‘I’m gonna give you a proper Manchester kicking’: Ian Brown’s journey from violence to anti-vaxxer

“It’s Ian Brown.” Pause for effect. “Yeah, the Ian Brown.” Back in 1998, I was working on a pop culture magazine. One bleak winter’s afternoon, my desk landline (remember them?) rang. I picked up and the afternoon became even bleaker.

I guessed why the former Stone Roses frontman was calling. The previous day, our latest issue had hit the shelves. It included my short but not terribly sweet verdict on Brown’s new album, Unfinished Monkey Business. As a huge fan of the Stone Roses, I’d eagerly volunteered to review his solo debut, but found it a mumbling, self-indulgent mess and said as much in print. I gave it one star out of five.

What I didn’t know was how incandescent with rage he would be. He proceeded to tell me that he’d read my review and, in language too ripe to be repeated here, vowed violent retribution. His choice threats included the phrase: “I’m gonna come down there on the coach and give you a proper Manchester kicking”. I later appreciated how he’d specified the mode of transport. More thrifty than the train.

Shaken by the call, I told my boss and mentor Mark Ellen – a terrific fellow who’d edited Smash Hits in its Eighties pomp, launched Q and Mojo, and presented The Old Grey Whistle Test. (Brilliantly, he was also in Tony Blair’s band Ugly Rumours at Oxford University.) His reaction was a mix of sympathy, sage advice and barely-concealed glee.

Mark himself had once had his head banged repeatedly against a wall by Elvis Costello’s combative manager, Jake Riviera; one of his former NME colleagues was set on fire by Rat Scabies from The Damned, and another was left gaffer-taped to a tree in a desert by The Stranglers. Another of my bosses, Barry McIlheney (another ex-Smash Hits editor and founder of Empire magazine), left the Melody Maker office to find Kevin Rowland of Dexy’s Midnight Runners waiting outside with his fists raised, claiming Barry had misquoted him. They stopped traffic as their brawl spilled into the road.

Being “duffed up” (as Mark put it) by disgruntled rock stars was, I realised, a journalistic rite-of-passage. Still, he recommended I call Brown’s record company and tell them that their “talent” was going around threatening critics, which presumably wasn’t part of their marketing strategy. They were effusive in their apologies, yet somehow gave me the impression this wasn’t the first time.

My “Manchester kicking” never came. A few days later, a bunch of flowers arrived with a “Sorry” card from Brown. I strongly suspected it came from the press office and he knew nothing about it. For a time afterwards, if we happened to see Brown at a gig or festival, my friends and colleagues would boisterously shout over to him: “Ian! Look, he’s over here! Michael Hogan! One star! Manchester kicking! Now’s your chance!” Most amusing.

As the record company had implied, Brown had form for this sort of thing. He also took issue with something a female music journalist had written and aggressively berated her at Glastonbury festival in front of his entourage, leaving the 23-year-old in tears. Even then, Brown wouldn’t leave it, referencing the offending article in the spoken word lyrics to a B-side.

Within two weeks of our phone “chat” came the infamous air-rage incident, when he threatened to cut off the hands of a British Airways stewardess, then hammered on the cockpit door as the flight came into land. The captain radioed for help and when the plane touched down, Brown was arrested. (He was eventually sentenced to four months in Strangeways, of which he served eight weeks.)

And, a few months later, Brown launched into a bizarre homophobic rant during the seemingly innocuous activity of guest-reviewing the week’s singles in Melody Maker: ”I don’t trust the British fascination with homosexuals… Violence comes from Romans, Nazis, Greeks – they were all homosexuals.”

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that Brown’s recent “pivot” into anti-mask, anti-lockdown, anti-vaccination lectures doesn’t exactly surprise me. His Twitter feed in recent months has become a bin fire of unorthodox opinions, stream-of-consciousness keyboard-mashing and nonsensical hashtags. It all began in early September, when he provoked a backlash by posting – in unpunctuated upper-case, always an indicator of reasoned thought – "NO LOCKDOWN NO TESTS NO TRACKS NO MASKS NO VAX #researchanddestroy.”

His Tweets have continued in the same vein since:

Brown’s fans and fellow musicians alike have slammed his use of his public platform. Within half-an-hour of the initial “NO LOCKDOWN” Tweet, Stone Roses guitarist John Squire distanced himself from his former bandmate and childhood friend, posting: “Wear a mask. Stay safe. Look after yourself and others.” The Roses puns soon flowed thick and fast: Fool’s Cold, I Am the Resuscitation, I Wanna be a Corpse, Second Spike Island… (You get the idea.)

A fortnight after that, Brown shared a new solo song titled Little Seed, Big Tree, the tinfoil-hatted lyrics to which went: “A sonic lockdown in your home town / Sonic lockdown, state shakedown, mass breakdown / Put your muzzle on, get back in your basket / Get behind your doors, ’cos living here is drastic.”

Brown found himself in the unenviable position of being admonished by no less than Irish twins John and Edward Grimes, aka X Factor alumni Jedward. He doubled down, first defending his position as an armchair epidemiologist (“To all of you asking about my medical qualifications, I have the same as the computer seller Bill Gates”), then denying he was a conspiracy theorist (“A term invented by the lamestream media to discredit those who can smell and see through lies and propaganda”).

This incurred the wrath of Jedward, unlikely cult heroes in the crusade against covidiocy. “Ian, you discredited yourself with your backward views and illogical actions,” they replied. “The public have lost all respect for your views. Your music and cheekbones are a dream, but your tweets are a nightmare.” Touché. Undeterred, “Doc” Brown proceeded to call the health crisis a “plandemic”, claiming it was all a sinister scam “designed to make us digital slaves”. When Twitter users spotted that he was posting this anti-tech codswallop from an iPhone, Brown claimed: “They’re from my pals phone #idontwannabeacyborg.”

How did the lead singer of such an epoch-defining band become a swivel-eyed Covid-denier and online truth warrior? Well, one could plausibly point to a heady cocktail of toxic masculinity, over-inflated ego and drug use. (Brown claims he only smokes “a little bit of weed” nowadays.) It’s notable, too, how most of the celebrity anti-lockdown brigade happen to be men, particularly white male rockers of a certain age – the likes of Noel Gallagher, Van Morrison, Howard Donald, Right Said Fred, Jim Corr and Bryan Adams, as well as Brown. (Now there’s a potential supergroup to send shivers down the spine.)

A cynic might connect Brown’s sudden flurry of social media activity to the fact that he had new music to promote. Crackpot tirades about an ongoing pandemic might be an unusual publicity approach, but it's certainly got Brown more media coverage than he’s enjoyed in years.

A more sympathetic reading is that the 57-year-old divorced father-of-three might not be feeling quite himself in this new normal?, as is the case with many of us right now. Brown's "me against the world" complex could be heightened by his counter-cultural leanings, instinctive anti-establishment beliefs and estrangement from his former bandmates.

He's certainly capable of great clarity of thought and bravery, as Brown showed in 2015 and again in 2017 when he testified in court against ITV weatherman Fred Talbot, a former teacher at his alma mater of Altrincham Grammar School For Boys. Talbot was found guilty of sexually abusing pupils during the Seventies. He was sentenced to a total of nine years and released on licence last December.

At least there are signs that help is at hand. A week ago, all of Brown’s coronavirus-related tweets were quietly deleted from his account. One hopes some kind of intervention was staged. Sadly, within days, he’d presumably borrowed his mysterious “pal’s” phone and was at it again.

A subsequent string of tweets likened lockdown measures to “the War on Terror, designed to favour the elite”, said it was “house arrest” and urged his followers to “IGNORE ALiEN ORDERS”. The icing on the conspiracist cake? “LOCKDOWN KiLLS. EVERYONE KNOWS IT!  DEPOPULATiON iS THE NAME OF THE GAME.”

It’s dispiriting how Ian Brown has turned from a Madchester hero into a cranky old contrarian, shouting at passing traffic. Shaking his fist at clouds instead of shaking a tambourine. I just hope he’s well and this article doesn’t provoke another threat of a proper Manchester kicking. Maybe I’ll screen my calls for the next few days.