I’ve been having difficulty formulating, and understanding, my own thoughts on The Stone Roses’ reunion. It’s a unique feeling: One of my favourite ever bands announces a reunion, and I wish it wasn’t happening.

In the press conference Ian Brown said they have no intention of destroying the legacy, but I worry that’s precisely what will happen. History does not suggest anything different (I’m thinking Sex Pistols and Happy Mondays among others). I suppose the Pixies reunion was well-greated though.

The same press conference reminded me of one of the things I love(d) about the band: their gobbiness, and they’re political views. I love the way Ian Brown laid into this Daily Mail reporter.

The fact that the 2 initial dates at Heaton Park, priced at £55 a ticket, with 75,000 capacity each day, would gross £8.25m in gate receipts doesn’t bother me. I genuinely believe they’re not in it for the money.

Wondering whether to get a ticket, I thought “I really shouldn’t but…”.  I never got to see them first time around. However, from the live recordings and first hand accounts I’ve heard, they were never much cop live. Having said all that, at the end of the day, it is the blinking Stone Roses, one of the bands who (thanks largely to the persistence of my brother Phil) stopped me just listening to the charts.

The decision was taken out of my hands this morning however, as all 150,000 tickets sold out in 14 mins. I was expecting them to sell out, but that speed is quite staggering.  A third date was added (unsurprisingly – I had retweeted somebody saying there would be 3 dates, a few minutes before the press conference even started). That sold out too.

I know that a lot of those ticket sales were bought by fans, but there is no expletive strong enough to describe the contempt I feel towards the people who had put their tickets on eBay even before their breakfast had settled.  They are suckers of satan’s cock, every single one of them.

Another thought occurred to me today, when thinking of the timescale we’re talking about here, comparing when The Stone Roses were first on the scene to now.  When I first got into The Stone Roses, the 60s were ‘ancient history’.

I mean, to me growing up, songs like ‘Yesterday‘ and ‘Something‘ had ‘always existed’.  They were like folk songs, and thinking of a time when those songs had not yet been written or heard seemed like thinking of a time when oxygen didn’t exist.  The Beatles swansong was 20 years before The Stone Roses were changing my world.  So, this means that now, 20 years on, there are a generation of Stone Roses fans for whom ‘Waterfall‘ and ‘Fools Gold‘ have ‘always existed’.  In terms of timescale, The Stone Roses reunion, for the teenagers of today, is like how I would have felt if The Beatles had reformed in my teens.  That’s a really bonkers thought.