A look at the places that feature in the history of The Stone Roses

Lanzarote

The Fool's Gold video features The Stone Roses walking across the volcanic landscape of Lanzarote, one of John Squire's favourite vacation spots. Lanzarote, a Spanish island, is the easternmost of the Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 125 kilometres off the coast of Africa and 1,000 kilometres from the Iberian Peninsula. Lanzarote is an island of volcanic origin with very low rainfall; much of the south of the island is desert and a barren expanse of lava flows. It was created about 35 million years ago. Alfred Wegener arrived in 1912 and studied the island, showing how it fitted in with his theory of continental drift. The island, along with others, was created after the breakup of the African and American continental plates.

Giant's Causeway

This is John Squire speaking about the Bye Bye Badman artwork, to be found on the front cover of the band's debut LP:

Used - with the addition of three lemons and the requisite typography - on the cover of The Stone Roses’ first album in April 1989. "It was based on the colour of the water and the foam at the Giant’s Causeway", John says. "We went there before a gig at Coleraine University. I actually wasn’t happy with it, which is why the tricoleur ended up on there; that and the situationist theme of the song."
('John Squire Artworks 1988 - 2004')

Giant's Causeway, a mass of basalt columns packed tightly together, is Northern Ireland's premier tourist attraction. The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the cliff foot and disappear under the sea. Altogether there are 40,000 of these stone columns, mostly hexagonal but some with four, five, seven and eight sides. The tallest are about 40 feet high, and the solidified lava in the cliffs is 90 feet thick in places. While scientific research explains the formation of the columns as a natural consequence of lava cooling, legend has it that the Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhail (Finn McCool) built the causeway to walk to Scotland to fight his Scottish counterpart Benandonner. One version of the legend tells that Finn McCool fell asleep before he got to Scotland. When he failed to arrive, the much larger Benandonner crossed the bridge looking for him. To protect Fionn, his wife Oonagh laid a blanket over Fionn and pretended he was actually Fionn's baby son (in a variation, Fionn fled after seeing Benandonner's great bulk, and asked his wife to disguise him as the baby.) In both versions, when Benandonner saw the size of the 'infant', he assumed the alleged father, Fionn, must be gigantic indeed. Therefore, Benandonner fled home in terror, ripping up the Causeway in case he was followed by Fionn. This wasn't the first time that Giant's Causeway had been used for an album cover. The cover of Led Zeppelin's 1973 LP, Houses of the Holy, is a collage of several photographs taken at the site by Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis.

Longsight

From Atlanta, Georgia to Longsight, Manchester

(The Stone Roses, Daybreak)

Ian Brown's 'Longsight M13' is a tribute to the "Free Ian Brown" graffiti ('picture 4' above) found in the postcode area when he was in Strangeways prison. The song was written with Aziz Ibrahim, who lives in Longsight. Longsight is an area of Manchester around 3 miles south of the city centre. Previously known as Grindlow Marsh, it was incorporated into the City of Manchester in 1890. The district is bordered by Ardwick to the north, Rusholme and Victoria Park to the west, Levenshulme to the south, and Gorton to the east.

Newport Bridge

John Squire may have been inspired by the 'I Was A Teenage Gwent Boy' LP cover artwork featuring this sculpture. This 1994 compilation featured the best of the Newport scene circa 1994, including 60ft Dolls, Cowboy Killers, The Flemgods and Novocaine (Novocaine were a neo-punk band, who were booked into the next-door studio at Rockfield when The Stone Roses arrived. Ian Brown struck up a friendship with the band, particularly singer Steve, and provided a lyric for Novocaine’s song 'Brain'; he was also in attendance when Novocaine supported Dub War at at TJ’s, Newport, in February 1994). The cherub is modelled after Newport's coat of arms. On 10th December 1991, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love crashed here (right underneath one of the cherubs) when arriving in Newport for that evening's Hole gig.

This is John Squire speaking about the Love Spreads artwork (the cherub with fag in mouth, that Squire speaks of, can be seen on the front cover of Second Coming):

"I took that, I drove past it in Newport, went and bought a Polaroid camera and drove back to the bridge. The fag in its mouth is what appealed to me."
(John Squire speaking to Select Magazine, November 1997)

Trafalgar Square

The Ian Brown solo track Lions is critical of the association of the animal with England, such as those to be found at Trafalgar Square and on the England shirt. Trafalgar Square is a square in central London that commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar of 1805, a British naval victory of the Napoleonic Wars. The original name was to have been 'King William the Fourth's Square', but George Ledwell Taylor suggested the name 'Trafalgar Square'. Nelson's Column is in the centre of the square. It is surrounded by four huge bronze lions on granite plinths, sculpted by Sir Edwin Landseer and cast by Marocchetti, that arrived in 1868, and fountains designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1939. The metal used to sculpt the lions is said to have been recycled from the cannon of the French fleet. On the North side of the Square is the National Gallery, alongside which is the National Portrait Gallery.

The lions at Trafalgar Square feature in the 'Corpses In Their Mouths' video.

The Washington Library of Congress

The Washington Library of Congress, in the Capitol Hill area of Washington DC, is the national library of America and is actually the world's largest library and one of the major landmarks in Washington DC. Its three enormous buildings are home to more than 100 million items, including the papers of over 20 presidents, along the 535 miles of bookshelves.

The Vatican

Vatican City is a sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a landlocked, almost completely walled, enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. Governed by the Pope, the entire state is about 44 hectares (108.7 acres) and thus is a European microstate. It is the smallest independent nation in the world, created in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty, and a vestige of the much larger former Papal States (A.D. 756 to A.D. 1870).

All Ablaze was inspired by Ian's trip to the Vatican, as the director of the video, Colin O'Toole, explained to the NME:

"The ring of fire throughout was my idea. When I was a kid, the imagery of the Catholic Church was simple and water and fire are very much part of it. But the song is really anti-organised religion. It was inspired by a trip Ian had to the Vatican. He saw an image of Jesus whose face was that of the illegitimate son of an ancient pope."
(Colin O'Toole speaking to the NME, 21st September 2005)

This is Ian speaking about All Ablaze:

"I wrote that song the day Pope John Paul II died. I watched them all parading about at the Vatican and preening themselves. I see that they just stole God off the people and attempted to sell God back. I think that the organised religions are about controlling people."
(Ian Brown speaking to Sharon Fried-Jones, from a blueyonder link)

The "illegitimate son of an ancient pope" that Colin O'Toole refers to is Cesare Borgia. Ian's thinking on this matter is almost certainly inspired by 'B.I.B.L.E.' by Genius / GZA, one of his Planet Groove selections - see this essay for further information.

Bibliography:

Wikipedia

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Paul McAuley

http://www.thisisthedaybreak.co.uk

Email: Paul@thisisthedaybreak.co.uk

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