The Stones Roses and the Infamous Paint Revenge on FM Revolver
Rockapedia
Stone Roses (Public Domain)
Back in 1987, Stones Roses were still mostly a Manchester secret. Their manager, Gareth Evans, signed a one-off deal with a small label called FM Revolver, using a sub-label named Black Records, to put out what would become the band’s second single, Sally Cinnamon
. It was a tiny 1,000-copy release that sold out but didn’t exactly crack the wider UK scene.
Around the same time, the band’s first single So Young/Tell Me
had already come and gone without much noise outside their hometown. But things were about to change.
In early 1988, industry folks finally started paying real attention. Representatives from Zomba and Rough Trade’s Geoff Travis caught a London gig and were impressed. Rough Trade even funded the recording of Elephant Stone
, but before anything could come of it, the Roses signed a long-term deal with Zomba, who moved them to their new guitar-focused label, Silvertone Records.
Silvertone bought the Elephant Stone
tapes from Rough Trade and released the single in October 1988. A few months later, in 1989, the band dropped their debut album The Stone Roses, which would eventually become an indie classic.
FM Revolver, watching the band’s profile rise, saw an opportunity. In 1990, they decided to reissue Sally Cinnamon
, complete with a new music video. The Roses weren’t asked, weren’t involved, and absolutely weren’t happy. They refused to appear in the video, so the label stitched together its own footage, which only made things worse.
The band felt exploited, old material, reissued without their approval, just as their popularity was exploding. And so they decided to take matters into their own hands.
On the way to a recording session in Wales, the band made an unscheduled detour to FM Revolver’s offices in Wolverhampton. Dressed in overalls and armed with litres of blue and white paint, they knocked on the door and asked for the label’s founder, Paul Birch.
The moment Birch opened the door, they drenched him in paint. Birch staggered back inside, shocked and dripping, while the band kept going. They headed outside, coating cars in paint, including Birch’s Mercedes, and causing thousands of pounds’ worth of damage.
Members later admitted they’d even brought paint stripper but didn’t end up using it because everything escalated so quickly. The Mercedes, however, didn’t escape the chaos.
After the attack, the band calmly got back in their van and continued on to Wales.
When they arrived at the studio, they bumped into Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler and told them what had happened. Their response was....let’s just say encouraging.
The Roses were arrested the next day, leading to a media frenzy. For a moment, they genuinely feared prison time. Instead, months later, the court handed them fines — £3,000 each — for the damage.
It’s the kind of tale that sticks around because it captures the band’s spirit: rebellious, principled, chaotic, and totally uninterested in letting anyone profit from their work without their say.
