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 in the previous month's live performances)

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

Details:

1989 the number, another summer (get down) / Sound of the funky drummer. In July 1989, when The Stone Roses were signing copies of 'She Bangs The Drums' in Eastern Bloc Records, Manchester, the manager of the shop told them that they could take a couple of records each. A Warrior Breakbeats LP which had a Black Power fist salute on the cover caught Squire's eye. James Brown's 'Funky Drummer' featured on the record, and Squire wrote Fool's Gold over this in the summer of 1989. "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). "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, February 2005). On this Public Enemy theme, the hip-hop track which forced Public Enemy to raise their game was 'I Know You Got Soul' (1987) by Eric B. & Rakim. Ian Brown's growing interest in hip-hop in this period is evidenced by a comical retort he made to the Alexandra Palace crowd in November 1989. Responding to celebratory chants of "Manchester la-la-la, Manchester la-la-la", Ian drew from this benchmark hip-hop song in delivering the maxim, "It's not where you're from, it's where you're at." (Now if you're from Uptown, Brooklyn-bound / The Bronx, Queens, or Long Island Sound / Even other states come right and exact / It ain't where you're from, it's where you're at).

 

 

Top: A bird's-eye view of Alexandra Palace. Steeped in the musical heritage of the sixties, Alexandra Palace held obvious appeal for The Stone Roses. The Rolling Stones had staged an all-nighter there in June 1964 (second row). At the end of April 1967, 'The 14 Hour Technicolour Dream' concert - organised by the 'International Times' - took place at Alexandra Palace (third row), demonstrating the importance of the quickly developing UK Underground scene. Although 'underground' venues such as the UFO Club were hosting counter-cultural bands, this was certainly the biggest indoor event at the time. Described as a multi-artist event featuring poets, artists and musicians, those present included headlining act Pink Floyd, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, The Pretty Things, Savoy Brown, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Soft Machine, The Move and Sam Gopal's Dream. Pink Floyd appeared at the end of the show, just as the sun was beginning to rise, at around five o'clock in the morning.
Penultimate row & bottom left: Ian at Alexandra Palace, November 1989.
Bottom right: The interior of Alexandra Palace.

As The Stone Roses' following grew, they forsook tours in favour of big, one-off events like the 'days out' at Blackpool and Alexandra Palace. Blackpool was an unqualified success, but November 1989's appearance at Alexandra Palace was beset with sound problems. The band called on the services of a friend who was a sound engineer, but he had never worked upon anything of such a scale previously. After the show, Ian and John left in a car and didn't say anything for two hours. The sense of anti-climax was soon forgotten with a vibrant Fool's Gold Top Of The Pops appearance that cemented the band's national fame. At the end of 1989, the band had their pictures taken at The Eiger, in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland; they were on top of the world and it must have felt every bit like it. Fool's Gold, the band's first Top Ten hit and their most adventurous song to date, was inspired by the 1948 film, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, starring Humphrey Bogart.

 

 

The 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.

A mass of intergrown pyrite crystals.

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. The band located to Sawmills Studio, Cornwall, where John Leckie had worked on a number 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 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 recorded his vocals and John Squire played all of the wah-wah guitar licks that he had 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 intended A-side, What The World Is Waiting For. Remarkably, up until a very late stage, The Stone Roses actually intended What The World Is Waiting For to be the 'A' side, with Fool's Gold as the 'B' side. Promo kits with 'What The World Is Waiting For' were sent out and the band received feedback raving about the song's funky bassline. The band were confused by this, since 'What The World Is Waiting For' was a simple guitar based track. They soon relised that the press were referring to 'Fool's Gold', and they promptly released the songs as a double A-side. This chain of events had the bonus effect of greatly benefiting What The World Is Waiting For, 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 presented to Leckie consisted of a four-bar drum loop and tambourine along with a guitar, vocal and some reverb. In a Total Guitar Magazine interview with John Leckie in 1999, he states 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.

 

 

Top photos: Ian Brown - doing his Bez impersonation - with Mani at Sawmills Studio, Cornwall.
Bottom left: John and Mani in the boat.
Bottom right: Sawmills Studio. Set in its own unspoilt tidal creek on the banks of the River Fowey in Cornwall, the Sawmills boasts one of the most picturesque and atmospheric locations for a recording studio anywhere in the world. XTC, The Stone Roses, Oasis and The Verve have all recorded here. Sawmills Studio was where things would start to come together for Oasis. After being unsatisfied with the recording of their debut LP at Monnow Valley Studio, near Monmouth (close to where The Stone Roses were recording Second Coming), the band relocated to Sawmills Studio to re-record the album. Producer Owen Morris's subsequent gifted touch galvanized Definitely Maybe, and the band had finally found their desired sound.

 

   

Top left: The Fool's Gold riff is derivative of 'Bra', from Cymande's self-titled debut album, 'Cymande' (1972). Cymande were an eclectic funk band formed in London in 1971, by musicians from Guyana and Jamaica. The soulful dancefloor filler, 'Bra' was later sampled by the American hip-hop group De La Soul, and used as a breakbeat record by the godfathers of hip-hop, Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash. In his notes for the Under The Influence (2003) compilation, Ian Brown recalls that The Stone Roses would regularly play Fug by Cymande in the dressing room, or on their way to gigs, in '88 and '89, to get the band in the mood for the show.
Top right: The Stone Roses, infused with funk and krautrock musical influences, were moving in a new, exciting musical direction. Fool's Gold owes much to 'Paperhouse', from Can's 1971 LP, 'Tago Mago' (pictured), while the rolling, rhythmic feel and sinister lyrical obliqueness of the track may have drawn inspiration from 'Vitamin C', from Can's 1972 LP, 'Ege Bamyasi.' Can were an experimental rock band formed in Cologne, West Germany in 1968. One of the first 'krautrock' groups, they rejected American influences and incorporated strong minimalist and world music elements into their often psychedelic music.
Bottom left: Young MC at the 1990 Grammy Awards. Mani's hedonistic lifestyle would pay dividends on Fool's Gold; in a May 2002 Mojo magazine feature, he revealed that the Fool's Gold bassline was pinched from Young MC's 'Know How', which he would hear on regular rotation at the Haçienda.
Bottom centre: The lyric 'These boots weren't made for walking' is a variation on Nancy Sinatra's 1966 signature hit, 'These Boots Are Made For Walkin''. The Marquis de Sade (1740 – 1814) (bottom right) was a French aristocrat and writer of philosophy-laden and often violent pornography, as well as some strictly philosophical works. He is one of the most controversial figures in literature. He was so influential that his very name was given to the sexual practice of deriving pleasure from inflicting pain on others, 'sadism.' His obscene works left him spending time in the Bastille, where he wrote much of his work, including 'Lusts of the Libertines' (from which rock band The Libertines take their name) and 'The 120 Days of Sodom'.

Top: Fool's Gold Top Of The Pops appearance, November 1989.
All other photos: Fool's Gold Top Of The Pops rehearsal. This Top Of The Pops cemented the Roses' national fame and was their one and only appearance on the show. According to Gaz Whelan of the Happy Mondays, the Roses and Mondays were going to swap bands for their respective appearance on the show, only being prevented from doing so by the producers. Shaun Ryder contradicts this in an interview on 'The Amp' (2003), however, stating that the Roses "chickened out" at the last minute. Oasis would later pull off a similar stunt, changing the position of musicians within their band for their Top Of The Pops appearance with 'Roll With It.' Liam became lead guitarist for the mimed performance, with brother Noel mimicking his brother's style on lead vocals.

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')

 

Left: 'You Can't Hide Your Love Forever' (1982) by Orange Juice. Orange Juice were a strong influence on The Waterfront.
Right: In 2004, John would rework 'Double Dorsal Dopplegänger' for 'ddd2a', (oil on canvas, 44" x 82"). "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)

The influence of Fool's Gold was far-reaching, extending beyond indie circles.

 

 

 

"We had a drummer with soul, so we always had a beat. That's what made the Roses.", Ian Brown remarked to Uncut magazine in February 1998. Numerous contemporaries of The Stone Roses took note of the Fool's Gold drumbeat.
Top left: 'Strawberry Fields Forever' by Candy Flip (March 1990).
Top right: Bananarama combined a Fool's Gold sample with samples of 'Sympathy for the Devil' by The Rolling Stones, and 'Loaded' by Primal Scream, for their June 1990 single, 'Only Your Love.'
Middle left: 'There's No Other Way' (April 1991) by Blur. With an Inspiral Carpets haircut and a Fool's Gold drumbeat, Damon Albarn of Blur promptly jumped on the Madchester bandwagon. Blur's debut single, the placid 'She's So High' (October 1990) was a strong track, but it was its B-side 'Sing' that gave a true indication of the band's musical potential. A droning, unhurried almost mantra-like track, its minor chords and slow build is a world away from the lazy shuffles that earmark the band's first LP. It was their follow-up single, the more direct 'There's No Other Way' that enabled them to break through. A catchy baggy hit, it did little to suggest they were a long-term prospect, however. Debut LP 'Leisure' (August 1991) did little to dispel this assumption, as it was an unadventurous rush job that proved that, while the band was willing to take chances, it would only come on their B-sides. As a result of their stalled position in the charts, Blur made the shift from baggy to Mod (see Damon Albarn's three-button suit at Glastonbury in 1992).
Middle right: Damon Albarn feeling the full effects of ecstacy on Top Of The Pops, performing 'There's No Other Way.'
Bottom left: 'Black Sky', from the 1992 Shakespears Sister album, 'Hormonally Yours', contains obvious traces of Fool's Gold.
Bottom right: Run DMC sampled Fool's Gold on 'What's It All About' (November 1990), from their 1990 LP, 'Back From Hell'. Ian Brown would later meet Reverend Run in 1999 and in an interview with Q magazine, he 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 !"

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 holiday resorts. The director of the Fool's Gold video may have had Echoes (part II) from Pink Floyd's Live at Pompeii in mind.

The 'Who Feels Love ?' video, directed by Nick Egan, was shot in Death Valley, California.

Fool's Gold features on Guy Ritchie's 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' (1998), when Big Chris (Vinnie Jones) says, "It's been emotional."

 

 

Top left: Fool's Gold 7 inch front cover. Speaking to the NME on 26th August 1989, John Squire described the creative process for his artwork sleeves: "My incentive at the moment is the sleeve for the next single and the four songs for it," says John. "I usually tend to take one element of the lyric and magnify it for the painting. This time it's dolphins because Ian sings 'I'm no dog I'm a dolphin / I just don't live in the sea.'" From this snippet, one can conclude that 'Double Dorsal Dopplegänger' was actually intended to be the artwork for the One Love single, rather than Fool's Gold. Ian explains in the same interview the background to this lyric: "We went to see a dolphin in Brighton. It was really sad because it was in a tiny little pool. None of us said anything for about half-an-hour. We just stared at it. It kept going past and turning its head and smiling. It didn't jump up at anyone else though, did it ? There were loads of people around the pool and it kept circling, only jumping up whenever it saw us."
Top right: Fool's Gold 7 inch back cover.
Bottom left: Fool's Gold promotional card.
Bottom right: 'Double Dorsal Doppelganger One' (1989), cellulose on canvas , 24" x 28", from the Manchester exhibition, May 2004.

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