A biography for Ian Brownhasn’t been written yet.
“I thought it would be more interesting to make a musical autobiography than an actual autobiography.”
“I went into jail with absolutely no respect whatsoever for authority, and I came out with even less.”
“If you want to call me a Karaoke King, I'll take it.”
“We started out to finish groups like U2 - that was what it was all about.”
“When you live in Manchester and it's raining every day, you've got to imagine the sun sometimes. When you're brought up in concrete, you aim for the green leaves. And when you get to the green leaves, you yearn again for concrete.”
“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.”
“The jails are full of kids from kids' homes. You're 16 years old, and you're out on the street. How you going to fend for yourself at 16 if you've not had an education? You're going to turn to crime.”
“I was skint, and I had to move back to my mum and dad's house, back into the room I shared with my brother when I was a kid. I kept getting people on the streets telling me that they loved me; it didn't mean anything to me because I was still borrowing tenners off my pensioner father to go and get some chicken.”
“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.”
“Getting a grey beard's not cool.”
“You're never alone on the dole in Manchester.”
“At primary school, I thought I was George Best. Then I got to secondary school, and it was more serious.”
“I love karaoke - I usually do Blondie's 'Heart Of Glass,' or 'Try A Little Tenderness.'”
“I am gentle. I think nearly everyone who makes music is sensitive - I don't care how hard they pretend they are.”
“People have to realise you don't help African children singing along to 60-year-old men playing their tunes from 40 years ago.”
“England's a small nation, and the pop music industry is built on fashion.”
“I actually was able to give up shopping in February '99.”
“I feel like I've established myself as a music maker in my own right.”
“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.”
“We feel we're the only British group worth exporting since the Sex Pistols, definitely.”