All Across The Sands

Bones of an impressive romance
Scattered all across the sand
A secret safe with all the world
Too vain to seem so capable

Can you hear it calling ?
Do you feel warmer ?
As the hired hand is bought

How can a pretty painted shell
Send them all packing off to hell
A freight train laughs and rattles by
You kissed the girls and made them die

Can you hear it calling ?
Do you feel warmer ?
As the hired hand is bought

And I'll never come here again
And we will never come here again
And we will never play here again, again

Can you hear it calling ?
Do you feel warmer ?
As the hired hand is bought ?

Of her call
Of her call
Of her call
Dead and cold

Can you hear it calling ?
Do you feel warmer ?
As the hired hand is bought ?

Of the call
Of the call
Of her call
As she calls

Lyrics by:
Brown

Music by:
Squire / Brown

Written:
1985

Personnel:
John Squire (guitar)
Ian Brown (vocals)
Pete Garner (bass)
Alan Wren (drums, backing vocals)

Produced by:
The Stone Roses & Simon

Available on:
Sally Cinnamon single (b-side)
The Complete Stone Roses (2.40)

First live performance:
Blackburn King George's Hall (5th March 1986)

Details:
John Squire's dainty guitar line and Ian Brown's mellowing vocals on All Across The Sands sets the blueprint for later melodic guitar pop pieces, such as Going Down and Mersey Paradise. The dark undercurrent of the song (which at one point twists the nursery rhyme Georgie Porgie - You kissed the girls and made them die, also the title of a 1966 James Bond parody) stems from a book Ian read about a German murderer, who killed and buried his female victims under sand. 'The Shepherd and His Flock' (John 10: 1 - 21) is used as a template, with the wolf and the sheep representing the hunter and hunted respectively:

"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep."
(John: 10: 11 - 13)

Here, Jesus is depicting the Jewish rabbinic leadership as 'hired hands'. Years later, Ian would revisit this biblical passage on Can't See Me.

 

Left: Good Shepherd fresco, Catacombs of San Callisto, 3rd century.
Right: Mausoleum of Galla Placidia at Ravenna, 440 AD.

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