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
30 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
30 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:
Going Down is a song about oral sex ("Her neck, her thighs, her lips, her hair...I'm going down". Ambre Solaire is suncream which 'Ian' tastes during this act), tacitly recognized in the reference to "Jimi's tune" in the second verse ("Her dansette crackles to Jimi's tune"). This is a Hendrix song called 'If 6 Was 9' (the '69' position in oral sex being its connection with Going Down) from the 'Axis: Bold As Love' album.

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, oh I don't care.
Dig.

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

This Hendrix song appears on the soundtrack of Ian's favourite film of all time, 'Easy Rider'. The last line of Going Down is further indication that this Hendrix track is a source of inspiration. This last line, which neatly results in the song beginning and ending with (re)birth (Resurrection - see below) and death, appears to be a take on a spoken section 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

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

Axis: Bold As Love (December 1967) by The Jimi Hendrix Experience (left) and Number 5, 1951 ("Elegant Lady", 58 x 55 1/2", 147.3 x 140.9 cm) (right)

The casual fusion of the '69' position and death has precedent in art in a work from 1985, a year prior to Going Down being written, by conceptual artist Bruce Nauman (1941 - ), Sex and Death / Double "69".* On the subject of the line "Yeah she looks like a painting - Jackson Pollock's 'Number 5'" (originating from the saying, "She's as pretty as a picture"), above is a scan of this 1951 painting. One or more other Pollock paintings have the title 'Number 5'** but one can safely assume that Squire is referring to the above artistic work. The title 'Number 5' is what Pollock would have referred to the piece as. 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 case, the title "Elegant Lady" is an unofficial one, most likely given by the owner of the painting. The person who bought it might have thought the image in the painting looked liked a woman and named it "Elegant Lady". Thus, the line "Yeah she looks like a painting - Jackson Pollock's Number 5" is referring to the unofficial title of the painting - "Elegant Lady". Controversy surrounded Pollock's 'Number 5', with some claiming that the figure of Christ is present within. A theme of Gnosticism (investigated on other Roses tracks including Love Spreads, She Bangs The Drums, etc) is evident here, with 'She' pertaining to Christ.

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 is akin to attempting to interpret Wassily Kandinsky's (1866 - 1944) Improvisation Number 6. The image one is presented with from the music and artistic piece respectively is not immediately scrutable. Closer inspection reveals each to be about 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. The line is most probably a tacit recognition of 'life' meaning 'everlasting life' with God, as stated in the Bible. The Bible portrays life on this earth as only a passing phase, thus the equation with death in the lyric. While the time that Christ rose from the dead is not explicitly referenced in the Bible, it must have been pre-dawn at the latest, on Sunday. From Matthew's account of 'The Resurrection':

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)

Thus, this explains why "Dawn sings" (I do not think it is "Dog sings", as some suggest) in the opening line. With the coming of dawn on Sunday morning, this brought nearer the promised Resurrection of Christ. The "phone" singing "in the hall" specifies the scene as the residence of the couple enjoying oral sex, but even within this line there are allusions to the Resurrection of Christ. Jesus is Resurrected by the (phone)call of God. The explicit mention of a 'garden' in the opening line is interesting, since Mary Magdalene thought that the man she was talking to was the 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)

The focus 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 crucified ("I'm going down" relating to Jesus's imminent trial) and subsequently Resurrected ("Resurrected by the call") - Jesus Christ. The speaker for the first two lines of the third verse I propose is Jesus, the scene being 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)

* Bruce Nauman, Sex and Death / Double "69" (1985)
neon tubing mounted on aluminum monolith
85 x 53 x 12 in.
Private collection, Switzerland
** Another Pollock work entitled 'No. 5' (1948) became the world's most expensive painting in 2006, being sold for $140 million. The person alleged to have sold the picture, which measures 4ft by 8ft (1.2 by 2.4m), was The Stone Roses' former record label boss, David Geffen. The buyer, according to The New York Times, was Mexican David Martinez. The highest amount of money ever paid previously for a painting was $134m for Gustav Klimt's 'Adele Bloch-Bauer I', by the cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder in June 2006.

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