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Recently I've been considering people who seem to eschew fame and fortune, choosing to just do their own thing instead. That's not to exclude famous and wealthy people from consideration - sometimes these things are just a by-product of a particular passion. It more about choosing self-determination.
Best known as the drummer in the Stone Roses, Alan Wren seems to fit the criteria. He's clearly naturally talented, and was without doubt the elevating force that allowed the Stone Roses to be as creative as they were. The rest of the band recognised this when he joined - their bassist at the time was convinced he'd be poached when they came to do their first gig.
Curiously, that more or less happened at their first gig, a charity even in London organised by Pete Townsend of The Who, on hearing Reni had asked if he would play drums for his set too.
and then Townshend asked Reni to drum with him, and he did... did maybe 3 or 4 Who tunes and one of them Reni didn’t know the song. I was on the side of the stage and he mouthed to me, how does it go? It was surreal, what an experience. But I was thinking, shit man, our secret weapon is out of the bag, he’s going to get poached
He got offered the opportunity to work with Townsend on his solo work, but declined, choosing to stick with his fellow Manc cabal. With hindsight, this was clearly the right thing to do, since he was instrumental in defining a whole genre of music, as opposed to being one name among many in the shadow of a superstar, but at the time (he was ~20 years old) it must have looked like a weird decision to take.
So the Stone Roses had some commercial success, but much more than that, they influenced that decade of British music (and probably beyond).
When Reni left the Stone Roses, he disappeared from the music scene for a few years, reappearing with his own band that played the kind of small venues where you could yell banter with the crowd, probably made more enjoyable because, when the other bands were on, he'd be among the audience himself. He seemed to love live music, whether watching or performing.
But to watch him play drums is joyful. He's so fluid and measured in every part of his performance (notice him dampen the cymbals), including his singing which, for the Stone Roses at least, is almost angelic (a stark contrast to his own stuff, which is much more grungy and gruff, and he plays guitar rather then drums).
I've chosen two songs by the Stone Roses to show you. They are related, because each is the other song backwards, and while I was aware of that (the two songs appear on the same album), what I only recently discovered was that they are not just musically reversed, but lyrically too. That is, when you play Don't Stop backwards, you also hear the lyrics from Waterfall (see the link further down).
In Don't Stop, Reni is not only playing the rhythm for Waterfall in reverse, but singing the words, in harmony, and in a style that will reverse back to the words of Waterfall. The vocals start around 1:45 into the song.
In the link below, someone has actually reversed the songs from the album for us to hear, there are players embedded around 2/3 of the way down the page. Only the reversed versions of the songs are included, so if you don't know the songs you'd realy need to listen to the links above in order to get it properly.
Reversed exampes, Don't Stop & Waterfall ~2/3 down
The Stone Roses were raw musically, but I think beautifully creative. I rarely use the word 'synergy', but that's what we got in the brief period that the Stone Roses were together, they have never functioned without Reni. I'm not sure what he's up to these days, but since he's not widely recognised and doesn't court the press at all, he could be still be gigging around the country just for fun. Or not, he seems to have retained his own freedom of choice whatever.
Fool's Gold, an era defining tune.
The print on Ian Brown's t-shirt is a work by Vaughn Bodē (in case the Mancunian accent is hard to understand).