Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

The Stone Roses: Made of Stone Blu-ray Movie Review

From Lad Rock to Dad Rock

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater December 11, 2013

Before Oasis and Blur, and long before Kasabian and Coldplay, there was The Stone Roses, Manchester’s Britpop progenitors, who imploded just as the second British invasion properly began hitting the U.S. in the mid-1990s. Their eponymous 1989 debut album was commonly lauded as “seminal” during the Britpop heyday—and as recently as 2006, NME deemed it the best British album ever—but increasingly, some of the praise seems a bit much. Yes, The Stone Roses is a solid record. And yes, it was (and continues to be) hugely influential. But as the cozy glow of Britpop has faded—and it was cozy, all wrapped up in homey cultural Englishness—the album seems less groundbreaking than it is a retilling of old rock and roll soil. A bit mod, a bit punk, a bit Northern Soul, a bit jangly ‘60s pop. Some of The Beatles and a good deal of those other Stones, the rolling ones. The band came along just after the demise of The Smiths, giving the English indie music scene a bright new hope and providing the soundtrack for a brief generation of youths prone to wearing the unfortunate combo of flares, track jackets, and bucket hats. (The “Baggies” were no Mods when it came to sartorial prowess.) This might account for the massive nostalgia-driven hype that buzzed up around the band’s 2011 announcement that they were, after sixteen years of inactivity, reuniting for a world tour. Fans, some with teenaged children of their own, went mental.

One of these fans was English filmmaker Shane Meadows, director of 2006’s moving and terrifying This Is England, about the insidious way that white nationalists co-opted the previously multicultural skinhead subculture of the early 1980s. Meadows, now 40, came of age listening to The Stone Roses, and he dropped everything—including a third season of his subsequent This Is England television series—to make a documentary about the band’s reunification. It becomes clear early on that The Stone Roses: Made of Stone is a fondly constructed rock-doc, far more celebratory than incisive. It’s made for the fanbase by one of their own, and as such, it may not win over those unfamiliar with the band and the surrounding Manchester—or, Madchester—scene that it birthed.

The film does give a brief history of the band and its rock and roll milieu, both emerging from Manchester's tenements, obsessed simultaneously with 1960s psychedelica and 1980s acid/house music. (Along with the lingering influence of mod culture. The Who's Pete Townshend, notably, was at The Stone Roses' first concert in '84.) Using archival VHS footage, Super 8 clips, and one memorable TV interview—where singer Ian Brown and guitarist John Squire stonewall the reporter with monosyllabic responses—Meadows charts the band's meteoric rise, which started even before they released their instant-classic first album in 1988. Their popularity peaked in 1990, when they headlined an outdoor concert on Spike Island, in Widnes, attended by some 27,000 fans. It was a watershed moment—the BBC called it "a Woodstock for the baggy generation"—but while other bands were rapidly swept downstream into Britpop proper, The Stone Roses got snagged up on a botched recording contract, impending fatherhood, and a general lack of direction. When they finally got around to releasing their second album, 1994's Second Coming, Blur, Oasis, and others had long since passed them by. The Stone Roses disbanded in 1996, gone but not forgotten.

Made of Stone glosses over the band's lean years—it leaves out the drug troubles, for instance—but the film isn't meant to be some kind of exhaustive tell-all. Meadows only sketches out The Stone Roses' past in order to contextualize their comeback and potential future. We see the band joking around during the press conference they've called to announce their return. We see them feeling their way through their old hits—like "I Wanna Be Adored"—in a rural rehearsal space far from prying eyes. We see that they still dress like teenagers, which suggests a certain delusional attachment to the past. Are they merely fooling themselves when they talk self-seriously about world domination? Maybe not. If Made of Stone shows anything, it's that love for the band has only grown in their longtime absence. The film's emotional centerpiece is a free concert—a warmup for bigger gigs to follow—held at Parr Hall, a tiny performing space in provincial Warrington. Tickets are limited to the first 1,000 people who arrive with a piece of Stone Roses merchandise—an LP, CD sleeve, or t-shirt—and fans literally run from all directions to queue up at the box office. Most are in their late 30s and early 40s, keen to relive old glories, but there are lots of younger faces too—some, yes, in bucket hats—for whom the band is the stuff of musical lore. After an 11-song set, one thousand sweaty, smiling faces emerge from the venue, raving about the night.

Of course, it wouldn't be a rock and roll documentary without a bit of unexpected drama, which comes in Amsterdam—the second stop on the band's tour of Europe—when drummer Alan "Reni" Wren gets fed up with monitor issues during the show and refuses to come out for an encore, leaving the audience jeering. Meadows, ashen-faced, records himself in his hotel room, speculating that this might mean the bitter end of the documentary, but calm heads thankfully prevail and the band soldiers on to a series of three triumphant homecoming gigs at Manchester's Heaton Park. With a helicopter at his disposal, Meadows pulls back to show a swarm of tens of thousands—some 225,000 turned out in total—while cameramen onstage and in the crowd capture the ecstasy and energy up close. The screaming. The cellphones held high. The teary eyes and raised fists. The joy of reconnecting with the past, whether that past was experienced directly or secondhand through the stories of older siblings, parents, and the collective pop culture consciousness. Ultimately, Made of Stone is as much a tribute to the fans—and the very idea of loving a band—as it is to The Stone Roses themselves.

The Stone Roses: Made of Stone Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

MVD Visual brings Made of Stone to Blu-ray with a 1080p/AVC-encoded presentation that appears true to its source materials. The contemporary footage was shot using various high definition digital cameras—from DSLRs to GoPro action cams to larger, more professional rigs—and each has its own picture quality quirks. Noise is heavy at times, in-camera compression artifacts are occasionally visible, and highlights can be blown out, but most of this is unavoidable, and none of it is outright distracting. (I suspect the decision to shoot much of the modern stuff in black and white was as much a technical decision—in that it reduces the harsh look of digital artifacts—as it was an artistic one.) Clarity is variable, with excellent sharpness giving way to imprecise focus and back again, but this too is not unexpected for a shot-on-the-fly music documentary. Of course, the archival material is understandably all over the place, image-wise, with duped VHS footage, Super 8/16mm clips, and now-ancient-looking TV broadcasts. It is what it is, and it's displayed here as cleanly and accurately as possible.

The Stone Roses: Made of Stone Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Made of Stone has two audio options, an uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 stereo track—which is the disc's default—and a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 multichannel mix. This is an odd reversal of the usual Blu-ray audio setup, where the stereo mixdown is usually the one given the Dolby Digital treatment. It's unclear why MVD Visual didn't or couldn't include a lossless or uncompressed multichannel track. The 5.1 option is less bright and clear than its stereo counterpart, but that said, the rear channels don't get much play anyway—some bleeding room for the music, the occasional cheers and jeers of the crowds—so you shouldn't feel short-shrifted by sticking with the 2.0 track. Blasting out of the front and center, the music sounds fantastic, with crisp drum hits and room-filling bass, crunchy guitar and reasonably clear vocals. (Ian Brown isn't exactly known for putting his voice high in the mix.) The archival material can be a bit murky at times, understandably, but there's not much that can be done about that. As clear as the audio for the present-day footage is, some subtitles would've been helpful in deciphering the band's Mancunian accents.

The Stone Roses: Made of Stone Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary: Director Shane Meadows and producer Mark Herbert generally gush about how much they love the band, while also delivering some insights about how the documentary came together.
• Locating the Rehearsal Venue (HD, 2:41:): Driving over to the Stone Roses' rehearsal space, the doc's director and producer chat and get lost.
• Behind the Scenes: Warrington Parr Hall (HD, 13:03): Some pre-show planning and rehearsal footage, along with an extended interview with Shane.
• Shane's Hallelujah Moment (HD, 5:29): Some rehearsal footage captured with the director's smartphone in an attempt to help him figure out the visual style he wanted for the film.
• Fan Phone Footage (HD, 00:25): A quick clip of Ian walking into the arena and grabbing a fan's cell-phone to shoot a little selfie video.
• Trailer (HD, 2:21)
• Live: "She Bangs the Drums" - Fuji (HD, 3:51)
• Live: "Shoot You Down" - Warrington Parr Hall (HD, 4:51)
• Live: "I Wanna Be Adored (False Start)" - Rehearsals (HD, 13:33)

The Stone Roses: Made of Stone Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's clearly money in it, so the phenomenon of 1980s and '90s indie bands getting back together nowadays shouldn't be surprising—see My Bloody Valentine, Pixies, even the 2009 reformation of Blur—but Made of Stone is all about setting aside the cynical and experiencing the simple fanboy/fangirl joy of The Stone Roses' recent reunion. Director Shane Meadows follows the band from the surprising 2011 press conference announcement of their return to their homecoming gigs at Manchester's Heaton Park—which attracted 225,000 fans over three nights—and in the process he argues for The Stone Roses' place in British musical history by illuminating just how beloved they continue to be. It's a for-fans-only kind of film, but those fans will be plenty happy with MVD Visual's Blu-ray release, which includes an audio commentary, additional live material, and lots of behind-the-scenes footage. Recommended.