for the 23-song set over a backing track, which was described by one commentator as “skirting perilously close to Milli Vanilli territory”.
Most fans – just as they did in Dundee 15 years ago – lapped up the performance, however, despite him seemingly now morphing from King Monkey to the King of Karaoke.
But, then, he has always been unconventional.
That’s what makes him Ian Brown.
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