Made Of Stone

Your knuckles whiten on the wheel
The last thing that your hands will feel
your final flight can't be delayed
No earth just sky it's so serene
Your pink fat lips let go a scream
You fry and melt I love the scene

Sometimes I fantasize
When the streets are cold and lonely
And the cars they burn below me
Don't these times fill your eyes
When the streets are cold and lonely
And the cars they burn below me
Are you all alone ?
Is anybody home ?

I'm standing warm against the cold
Now that the flames have taken hold
At least you left your life in style

And for as far as I can see
Tin twisted grills grin back at me
Bad money dies I love the scene

Sometimes I fantasize
When the streets are cold and lonely
And the cars they burn below me
Don't these times
Fill your eyes
When the streets are cold and lonely
And the cars they burn below me
Are you all alone ?
Is anybody home ?

Sometimes I fantasize
When the streets are cold and lonely
And the cars they burn below me
Don't these times
Fill your eyes
When the streets are cold and lonely
And the cars they burn below me
Are you all alone ?
Are you made of stone ?

Lyrics by:
Squire / Brown

Music by:
Squire / Brown

Written:
1987

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

Producer:
John Leckie

Engineer:
Paul Schroeder

Format:
Released February 1989:
Made Of Stone / Going Down / Guernica (Silvertone, ORE T 2, 12")
Made Of Stone / Going Down (Silvertone, ORE 2, 7")

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

Released March 1990:
Made Of Stone / Going Down / Guernica (Silvertone, ORE T 2, 12" reissue)
Made Of Stone / Going Down (Silvertone, ORE 2, 7" reissue)
Made Of Stone / Going Down / Guernica (Silvertone, ORE CD 2, CD)
Made Of Stone / Going Down / Guernica (Silvertone, ORE CD 2, CD)

Released June 1990:
Elephant Stone (7" Version) / The Hardest Thing In The World & Made Of Stone / Going Down (Silvertone, ORE 1/2, Australian 2 x 7" limited edition poster pack)
Elephant Stone (7" Version) / The Hardest Thing In The World & Made Of Stone / Going Down (Silvertone, CSORE C 1/2, Australian 2 x cassette limited edition poster pack)

Released June 1992:
Made Of Stone / Going Down / Guernica (Alfa-Silvertone, ALCB-540, CD from Japanese Singles Collection boxset)

UK chart details:
Made Of Stone entered the charts on 17th March 1990, spending 4 weeks in the charts and reaching a highest position of 20.

Also available on:
The Stone Roses (4.10)
The Complete Stone Roses (4.11)
The Stone Roses (10th Anniversary Edition) (4.15)
The Very Best Of The Stone Roses (4.18)

First live performance:
In early 1988

Artwork details:
The Made Of Stone artwork is from 'Cody Calling' (1988), oil on canvas, 61" x 28"

Details:

A winters day
In a deep and dark December
I am alone
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow
I am a rock
I am an island

Paul Simon, I Am A Rock (1965)

Paul Simon's character is 'made of stone', in an emotional comparance to a rock. His character has been hardened by the feelings of pain of a previous relationship encounter ("I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died. If I never loved I never would have cried."), while Made Of Stone offers no insight into the characters' past. This song of urban decay and destruction contains some of the band's darkest lyrics ("Your pink fat lips let go a scream"). Made Of Stone is considered by many to be influenced by Primal Scream's one minute b-side from their Crystal Crescent single (May '86), 'Velocity Girl' (Ian claims that he had never even heard the song however). 'Paint It Black' by The Rolling Stones (compare the vocal melody on the verses of Made Of Stone to the intro / sitar riff of Paint It Black) is another possible musical influence.

The horrific scene depicted in the verses ends on the words "I love the scene", revealing a sadistic enjoyment of events. This triggers an uplifting - yet dark - chorus in which the author revels in the ability to rise above it all. One can almost infer from the haunting descending intro that someone is falling to their death. Like Bob Dylan's 'It Ain't Me, Babe'*, the surrealist aspect of the lyric - of figures in stasis ("made of stone"), and melting ("you fry and melt") - conjures up the work of René Magritte (1898 - 1967), e.g., 'Le Chant de la violette' ('The song of the violet', 1951) and 'Souvenir de voyage' ('Memory of a voyage', 1952):

Go melt back into the night, babe
Everything inside is made of stone.
There's nothing in here moving
An' anyway I'm not alone.

Bob Dylan, It Ain't Me, Babe (1964)

Made Of Stone, like other songs in the Roses catalogue, has a strong element of existentialism. Existentialism is a unilateral, philosophical movement that views the individual, the self, the individual's experience, and the uniqueness therein as the only reality. Existentialists believe in sheer freedom and accept the consequences and ramifications of their actions wholly. Existentialists prefer subjectivity, and view general existence as arcane, that they are isolated entities in an indifferent and often ambiguous universe. According to Sartre, "A human is no more than a series of undertakings." Existentialist works continued to feature among Ian Brown's reading material in his solo career - in an interview with The Scotsman Newspaper from 28th January 2000, he stated that while in Strangeways jail, he read works by Friedrich Nietzsche and Albert Camus:

He read and read. Nietzsche, Camus, Marcus Garvey, Eldridge Cleaver, George Graham. He started reading Mad Frankie Fraser but the book got stolen.
(The Scotsman Newspaper, 28th January 2000)

'The Bible of existentialism', 'Being and Nothingness' by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 - 1980), is one of the most significant philosophical works of the twentieth century. Sartre was a key figure in Paris in 1968. The central idea of the book is the opposition between objective things and human consciousness. Sartre argues that consciousness and thus humans themselves are essentially free. Thus, any attempt by an individual or a philosophical theory to believe otherwise is a form of "bad faith", a refusal to recognize what one is, namely, a being who is both facticity and transcendence:

These two aspects of human reality are and ought to be capable of a valid coordination. But bad faith does not wish either to coordinate them or to surmount them in a synthesis. Bad faith seeks to affirm their identity while preserving their differences. It must affirm facticity as being transcendence and transcendence as being facticity, in such a way that at when the instant a person apprehends the one, he can find himself abruptly faced with the other....
(a segment of ‘Bad Faith’ from 'Being and Nothingness')

Humans are born without essence and therefore existence precedes essence; humans have to create their own essence by making choices. Ironically, the freedom of human consciousness is experienced by humans as a burden ("Man is condemned to be free"). Human projects, therefore, consist in the impossible attempt to become a free consciousness, such as when a person tries to become an intellectual or a parent or to play any other determinate social role. Because the impossibility of this attempt to become a conscious thing does not prevent humans from being irresistibly drawn to undertake it, Sartre declares that "man is a useless passion." In Made Of Stone, the question is posed to the listener 'Are you all alone ? Are you made of stone ?'. To do nothing is to embrace 'nothingness'; to take action is to embrace 'being' and begin to become oneself. Ian's response is to 'fantasize', a common response to existential pain in Sartre's works and a step along the path of self-realisation, since it transcends and is therefore not bound by what is real. Made Of Stone should be seen in the context of works such as 'Being and Nothingness' and 'Iron in the Soul' (the third volume of Sartre's 'Roads to Freedom' Trilogy).

The Made of Stone artwork, entitled 'Cody Calling', was later lost en-route to Liam Gallagher. The painting takes its title from Jackson Pollock' birthplace, Cody, Wyoming, on 28th January 1912. In 1989, John Squire pollocked a toaster with a Cody Calling design, later featuring at exhibitions of his art.

"There's a full figure in that one, again accidental. I tried recreating the effect, controlling the line, but it didn't work. It's like the outline you get on sport logos."
(John Squire speaking to Select Magazine, November 1997)

Do people ever bug you to give them a painting ?
"Liam Gallagher asked me for one, so I sent him the painting for ‘Made of Stone’. I’m trying to track it down because he claims he never got it. Someone at the office has snaffled it away."
(John Squire speaking to X-ray Magazine, 11th February 2004)

In assessing how to cement their own place in television folklore, the Roses would have recognized that it was impossible to surpass the vulgarity of the Sex Pistols' TV appearance on Bill Grundy's 'Today' programme in 1976 and thus perhaps delved further back into music history for inspiration when deciding upon their strategy to create confusion live on air, as I will detail below. The Late Show (1989 – 1995), a British television arts magazine programme broadcast on BBC Two weeknights at 11.15pm, directly after Newsnight, a seemingly strange choice of show for the band to perform, was to provide that moment. The Stone Roses' appearance on BBC2's The Late Show in 1989 infamously ended early after they exceeded the allowed level of noise for the building, thereby cutting out the sound; evidence strongly points towards this being an intentional ploy by the band and/or manager Gareth Evans - at the point of power failure, Reni's knowing laugh has a certain conspiratorial feel. Even prior to this, the band's actions look very 'unnatural' and 'staged'. While presenter Tracey MacLeod is introducing the band, Ian Brown can be seen in the background, nonchalantly pretending to pick his nose, and wipe his hand on his trousers (a 'working class' gesture by the singer, on a 'high brow' arts programme). His singing is very shaky, noticeably anticipating something is about to happen. The performance - what there was of it - of this track on 'The Late Show' has its precedent in that of The Jimi Hendrix Experience on the 'Happening for Lulu show'. Following 'Voodoo Child (Slight Return)', the band play a very loose version of the scheduled song, 'Hey Joe', then Hendrix says "Why don't I stop playing this rubbish and dedicate a song to the uh Cream..." (who had just broken up - Ed), then launches into one of Cream's songs, 'Sunshine Of Your Love'. These two performances have striking parallels, with Hendrix and Brown attempting to create havoc in the BBC studios. Both artists were intent on not playing their scheduled songs in full, Hendrix by changing to an unscheduled number (to avoid having to do a duet on Hey Joe with Lulu, who was waiting expectantly in the wings !), the Roses by causing a power cut during the performance. Both Hendrix and Brown were intent on making life extremely difficult for the presenters (note Hendrix's screeching feedback while Lulu is reading the autocue introducing them, and of course Brown's "Amateurs, amateurs, we're wasting our time here lads" response while Tracey MacLeod was trying to read an autocue following the power cut). One important difference, however, was that Hendrix approached Lulu after the show and made an apology of sorts. I think Tracey MacLeod and the BBC are waiting for an apology from the Roses to this day...

Made Of Stone was used during some of the road trip scenes in the 1997 American movie, 'Heaven or Vegas.'

* See Neil Corcoran (ed.), 'Do you, Mr Jones ?' - Bob Dylan with the poets and professors (London: Chatto & Windus, 2002), pp. 20 - 21.

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