This Is The One

A girl consumed by fire
We all know her desire
From the plans that she has made
I have her on a promise
Immerse me in your splendour
All the plans that I have made

This is the one
This is the one
This is the one
This is the one
This is the one
She's waited for

This is the one
This is the one
This is the one
Oh this is the one
This is the one
She's waited for

I'd like to leave the country
For a month of Sundays
Burn the town where I was born
If only she'd believe me
Bellona Belladonna
Burn me out or bring me home

And this is the one
This is the one
This is the one
This is the one
This is the one
She's waited for

This is the one
This is the one
This is the one
Oh this is the one
This is the one
I've waited for

Oh this is the one
Oh this is the one
This is the one
I've waited for

This is the one
Oh this is the one
Oh this is the one
This is the one
I've waited for

This is the one
This is the one
This is the one
Oh this is the one
This is the one
I've waited for

I had a plan
But it might go wrong
This is the one
This is the one
She's waited for

And this is the one
This is the one
This is the one
This is the one
She's waited for

And this is the one
Oh this is the one
Ah this is the one
This is the one
I've waited for

Lyrics by:
Brown

Music by:
Squire / Brown

Written:
1985

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

Producer:
John Leckie

Engineer:
Paul Schroeder

Available on:
The Stone Roses (4.58)
Garage Flower (3.42)
The Stone Roses (10th Anniversary Edition) (4.59)
The Very Best Of The Stone Roses (5.02)

First live performance:
In 1985

Details:
The Stone Roses were locked in a room by producer Martin Hannett* and not allowed out until they wrote a song; This Is The One was the result of this curfew. It opens with loud slicing guitar from Squire interspersed with Ian's almost whispered vocal. The chorus is repeated, louder and faster, each time, setting up a frantic finish. On Breaking Into Heaven, the Roses took a vocal part from a later part of the song and sampled it for the intro. On This Is The One, it is the opposite - the ending contains a looped vocal of an earlier part of the song, merging into the opening drumbeat of I Am The Resurrection. In a Q magazine piece from April 2000, John Leckie stated that This Is The One was difficult to perfect:

"This the One caused the most problems. There was always a big question as to whether it should go on the record. It worked real well live, a bombastic thing that got faster and faster and was a bit Nirvana-ish. But we had to work hard on getting the dynamics right and making the speed changes work smoothly. I Am The Resurrection took a bit of time too. We wanted something epic to end the album and that was the song they'd been ending the live set with, so we literally built that massive crescendo piece by piece."
(John Leckie, Q magazine, April 2000)

Written in 1985, in the same year as I Wanna Be Adored, these two tracks were wisely not considered fit for release until the structure achieved four years later. The earlier (shorter and punkier) version of these songs can be found on the Garage Flower LP, but it is too frenzied, lacking the assured structure of the Leckie production. The song's title originates from John the Baptist's words in the Bible, in 'Jesus the Lamb of God':

The next day John saw Jesus coming towards him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world ! This is the one I meant when I said, 'A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.'"
(John 1: 29 - 30)

After her months of pregnancy, Jesus was the one that Mary had waited for ("This is the one she's waited for"). The verses switch between documenting the events surrounding the birth of Jesus, and Satan's expulsion from Heaven. For example, the line "I have her on a promise" refers to Mary's betrothal to Joseph (Joseph had Mary "on a promise" of marriage).

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.
(Matthew 1: 18)

The line following this in the song refers to Satan's expulsion from Heaven, which I will explain later. The chorus documents a figure who spoke in the highest regard of Jesus while the verses incorporate a figure who plotted to destroy His power, Satan. Evil appeared in the world of angels when one of God’s cherubs, Lucifer, rebelled against this order. We read a description of this in the book of Ezekiel:

You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
till wickedness was found in you.

Through your widespread trade
you were filled with violence,
and you sinned.
So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God,
and I expelled you, O guardian cherub,
from among the fiery stones.

Your heart became proud
on account of your beauty,
and you corrupted your wisdom
because of your splendor.
So I threw you to the earth;
I made a spectacle of you before kings.

By your many sins and dishonest trade
you have desecrated your sanctuaries.
So I made a fire come out from you,
and it consumed you,
and I reduced you to ashes on the ground
in the sight of all who were watching.
(Ezekiel 28: 15 - 19)

The angel Lucifer - who became Satan - was expelled from heaven together with all the other angels who joined him in his act of rebellion. Pride caused his fall, with Satan wishing to be independent from God and refusing submission to Him. God’s justice determines that the fallen angels will exist forever, but without the chance to return to the spring of real existence and communion with God. To take two lines from This Is The One:

-"immerse me in your splendour"..... "and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor."
(Ezekiel 28: 17)

- "consumed by fire"..... "So I made a fire come out from you, and it consumed you"
(Ezekiel 28: 18)

Ian mentions a 'plan' which might go wrong, God's plan for the salvation of mankind, through Jesus being born on this earth (Satan and the other demons do their best to thwart God’s plan for mankind). The plan could certainly "go wrong" because there were so many potential obstacles towards its completion. Would Mary and Joseph accept the abrupt news from the angel of the Lord that Mary would give birth to the Son of Man ? A law existed in the first century that a betrothed women who became pregnant as an adulteress was subject to death by stoning. And the plan came dangerously close to going wrong when Herod ordered the Massacre of the Innocents. Regarding the lyric, "Bellona Belladonna, burn me out or bring me home", Bellona was a favorite of Roman soldiers; her priests used belladonna in religious ritual. She represented the frenzy of battle and was variously identified as the wife, sister, or daughter of Mars. This could add weight to the idea of Satan going to war with God and attempting to stifle His plan. The name Bellona, the goddess of War, is tacit within the letters Belladonna. Ian makes this connection obvious by first naming the goddess, then the plant. The name Belladonna has religious connotations, as it is ostensibly a reference to the Virgin Mary.

St Augustine (and most non philosophical theists) explained evil in the world as being caused by corrupt angels (including Lucifer) who rebelled against God and subsequently corrupted Adam and Eve with the apple. Following on from this, the lyric "I'd like to leave the country for a month of Sundays" possibly literally can be read as an expressed desire not to go to church, as the author has been corrupted and does not want to praise God on the Christian holy day. However, it could instead be referring to Joseph leaving Nazareth (in the country of Galilee) to go to Bethlehem, in Judea. This was prompted by Caesar Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, issuing a decree calling for a census to be taken of the entire Roman world, with everyone having to go to their own town to register. Joseph left the country for the last month of Mary's pregnancy, known in the Christian calendar as Advent: a period of time beginning with the fourth Sunday before Christmas and ending with Christmas Eve. Hence, Joseph left the country for "a month of Sundays". "Burn the town where I was born" refers to the events surrounding Jesus' birth. After Herod unsuccessfully attempted to fool the Magi into leading him to Jesus so that he could kill Him, Herod was furious and ordered a massacre of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. "Burn me out or bring me home" summarizes the return of Jesus, Mary and Joseph to Nazareth, their previous 'home'. Since Herod was unsuccessful in his attempt to burn Jesus in his massacre of Bethlehem, Jesus was brought home (following Herod’s death):

After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child's life are dead."
So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: "He will be called a Nazarene."
(Matthew 2: 19 - 23)

The original lyrics to the second verse of the demo from 'The First Coming' CD are as follows:

He’d like to leave the country
For a month of Sundays
For all the things that we've been told
With only but a donkey
I had her on a promise
All the thoughts that I had laid

Both Mary and Joseph were approached by the angel Gabriel in dreams and told that they would be the parents of the son of God. "With only but a donkey" refers to their trip from Bethlehem to Egypt, when they had only a donkey** to bring them there. This was a trip of about two hundred miles by foot or donkey, over mountains, wilderness, and desert that would have taken at least ten days to complete. God commanded them to take such a gruelling trip because Herod's power did not reach to Egypt and thus the child Christ would be safe there. Secondly, historically Egypt has been the land of refuge for those fleeing from Palestine (for example, Jacob and his family, Jeroboam, and the prophets Uriah and Jeremiah at various times all sought refuge there).

Manchester United regularly walk on to the pitch at Old Trafford to This Is The One. Stone Roses lyrics are a feature of banners among the United supporters. Next to a "One United - One Love" banner at Old Trafford is one saying "Sent to me from Heaven, you are my world" (from Sally Cinnamon) with pictures of George Best, Denis Law, Bobby Charlton and Duncan Edwards. Ian Brown requested that his NME 'Godlike Genius' award was presented by one of the club's treble winning side of 1999, Teddy Sheringham. The F.E.A.R. inspired "MUFC: For Every Manc A Religion" is another. The band's lyrics also feature in banners of FC United of Manchester, founded in 2005 (the banner below using a lyric from I Wanna Be Adored refers to the perceived 'selling out' of Manchester United to the Glazer family.

* Martin Hannett (1948 - 1991), producer of The Stone Roses' Garage Flower work, is best known for his production of Joy Division's work. Hannett's trademark sound, most apparent on Joy Division's groundbreaking debut Unknown Pleasures and its dirge-like follow-up (Closer), was spare and eerie, sonically matching frontman Ian Curtis' dark, depressive musings and baritone vocals. Hannett co-founded Factory Records with Tony Wilson and went on to work with The Happy Mondays. As a producer, Hannett was notoriously difficult to work with, obsessive over drum sounds and never content until he achieved the sounds in his head. Speaking to Uncut magazine in 1998, Ian Brown says that it was his production on Slaughter and the Dogs' single, 'Cranked Up Really High', more than his association with Joy Division, that appealed:

What was Manchester like at this time ?
"There was no-one about. There was The Smiths, New Order. I liked a few singles, but there wasn't anyone giving you a charge. We loved Slaughter and the Dogs. In 1985, we worked with Martin Hannett (releasing an ignored single, "So Young", on Thin Line) because he'd done 'Cranked Up Really High', not cos of Joy Division and all that Manchester heritage. But Hannett was in a bad way. We caught him snorting coke off the 'There's no-one quite like Grandma' gold disc ! He was a junkie; lovely man, but nothing else mattered."
(Ian Brown speaking to Uncut magazine, February 1998)

Incidentally, Ian Brown's first gig was Joy Division at Bowdon Vale Youth Club, South Manchester, on 14th March 1979.

** The bible does not state that the journey was by donkey, but it was either via donkey or foot. The Nativity Story incorporates a donkey.

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