Rocker Ian Brown relishing position as father of Britrock

0 Comments | AFP, October, 2006

HONG KONG (AFP) — When Ian Brown crashed onto the music scene with his former band The Stone Roses in the late 1980s, the fresh-faced singer from the north of England became the archetype for every generation of British pop star to follow. Oasis' onstage simian leer, the Arctic Monkey's cocky northern charm and Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker's strut all owed something to Brown, whose reputation for clowning around on and offstage earned him the nickname Monkey King.

Now aged 43, and having his third bite at the rock and roll cherry after the Roses split in 1996 and a jail term for an air rage incident in 1998 put the brakes on his career, he finds himself the father of British rock. "We got young kids who were only in kindergarten when we (the Stone Roses) were out, so to have...