John Squire has downplayed the chances of a Stone Roses reunion, saying that the members “aren’t sending each other Christmas cards or anything”.
The comments arose during a new interview with NME, when the former guitarist for the Britpop giants sat down with Liam Gallagher to discuss the huge response to their collaborative self-titled album and UK and European shows.
Towards the end of the discussion, the topic turned to the widespread rumours that Liam Gallagher could see eye-to-eye with brother Noel, and come together to reform Oasis in time for this summer’s ‘Definitely Maybe’ 30th anniversary shows.
After the former Oasis frontman reaffirmed that “it’s not happening at this moment in time”, the topic turned to the possibility of another reunion from The Stone Roses. Squire still spends time with bassist Mani, who is “into” the two’s collaborative album and even gifted Squire the amplifier that he used during the recent run of live shows.
In the discussion, he recalled seeing Mani and former frontman Ian Brown at the funeral of the former’s wife Imelda, who sadly died last November. Explaining the terms that the members are on, he told NME: “He was fine that day, but we’re not sending each other Christmas cards or anything.”
Mani replaced Pete Garner in the Manchester band in 1987, remaining with them until they disbanded in 1996. He then joined Primal Scream that year, but rejoined the Stone Roses following news of their reformation in 2011.
Recommended
In 2016, they release two singles with ‘All For One‘ and ‘Beautiful Thing‘. They remained together for a few years, before disbanding once more in 2017 after the old tensions recurred.
In 2019, he confirmed the reunion was over for good, telling The Guardian that the band had officially come to an end, and later that year Ian Brown released his seventh solo album ‘Ripples‘.
Last year, Pete Garner, the original bassist, died at the age of 59, with Ian Brown leading the tributes on X.
Discussing what he has been doing recently in his time away from the line-up, Squire confirmed that he had set his sights on raising his six children and making expressionistic visual art.
“I look after the kids,” he told NME, “I put the odd shelf up, I paint and play guitar.”
While the band don’t seem to be coming together for a reunion anytime soon, they did join forces with Manchester United earlier this year to launch a new clothing collection with Adidas.
The collaboration between The Stone Roses, the football club and the fashion brand came as a homage to the iconic ‘Madchester’ era of the UK city, which first emerged in the late ‘80s and became closely tied with the indie music scene.
Elsewhere in the interview with NME, Gallagher defended the length of his gigs on the recent tour with Squire, after being criticised by some fans for their headline sets running for less than an hour, and looked back at their time co-writing The Seahorses’ ‘Love Me And Leave Me’.
In a review of their self-titled LP, which the duo shared in February, NME gave the collaboration four-stars, and described it as “a triumph of style and mood… and well worthy of their enduring legacies.”
At the duo’s show in Glasgow last month, the gig was given a four-star review by NME, and praised as keeping things “short and sweet”.
Since wrapping up the dates, both Gallagher and Squire performed their song ‘I’m A Wheel’ on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon earlier this week (April 9). Following the tour, Gallagher said it would “be rude not to do another album” with Squire in the future.
In other news, Gallagher has responded to Andy Bell‘s recent comments about a potential Oasis reunion.