“Somebody handed me a ’59 Les Paul and said, ‘That’s yours to play.’ I went from poverty one minute to having the world’s ultimate guitars in my care”: The underrated Stone Roses guitarist whose life changed completely after landing the highly-coveted gig

Aziz Ibrahim may not be a household name. However, the guitarist’s tonal fingerprints are all over works by Simply Red, Asia, The Stone Roses, Paul Weller, and Steven Wilson, to name a few.

Raised in a poor immigrant family in Manchester, England, Ibrahim says free access to libraries was instrumental in his development as a guitarist. He spoke about their lasting impact in a recently unearthed interview with the former Mayor of Manchester, and now the British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham.

Therefore, when British indie rock legends The Stone Roses asked him to join the band in 1996, following the departure of co-founding guitarist John Squire, Ibrahim found himself in a completely different world.

“It came as a surprise to me when The Stone Roses asked me to play for them because that was the ultimate rock ’n’ roll gig,” he says in the latest issue of Guitarist.

“And by that, I mean that somebody literally just handed me a 1959 Gibson Les Paul and said, ‘Yeah, mate, that’s yours to play.’ Then they said, ‘Oh, and so are these…’” Ibrahim looked at the rest of the collection on offer and was astounded to find a “plethora of beautiful amps,” “vintage pedals,” a 1959 Gibson ES-345, and 1959, ’62, and ’64 Fender Strats.

“I went from poverty and playing what I could afford one minute, and then the next minute I had the world’s ultimate guitars in my care.”

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While he didn’t own them outright, Ibrahim was given unconditional access to them – something that he was not necessarily used to. “As you can imagine, that blew my mind!” he admits.

“But it was also an education because you don’t often get the opportunity to live with those sorts of instruments and appreciate what’s special about them.”

Most notably, Ibrahim was part of The Stone Roses’ lineup for the final show before they split – 1996’s Reading Festival, a memory he still cherishes to this day.

“The esteem and how the band was treated… people would go quiet when the band entered. That was a world I didn’t know. Before The Stone Roses, it’s not like I was in Guns N’ Roses,” he chuckles.

“I didn’t know about the status of a band like the Roses or how people reacted to that. I felt like a sober observer, looking out from the inside.”

Despite joining the band during their downfall, his short stint with the Roses springboarded what came next. Ibrahim kept working with frontman Ian Brown, and he even ended up collaborating with Paul Weller on his album, Illumination, a couple of years later.

“That demise was where I got to shine because Ian Brown was letting me write music,” he says frankly, “and if he liked something, he’d pull out a cigarette packet and write some lyrics on it.

“So it was initially a solo album, but eventually became an all-valve-amp, all-analog solo record for Ian.”

For more from Aziz Ibrahim, plus new interviews with Graham Coxon and Billy Duffy, pick up issue 540 of Guitarist from Magazines Direct.