In the above extract, Ian Brown explains why Religion features so strongly in his lyrics. He is grossly inaccurate in the assertion highlighted above in bold. The Christians did not steal the steps of the Praetorium during the Crusades; they were taken - legally - by the Emperor Constantine's mother, Helena, almost a thousand years earlier, around 326 AD, and re-erected in Rome in the papal palace. The holy steps consist of twenty-eight white marble steps, at Rome, near Saint John in Lateran; these are believed to be the steps leading once to the praetorium of Pilate at Jerusalem, hence sanctified by the footsteps of Our Lord during His Passion.
Dialogue from a Melody Maker interview with journalist Dave Simpson in May 1995 offers further insight into why Squire and Brown draw upon Religion in their work:
Squire: "It's unconscious. Resurrection was Ian's and Second Coming, that's public domain, innit ? I thought it was cocky and tongue-in-cheek at the same time."
Simpson: One thing I particularly liked about Love Spreads were the lyrics "The Messiah is my sister", which sound really innocuous when you hear them on the radio but in fact you're questioning thousands of years of Christianity by saying that. It's a casually controversial thing to have in a pop song.
...
Brown: "Well, if you read the Dead Sea scrolls, they tell you that Mary Magdalene gave Him his power."
(The Stone Roses speaking to Melody Maker, May 1995)
In a Guardian interview in 2002, Ian Brown spoke about his unstructured personal belief system. Such a mish-mash approach to religion is symptomatic of the widespread societal transition where people manoeuvre from faith in God to belief in some amorphous spirit being, with whom they have no relationship at all.
This cherry picking of the world's three heavyweight religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism) is typical of the modern unease with commitment to the (one true) faith. Islam and Christianity are diametrically opposed and are not the same moral equivalency. Islam rejects the Trinity; God revealed Himself to be a Trinity and Jesus revealed Himself to be God. Islam does not even come close to accepting these truths. One cannot put other religions on the same moral footing as Christianity, as Ian seeks to do here. The singer's venomous verbal attacks on the Roman Catholic Church and that of many other idealogues can no doubt be traced to hatred of the moral codes imposed by the Catholic faith. In an effort to destroy Christianity, they will try to elevate anything or anyone to the same level, to make Christianity seem like it has no special place. On a final note, given Ian's deep-seated revulsion towards the central governing body of the Catholic Church, one has to wonder what in God's name he is doing anywhere near the Virgin of Guadalupe. If Ian is simply reading the Bible "for the stories", then he might as well be tuning into the latest instalment of Jackanory.
The Virgin of Guadalupe or Our Lady of Guadalupe is a Marian apparition and 16th century Roman Catholic icon - Mexico's most popular religious image. Guadalupe's feast day is celebrated on 12th December, a day which commemorates her appearance to St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City from 9th - 12th December 1531.
The Rastafari movement is a religion and philosophy that accepts Haile Selassie I (1892 - 1975), the former (and last) emperor of Ethiopia, as Jah (the Rasta name for God incarnate, from a shortened form of Jehovah found in Psalms 68:4 in the King James Version of the Bible), and part of the Holy Trinity as the messiah promised to return in the Bible. The name Rastafari comes from Ras (Duke or Chief) Tafari Makonnen, the pre-coronation name of Haile Selassie I. The movement emerged in Jamaica among working-class and peasant black people in the early 1930s, arising from an interpretation of Biblical prophecy partly based on Selassie's status as the only African monarch of a fully independent state, and his titles of King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and Conquering Lion of Judah (Revelation 5:5). Other factors leading to its rise include the sacred use of cannabis, and various Afrocentric social and political aspirations, such as the teachings of Jamaican publicist and organiser Marcus Garvey (also often regarded as a prophet whom Ian Brown has namechecked in interviews as being among his reading material), whose political and cultural vision helped inspire a new world view. The movement is called Rastafarianism by some non-Rastas although some Rastas themselves regard that term as improper and offensive. The Rastafari movement has spread throughout much of the world, largely through interest generated by reggae music — most notably, that of Jamaican-born singer/songwriter Bob Marley. By 2000, there were more than one million Rastafari faithful worldwide. Most Rastas see Marcus Garvey (1887 - 1940) as a prophet, with his philosophy fundamentally shaping the movement, and with many of the early Rastas having started out as Garveyites. He is often seen as a second John the Baptist. One of the most famous prophecies attributed to him involving the coronation of Haile Selassie I was the 1927 pronouncement "Look to Africa, for there a king shall be crowned," though an associate of Garvey's, James Morris Webb, had made very similar public statements as early as 1921. Garvey promoted Pan-Africanism: the belief that all black people of the world should join in brotherhood and work to decolonise the continent of Africa — then still controlled by the white colonialist powers. He promoted his cause of black pride throughout the twenties and thirties, and was particularly successful and influential among lower-class blacks in Jamaica and in rural communities. Although his ideas have been hugely influential in the development of Rastafari culture, Garvey never identified himself with the movement, and even wrote an article critical of Haile Selassie for leaving Ethiopia at the time of the Fascist occupation. In addition, his Universal Negro Improvement Association disagreed with Leonard P. Howell over Howell's teaching that Haile Selassie was the Messiah. Rastafari nonetheless may be seen as an extension of Garveyism.
This is a simplified list of important references, direct or alluded to, in Where Angels Play:
'Ok let's fly' she says, 'This carpet's made for two'
'This ugly little box, no place for me and you'
Our carpet falls
On a dew-freshed apple glade
Take a look around, there's something happening
All the colours fade
I don't want you now, bang bang bang, gone ooooh
I don't need you now, the seeds are sown ooooh
Bang bang pretty pretty
Bang bang
(6) Woman
(7) -----
(8) -----
(9) Apple
(10) Event of significance takes place
(11) Some sort of Realisation on the part of the two figures
(12) Man takes action which suggests that he feels he does not need God
(13) -----
(14) -----
(15) -----
The song - the first two verses in particular - is using symbolism to describe the actions of Adam and Eve in Paradise which caused their subsequent expulsion. Eleven lines after the speaker invites a female to a place "no eyes have ever seen", he proclaims that he does not want or need a particular figure anymore. Something significant must take place when the carpet "falls on a dew-freshed apple glade" to evoke this emotion from the speaker. "Something" is "happening" whereby "all the colours fade", which changes the perception of events completely. In the opening line, a male, who must have prior knowledge of the place, invites a female to a place "no eyes have ever seen". Adam and Eve were the first to see Paradise, with Adam there first and being later joined by Eve. Thus, no eyes had ever seen the Garden of Eden, Paradise, before their arrival. The following passage from Genesis may have been the inspiration for line (3), in which the male has "God given grace and a holy heaven face":
Adam eating the apple from the tree was an act against God's grace. It was in effect, Adam saying to his Creator "I don't need you" (line (12) - Where Angels Play). Lines (10) and (11) are integral to the story because in these lines, the male abruptly decides upon an action that shows how he feels he does not need God anymore. The introduction of the word 'apple' into the song in line (9) is significant. When asked by God to account for his and Eve's actions, Adam blamed Eve:
All the colours fading is symbolic of the experience of Adam and Eve at the point when they eat the apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil:
In addition to Ian pronouncing "bang bang bang, gone" as "Van Van Van Gogh", the imagery of the two opening lines of the third verse - "Down below the country rolls like a mighty boiling sea. The warm red sun gives up and sinks into the trees" - is tangible within some of Vincent Van Gogh's (1853 - 1890) countryside depictions. The Sun plays a prominent part in several of his works. The following work by Van Gogh, 'Flowering Plum Tree' (1887) may even have provided the inspiration for these lines.
In Adam’s eyes, “the seeds are sown"; since God had created all things necessary for continual human existence in Adam's eyes, he felt that he no longer needed God:
The song is perhaps entitled 'Where Angels Play' because cherubim were placed in the Garden of Eden by God after the expulsion of Adam and Eve:
"I don't think so no no. Bang bang" may be the response of God (note the change in sound level of Ian's voice which may denote that God is speaking here, not Adam) who punished Adam and Eve (hence two 'bangs' - 'shots') for their sin, thus rendering the shots of Adam (lines 14 and 15) futile.
The following passage from 'Adam and Eve' surely influenced Fool's Gold:
The "gold road is "a long road" because in conjunction with the headwater, it winds on through the entire land of Havilah.
In the original 1987 version of Where Angels Play, from which the title derives, is the following chorus:
While Adam was in the Garden of Eden, God brought living creatures to him:
God placing cherubim in the Garden of Eden would explain why "angels play" there. Throughout the history of art, angels are often portrayed playing musical instruments, a symbol and expression of heavenly harmony. We see this in the works of Fra Angelico (1400 - 1455), 'The Annunciation' (1596) by El Greco (1541 - 1614) and 'Song of the Angels' (1881) by William Adolphe Bouguereau (1825 - 1905).
On Transatlantic Near Death Experience, John invites us to "come hear the angels sing", surely alluding to Where Angels Play. The above passage from Genesis explains why they are joined by "birds" who "sing out the sweetest song". On John's Nighthawks, "...the snake's head still grows in my garden." This also originates from the story of Adam and Eve (Satan taking the form of a serpent to tempt Eve), where the serpent was punished by God. The serpent was cursed to crawl on the ground as a direct result of Satan’s sin, susceptible to man’s heel crushing its head. The offspring (or seed) of the woman in the following passage alludes to Jesus' later crushing victory over Satan and sin, given visual representation with the use of artistic license in the Garden of Gethsemane scene of Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ' (2004); Jesus was the 'new Adam', who came to undo the Fall of the first Adam:
So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
The Biblical account of Adam and Eve, perhaps the most familiar story in the world, was incorporated by John Milton as the central theme of 'Paradise Lost'. Squire and Brown on Where Angels Play are creating their own Paradise Lost.
* Ian's sister bought him the Koran in 1990. The final statement issued by Ian and the Roses on 29th October 1996, announcing the end of the band, ends with the Muslim greeting of peace ("Peace be upon you" / "Salaam Alekhim"):
Ian turned Muslim in Strangeways jail, the reason for which he outlined in a Guardian Newspaper interview from 4th February 2000:
Bibliography:
Koenigsberger, H. G.. Early modern Europe, 1500 - 1789 (London: Longman, 1989).
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Paul McAuley
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