The Classic Rock Archive
> Browse > Latest IssueSearch the Archive
Enter your search below and click "Search".
(e.g. 'hendrix' or 'guitar solo')
Your Account
You're not logged in! Logging into the archive will allow you to flag and retrieve articles you're especially interested in.
> Login to your account > RegisterJohn Squire
From page 96 of Classic Rock Magazine December 2002
Cover of December 2002 issue.
'Time Changes Everything'
(North Country) Squire's solo debut is his first release for six years, coming after his "seminal work with the Stone Roses and the Seahorses" which has apparently "seen him acclaimed as the finest guitarist and songwriter of his generation".
To be fair, Squire really does appear somewhere up in the top 50. But there's another, far greater problem in allowing a public relations scribbler to throw down this kind of gauntlet: Squire's irritating squawk of a voice.
His voice, unfortunately is a joke, bringing to mind the career-wrecking problems of silent-screen idol John Gilbert when it was discovered that his voice transferred to the talkies like Kermit the Frog.
There's another problem, too: the Finest Songwriter Of His Generation actually wrote only the tunes to the epoch-making Stone Roses output. Here we find out why he didn't write the words. And, after years of lazing on his farm in Cheshire, he's forgotten how to write those big, wobbly shimmery bounce-off-the-walls tunes, too.
Squires says he took on the vocal chores because he doesn't want his "ideas refracted through someone else". Retract. Refract.
***** Derek Hammond
