I m Ian Brown. I used to be in a band called the Stone Roses."

It s re-introductions all round, as the Starman embarks on a hazardous solo mission. Stuart Bailie records him taking one giant leap for a man.

The Starman walks into a public bar in Chorlton and looks for a quiet spot. The old regulars at the back are nudging each other. They re sure that they recognise the face and the style of a traveller who s been all the way up there and back.

The Starman takes no notice. He doesn t alter his sure-headed stride. His galt is so smooth; it s like he hardly touches the tiles. His feet are at right angles, his shoulders are rolling in sympathy with his hips.

"VIHHHSHT-VHHHHSHT", is what you hear as Ian Brown crosses the bar. "VIHHSHT-VIHHSHT-VIHHSHT".

It s the sound of synthetic trouser legs bottle green Quicksilver snowboarding pants chafing together. The singer s legs are unnaturally far apart due to his funky walk, but the trousers are of such a generous cut and the crotch is so remarkably low-slung that friction can t be helped.

Only a starman would walk these streets in such clobber. Only a unique soul would have such big, truth-seeking eyes and a jaw structure that pulls so much attention to his mouth. And while the shaggy haircut has become almost generic in pop star circles, Ian Brown is the guy who popularised the floppy, feminine fringe nine years back.

He sits down with a non-alcoholic drink and talks about football, The Bible and the changing face of Chorlton, south Manchester. Years ago, when he lived in West Didsbury, he used to journey over here to meet his pal, John Squire. They would write songs together, and sometimes their band, The Stone Roses, used to rehearse in the area.

That was before the place became gentrified and the wine bars opened. It was before The Stone Roses grew into an astonishing era-defining group. And of course, all of this prefigured the fall-out between Squire and Brown, leading to the slow, messy decline of the band.

Yet before he comtemplates some of that history, Ian describes the video that he s just made for his first solo single, "My Star". It s been directed by Wiz, the guy who made some spectacular promos for bands like the Manics and Flowered Up especially the latter s seminal "Weekender" clip.

Ian was given an amusing role. He was cast as Captain James T Spender, back from a mission to Saturn. Three of the other crew members had died in suspicious circumstances. Spender wasn t involved in the deaths, but the authorities had him locked up in a penthouse, under observation, afraid that he had dangerous information,
that he could bring them all down. A spaceman who knew too much.

"It ends up alright though" says Brown, smiling. He s hunched up at the bar with the gentlemen from the press and a few other business friends. There s a mate that he picked up nearby, plus his manager Noel, an old Roses associate. Ian s Mexican girlfriend, Fabiola, has taken out a digital camcorder and is capturing the event for
posterity.

The regulars at the back of the pub are still nudging each other, absoloutely sure now that they have the measure of the star. Finally, they send the most presentable of their party over to clarify the matter.

"Here lad, are you famous or what?"

"I m Ian Brown"

"Ian who?"

"Ian Brown. I used to be in a band called the Stone Roses"

"Sorry, I ve never eard or ya. But listen, could you do us a favour? Could you sign this bit of paper for me grand-daughter?"

Ian obliges, on the condition that he can have his picture taken with the old buffer. He s putting pen to paper when the man accidently drops the hurtful line in.

"Of course, y know who we thought you were? We reckoned you were that lad out of Oasis."

"Nah" says Ian, not missing a beat. "He just thinks he s me."

Seven years ago, there was a very different mission, a more famous crew. The Stone Roses were already legendary. Their self-titled debut album of 1989 had rediscovered the majestic possibilities of the guitar band. Later that year, Fools Gold chased the groove over a thrilling, extended single and transformed indie s wallflower status forever.

Happily, the band also believed in the romantic idea of "The Kids". They wanted to be worthy of their fans, to give them value, to never get conceited or let them down. They d adopted this ethos from the Clash, whom Ian Brown had met when they recorded Bankrobber in Manchester s Pluto studios in 1979.

So Brown, Squire, Mani and Reni came across like a perfect gang; self-reliant, sharing everything, unpretentious, your mates. They were an alternative community, a utopia in a chessy world. And when they threw a party in 1990 by the chemical stacks of Spike Island near Widnes, 30,000 punters in flared jeans came to share in the delirium.

Soon after, though, the band were appearing before the court, trying to get out of their record contract with Silvertone. This was still dragging on in January 91, when the band hauled up to the Blue Stone rehearsal rooms, at a remote Pembrokeshire farm. It was a chance to write new songs, to redesign the vision.

But Ian Brown remembers it as the worst of times. Squire was already becoming withdrawn. He s told Ian that he wasn t going to work with Mani once the second album was done. He was snubbing Reni, and later Ian realised he was probably writing him out of the picture as well. The mate that he d grown up with on Sylvan Avenue. They d known each other since their mythical meeting in a sandpit at the age of four.

"The Gulf War had just started" Ian recalls. "And we used to play Stevie Wonder s Heaven Help Us All every day. Me Mani and Reni. But John wouldn t come out of his room. In fact, he was working on the songs Love Is The Law and Happiness Is Eggshaped (later to appear on the Seahorses album).

"So I was watching the Gulf war and reading Exodus and listening to Stevie. And I could hear Squire walking past my door, sniggering, as if to say, he s a dick, playing Sir Duke. It was alright him playing his Led Zeppelin, but I was a dick for playing Stevie."

Squire later confessed that he had over-indulged in cocaine during the wilderness years, that the drug made him anti-social. In contrast, Brown passes on alcohol, fuels up on bananas and treats his face with Clinique Pour Homme moisturiser. He does press-ups, stretches and sit-ups, and works out on a rowing machine. He is deeply
contemptuous of cocaine users.

"When you go into a place where people are using it, you can feel the coke straight away" he snarls. "There s no love in the place, no soul. They re saying nothing. They re wastin our time, like an entire generation all on coke. We know that coke is the devil. In the 70 s punk came to destroy coke and now it s cool again."

"If you re gonna make records in coke, do what Marvin Gaye did and let s hear the torture, how you re fighting for your soul. You can hear it on What s Going On. Look at how he ended up. A world superstar, and he was on his own in Belgium. Playing dates in Ostend. To get away from coke. I gave up powders in 1990. But I never went mad
on them, no."

Significally, there are three finger-pointing songs on Unfinished Monkey Business, the new Ian Brown album. One of these, Ice Cold Cube, was performed by the Roses (augmented by three session players) after Squire quit in 96. It dismisses the superior attitude of a drug-snorting associate.

Nigel Ipinson and Robbie Maddix, who played keyboards and drums in the last stand of the Roses at the Reading Festival in 96, wrote another song, What Happened To Ya. Again, the listener is tempted to ask Ian if the departed guitarist is the subject of the lyric.

"I ve got a feeling that at the time that they wrote it, certain situations had been mentioned, yeah."

And what about the song Deep Pile Dreams, which mocks the misplaced rock dream of the stretch limo and the $60 bag of powders? Another reference to a former colleague?

"I think my mind had fallen into that category, definitely. We d been given too much love; too many people believed in us. I don t think he knew that. I know that he didn t know that."

"He could play that funky guitar, but he was too embarrassed to do it, because he was white. He decided to go the rock way. But we d heard him do the funky thing have some faith in us. But he never had any faith in us. He never rated Reni, Mani or me."

"In his head, Squire is the man. Always. We were superfluous and he s gone and proved it. He s done his own thing. You get what you want."

And yet there s something special about a band. People bonding together themselves against the world.

"That s it. You re tight, you re close, no-one can touch ya and you ve got your own language. I ll never get that back."

Does that make you sad?

"No, I ve gotta give thanks that I was involved in the first place. We spent four years unemployed, in a cellar, working on the music every day. We ended up in New York, Tokyo, San Francisco, Australia. Had a great time. People chanting my name, worldwide."

Brown is sore about the bust-up of the Roses, but he s not simply bitter. He frequently deals in New Testament quotations, Rastafarian spiel and hash-fuelled logic that combine to enhance his status as a jivey street preacher intuitive and morally true. The same impulse led him to hand out large wodges of cash to strangers when his
money from Geffen Records came in around 91.

Some of that sensibility also kicked in when he took a holiday to Morocco after the Roses had finished. There he witnessed the muezzin call to prayer singing without any commercial purpose, a pure spiritual expression of Islam, and it blew him away.

"It lifted me off my feet, like a Saturday afternoon when I was 14 it was so rough and raw, echoing off the walls. The most uplifting thing I ve heard for a long time."

He is less accepting of the bohemian types who have used North Africa to indulge their sensual whims.

"There used to be a thousand brothels in Tangiers. Westerners used to go to get smashed out of their faces, to pick up women and kids. 60 s intellectuals and pop stars they all went over there to abuse the people."

People like William Burroughs, for instance.

"William Burroughs, he was another bum. He abused his life and he wrote a book about it. There s nothing more boring than hearing someone else s drug stories. But he s held up, as some kind of literary great. For me, he was just a bum."

Ian remembers that once his last religious education class at school was finished, himself and his mates burnt their Bibles in a big pile. Yet he picked the book up again in 1991. His favourite line he says comes from Corinthians: "They shall think they are lions and we shall turn them into women."

He fully approved when John Squire presented him with the lyrics to Love Spreads. This critical song dealt in religious imagery, just as I Am The Resurrection had in the past and the Second Coming would in the near future. Love Spreads pondered the idea that Jesus ought to have been a black woman. Up there on the cross, nixing the
concept of a patriarchal society.

"A true strong woman doesn t want to see men put under." He muses. "She wants to see a man standing strong."

So are you a religious guy?

"I know about the lies and the abuse that goes on in organised religions. But yes, I ve read the Koran. Me sister bought me it in 1991. It s a beautiful book."

In the song Can t See Me, it sounds like Ian Brown is surrounded by corruption, in danger of being overwhelmed by Babylon.

"All Babylon all around." He intones, in his natural mystic patois. "And those that are close, you can t see who you are, and what you re doing. There s more to life than your own selfish ambition."

So what about marijuana is that an evil drug like cocaine?

"No. I smoke weed. You can t ban a plant. It s a natural thing it comes from the earth. Whoever heard of banning a plant? I ve got a friend who was taken to court for growing it, and he refused to plead unless they changed the charge from growing marijuana on common land to growing marijuana on God s earth."

And did they alter the charge?

"No. They fined him."

Brown says that he never wanted to go solo, that he wanted to take the Roses back to America with a third album. Everywhere he played in 95, he sensed that the punters were there for the band. They d lost five years between The Stone Roses and Second Coming, released at the end of 94. But that momentum was picking up again.

"I knew how strong we were at the end of 95. Someone else made me close it down. It took me a while to get over the fact that I felt robbed of the natural thing that I was doing."

"So eventually, people persuaded me to go solo. I know it s a dirty business, but it was either this or gardening. And I still felt that I had music inside me, that I had things to do."

The Reading Festival gig in August 96 was a scrappy end to the band. Only Ian and Mani were left from the classic line-up (Reni had quit in early 95). The music wasn t great and Ian s vocals were weak. The singer had been aiming to dismantle the myth of the band: now he concedes that he managed all this in one famous evening. He
officially pronounced the band dead at the end of October.

Soon after, he put carpet up on the walls at his Warrington home, bought some portable studio gear and started working on his own stuff. He bought some music guides and learnt to play bass and keyboards. Once he got moving, he felt that he d subconsciously picked up a lot of knowledge from his time with the Roses.

He wanted creative freedom more than anything. Music executives at Geffen had pressurised the Roses to finish off Second Coming. They gave them schedules, told them to make videos and suggested single releases. Brown had been affronted by this. He was going to deliver his solo record as a finished work, beyond interference.

On some of the new songs, he was relying on his musician friends, Robbie Maddix and Aziz Ibrahim. Another piece, Can t See Me, was inspired by a DAT recording of an old Roses rehearsal tape, and thus it features Mani and Reni, who gave their permission and encouragement.

The album was finished off at Chiswick Reach studios, where a lot of the early reggae songs were prepared for the Trojan label. Brown s main rationale was honesty, and he certainly achieved this. There are no pretences of the record. Sometimes it sounds naove, but he s happy with that too. His only poser was how to get the music to its fans.

Traditionally, you sign to a record label and they do the rest for a price. But Brown has been down that road before. He claims that he s seen little from the Silvertone deal, even though the first album has sold over 400,000 copies, and all of the other music they made from the label has been repackaged and repromoted several times.

The Geffen deal was a lot more generous to the band, but the long sessions at Rockfield Studios cost plenty. At one stage, they owed an estimated #2 million. They didn t sell enough records to recoup. Thus, Brown is a star without funds.

"I got #125,000 in 91, and I gave it all away. Within three days, it had gone. I gave it to me mother, me brother and sister, and I put 30 grand on the house."

At one stage Ian resolved that he would press up a load of albums at his own expense, get a van and drive round the record shops, offering to put them in the shops on a sale or return basis.

"I wanted to destroy the thing where you sign yourself away, when you ve just got one option. But I realised that, on my own, I can t destroy the business. I didn t want to become a president. At the end of the day, I haven t got time."

So he took the tapes to John Kennedy, the old Roses lawyer, now the boss of Polygram, who liked what he heard. He offered Ian his choice of label. He toyed with the idea of working with Island, Bob Marley s old home, but they wanted to remix bits of the album. Instead he chose Polydor, one time host to Jimi Hendrix.

So was it liberating, playing alone?

"Yeah. I didn t know if I could make anything musical. I didn t want it to sound like punk. So it s given me a confidence. I wanted to destroy the mystery of sound production and the pretentiousness of musicians. That s what I was after. Where s this singer who can t sing? Now he s playing all the instruments."

Ian tells you many of his Stone Roses stories in the present tense, and suddenly you get to imagine what it was like to be at an early soundcheck, when the bar staff would stand open-mouthed, amazed at this rapidly maturing band. He lets you see the wreckage of Spike Island through his eyes, upset at the money-grabbing corruption of the day. Or how it was to be at the Feile in 95, when half the bright lights of Britpop were drugged out afterwards, and slobbering in the hotel bar.

He talks about the fixers who made money out of the Roses, and reckons that he should personally own eight holes of a nearby golf course. He brightens up when you mention his old mate Reni, and the singer recalls visiting him recently for a jamming session. Reni was behind his drum kit for seven hours, non-stop, utterly into it.

The drummer is writing his own songs and playing guitar. He s also teaching a young kid how to play the drums, consciously passing the mantle on. Ian approves of that kind of discipline. It was the same joy that led Ian to study karate from the ages of 11 to 18, stopping just short of his black belt.

His best memory of the Roses relates to a Japanese tour in 95. As a kid, he d always dreamed of visiting Okinawa, the home of karate and finally here he was, strolling around the very island, cutting out of his hotel into a nearby shanty town. And the first person he met there was an old shop-keeper who smiled at him and shouted "Ian
Brown!" It was as if he had finally come home.

You remind him that early in 1988, the Stone Roses played a gig at Manchester s International 2. It was a political gesture against the Tory government s Clause 28, which aimed to penalise any artform that was seen to promote homosexuality. All of pop music was in rebellion against this scheme, and the Roses gesture was well-received.

Two interesting developments came out of that night. Firstly, the band was spotted by Andrew Lauder, from Silvertone Records, who promptly signed them up. Secondly, there were two brothers at the gig, who were excited enough to get their own musical project going. They were, of course, Noel and Liam Gallagher.

"They ve seen our band", Ian states, without any trace of jealousy, "and they ve formed the biggest band since the Beatles. I ve not heard their LPs all the way through. It isn t my kind of music. But there again, I don t think their music s made to uplift me. If they started their thing from seeing our thing, it stands to reason that it won t uplift me."

"I think Noel Gallagher, for a rock star, has still got some degree of humility. He still treats people as human. Good luck to him. They ve got out of Burnage, y know."

Your thoughts on Liam s coke progress?

"Liam should keep off the coke, cause it s doing nothing for him."

And has Ian checked out Roses-influenced acts like the Bluetones and Kula Shaker?

"I m a grown man you know. I don t really listen to that stuff. I can t hear the similarities. They sound limp. Did we sound that limp? I know we had a 60s thing because we
had a melody thing, but we weren t like that, I m sure. We did want people to form bands from seeing us, but we wanted them to do their own thing. To realise that you re an individual."

"When you re young, you are influenced by other people. So you might stand up and think you re Ian Brown. My family s still cracking up at Tim Burgess. Slightly struck in time, frozen. They ve aped something and kept at it. They re not giving us nothing. In a way it s a joke. But good luck to them all."

"It s like, 1998, and we still have to worship the Beatles. I was fed up with the Beatles by the time I was 13. There s too many good things going on. Do we have to suffer the 60s again? After all the advancement that was made with acid house?"

"It was a big thing, a big change in 88. The love. No more fronts. Joy and community. Where s all that gone? Is community about #10 for a burger and we ll play a few Beatles tunes? It was about more than that. More than childish things."

The starman zips up his jacket and heads out of the bar, past the waving regulars. The same effortless walk, a reprise of the pants-swinging sound of a celebrity who doesn t have to care about what s deemed to be cool in the real world. He s on another mission. One more splashdown into the filthy atmosphere of rock and roll. A place
where bold steps are the only ones worth taking.