View 4 Images

I am sure I can’t be the only one who has spent the weekend listening to the Stone Roses with a new intensity - particularly those basslines. It has taken me right back to the summer of 1989 and my first summer job in an office at the top of Portland Street.

I would spend every lunch-hour mooching around the old Piccadilly Records shop and then go over the road into the gardens to eat my lunch.

One day, a sign appeared in the ticket booth: “Stone Roses, Empress Ballroom, Blackpool, August 12”. I bought three tickets on the spot for me and my brothers.

A few weeks later, we went up the M6 with what seemed like the whole of Manchester for one of the best nights of our lives. That summer, I fell in love with Manchester.

When I graduated from university two years later, I ca

See Full Page