Top 60 Ian Brown Quotes

It is a fact that everyone’s got a limited run in music – but who’s to say how long that run lasts? I used to think that there would be no way I’d still be in music when I was 40. I used to think anyone who was 40 was an old man, and they probably shouldn’t be doing it anymore.

I like the fact that a group can become successful, and by way of what you are, you can show up all the other people who are around you.

Everybody is a star. It’s true. And if you’ve got a light, don’t let it go out. ‘Cos some people sink under.

I feel like I’ve established myself as a music maker in my own right.

We should be growing carrots up the side of the Empire State Building or Big Ben.

You’ll never find a Manchester band slagging off another Manchester band, but within each Manchester band, people will rip each other apart: Mondays, Smiths, New Order, Roses, Oasis.

I’m lucky enough to be one of them music makers who can do a dance festie or a rock festie.

Everything I’ve ever achieved, I’ve done on my terms.

Stardom’s transitory. Nothing really changes except people’s attitudes.

I’ve never chatted up a girl in me life. I’ve always let girls come to me. I’ve never approached a girl to chat her up.

I’d like to change the world. Eradicate poverty, racism, and sexism… all the usual things.

Getting a grey beard’s not cool.

We’re the most important group in the world.

If I was in the gutter, and my kids lived on the kerb, I’d go and get a job in B&Q before I’d reform the Roses. I gave everything I had to the Stone Roses and ended up hitting a brick wall. I’m never going to give anyone a foothold on that wall again.

I love harmonicas – old blues players like Sonny Boy Williamson.

I feel like the Roses were a great group, but I never wanted to try to do it again. I knew I couldn’t get a band that would compare to the Roses, that would have an impact like the Roses.

One person might perceive me as godlike, and the next might think I’m a northern thug. I don’t think I’ve done myself any favours… but I swear I’ve not had a proper fight since I was 14.

We feel we’re the only British group worth exporting since the Sex Pistols, definitely.

I’d never been paid for the first Roses LP – it was 2002 before we received any royalties.

My biggest fault is that I give people too much credit. Then they let you down. I’m 99.9 per cent perfect – that’s how I look at myself and, therefore, everybody else too.

I’d like to write songs for other people, see things from a different perspective. I’d like to watch things from the dugout instead of the pitch.

Just because I’m a successful singer who’s loved and has been loved for years doesn’t mean I’m sitting behind electric gates in my own fantasy land.

Putting another human being above yourself isn’t healthy. I think it’s capitalistic.

You’re never alone on the dole in Manchester.

I like a lot of that Chicago stuff, house music.

One thing I’ve always loved and rated me dad for is that, because of him, I’ve never seen the Queen’s Christmas speech.

I’d love to see the world without liquor for a week.

The Beatles were great; we know that. But we were trying to do a new thing. Why do we need to recreate the Sixties?

I thought it would be more interesting to make a musical autobiography than an actual autobiography.

At primary school, I thought I was George Best. Then I got to secondary school, and it was more serious.

I’m only really good at making music. I wasn’t convinced when I started out, but then I heard the first Stone Roses’ LP.

In March 1977, I taped the single ‘Career Opportunities’ off Piccadilly Radio, which was the ’70s equivalent of downloading, and then the album came out in April 1977.

Oasis are okay, but they’re like The Sun: base.

With the Stone Roses, I always thought we’d be successful because we had some great songs.

I went into jail with absolutely no respect whatsoever for authority, and I came out with even less.

With the Roses, I knew we were great; I felt that we would achieve something. On my own, I had no idea.

People have to realise you don’t help African children singing along to 60-year-old men playing their tunes from 40 years ago.

We started out to finish groups like U2 – that was what it was all about.

My sister bought me the Koran in 1990. I always thought the stories in it were magical.

I can’t think of anyone who’s reformed for art’s sake. That’s why the Roses will never reform.

People want to adulate people.

If you want to call me a Karaoke King, I’ll take it.

Permacultures – where you use the immediate environment to grow food – should be mandatory.

I never wanted to be a pop singer, but I always watched pop programs and knew I could do better than the people I was seeing.

People in Russia learned English off the Beatles. People in Japan learned English off the Stone Roses. Noel Gallagher says music can’t change the world, but the Roses made him want to start a group, so it changed his world.

I love karaoke – I usually do Blondie’s ‘Heart Of Glass,’ or ‘Try A Little Tenderness.’

By 1993, the Stone Roses had become this huge, beautiful cruise ship just floating about in the middle of nowhere with no captain.

I wrote a lot of lyrics in prison, but they’d all be like, ‘Crawls upon the shoulders, hatred in the eyes.’ I wrote about 50 songs in there that were all about jail. I’ve come out and thought, ‘I’ve only served eight weeks; I can’t really write a concept album about jail.’

I love people, me, I believe in people. I love people too much.

We need to ban all air-freighted food. Carrots from Holland. Potatoes from Egypt. It’s got to stop.

I’ve got six solo albums. I’ve been round the world three times. I don’t even think about the Roses.

I was really into punk when I was about 14.

When I was 9, I was into T. Rex, Gary Glitter, and Alice Cooper. I knew The Beatles because my nan introduced me to them, but T. Rex was the first band I got into myself. I got ‘Metal Guru’ a few months after hearing ‘Children of the Revolution’ in Pwllheli in North Wales at a market.

It’s a horrible name, Coldplay. It doesn’t conjure up any positive thoughts.

I’m solo, and I love being solo. I believe I went through the Roses so I could become a solo music-maker. That’s what I believe.

I am gentle. I think nearly everyone who makes music is sensitive – I don’t care how hard they pretend they are.

We believe that anyone can do anything, and everyone’s a star. And that’s evident from the shows we do. It just feels like a whole bunch of people in a room celebrating something – maybe just being alive.

I always loved Oasis because when they came out, they did express that they loved us, and they saw that we did it, and they thought they could do it, too.

Even on songs we’ve got that are about a girl, there’s always something there that’s a call to insurrection.

I started managing myself in October 2004, and since then, it’s gone up and up.