Full Fathom Five

Lyrics by:
Full Fathom Five is Elephant Stone played backwards and has no (decipherable) lyrics.

Music by:
Squire

Written:
1988

Personnel:
John Squire (guitar)
Ian Brown (vocals)
Gary Mounfield (bass)
Alan Wren (drums)

Produced by:
The Stone Roses

Available on:
Elephant Stone single (as a b-side)
The Complete Stone Roses (3.18)

First live performance:
Never performed live

Details:

Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich, and strange:
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell
Hark ! Now I hear them,
Ding-dong bell.

'Ariel's Song', from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'

Full Fathom Five was the first of five backwards tracks by The Stone Roses and easily the weakest of the backwards catalogue. Two versions are available: the TCSR version and a shorter, rawer version (on the Elephant Stone single). The inspiration for the title* presumably derives from a painting of this name by Jackson Pollock (1912 - 1956), from 1947:

* 'Full Fathom Five' was also the title of a Sylvia Plath poem from 1958.

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