Fool's Gold

The gold road's sure a long road
Winds on through the hills for fifteen days
The pack on my back is aching
The straps seem to cut me like a knife

The gold road's sure a long road
Winds on through the hills for fifteen days
The pack on my back is aching
The straps seem to cut me like a knife

I'm no clown I won't back down
I don't need you to tell me what's going down
Down down down down da down down down
Down down down down da down down down

I'm standing alone
I'm watching you all
I'm seeing you sinking
I'm standing alone
You're weighing the gold
I'm watching you sinking
Fool's gold

These boots weren't made for walking
The Marquis de Sade never made no boots like these
Gold's just around the corner
Breakdown's coming up round the bend
What you doing ? You've all gone mad

Sometimes you have to try to get along dear
I know the truth and I know what you're thinking

Down down down down da down down down

I'm standing alone
I'm watching you all
I'm seeing you sinking
I'm standing alone
You're weighing the gold
I'm watching you sinking
Fool's gold
Fool's gold

I'm standing alone
I'm watching you all
I'm seeing you sinking
I'm standing alone
You're weighing the gold
I'm watching you sinking
Fool's gold
Fool's gold

Lyrics by:
Squire / Brown

Music by:
Squire

Written:
1989

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

Produced by:
John Leckie

Format:
Released November 1989:
What The World Is Waiting For / Fool's Gold 4.15 (Silvertone, ORE 13, 7")
What The World Is Waiting For / Fool's Gold 4.15 (Silvertone, ORE 13, 7" w/postcard)
What The World Is Waiting For / Fool's Gold 9.53 (Silvertone ORE T 13, 12")
Fool's Gold 9.53 / What The World Is Waiting For (Silvertone, ORE T 13, 12")
Fool's Gold 9.53 / What The World Is Waiting For / Fool's Gold 4.15 (Silvertone, ORECD 13, CD)
Fool's Gold 9.53 / What The World Is Waiting For / Fool's Gold 4.15 (Silvertone, OREC 13, cassette)
Fool's Gold 9.53 / What The World Is Waiting For (Silvertone, ZT43322, German 12")
Fool's Gold 4.15 / What The World Is Waiting For (Silvertone, ORE 13, 7")
Fool's Gold 4.15 / What The World Is Waiting For (Silvertone, ORE DJ 13, 7" promo)
Fool's Gold 4.15 / What The World Is Waiting For (Silvertone, ZB43321, German 7")
What The World Is Waiting For / Fool's Gold / She Bangs The Drums (12" mix) / Elephant Stone (12" mix) / Guernica / Going Down (Alfa-Silvertone, 18B2-103, Japanese CD)

Released February 1990:
Elephant Stone / Made Of Stone / She Bangs The Drums / Fool's Gold (Silvertone, ZD43632, The UK Singles)

Released 1990:
Fool's Gold 9.53 / What The World Is Waiting For / Fool's Gold 4.15 (Silvertone, ORE 13, Australian 7")
Fool's Gold 9.53 / What The World Is Waiting For / Fool's Gold 4.15 (Silvertone / BMG, 1315-1-JD, US 12" limited edition gold vinyl)
Fool's Gold 9.53 / What The World Is Waiting For / Fool's Gold 4.15 (Silvertone / BMG, 1315-1-JD, US black vinyl)
Fool's Gold 9.53 / What The World Is Waiting For / Fool's Gold 4.15 (Silvertone / BMG, 1315-4-JS, US cassette)
Fool's Gold 4.15 / What The World Is Waiting For / Fool's Gold 9.53 (Silvertone, 1315-2-JDJ, US promo CD)

Released May 1992:
Fool's Gold (A Guy Called Gerald's Top Won Remix) / Fool's Gold (A Guy Called Gerald's Bottom Won Remix) (Silvertone, ORE CD Z 13, CD)

Released June 1992:
Fool's Gold 9.53 / What The World Is Waiting For / Fool's Gold 4.15 (Alfa-Silvertone, ALCB-542, Japanese CD from Singles Collection boxset)

Released 1992:
Fool's Gold 9.53 / What The World Is Waiting For / Fool's Gold 4.15 (Silvertone, ZD43322, German CD from Maxi Collection)

Released April 1995:
Fool's Gold 4.15 / Fool's Gold (The Tall Paul Remix) / Fool's Gold 9.53 / Fool's Gold (Cricklewood Ballroom Mix) (Silvertone, ORE CD 71, CD)
Fool's Gold 4.15 / Fool's Gold (The Tall Paul Remix) / Fool's Gold 9.53 / Fool's Gold (Cricklewood Ballroom Mix) (Silvertone, 74321 25501 2, CD)
Fool's Gold (The Tall Paul Remix) / Fool's Gold 9.53 / Fool's Gold (Cricklewood Ballroom Mix) (Silvertone, ORE T 71, 12")
Fool's Gold 4.15 / Fool's Gold (The Tall Paul Remix) (Silvertone, ORE C 71, cassette)

Released February 1999:
Fool's Gold (Rabbit In The Moon's Message To The Majors Edit) / Fool's Gold (Grooverider's Mix Edit) / Fool's Gold (Rabbit In The Moon's Message To The Majors) / She Bangs The Drums (Kelly Reverb's Kiss My Arse Mix) (Jive Electro, 0523362, CD)
Fool's Gold (Grooverider's Mix Edit) / She Bangs The Drums (Kelly Reverb's Kiss My Arse Mix) (Jive Electro, 0523094, cassette)
Fool's Gold (Grooverider's Mix Edit) / Fool's Gold (Rabbit In The Moon's Message To The Majors) / She Bangs The Drums (Kelly Reverb's Kiss My Arse Mix) (Jive Electro, 0523092, Australian CD)
Fool's Gold (Rabbit In The Moon's Message To The Majors) (Jive Electro, 01241-42579-1, US 12")

Released 4th April 2005:
Fool's Gold 9.53 / Fool's Gold (Top Won Mix: A Guy Called Gerald) / Fool's Gold (Grooverider's Mix) (Simply Vinyl S12, S12DJ191, 12")

UK chart details:
Fools Gold / What The World Is Waiting For (Silvertone ORE 13) entered the charts on 25th November 1989, spending 14 weeks in the charts and reaching a highest position of 8. It re-entered the charts on 15th September 1990, for 5 weeks, reaching a highest position of 22. The Fool's Gold remix (Silvertone ORET 13) entered the charts on 30th May 1992, spending 1 week in the chart and reaching a highest position of 73. A second remix (Silvertone ORECD 71) entered the charts on 29th April 1995, spending 3 weeks in the chart and reaching a highest position of 25.

Also available on:
The Complete Stone Roses (4.15)
Turns Into Stone (9.53)
The Very Best Of The Stone Roses (9.56)

First live performance:
Alexandra Palace (18 November 1989) (snippets of the song featured live in the previous month)

Artwork details:
The Fool's Gold artwork is from 'Double Dorsal Doppelganger One' (1989), cellulose on canvas , 24" x 28"

Details:
This song was inspired by the 1948 film, Treasure Of The Sierra Madre.

'Fool's Gold' is the name given to Iron Pyrite (the naturally shining Pyrite takes on a lustre very similar to gold), a naturally occurring gem that is found in various areas throughout the world. During the Gold Rush in the 1800's, many fanatic gold diggers in the U.S. found Iron Pyrite in the mines, believing it to be gold. One can tell the difference between gold and 'Fool's Gold' in that real gold is soft and malleable, whereas, Iron Pyrite (FeS2) is hard and brittle.

Following a triumphant gig at Blackpool Empress Ballroom on 12th August 1989, The Stone Roses went back into the studio on 23rd August, to commence work on Fool's Gold. Work on Fool's Gold took place at Sawmills Studio, Cornwall, where John Leckie had worked on a lot of projects previously, including the psychedelic 'Chips From The Chocolate Fireball' LP (1987) by the Dukes of Stratosphear (who were XTC under a different persona). The Stone Roses told Leckie that that LP was the main reason they wanted to work with him. The Sawmills' in-house engineer John Cornfield, who largely built the studio, was involved in the Fool's Gold sessions during the 18 days they were there. The band then went back to Battery Studio One for four days, where Ian Brown did his vocals and John Squire played all of the little wah-wah guitar licks that he'd worked out to go between the main lines. John Leckie and Paul Schroeder did the mix at Battery, but it did not work out: "spending three days on overdubs and then the last to do the mix very rarely works", commented John Leckie to Sound on Sound magazine in February 2005. So, on 3rd and 4th October, Leckie went into RAK Studio Three on his own and mixed the song along with the A-side, What The World Is Waiting For. Up to this point, The Stone Roses actually intended What The World Is Waiting For to be the 'A' side, with Fool's Gold as the b side. Early copies of the 12-inch record had What The World Is Waiting For as the 'A' side. This was changed around quickly, yet it meant that What The World Is Waiting For benefited from the attention devoted to it up until this point. Piecemeal in nature, the recording approach for Fool's Gold was very different to that employed for the debut LP. Leckie didn't hear either of the two aforementioned tracks until he met up with Brown and Squire in Cornwall. The Fool's Gold demo presnted to Leckie consisted of a four-bar drum loop and tambourine along with a guitar, vocal and some reverb.

"The drum loop came from a record, and the funny thing about it was, when the track ran out on that record, you could hear them lift the needle and put it on again. They'd brought the record with them, so we copied the drum track and made the loop in an (Akai) S1000, sequenced on Cubase. We spent ages tuning that loop, trying to get the right tempo and generally fiddling about, and we quite enjoyed doing that." (John Leckie speaking to Sound on Sound magazine in February 2005)

"I got a breakbeat record called Warrior when we first got the deal, and there was a track on it with that beat on it and so I looped and wrote a guitar riff over it, then Reni drummed over it. But the funny thing was I got Warrior Breakbeats Five a few years ago and they had re-sampled Fools Gold."
(John Squire, Q 'Cash For Questions', 1st November 2002)

Fool's Gold, the band's first Top Ten hit and their adventurous song to date musically, was arguably the zenith of their rhythm section. John Leckie was finally persuaded to allow the drums and bass more prominence on this song, something he should have done a year earlier. In a Total Guitar Magazine interview with John Leckie in 1999, Leckie said that Squire used a Hofner 335 (semi-acoustic) for the basic riff and also a pink Fender Strat. "For amps we used a Fender Twin amp with JBI speakers, the old-style Twin with the silver front and black knobs." A wah pedal, Ibanez chorus and overdrive pedals were Squire's choice of pedals. Six minutes into the song, Leckie added a studio trick to Squire's lead playing, feeding a drum machine's hi-hat pattern into the key input of a noise gate, which was applied to the guitar part. The gate opens up in time with the hi-hat rhythm, creating a sliced up effect.

The riff is strongly derivative of 'Know How' by Young M.C.. The lyric "These boots weren't made for walking" is a variation on Nancy Sinatra's first Number 1 hit, 'These Boots Are Made For Walkin''. The Marquis de Sade (1740 – 1814) was a French aristocrat and writer of philosophy-laden and often violent pornography, as well as some strictly philosophical works; much of his writing was done while in prison. His name is the source of the word 'sadism'.

According to Gaz Whelan of the Happy Mondays, the Roses and Mondays were going to swap bands for their 1989 Top Of The Pops performances, only being prevented from doing so by the producers (although Shaun Ryder claimed in an interview on 'The Amp' (2003) that the Roses "chickened out" at the last minute). This performance on Top Of The Pops cemented the Roses' national fame and was their one and only appearance on the show.

This is John speaking about the Fool's Gold artwork, entitled 'Double Dorsal Dopplegänger'; the prevailing visual effect was achieved by photographing over one half of the painting through dappled glass:

"Double Dorsal Doppelganger. There's no real connection with 'Fool's Gold', although at a push I could stretch it to the purity of dolphin life over the avarice of human life. It's a con, that. It's photographed through that dappled glass you get in bedroom windows."
(John Squire speaking to Select Magazine, November 1997)

"I think I’d filed away the idea after falling in love with the Orange Juice album that had two dolphins on the cover. I thought it was a very striking image. It had no reference to the song."
('John Squire Artworks 1988 - 2004')

John would rework 'Double Dorsal Dopplegänger' in 2004 in the work 'ddd2a', used as the main promotional artwork for his first ever art exhibition, at the London ICA, in February 2004:

"I started these just before agreeing to the exhibition. One of the the things I took from the Pollock experience was the liberating feeling of detaching yourself; having the control and responsibility taken away. Without wanting to sound too pretentious, it was almost like something else was getting involved. I was looking for a way to harness that, but escape from Action Painting. I worked on the theory that a continuous line was the thing to try and strive for, and any mistakes and overlaps should be accommodated."
(John Squire official site, February 2004)

Numerous contemporaries of The Stone Roses took note of the Fool's Gold beat (Candy Flip, 'Strawberry Fields Forever', March 1990; Blur, 'There's No Other Way', April 1991; Shakespears Sister, Black Sky, 1992) and promptly jumped on the Madchester bandwagon. Run DMC sampled Fool's Gold on 'What's It All About', from their 1990 LP, 'Back From Hell'. Ian Brown would eventually meet Reverend Run in 1999 and in an interview with Q magazine, Ian recalled their meeting: "I met Reverend Run and said to him 'You may not know me but you sampled us years ago' and then he did the riff from Fool's Gold ! Surreal !" Fool's Gold was mashed up with 'If Your Girl Only Knew' by Aaliyah for the bootleg 'If Only Your Girlfriend Was Stoned.' Manda Rin, former lead singer with 90's Scottish rock band Bis, sampled the Fool's Gold drumbeat on 'Bad Things Happen To Bad People'. In November 2002 the Fool's Gold Grooverider Mix appeared on the video game 'Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX'. In October 2004, Fool's Gold featured on the alternative rock radio station Radio X in the video game 'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas'. The song appears in Guy Ritchie's 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' when Big Chris (Vinnie Jones) says "It's been emotional". It has also been used in the computer game 'FIFA 2004'. The Fool's Gold video, a notable influence on 'Who Feels Love ?' by Oasis, features The Stone Roses walking across the volcanic landscape of Lanzarote, Canary Islands, one of John Squire's favourite vacation spots. The Oasis video, directed by Nick Egan, was shot in Death Valley, California.

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