Chimes sing Sunday morn
Today's the day she swore
To steal what she never could own
And race from this hole she calls home
Now you're at the wheel
Tell me how, how does it feel ?
So good to have equalized
To lift up the lids of your eyes
As the miles they disappear
See land begin to clear
Free from the filth and the scum
This American satellite's won
She'll carry on through it all
She's a waterfall
She'll carry on through it all
She's a waterfall
See the steeple pine
The hills as old as time
Soon to be put to the test
To be whipped by the winds of the west
Stands on shifting sands
The scales held in her hands
The wind it just whips her and wails
And fills up her Brigantine sails
She'll carry on through it all
She's a waterfall
She'll carry on through it all
She's a waterfall
Lyrics by:
Squire / Brown
Music by:
Squire
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 1991:
Waterfall (Silvertone, ORE T DJ 34, 12" promo)
Waterfall (7" version) / One Love (7" version) / Waterfall (12" version) / One Love (12" version) (Silvertone, 06192-10041-2, Canadian CD)
Released January 1992:
Waterfall (Paul Oakenfold / Steve Osborne Remix) (7" Edit) / One Love (Adrian Sherwood Remix) (7" Edit) (Silvertone, ORE 35, 7")
Waterfall / One Love (Silvertone, ORE ZT 35, 12" with print)
Waterfall (7" version) / One Love (7" version) / Waterfall (12" version) / One Love (12" version) (Silvertone, ORE CD 35, CD)
Waterfall / One Love (Silvertone, ORE C 35, cassette)
Released June 1992:
Waterfall (7" version) / One Love (7" version) / Waterfall (12" version) / One Love (12" version) (Alfa-Silvertone, ALCB-543, Japanese CD from Singles Collection boxset)
UK chart details:
Waterfall entered the charts on 11th January 1992, spending 4 weeks in the charts and reaching a highest position of 27.
Also available on:
The Stone Roses (4.37)
The Complete Stone Roses (3.36)
The Stone Roses (10th Anniversary Edition) (4.38)
The Very Best Of The Stone Roses (4.41)
First live performance:
In 1987.
Artwork details:
The Waterfall artwork is from 'Waterfall' (1988), oil on canvas, 30" x 26"
Details:
While Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin was the benchmark for John Squire circa Second Coming, The Clash were the biggest influence on the pre-Second Coming Squire. Ian introduced John to the music of The Clash, bringing records - such as their debut LP, 'God Save The Queen' by The Sex Pistols and 'One Chord Wonders' by The Adverts - to his house when they were in their teens. A week later, John had bought the first two of the aforementioned records and developed a strong interest in The Clash, following the band on their '16 Tons' tour. John did, however, miss out on an opportunity to meet his idols, due to other commitments. Ian Brown and Pete Garner heard that The Clash were rehearsing somewhere in Manchester. After some investigation, they made their way to the Pluto Recording studios in Granby Row, waiting expectantly outside. The Clash arrived to work on 'Bankrobber' and the two Patrol members blagged their way into the studios as part of the band's entourage. Though he missed out on this adventure, Squire did get to perform this very Clash track with Mick Jones at Manchester Ritz in December 2011. Pete Garner (who lived round the corner from Manchester Ritz) was also present at this 2011 reunion, having been invited by Ian Brown and John Robb via phone shortly before the gig. During the soundcheck, The Stone Roses needed a drummer to run through 'Bankrobber', and Si Wolstencroft - formerly of The Patrol and very briefly, The Stone Roses - stepped up. Ian was not impressed by the rock star demeanour of Joe Strummer at the 1980 Clash rehearsal, describing the experience as somewhat of a disappointment: "He sat under this grandfather clock, clicking his fingers in time with it. I thought, what a dick !" (Ian Brown speaking to Record Collector, 1998). This encounter would have solidified Ian's preference for The Sex Pistols, of the two punk acts. John's interest in The Clash continued to grow however - he had a Clash lyric, "Too chicken to even try it", from 'White Riot', emblazoned on his scooter in his younger days, while Ian had a lyric such as "Cranked Up Really High" on his scooter, the title of a Slaughter and the Dogs song. Of the two, Ian was the first to develop an interest in scooters - one that blossomed through his interest in Northern Soul - while John only became serious after watching Quadrophenia; soon after, the guitarist assembled his own Lambretta, rebuilding a GP200 from the frame. When Ian was 17, he and a friend from Salford used to put on a Northern Soul night at the Black Lion in Blackfriars Street. They would hire a room for £15, inviting all their friends, and one can imagine that Ian's desire and enthusiasm for The Stone Roses to stage all-nighter events stems from fond memories of these times. John Squire first became aware of Jackson Pollock through The Clash, who customised their stage gear with Pollock-esque paint splashes (although, of the Punk era, The Sex Pistols' Glen Matlock was actually the first to do it). Squire cites seeing one particular Pollock-themed photograph in The Clash photo book, by Pennie Smith, as the inspiration for his own incorporation of art into the medium of music. Being an obsessive fan of The Clash, John made a visit to Manchester's Central library to look for books on Pollock:
How did you get into doing all The Stone Roses' cover art ?
The Clash and Jesus and Mary Chain used Jackson Pollock a little bit and that was what got me interested. With the first two record sleeves - So Young and Sally Cinnamon – I tried to do my own thing. Then I started painting guitars and drums and did a shirt for Ian and then I went on to covers. After that I stopped trying to be original and started doing the Jackson Pollock copies.
(John Squire speaking to United We Stand fanzine in December 2004)
John Squire, a self-taught artist, was the taciturn and introspective mirror to Ian Brown's outspoken bolshiness. He attended Heyes Lane Junior School, and passed his 11+ exam. Squire and Brown grew up on the same street, Sylvan Avenue, in the South Manchester suburb of Timperley and attended Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, where their polar-opposite personalities came together; the introverted Squire and gregarious Brown shared a love of 60's rock and punk music, and an interest in politics. Whereas Brown preferred the nihilistic Pistols, Squire’s interest was drawn more towards The Clash, an idealistic band, charged with righteousness and a leftist political ideology. He excelled in art classes at school and was often excused from attending P.E. so that he could develop his artistic talents. Squire obtained his first guitar at the age of 14 and spent many hours in his bedroom practising, at the same time developing a strong interest in modern art: "I picked up a guitar when I was 14 and I can distinctly remember sitting on the bedroom windowsill playing Three Blind Mice on one string, and thinking 'this is gonna take a long time...'" (John Squire speaking to Radio 4, 2007). Squire did reasonably well academically until leaving for college at 16, and formed a band, The Patrol. He worked hard on the guitar and used the art department after hours to make screen-printed posters and flyers for gigs. The band didn't make it, and Squire subsequently worked at Tesco, as a barman at the local, as a labourer at a market garden, and as a grease monkey for a roller shutter maintenance firm. Squire came from a family of artists - his brother could draw, his mother did ceramics and oil painting at night school, and his father, an engineer, made toys and go-karts for his boys - but he was the first to pursue it professionally. Despite failing A-Level Art, Squire gained a foothold in the art world with Chorlton-based children's TV production company Cosgrove Hall. Squire's cousin saw a programme about them on Granada Television and encouraged John to pay them a visit; he duly made a model of a little garden shed, put it on a little plinth and surrounded it with rusty spades and broken plant pots. He took it to a director and she said, 'Yeah that's nice, but you need to go to college.' On his way out, Squire had the fortune of running into the boss on the stairs, with whom Squire left his name. A fortnight later, the company were overloaded with work and they started to give Squire freelance jobs; his first unenviable task was to make one hundred miniature onions, out of clay and paper. Squire created work for TV programmes such as Cockleshell Bay, Wind In The Willows, and a pilot of Fungus The Bogeyman, based on the Raymond Briggs story. Raymond Briggs is one of the foremost creators of illustrated books for adults and children, including The Snowman and Father Christmas. When the Wind Blows, a 1982 novel by Briggs, inspired a song of this title by The Waterfront in 1983. Squire retained his position at Cosgrove Hall until 1984, the year of The Stone Roses' formation.
The genesis of John Squire's interest in painting was American painter Nancy Kominsky, as he revealed to The Guardian in 2007:
'Paint Along With Nancy' was a UK television programme made by HTV West in the mid to late 1970s, shown on the ITV network in a daytime slot - usually 12.30 or 3.30pm. The programme aimed to teach viewers - ostensibly housewives and sick school children (or in Squire's case, a school child playing truant) - to paint, following the instructions of Philadelphian artist, Nancy Kominsky, who would create a painting in twenty-five minutes. Initially, her 'assistant' was popular HTV West personality Alan Taylor. Starting with the ritual wash of burnt umber and turpentine, Nancy would then follow through with a set of grid lines (to place the subject) and roughly sketch in a drawing of sorts using a brush, before moving on to a palette knife. An unorthodox practitioner in the field, Nancy would implore viewers to copy from the Impressionists, "as they have distortion of form"; "Paint what you see and not what you know to be there." In response to a lady who asked her "Why paint ?", she replied, "I paint to match the drapes." Nancy had already done an earlier version, to facilitate 'the recap' at the end of the show, where the picture would paint itself in less time than even Nancy could manage. This sequence, (shot on 16mm although, curiously edited on VT) was always heralded by a luxurious chord on the harp. Titles of her work on the show included: 'Stawberries', 'Snow in Central Park', 'Twilight in the Cotswolds', 'Nasturtiums', 'Still Life - Vegetables', 'Yellow Tulips', 'San Juan Mountains, Colorado', 'White Daisies', 'Old Rome', 'Wind on the Adriatic', 'Last Three in Totterdown' and 'Red Apples'. John Squire cites artist Tom Keating as being an influence at this time also. Keating was an art restorer and famous art forger who claimed to have forged more than 2,000 paintings by over 100 different artists. Keating was born in Lewisham, London, into a poor family. After World War II he began to restore paintings for a living, though he also worked as a house painter to make ends meet. He exhibited his own paintings, but he failed to break into the art market. Keating perceived the gallery system to be rotten, dominated, he said, by American "avant-garde fashion, with critics and dealers often conniving to line their own pockets at the expense both of naive collectors and impoverished artists." Keating retaliated by creating forgeries to fool the experts, hoping to destabilize the system. Keating planted 'time-bombs' in his products, leaving clues of the paintings' true nature for fellow art restorers or conservators to find. For example, he might write text onto the canvas with lead white before he began the painting, knowing that x-rays would later reveal the text. He deliberately added flaws or anachronisms, or used materials peculiar to the twentieth century. Keating was finally arrested in 1977 and accused of conspiracy to defraud, but the case was dropped on account of his bad health. Through 1982 and 1983 Keating rallied, however, and though in fragile health, he presented television programmes on the techniques of old masters for Channel 4 in the UK. This step-by-step demonstration in replicating the art of the Great Masters would have made an indelible impression on a youthful Squire, who himself was to 'do a Keating' on the works of Jackson Pollock later that decade (See also Squire's 'Make your own watercolour' televisual piece, recorded at the Tate in 2010).
In his explanation of 'I'm So Bored With The U.S.A.' (Squire would perform a cover of this track by The Clash as an encore for his 2003 solo tour, in tribute to the recently deceased Joe Strummer*), Mick Jones, guitarist of The Clash, said that it was a criticism of the dominating influence of American culture on British life. The band went to an ice-cream parlour, bought ice-creams and wrote on the window with the ice-creams, 'I'm So Bored With The USA'. This Clash song made references to American support of dictatorships (something that was later elaborated on, on their track, 'Washington Bullets'), the over-riding dominance of American culture and the Watergate scandal, as Mick Jones explains:
In some 1989 interviews, Squire said almost those exact words about Waterfall. He explained how the song and accompanying artwork – the American flag overshadowing a British one - was a criticism of the influence of American culture on British life. With the increasing 'Americanisation' of the British landscape in the 1980s, the warning of Johnny Rotten on 'Anarchy in the U.K.' - 'Your future dream is a shopping scheme' - became a distinct reality.
A detail of the original 1988 painting, 'Waterfall', was originally used in the insert of the Roses' debut album. John would revisit 'Waterfall' on two subsequent artworks: '15 Days' (2003) and 'gtr' (2004). In 2007, 'Marshall Artist' asked a select group of artists to design a t-shirt, with £10 from each one sold being donated to the charity of the artist's choice. The complete list of artists were: Amp Fiddler, Ash, Larrikin Love, Lauren Laverne, Mani, Nightmares on Wax, Paul Oakenfold, Rob da Bank, Roots Manuva, Shaun Ryder, The Mitchell Brothers, The Subways, and Trevor Nelson. Mani's piece combines elements of Squire's 'Waterfall' artwork and Ian Brown's 'money burning' shirt, personally designed by Paul Smith.
Waterfall, written in 1987, should be seen in the perspective of the Reagan (1981 - 1989) and Thatcher (1979 - 1990) administrations, but also against a backdrop of the entire twentieth century. Growing up in the north during the Thatcher government's miner-crushing, at-war-with-Liverpool Council, imperialist phase was both a politicising and politically polarising experience. Ian Brown was, at the time, wisely dismissive of the economic 'North/South divide' cliché: "We drive into London and we just turn off the motorway and we see people living under a bridge. What's it all about ?" (Ian Brown speaking to Melody Maker, 3rd June 1989). In November 1989, he would again address this perception: "I don't recognise a North/South divide. There's poverty in London that would make your eyes bleed. There's poverty in Manchester, there's poverty in Glasgow. Poverty's poverty. Not everyone who lives south of Manchester is rich. Not everyone who lives north of London is poor. I don't believe there's a North/South divide at all. It's a media lie to divide the people. It's convenient and it's bullshit." ('What a Trip' interview, 22nd November 1989). Nonetheless, the mid-to-late 80s were a time when the major cities of the North of England - Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield - were significantly disconnected from both the central government and the popular media. In December 2011, previously secret government documents revealed that in the aftermath of the Toxteth riots, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was advised to abandon Liverpool to "managed decline" by her senior advisers. Geoffrey Howe, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, argued that enough money had been spent on the city and they should not expend all their resources "making water flow uphill." Government neglect of the North had obvious destabilizing repercussions, but it did serve to galvanize these cities. As a consequence, these cities and the surrounding towns - studded along a strip of motorway that later became the superhighway of the northern rave scene - were free to create and assert their own popular culture and political sensibilities. The Stone Roses, easy to dismiss at a glance as inward-looking 60s classicists, were right at the heart of this activity.
"This American satellite" in the third verse is Britain and these lines state that despite America's influence, it hasn't completely taken over as it would perhaps like to. As the historian T.C.W. Blanning argues, the year 1917 has a good claim to be a truly pivotal moment in European history, for it witnessed a paradigm shift in world power; it was in this year that Europe lost control of its own affairs. The arrival of American troops both sealed the defeat of Germany and ensured that the subsequent peace settlement would be framed according to American interests. If the nineteenth century was the century of Europe - in which Britain was the leading overseas power, Germany the strongest on the continent - the twentieth century belongs to America.*** That the proclamation of victory comes in the verse where the figure is at sea relates to Britain's naval strength; Britannia does indeed rule the waves (not that this song is in any shape or form a celebration of British naval power). A Brigantine vessel is a sailing vessel of the 18th century with two masts, at least one of which is square rigged. They are now almost obsolete; there is currently only one sailing true brigantine in the world, the 'Eye of the Wind', and thus the reference makes association with previous centuries of British naval dominance. Britain's dominance at sea can be traced back to the Spanish Armada in 1588. Having had a marriage proposal rejected by Elizabeth I, Philip II of Spain, incensed by English piracy and forays in New World exploration, sent his Armada to raid England. England won the naval battle (due as much to bad weather as to English naval prowess) and emerged as the world's strongest naval power.
It is quite apt that the Britpop**** documentary, 'Live Forever' (2003), starts with Waterfall, since an embryonic form of Britpop is inherent within this lyric and overall song. Although the band would never espouse pro-British sentiments, and indeed were heavily critical of the nation's history and current policies in interviews, what was to become the Britpop manifesto is nevertheless crystallised within the aforementioned lyric. As John Harris states in his book 'The Last Party', part of Britpop's aim was to avenge the dominance of the USA, not only musically, but also in a broader cultural sense.***** The Stone Roses had little affiliation with Britpop values and had no desire to attach themselves politically to any party. The band were heavily critical of the previous Thatcher and Major regimes, but saw those taking over in 1997 as ineffectual: "Blair's got a massive landslide, the Tories smashed themselves and it was beautiful, but there's nothing to replace it. All the people who suffered through the Eighties... Blair wants to be everything to everybody, and he'll end up being none of them." (Ian Brown speaking to Uncut magazine, February 1998). The Britpop movement was characterised by a new-found pride in the Union Jack, and while Noel Gallagher had a Union Jack emblazoned on his guitar at the height of the movement, Ian Brown was furiously calling for one to be immediately taken down by a member of the audience at the 1996 Reading festival (One would imagine that Ian was not comfortable either with the St George's Cross being waved in his direct eyeline during his Can't See Me Top Of The Pops performance). In his youth, Ian Brown did have a Union Jack tattoo on his arm - which he later attributed to being "Fifteen, pissed and foolish" - but became fiercely critical of the flag's symbolism in his adult years. The closest that any members of The Stone Roses ever came to willing attachment to the Union Jack was arguably John Squire's unfashionable choice of boxer shorts here. Speaking to the NME in December 1989, Squire was critical of both patriotism and regionalism: "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel and the same goes for regionalism." Discussing his new series of artwork - 'Re-Engineered Garments' - on The Culture Show in 2008, with its common theme of destroying the past, Squire gives an explanation as to its possible subconscious exploration of national identity: "I wondered if that was more than just a personal trait. I wondered if it was to do with the national psychology, whether it spoke to those ideas of, those cliches about Englishness, of reserve, self-control, restraint, y'know, that kind of thing. I wanted to exaggerate that by incorporating fabrics into the work that were synonymous with certain ideas of Englishness."
As with the opening verse of Going Down, the Resurrection of Jesus on the Third Day (Sunday) is referenced implicitly here. "Chimes sing Sunday morn" refers to the Easter Sunday celebration of Jesus' rising from the dead. The main riff for the song sounds like Church bells played on a guitar. "She" who will "steal what she never could own" is Jesus. According to Ian, Waterfall is:
Ian's explanation of drug usage may simply be a mask for the inherent religious meaning (or religious meaning is supplanting the narrative of the Dover journey). In an interview with Chris Rolfe for a Canadian publication (26/01/98), Ian states that particular effort was made to hide meanings in the TSR era material:
While its follow-up, 1994's Second Coming, was a 'cocaine record', the debut LP was an 'Ecstasy record'. Similarly, distinction can be made in the releases of The Beatles' in the 1960s from their drug of choice at the time, with the middle of the decade marking a more expansive outlook in the band's work: Preludin (Hamburg era), Amphetamines ('A Hard Day's Night'), Marijuana ('Help'), LSD ('Magical Mystery Tour') and Heroin ('Let It Be'). Paul McCartney, the driving force behind 1967's 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', used cocaine for a year in the creation of that album. The release could not be described as a 'cocaine record' in the vein of 'Second Coming' or 'Be Here Now', however. Speaking in 2004, McCartney describes how he also took grass to "balance it out", adding that he was "never completely crazy with cocaine." The French flag is turned upright, and positioned at the very left of The Stone Roses' debut LP cover, so that the eye reads it as an 'E' (slightly more subtle then Shaun Ryder's physical attachment to the 'E' of a 'HOTEL' sign in the Happy Mondays' 'Step On' video...). In their early years, The Stone Roses experimented with speed and LSD, before moving on to weed in 1986. John Squire's first acid trip was in 1983, at his old flat on Zetland Road, in the company of Mani and Cressa. As the Second Summer of Love swept over England in 1988, the band started taking Ecstasy; Ian's once aggressive persona - of singing in people's faces, high kicking, or kissing someone's girlfriend to wind their partner up - now mellowed dramatically. MDMA (Methylenedioxymethamphetamine), most commonly known today by the street name Ecstasy, is thought to be an invention by the famous German chemist, Fritz Haber, in 1891. The patent for MDMA was originally filed on 24th December 1912 by the German pharmaceutical company Merck, after being first synthesised for them by German chemist Anton Köllisch at Darmstadt earlier that year. The patent was granted in 1914 and two years later, Köllisch died, unaware of the impact his synthesis would have. Due to the wording of the existing Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, MDMA was automatically classified as a Class A drug in 1977 in the UK, and was classified as a Schedule I controlled substance in the US from 31st May 1985. Before then, it was used both as an adjunct to psychotherapy and as a recreational drug. MDMA began to be used therapeutically in the mid-1970s after the chemist Alexander Shulgin introduced it to psychotherapist Leo Zeff. As Zeff and others spread the word about MDMA, it developed a reputation for enhancing communication, reducing psychological defenses, and increasing capacity for introspection. MDMA appeared sporadically as a street drug in the late 1960s (when it was known as the 'love drug'), but it rose to prominence in the early 1980s in nightclubs in the Dallas area, and subsequently in gay dance clubs. From there, usage spread to rave clubs, and then to mainstream society. The street name of 'Ecstasy' was coined in California in 1984. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ecstasy was widely used in the UK and other parts of Europe, becoming an integral element of rave culture and other psychedelic / dancefloor-influenced music scenes, such as Madchester and Acid House. The hedonism of the drug culture and its inherent 'living for the weekend' mentality, allied with years of frustration under Thatcher rule were its primary motivations. Thatcher, unwittingly, had provided the ideal setting for the Acid House movement as thousands of revellers gathered in disused warehouse and factory sites up and down the country. The Stone Roses debut LP was recorded at the very moment when the left-field culture of warehouse parties and political dissent was being augmented into ecstasy-fuelled rave culture, and Thatcher's previously iron grip was starting to loosen. The Stone Roses' 1990 Spike Island festival was a feeling of space and freedom, after 11 years of Conservative rule under Thatcher, whose reign was shortly to come to an end. Here, on a polluted wasteland near Widnes, was proof for all to see that Acid House culture had swept through rock'n'roll completely, and the 1990s were underway. Booze was out; 'Puff' and pills were in. Ian Brown's loved-up placidity formed the spiritual counterbalance to Shaun Ryder's untrammelled hedonism, with Brown's high cheekbones and angelic countenance making him the pin-up of the scene. During the 1990s, along with the growing popularity of the rave subculture, MDMA usage became increasingly widespread among young adults in universities and later, in high schools. It rapidly became one of the four most widely used illegal drugs in the US, along with cocaine, heroin and cannabis.
Ibiza, a popular Mediterranean tourist destination, became synonymous with dance music and once word spread to Britain about 'Balearic Beat' and the ready supply of Ecstasy, a clubbing utopia was established. Clubs like Amnesia where DJ Alfredo was playing a mix of rock, pop, disco and house music fuelled by Ecstasy, began to have an influence on the British scene and by late 1987, DJs such as Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling were bringing the Ibiza sound to UK clubs, crystallizied with the gorgeously melodic and uplifting 'Pacific State' by 808 State. But the 'Second Summer of Love' of 1988 needed an added ingredient, one that would come from America. In America, a more sophisticated sound was evolving, moving beyond merely drum loops and short samples. New York witnessed this maturity in the slick production of disco house crossover tracks from artists such as Mateo & Matos. In Chicago, Marshall Jefferson had formed the house 'super group' Ten City (from intensity), demonstrating the developments in 'That's the Way Love Is'. In Detroit there were the beginnings of what would be called techno, with the emergence of Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. The Stone Roses certainly were watching this scene with interest; their first choice to produce their debut LP was not John Leckie - the band had several others in mind before opting for him - including New Order's Peter Hook, and Sly & Robbie. Top of the list, Brown revealed to Mojo in May 2002, was Acid House supremo DJ Pierre (stage name of Nathaniel Pierre Jones), a Chicago born DJ, but he was unavailable. He helped to develop the house music subgenre of Acid House as member of Phuture, whose 1987 EP, Acid Trax, has been cited as the first Acid House recording. Philippe Renaud, a journalist for La Presse in Montreal, states that the term 'Acid House' was coined in Chicago in 1987 to describe the sound of the Roland 303 bass machine, which made its first significant recording appearance on Acid Trax. Manchester's Haçienda nightclub, founded in 1982 by Factory Records, soaked up all of these influences from overseas and became the focal point of the era.
There existed a thriving warehouse party scene in the UK long before it would be given the label 'rave', and in the Manchester area in particular, these parties in disused warehouses were incredibly musically diverse: 80s indie, punk, goth, new wave, northern soul and hip-hop. Importantly, also slowly emerging in this environment were two previously punk-banished strands: shameless disco-pop in the form of house music, and the retro psychedelic delights of Hendrix and Sly and the Family Stone. The Stone Roses themselves had been forerunners in this aspect of the scene; never particularly keen on the standard gig format, the band put on warehouse parties as early as July and November 1985. The Stone Roses, a motley crew at this point, were mistaken as a goth outfit - based on their fashion sense - and had a punk, speed-fuelled sound. It was not until the latter part of the decade that they would find their niche, exuding an intransigent coolness and fresh, insouciant verve. The timing of this radical transformation in the band could not have been better, given the fusion of dance and rock culture that was taking place; the band's components - Squire's chiming guitars, propelling rhythms of fluid, soulful bass grooves and funky drumming, merged with psychedelic-tinged lyrics - all combined to enhance the appeal of what was technically a guitar pop band, to a dance audience. Sam King, reviewing The Stone Roses' Manchester Hacienda gig for Sounds in February 1989, described the band as "a post-adolescent love trauma put through a psychedelic mangle and shot out at full volume." The spacey, psychedelic production of John Leckie on the debut LP was ideal for the vast sonic space opened up by ecstasy. The Stone Roses were a conduit for the classic optimism of the Sixties to connect with the revolutionary idealism of the punk movement, on this new territory of Acid House. Waterfall can be identified as the point where Squire's sound began to metamorphose out of jangly English psychedelia, into its most accomplished form. The breakdown section (criminally omitted in the single version), where Squire dispatches a series of hypnotic two and three-note phrases before falling into sync with Reni's shuffling backbeat, is an example of those two players' synergy at its most potent. The Stone Roses were savvy enough to hire their equivalent of The Happy Mondays' Bez, in the form of Cressa, in order to further the band's association with dance culture. Speaking to This Is The Daybreak, Ian Tilton describes Cressa's influence on the Roses' look: "Cressa's legs appear in the Baldrick's photo I originally took for i-D magazine. He and his mates were the first to re-champion the wearing of flares. Back in '86 they were still really uncool but they had the courage to wear them down the Hac." Manchester, large enough to support a cultural infrastructure, yet small enough to form a community, fused a heady mix of styles from Ibiza, Chicago and Detroit into something tantalizingly new. The Stone Roses' debut LP fused the spirits of two Summers of Love: the swirling psychedelia of The Byrds and Co, and the earthier escapism of Acid House. According to Ian Brown (Record Collector, February 1998), he, Mani and Reni - but not John Squire - went to the Haçienda, the Thunderdome and various Acid House clubs in 1988, such as Spectrum, Shoom and Land Of Oz. In the second half of 1988, Mani was going to the Haçienda every night, whereas Ian was going just once or twice a week, in order to focus his energies on the band's debut LP. The Acid House movement carried with it a palpable sense of moral righteousness, of egalitarian zeal - and The Stone Roses fitted the bill: arrogant, anti-authoritarian, the embodiment of all that seemed bright and hopeful in British youth culture. The band's club-conscious credentials set them apart from most of their contemporaries who also chose the earlier strains of psychedelia for a base camp. The Stone Roses radiated a kaleidoscopic glow; so too did Primal Scream's 1991 offering, 'Screamadelica', which managed to find common ground between the classic rock of the Stones and the ambience of the House music scene. In October 1996, Primal Scream picked up Mani on a free transfer from the self-imploding Stone Roses and the bassist toured 'Screamadelica' in 2011 for its 20th anniversary. Speaking in North London in 1989, Ian Brown was keen to see a breakdown of rigid musical barriers: "There is such a breed of people, these psychedelic people that are all walking about and all their record collection is just psychedelic music and they turn their mind off to anything that isn't psychedelic."
We learn that the vessel is a Brigantine, an apt choice of transport for someone 'stealing'. A Brigantine is a small vessel equipped both for sailing and rowing, swifter and more easily manoeuvered than larger ships, thus having particular use for piracy. From the opening verse, we learn that Sunday is the day she swore to steal what she never could own. The Bible states that a man can own everything in the world but lose his life; Jesus 'stole' life after death by rising on the Third Day (Sunday). He swore that He would rise again in 'Jesus Predicts His Death':
Upon Jesus rising from the dead, the angel said to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary:
Jesus rose from His tomb - "this hole she calls home" - His resting place. See Going Down, where the two days in the tomb are equated with eventual everlasting life with God; "this hole" works perfectly on two levels: Jesus' tomb and a derogatory reference to the previous residence of the 'Dover girl'. After greeting Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, Jesus "raced" ahead of the women and the disciples towards Galilee, to meet them there. In the Bible, God's love is compared to a waterfall; we cannot live without water, just as the Bible preaches that we cannot survive ultimately without His love. Thus, She (Jesus, the messenger of God) will carry on through it all "like a waterfall".
Jesus went through much hurt in His life, yet carried on through it all because He knew that He had to carry out the will of the Father. He carried on through the ultimate suffering of crucifixion, and rose to life again on the Third Day. As Love Spreads depicts, not only did Jesus carry on through it all, but He ultimately prevailed. If the crucifixion of Christ was a victory for His persecutors, Jesus 'equalised' with His rising from the dead, in which the promise made in His ministry was followed through. This "lifting up the lids of your eyes" works on two levels; Jesus lifted his eye-lids in His Resurrection and escaped from the tomb, while the 'Dover girl', after leaving home, is able to see for the first time in a metaphorical sense, through her encounter with drugs and willingness to explore. The song goes backwards chronologically in the fourth verse by depicting the crucifixion of Christ (the steeple pine is the cross of Jesus). Jesus was crucified on top of an old hill ("The hills as old as time") at Golgotha, 'The Place of the Skull'. Jesus was soon to be put to the toughest of tests, in making His way to Golgotha to be crucified. He was put to the test throughout His lifetime by those wishing to see Him fail, but this was His ultimate test. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He asked God if it was possible that the cup of suffering be taken from Him. Jesus knew that He was being put to the test and that He must carry out the will of His Father, despite the suffering He knew that He would have to face. The line "whipped by the winds of the west" is evocative of when Jesus was at sea, especially when related to the third line of the last verse. Since the first three lines of the penultimate verse focus on the crucifixion, it should instead be read metaphorically as Jesus being whipped by the Roman soldiers. Rome, Italy can be viewed as 'the West' (the song focuses on the West elsewhere, with the end of the third verse alluding to America and Britain, prominent representatives of the Western world). The story of Jesus' life is one of a struggle between Himself and Rome. Rome's leading figures wished to see the Roman Empire preserved and thus viewed Jesus' presence as a threat, rendering an end to His existence as imperative. It is worth noting that the imagery presented in the song, the crucifixion of Jesus combined with an attack on America, is not without precedent. The video for 'Kill Surf City' by The Jesus and Mary Chain, a b-side on their 'April Skies' single (April 1987), shows 'Jesus' taking shots at the Stars and Stripes.
The final verse evokes imagery of Judgement Day, where 'She' (a Gnostic theme is evident in this song) has the scales of Judgement in 'Her' hands. The statue of Themis, Greek goddess of law and public assembly, is a traditional symbol at U.S. and U.K. courthouses. She appears as she was depicted in ancient times, holding the scales of justice; a blindfold was added by artists of the 16th century to denote impartial justice. God, Themis in the context of this song, holds the scales of justice over the earth’s population. God's very nature is justice; His name, Jehovah Mishpat, means 'God of Justice'. The "shifting sands" which She "stands on" places God in an hourglass, an allusion to the sands of time running out until the day of Judgement.****** The U.S. flag embodies Liberty and Justice according to the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance:
Jan Vermeer (1632 - 1675) used potent symbolism in 'Woman Holding a Balance' (c.1664), in which a Madonna-like woman holds a delicate - and empty - balance; behind her hangs a painting of Christ's Last Judgement in a heavy black frame. The woman's head obscures the place where Saint Michael customarily would be weighing souls in the balance, while the figure of Christ appears immediately above her head. The central vanishing point of the painting occurs at the woman's fingertips, with the little finger of her right hand echoing the horizontal arm of the balance and picture frame. On the table before her lie earthly treasures, pearls (these can also represent purity, as seen in Lorenzo Lotto's painting of Saint Catherine) and a gold chain. Behind her, Christ passes final judgement on the human race. The mirror on the wall is symbolic of vanity or self-knowledge, while a soft light raking across the picture sounds a spiritual note. The serene, contemplative woman, dressed in the traditional blue outfit of Mary, and seemingly expecting child (those who argue against this interpretation emphasize that her costume - a short jacket, a bodice, and a thickly padded skirt - reflects a style of dress current in the early to mid 1660s), stands in the centre of all of this, calmly weighing transitory worldly concerns against spiritual ones. One of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse carried a pair of scales, as depicted in Albrecht Dürer's 'The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' (1498). In Judgement, Jesus is depicted by artists according to the words of the Bible, as "sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven." (Matthew 26: 64). To take two examples, 'Christ the Judge' (1447), Chapel of San Brizio, Duomo, Orvieto by Fra Angelico (1400 - 1455) and Michelangelo's (1475 - 1564) portrayal of Christ in 'The Last Judgement' (1536 - 1541) from the Sistine Chapel can be seen below. Squire and Brown place Christ within the sand of an hourglass in keeping with the scene of the song - the progression from land to sea by the boat of the 'Dover girl'. This imagined figure in an hourglass is rather like the one which inspired Champagne Supernova, from '(What's The Story) Morning Glory ?' One night, Noel and his then-girlfriend Meg Matthews returned to Meg's house after a date, and Noel noticed a peculiar sugar jar in her kitchen. This Alessi Gianni jar can be found in the CD booklet of '(What's The Story) Morning Glory ?', on the page containing the 'Champagne Supernova' lyrics. A small plastic man hangs from the lid, just above the level of sugar in the jar. While studying this figure, the lyric, "Someday you will find me caught beneath the landslide" formed in Noel's mind, and Champagne Supernova was quickly penned in Meg's kitchen. From the same Oasis album, the lyric from 'Hey Now !', "And time as it stands won't be held in my hands", I propose, is a re-write of this Waterfall lyric. As illustrated towards the end of this page, this is a feature of various lyrics by Noel Gallagher, and I think in this instance, he is substituting 'scales' with a timepiece.
Waterfall was recorded twice, firstly at Battery Studios, London - where John Leckie felt that it was a little too fast - and subsequently at Rockfield Studios, Wales (thus, there is another version lying around in the vaults somewhere). When asked at what point the band's standard of songwriting began to improve, Ian Brown cited Waterfall as being of great significance, telling Uncut magazine, "'Waterfall' was the first time we went, 'Wow, this is it.'":
The band's first live TV performance was Waterfall on 'The Other Side Of Midnight', hosted by Tony Wilson*******, in January 1989. Wilson had previously passed on the chance of managing the band; his introduction of the band contains an admission of error for failing to recognise their potential earlier. Wilson's researcher had been urging him to have the Roses on the show, but he expressed no interest; this was until one night backstage with the Happy Mondays in Chester, Gary Whelan played him Elephant Stone on a cassette player - he was suitably impressed. Ian Tilton's shots from 'The Other Side Of Midnight' performance were subsequently used for the sleeve of the debut LP.
'April Come She Will' by Simon & Garfunkel is a significant musical influence. This is Ian Brown speaking to Q magazine in 2000 about the debut LP's production:
'There Goes the Fear', from 'The Last Broadcast', The Doves' second LP, owes a significant debt to Waterfall. So too does the prominent throbbing bass on Kasabian's 'Processed Beats', from their Madchester-tinged debut album; a mix of this track with Waterfall was subsequently made. Waterfall was also sampled by DJ Sam Flanigan for a mashup with Lily Allen's 'LDN'. Waterfall was used in the films 'Green Street' (starring Elijah Wood) and 'There's Only One Jimmy Grimble' (starring Robert Carlyle). A brief effect on Oasis's Wonderwall video, where a shot of Noel Gallagher is repeated in columns, borrows stylistically from the Waterfall video. 'The Panel', an Irish weekly chat show first broadcast on RTE2 in 2003, uses Waterfall as its theme song. Just as the essence of 'Revolution' by The Beatles was lost when it became used in a Nike advertising campaign (see Ian MacDonald's notes in 'Revolution In The Head'), it was perhaps inevitable that such an anthemic song as Waterfall would suffer the same fate. A song critical of the damaging influence of the commercialist and materialistic aspects of America on the U.K..... was used for the U.K. National Lottery advertising campaign in 2003.
* In his youth, Squire built a monument to Joe Strummer in his bedroom. A later piece, 'Rotten 2c' (2004), portraying Strummer's contemporary, Johnny Rotten (then appearing on 'I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here !'), would, from literal interpretation its title (Rotten to see), appear to express that Squire was unimpressed by the punk figure's venture into reality TV. The turn of the century would see a loosening of principles from punk and indie's finest frontmen, with each become walking advertisements for Country Life butter and Adidas respectively.
** With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism in 1989, America's influence overseas was to increase further; Capitalism now had no ideological opposition. This is why historian Niall Ferguson argues in 'Colossus: the rise and fall of the American empire' that 11/9 (9 November 1989) rather than 9/11 (11 September 2001) was the real turning point in American foreign policy. Following the collapse of the Berlin wall, America had no identifiable 'enemy'. Saddam Hussein soon filled this void with his invasion of Kuwait on 2nd August 1990. He was to be the focus of two Gulf wars fought by America and her allies: (1990 - 1991) and (2003). The beginning of the twenty-first century has witnessed a great chasm between the world's two largest religions, Christianity and Islam, while the previous century was characterised by the polarity of communism versus capitalism. The Western world was once obsessed with a polarity of religion, leading to 800 years of conflict, and this has resurfaced ferociously at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
*** T. C. W. Blanning, Short Oxford history of Europe: the nineteenth century 1789 - 1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 247.
**** Britpop is the term given to the British alternative rock movement which reached its peak between 1994 and 1996, characterised by the plethora of bands who, drawing heavily upon '60s and '70s influences, gave the impression that they were creating the soundtrack to the lives of a new generation of British youth. This period also witnessed the emergence of a multicultural British pop, focused firmly on the present rather than a gilded past. Drum 'n' bass, a genre characterised by fast tempo broken beat drums with heavy, often intricate basslines, broke through and the angst-sodden beats of Massive Attack came to reflect the millennial mood. The movement's 'capital' was Camden, where Noel Gallagher, Blur, Pulp and a host of other key figures from the scene would often congregate. Noel Gallagher, unlike The Stone Roses, was unconcerned about making it from Manchester and moved to London in 1993. His timing could not have been better, because Indie music's centre of gravity had shifted from Manchester to London, largely due to the impact of Suede. The Good Mixer, just off the High St in Camden Town, soon became Britpop's early HQ. The Stone Roses' work is distinct from the Britpop body of work in that Britpop's defining songs were marked by social commentaries, often ironic or cynical, such as Blur's 'Girls and Boys' and 'Country House', Oasis' 'Cigarettes & Alcohol', and Pulp's 'Common People'. In contrast, The Stone Roses' conceptually complex and painfully tender debut LP was more idealistic and had a stronger element of innocent romanticism. To take the example of the aforementioned Oasis track, this showcased the appeal of cigarettes, alcohol, drugs and hedonism as a remedy to the banality of working class life; lyrics such as "Is it worth the aggravation to find yourself a job when there's nothing worth working for ?" tapped into the mood of British working class youth in the mid-1990s ('Girls and Boys' by Blur contained much the same message - "Avoiding all work 'cause there's none available.") The erroneous lump categorization of The Stone Roses with their immediate successors overlooks key inherent elements within the former: the songwriting partnership of The Stone Roses were (effectively) teetotal, one-time members of the Socialist Workers Party, immersed in text ranging from the Bible to Albert Camus. When Ian and John were asked in a 1989 TV interview, "What gives you the greatest buzz ?", John humorously answers, "Sex", and a lengthy silence ensues. Ian then coyly remarks to John, "You're supposed to say Ecstasy though, John. That's what they want." Had this very same question been put five years later to the leading lights of the Britpop scene, one could predict with a strong degree of certainty the typical responses that would promptly fill such a void in conversation. Oasis' debut LP, Definitely Maybe, as Noel Gallagher was keen to remind the media, was about "shagging, drinking and taking drugs." Asked by Rolling Stone magazine in May 1996, "Are Oasis in fact hard-drinking, groupie-shagging, drug-snorting geezers ?", Noel leant back in his chair and smiled contentedly: "Yeah." The Stone Roses cast a long shadow over the hedonistic 90s, yet, all in their late 20s by the time of their debut album release, were more a product of the Spartan and politically embattled 80s. The halcyon period of The Stone Roses - from mid 1987 to the summer of 1990 - featured a blend of aching vulnerability and socialist revolutionary ire, largely absent from the bands who came in their wake. One would be inclined to venture towards a band on the fringes of the anti-intellectualism Britpop scene, the bookish and politically hard left Manic Street Preachers, to find a band of distinct commonality with The Stone Roses. This vein of work contrasted greatly with an anthemic Britpop release such as Girls and Boys; Damon Albarn was inspired by a holiday in Magaluf to pen commentary upon the rampant laddish 18-30 Club Med culture of the 90s:
Blur, Girls and Boys (1994)
A rise of unabashed maleness and lad culture (football, lager & 'birds'), exemplified by Loaded magazine and FHM, was a prominent characteristic of the Britpop era. Speaking to The Face in March 1995, Ian Brown distanced himself from this knuckle-dragging facet of the movement: "I think lad culture is really dangerous. What is it ? Just drinking beer and falling on the floor." The Gallagher brothers personified lad culture from the outset, whereas Damon Albarn was to later adopt this lifestyle as a badge of authenticity: "I started out reading Nabokov. Now I'm into football, dog racing and Essex girls." Underworld's Born Slippy .NUXX, featured on the 1996 'Trainspotting' soundtrack, became a defining hedonistic anthem ("Babes and babes and babes and babes and babes. And remembering nothing boy...Shouting lager lager lager lager"). Whereas Thatcher was strongly at odds with football, given its association with hooliganism, the sport suddenly became credible among the professional and media classes. The Acid House movement at the end of Thatcher's tenure has been largely credited with the distinct drop in hooligan activity in football. In 1995, Tony Blair could be seen doing headers with Kevin Keegan and in 1996, the Labour Party leader drew upon England's Euro '96 anthem, 'Three Lions', at a Labour Party conference speech: "Seventeen years of hurt. Never stopped us dreaming. Labour's coming home". 'Girl Power', a term appropriated by Geri Halliwell from the 1995 Shampoo single of this title, also was a defining movement of the era, reaching its zenith with The Spice Girls' 1997 Brits performance of 'Who Do You Think You Are' (the finest girl group release of the era came in 2000, with the wonderful 'Pure Shores' by All Saints). The Spice Girls were a key act in instituting a change in the charts away from Britpop, towards out-and-out pop. They beat off competition from Oasis, who were nominated for Best Single for 'Don't Look Back In Anger'. Earlier in the day, Liam Gallagher said he would not be coming to the awards, lest he "chin one of the Spice Girls." Upon receiving their award onstage, Mel C (aka Sporty Spice) pointed to her chin and shouted, "Come and have a go Liam if you think you're hard enough", exemplifying an era of 'laddishness' in both sexes of pop music - the ladette was born. Only a year before, at the previous Brits, Oasis had delivered a similar put-down to Blur. Oasis were notorious for their Beatles fixation but it was to be Ginger, Sporty, Scary, Baby and Posh - and not the Gallagher brothers' outfit - who were to become the most widely recognised group of individuals since John, Paul, George and Ringo. This was clearly on the agenda as early as the band's 1996 debut single, 'Wannabe', which ended with the name of each Spice Girl shown collectively on-screen. In their early days, The Beatles created the identity of a group of young, working class lads who had got together and suddenly taken the pop world by storm, an identity fostered in their first film, 'A Hard Day's Night.' The band were not working class, however, with Ringo being the only Beatle not to go to a Grammar School. The Spice Girls, also wishing to create an 'ordinary' image, gatecrash an aristocratic party at St. Pancras Grand Hotel, London, at the beginning of the 'Wannabe' video. At the outset, the band are juxtaposed between the homeless and the upper echelon of society, and after expressing an empathy for the plight of the former (somewhat tactlessly, with Baby Spice bizarrely stealing a homeless person's cap) and a boredom with the lack of commonality with the latter, they proceed, uninvited, inside. Upon arrival inside, Emma throws the guest list in the air and after causing a commotion, the group leave by bus. The individual personas of the Spice Girls are more pronounced than those of The Beatles; the former were consciously aimed at a younger audience. Ginger, Sporty, Scary, Baby and Posh were able to transmit the message to young girls that they could forge a unique personality, without losing close relationships as part of a group.
The movement also exercised a brief period of cultural hegemony, one highlight being the aforementioned film, 'Trainspotting', and its Britpop-centric soundtrack (featuring Blur, Elastica, Pulp and Sleeper). Despite the majority of the 'Britpop' movement happening under the premiership of The Conservative Party's John Major, Tony Blair's New Labour was keen to attach and credit itself with this image of 'Cool Britannia', upon coming to power in May 1997. Inspirational sparks flew from the synergy between pop, politics, film, art and culture and the phrase was quickly adopted in the media and advertising, seeming to capture the 'It' quality of London at the time. The YBAs (Young British Artists) co-opted much of their stance from British pop. Blair's government was elected on a platform of modernisation and the Prime Minister's relative youth gave the idea fresh currency. Pictures of the Prime Minister with a Fender Stratocaster identified Blair with the movement, and his desire to infiltrate the culture was demonstrated further when a host of celebrities, including Noel Gallagher (above), were invited to Number 10 upon Labour's arrival in power. Those not adhering to script were quickly put in their place by the new regime; Damon Albarn, who refused an invitation to attend, questioned whether it was the right signal for a future Prime Minister to be sending his children to a grant-maintained school, and received a letter saying, "Don't talk about this." Albarn had previously flirted with Labour, having been summoned to the Commons to meet John Prescott and Tony Blair in 1995, but he was soon to become disillusioned with the realisation of New Labour's plans. Oasis were keener to attach themselves to this harbinger of a new Britain, with Noel declaring at the 1996 Brit Awards, "There are seven people in this room giving a little bit of hope to young people in this country", proceeding to name-check the five members of his band, Creation Records' Alan McGee and Tony Blair. "And if you've got anything about you, get up there and shake Tony Blair's hand. He's the Man." This relationship solidified further with the Oasis songwriter's visit to Number 10; each will undoubtedly have recognised the parallels with the relationship between The Beatles and then Labour Leader and Prime Minister, Harold Wilson in the mid 1960s. Wilson exhibited his populist touch in 1965, when he nominated The Beatles with the award of MBE. The award was popular with the youth in society and created the image that the Prime Minister was 'in touch' with the younger generation, cementing Wilson's image as a modernistic leader and linking him to the burgeoning pride in the 'New Britain' typified by The Beatles. Similarly, New Labour surfed the 'Britpop' zeitgeist cannily and were a skilful operator of the media. As far back as the 1980s, Neil Kinnock had tried to wrest the Union Jack from the Tories, to redefine patriotism as something other than Queen, country, stately homes and 'the heritage industry'. New Labour quickly realised that the new Anglo-centric pop climate was doing the job for them, and could help marshal the youth vote into the bargain.
'Cool Britannia' was to 'Britpop' what the catchphrase 'Swinging London' was to the early years of Wilson's Labour government, a cultural parallel best illustrated by the Vanity Fair headline (above) with Patsy Kensit and Liam Gallagher: "London Swings Again!" Chris Evans' weekly variety show, TFI Friday, part of the televisual arm of Britpop, used Ocean Colour Scene's 'The Riverboat Song' to introduce guests. 'Shooting Stars' utilised large 'Mod' logos as part of the set and featured many prominent Britpop musicians as guests. The leading acts of the Britpop era all drew heavily from the imagery and sounds of the 1960s. Lewis Morley's photoshoot with Christine Keeler, one of the most iconic images of the 1960s, was recreated collectively on the front cover of The Spice Girls' 'Who Do You Think You Are / Mama' single, while the 1965 film 'Faster, Pussycat ! Kill ! Kill !' provided the inspiration for the 'Say You'll Be There' video. Patrick Macnee, the actor who played John Steed in the 1960s television series, The Avengers, made an appearance in Oasis' 'Don't Look Back In Anger' video, while Blur's Damon Albarn struck up a close relationship with The Kinks' Ray Davies, with the two performing a duet of 'Waterloo Sunset'. In this respect, Blur were key in introducing another critical element of the Britpop movement, a mod-influenced 1960s view of English life, portrayed through a clear lyrical narrative, which had largely been missing from the preceding 'shoegazing' and 'Madchester' scenes. His most recent predecessor to do this to such great effect was arguably Paul Weller (on tracks such as The Jam's 'That's Entertainment' and 'Town Called Malice'), who himself enjoyed a career resurgence in the Britpop era with his 1995 solo album, 'Stanley Road', and guest appearance on Oasis' 'Champagne Supernova'.
The Jam, Town Called Malice (1982)
Blur laid the blueprint for this as early as their April 1993 single, 'For Tomorrow'. The year before the single was released, the band reached their lowest point. They were prone to giving drunken and loose performances and being far outclassed by other bands such as early rivals, Suede. In this period, they embarked on a U.S. tour when the country was in the midst of the grunge era; audiences were unreceptive to their sound and the band detested the experience. Parts of England at the time were seemingly undergoing a mass Americanised refit, and caught in this curtural twilight zone, Albarn began to write songs in a classic English vein. 'For Tomorrow' was one such song, written on Christmas Day, 1992. The video, directed by Julien Temple, was filmed in a classic black and white style and opens with Albarn in typical British clothing, lying afloat in the Thames. Shot entirely in London, it switches between scenery from Trafalgar Square, Nelson's Column and Primrose Hill. One could join a thread between the Dover girl at the wheel on Waterfall, to the "twentieth century girl with her hands on the wheel" on 'For Tomorrow', with each feminine figure taking on America. The single front cover of 'For Tomorrow', showing two World War Two fighter planes, added further a sense of Britishness and national pride to the release. The band's 'Parklife' album became the quintessential Britpop album: confident, upbeat, yet containing an inherent cynicism and knowingness about English life. It also defined Britpop's iconography; despite being a primarily middle class outfit, the band shrewdly drew upon imagery from working class life: dog tracks, ice cream vans and package holidays. This British pride was embodied in the Parklife video, which featured spoken verses by actor Phil Daniels, who had starred in 'Quadrophenia'. Sleeper's 'Inbetweener' video positioned the band in a supermarket (with a guest appearance by Supermarket Sweep's Dale Winton) and laundrette, while in Pulp's 'Common People' video, Jarvis Cocker is pushed around a supermarket by Sadie Frost, an English actress (the single front cover featured the band in a greasy spoon cafe, eating establishments which became a badge of working class identity in this era). Blur, Oasis and Pulp were the premier acts of Britpop and Louise Wener aptly summarises the situation for those Britpop acts hanging on to the coat tails of 'the big three'. Suede were close to this 'big three', but their admirable refusal to conform to a 'Britpop stereotype' in this era, hindered their chances of selling at a level on a par with Blur and Oasis:
"British journalists wanted this album to be this standard-bearer for British rock, but I'm not anyone's pawn. People always expect me to write songs about council flats and corned beef and living in Leyton in 1945 and other very British stuff. I just decided, well, I'm going to write about James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, which are the last things anybody expected me to write about."
(Brett Anderson speaking to The New York Times about Suede's second album, 'Dog Man Star', February 1995)
***** John Harris, The last party (London: Fourth Estate, 2003), p. xvii. The key 'anti-influence' on the Britpop movement was Grunge. In the wake of the American invasion led by Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, British acts were thrown on the defensive. America threw down the gauntlet and Britain formed its response in Britpop. A generation of Brits came of age in the mid 90's, who harboured resentment that America had enjoyed this unchallenged cultural hegemony. The contrast between 1994's 'Live Forever' by Oasis and the Nirvana b-side of the same year, 'I Hate Myself and Want to Die' (a title which Cobain had previously considered giving to the band's third studio album, 'In Utero') could not have been greater. The former imbued Oasis' army of fans with a united sense of immortality, while the title of the latter defined the attitude of the grunge bands popular at the time. One important trait which Oasis carried on from their predecessors, The Stone Roses, was a positivity about life. "I don't have time for negative thinking. Positive thinking brings its own rewards," stated Ian Brown in a 1989 TV interview. Noel Gallagher: "Live Forever was written in the middle of grunge and all that, and I remember Nirvana had a tune called 'I Hate Myself and I Want to Die', and I was like 'Well, I'm not fucking having that.' As much as I fucking like him [Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain] and all that shit, I'm not having that. I can't have people like that coming over here, on smack, fucking saying that they hate themselves and they wanna die. That's fucking rubbish. Kids don't need to be hearing that nonsense. Seems to me that here was a guy who had everything, and was miserable about it. And we had fuck-all, and I still thought that getting up in the morning was the greatest fuckin' thing ever, 'cause you didn't know where you'd end up at night. And we didn't have a pot to piss in, but it was fucking great, man." ('Lock the Door', Stop the Clocks bonus DVD, 2006). Cobain committed suicide in April 1994 and featured in the U.S. 'Live Forever' music video. Whereas the first Stone Roses LP embodied sunshine and colour, the second took on an altogether darker mood. This was wholly reflective of the band's fragmented state in the mid 90s, with a despondency setting in, particularly emanating from Reni. Ian has always attempted to maintain an uplifting attitude within the band and the dichotomy in outlook between himself and a downbeat Reni at The Stone Roses' reunion press conference in 2011 is fascinating to watch. At one point, Reni reports that Ian and Mani are sounding good in rehearsals, but John and himself are "pretty rusty." This is quickly disputed by both Ian and Mani, keen to give the impression that all four players are on form and fighting fit for their comeback. At another juncture in the conference, Reni again goes on a dispirited tract and Ian swiftly interjects, "This is a great day for all positive thinkers."
****** Noel has stated in interviews that "He lives under a waterfall," from Oasis's 'Supersonic', is a direct reference to The Stone Roses' Waterfall. Noel Gallagher, indie's finest magpie, fuses elements of The Beatles, The La's, The Stone Roses, The Rolling Stones and T-Rex to name only a few, in his work. A plethora of Stone Roses references can be found in Oasis's work, originally quite well disguised and innovative in utilisation, but reaching a quite tiresome and blatant peak on their Be Here Now album:
- "Where angels fly, you won't play. So guess who's gonna take the blame for my big mouth."......"Into my big mouth you could fly a plane."
(My Big Mouth / Where Angels Play & Standing Here).
- "The future's mine and it's no disgrace. 'Cos in the end the past means nothing."
(I Hope I Think I Know / She Bangs The Drums).
- "They are sleeping while they dream. And then they wanna be adored......My star will shine."
(Magic Pie / I Wanna Be Adored & Your Star Will Shine).
In the case of 'Magic Pie', this appears to have been reciprocal; a John Squire lyric from Love Is The Law, "Oasis was a shop with shoes so hot, they were sure to blow your mind", considered alongside the Magic Pie lyric, 'I dig their shoes', reveals a mutual appreciation of 'shoes'. 'Shoes' equates to songs, with Squire acknowledging how Oasis took on the Roses' mantle, and Noel returning the compliment. There is a clothes shop in Manchester called Oasis, and thus the Squire lyric works on two levels. Noel attempts to link his own songs in a 'riddle' with those of The Stone Roses, for example claiming that 'Sally', from their 1996 single 'Don't Look Back In Anger', is Sally Cinnamon and that (the figure) 'Lyla', their 2005 single, is "Sally’s sister." Listen to the end of 'Acquiesce' from the Oasis videos 'Live By The Sea', 'There and Then', and The White Room performance (17/04/95), where Noel can be heard playing the riff from Sally Cinnamon. In interviews, Noel describes hearing Sally Cinnamon for the first time as a defining moment for him: "When I heard Sally Cinnamon for the first time, I knew what my destiny was." Click here to view an Oasis rehearsal at Manchester Boardwalk from 1992, with Noel Gallagher running through the intro of Sally Cinnamon. Numerous similar examples could be listed of Noel Gallagher remoulding La's lyrics; for example, 'Stop the Clocks' thematically and musically owes a significant debt to 'Looking Glass' by The La's, with the lyric, "turn the world around" a direct lift. The song was debuted in 2003 at the Zanzibar club in Liverpool, a fitting place to air it, given its debt to the Liverpudlian band. In Paul Du Noyer's 'Liverpool: Wondrous Place' (p. 230), Noel reflects upon the Northwest's rich musical heritage: "Between Manchester and Liverpool, you've probably got it all in British guitar music: The La's, The Beatles, Oasis, The Stone Roses, The Smiths."
******* Tony Wilson, a journalist for Granada Television, founded the record label Factory Records and the Haçienda nightclub in Manchester. A semi-fictionalized version of his life and of the surrounding era was made into a 2002 film, '24 Hour Party People', which stars the comedian Steve Coogan as Wilson. Wilson often overplays the merit of Factory's Happy Mondays, on occasion claiming them to be a more important band than The Stone Roses, and hailing vocalist Shaun Ryder as being on a par with the great English poets and lyricists of the past ("the greatest British poet since Yeats"..."the greatest lyric writer since Dylan"); of his contemporaries, Morrissey or Shane MacGowan would be much more deserving of any such appraisal in the opinion of the editor. Adopting the 'Cemetry Gates' model of a plot division along lines of literary merit, if Keats, Yeats and Dylan are on one side, then Shaun William Ryder is very firmly on the other. In a BBC documentary about Factory Records, 'From Joy Division To Happy Mondays', Wilson attempts to credit Fool's Gold to the Happy Mondays: "We now remember The Stone Roses, quite rightly, for things like Fool's Gold, which is the rolling Acid House rhythm that the Mondays invented six months before." This new musical direction taken by The Stone Roses in November 1989 was influenced not by the Happy Mondays, but by a Warrior breakbeat record obtained by John Squire. This somewhat inflated opinion of his own act is, one feels, an attempt to compensate for the one that got away (two, if we were to include The Smiths). Andy Couzens states that Wilson tried everything that he could to prevent the Roses' progression, and his thoughts are echoed by Stone Roses manager, Howard Jones:
"I thought it was disgraceful. But, I understand their reasons for doing it. They were trying to say: "Manchester, the Tony Wilsons of this world, fuck you mate. Y'know. People are gonna know we're here."
(Howard Jones speaking on BBC documentary, Blood On The Turntables, about The Stone Roses graffitiing the band's name on Manchester's monuments. Ian and Reni were responsible for this, with each taking turns to spray a wall, such as the side of the library in St. Peter's Square, while the other looked out for police).
It is the opinion of the editor that the Happy Mondays, while being a key facet of the 'Madchester' movement's aesthetic, were not in the same league as The Stone Roses, artistically or musically (to my knowledge, a Happy Mondays LP has never topped - or came close to topping - a best ever British LP poll). In a 'Wired' Joy Division documentary in 1988, Wilson also makes the very challengeable claim that The Buzzcocks were "the greatest punk group."
Modal analysis (by Steve Davidson):
This song has a modal change but retains the same Root note. It starts out with the verse chords essentially a Gb power chord, but the tonality implies a Gb major chord. Then there is a descending melody in the bass of the following chords: Cb major, Gb major/Bb, Ab minor. The second time, it goes up at the end like this:
Cb major, Gb major/Bb, Db7sus4.
So all these chords belong to the Key of Gb Ionian. Here are the notes:
Gb Ionian scale (Gb Ab Bb Cb Db Eb F Gb)
Some of you may prefer to think of it as F# Ionian. In which case the notes will be F# G# A# B C# D# E# F#. As it goes to the chorus, the 2nd descending melody in the bass is different. The chords this time are:
Fb major, Cbsus4/Eb, Dbmin7
The tonal centre is Still Gb but it shifts slightly by way of the Fb major chord (otherwise known as an E major chord) to Gb Mixolydian. Here are the notes:
Gb Mixolydian scale (Gb Ab Bb Cb Db Eb Fb Gb)
It's perhaps easier to think of it as F# Mixolydian, which hosts the same notes but in a slightly friendlier fashion:
F# Mixolydian (F# G# A# B C# D# E F#)
In this case the last 3 chords would read like this: E major, Bsus4/D#, C#min7. It returns to Gb Ionian again for the verse riff. Then the fast bit. Here the tonal centre shifts again to the Ab Dorian mode. The chords are Ab minor, Cb major, Db major. The notes are the same as the Gb Ionian scale, but the emphasis is on the Ab minor chord during this section.
And finally, the end section. We're back to our Gb power chord which again implies a major chord. This time, Squire stays with the Gb Mixolydian mode throughout to give it a more moody feel.
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