Going Down

Dawn sings in the garden
Phone sings in the hall
This boy's dead from two days' life
Resurrected by the call
Penny here, we've got to come
So come on round to me
There's so much Penny lying here
To touch, taste and tease

Ring a ding ding ding I'm going down
I'm coming round

Penny's place a crummy room
Her dansette crackles to Jimi's tune
I don't care, I taste Ambre Solaire
Her neck, her thighs, her lips, her hair

Ring a ding ding ding I'm going down
I'm coming round

All thoughts of sleep desert me
There is no time
Thirty minutes brings me round to
Her number 9

Yeah, she looks like a painting
Jackson Pollock's 'Number 5'
Come into the forest and taste the trees
The sun starts shining and I'm hard to please

Ring a ding ding ding I'm going down
I'm coming round

All thoughts of sleep desert me
There is no time
Thirty minutes brings me round to her number 9

To look down on the clouds
You don't need to fly
I've never flown in a plane
I'll live until I die

Lyrics by:
Squire / Brown

Music by:
Squire / Brown

Written:
1986

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

Produced by:
Paul Schroeder & The Stone Roses

Available on:
Made Of Stone single (as b-side)
The Complete Stone Roses (2.46)
Turns Into Stone (2.46)
What The World Is Waiting For / Fool's Gold / She Bangs The Drums (12" mix) / Elephant Stone (12" mix) / Guernica / Going Down (November 1989, Alfa-Silvertone, 18B2-103, Japanese CD)

First live performance:
In 1987

Details:

Now if uh, six, turned out to be nine
I don't mind, I don't mind
If all the hippies cut off all their hair
I don't care, I don't care.
Dig.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience, If 6 Was 9 (1967)

Number 5, 1951 ("Elegant Lady", 58 x 55 1/2", 147.3 x 140.9 cm) by Jackson Pollock. "Yeah, she looks like a painting" originates from the saying, "She's as pretty as a picture." The title 'Number 5' is what Pollock would have referred to the piece as, whereas any title of a Pollock painting enclosed by quotation marks is what it is referred to unofficially (i.e., not by Pollock or his wife Lee Krasner, etc). In this instance, the title "Elegant Lady" was possibly given by the purchaser of the painting, seeing a resemblance within, to the female form. Thus, Squire's lyric is perhaps referring to the unofficial title of the painting, "Elegant Lady". Some observers of the piece have claimed to see an outline of Christ, which would suggest a possible Gnostic theme in the song, with 'She' pertaining to Christ. Due to the scattered categorization of Pollock's work, there is more than one 'Number 5' in circulation. One such work of this title from 1948 became the world's most expensive painting in 2006, being sold for $140 million. The person thought to have sold the painting, which measures 4ft by 8ft (1.2m by 2.4m), was The Stone Roses' former record label boss, David Geffen.

Going Down is about oral sex ("Her neck, her thighs, her lips, her hair...I'm going down"; Ambre Solaire is the suncream tasted during this act). "Jimi's tune" in the second verse is a coded reference to a Hendrix song called 'If 6 Was 9', used to represent the '69' position in oral sex. This Hendrix track portrays the underlying conflict of the 1960s counterculture: the social and cultural dichotomies between the hippies and the 'white collared conservative' business world of the establishment. Opening with a blues riff, the lyrics accompany a spacey free-form jam, with Hendrix epitomizing the existentialist voice of the youth movement. At the age of eight, Ian had a dansette and his musical taste was broadened when his aunt gave him a selection of seven inches, his first ever records. These records included 'It's Not Unusual' by Tom Jones; 'Help!' and 'I Feel Fine' by The Beatles; (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction', 'Under My Thumb' and 'Get Off My Cloud' by The Rolling Stones; 'The Happening' and 'Love Child' by the Supremes. Jimi Hendrix's Smash Hits LP was the only album among the collection.

'If 6 Was 9' is from 'Axis: Bold as Love' (December 1967), by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. "We like a lot of 60s music, 60s psychedelic stuff. We like a lot of early punk stuff. So we try and combine the melody of the 60s stuff with the energy of the punk stuff. We're not a punk band and we're not a 60s band. We're just an 80s band." (Ian Brown). Going Down is neatly bookended with birth (a 'rebirth' in the form of Jesus' Resurrection - see below) and death, with the latter possibly being a take on a spoken segment from 'If 6 Was 9' ("I'm the one that's gonna have to die when it's time for me to die. So let me live my life the way I want to."). 'I Don't Live Today', also from this LP, most probably influenced the finale of What The World Is Waiting For. 'If 6 Was 9' features on the Easy Rider soundtrack. At The Stone Roses' reunion press conference in 2011, Ian was asked how long he envisaged the band's reunification would last. In his metaphorical response - "We'll ride it till the wheels fall off like we did last time." - Ian may have had the ending of this film in mind.

Dawn sings in the garden
Phone sings in the hall
This boy's dead from two days' life
Resurrected by the call

Making sense of the opening verse of Going Down is rather like trying to form an interpretation of Wassily Kandinsky's (1866 - 1944) 'Improvisation Number 6' (1909). The image one is presented with from the music and artistic piece respectively is not immediately scrutable, but closer inspection reveals each to be depicting the Resurrection of Christ. The figure on the right, with the halo, of Kandinsky's piece is Christ rolling back the boulder. The lines in the opening verse, "This boy's dead from two days' life. Resurrected by the call" appear to be 'reversing' Jesus' rising from the dead on the Third Day; Jesus was 'alive from two days' death', having risen on the Third Day. While the time that Christ rose from the dead is not stated explicitly in the Bible, it must have been pre-dawn at the latest, on Sunday.

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
(Matthew 28: 1)

Some sources erroneously have the opening lyric as "Dog sings in the garden"; rather, it is dawn that sings its joyful song. With the coming of dawn on Sunday morning, the promised Resurrection of Christ drew closer. The "phone sings in the hall" of the residence where the couple are enjoying oral sex, but this lyric perhaps has further depth in meaning - Jesus is resurrected by the (phone)call of God. The mention of a 'garden' in the opening line is interesting, since Mary Magdalene thought that the man she was speaking to was a gardener:

"Woman," he said, "why are you crying ? Who is it you are looking for ?"
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him."
(John 20: 15)

 

Left: Rembrandt immortalized the moment when Mary Magdalene mistakenly perceived the newly-risen Jesus to be a gardener. On one level, it was not really a mistake, for Jesus is indeed the new Adam. This garden near Golgotha is a contrast from Eden, the first garden. Adam and Eve failed to trust God, and left the garden in shame; the Risen Jesus, holding a spade, is now the indisputable Master over the garden where He was laid to rest. 1 Corinthians 15: 1 - 11 is the earliest reference in New Testament literature to the Resurrection, and is crucial for an appreciation of this central doctrine of the Christian faith. In verse 4, we learn that Jesus was raised (egerthe). It was God who raised Jesus from the dead; Jesus did not simply raise Himself, as is commonly thought. The distinction is important, and key to an understanding of the opening verse of this song - Jesus is resurrected by the call of God. Paul is handing on the earliest Christian tradition here, and saying that it was God himself that intervened in human history by raising Jesus after His death by crucifixion. To Jew and Gentile alike, but especially to the Jewish hearers, this was mind-blowing. In sheer panic, as Acts 2: 37 relates, they implored Peter, "what are we to do ?" In verses 5 - 8 of 1 Corinthians 15, we learn that Jesus appeared (the Greek word is ophthe, meaning 'he made himself visible.') In these appearances, Jesus made himself visible to the persons listed: Peter, the Twelve, the Five Hundred, James, the apostles and finally Paul himself, in the Damascene conversion.
Right: 'Improvisation Number 6' by Kandinsky.

The focus of the song later moves towards another 'garden', the Garden of Gethsemane. The figure from Tears who is "going down this time" is the same one from this track who was soon to be crucified ("I'm going down" works on two levels, in also relating to Jesus's imminent trial). The speaker for the first two lines of the third verse, I propose, is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he came back a third time to find His disciples sleeping:

Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting ? Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us go ! Here comes my betrayer !"
(Matthew 26: 45 - 46)

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