The Stone Roses’ eight minute epic, “I Am the Resurrection”, must be one of the greatest album closers of all time. Easily the Roses’ most anthemic song, “I Am the Resurrection” and its many remixes were a favorite at Manchester raves in the late 80s and early 90s. 

“I Am the Resurrection” begins with a short drum intro played by Reni until the song’s bassline, which is actually just the bassline to The Beatles’ “Taxman” played backwards, comes in. The drumming in this song is the most upbeat and punkish of any of the tracks from the Roses’ debut album. Ian Brown sings the first verse with just the bass and drums accompaniment before John Squire comes in on guitar. When the song gets to the chorus, the guitar part has an interesting sort of thumping sound to it that I really dig.

The arrangement of “I Am the Resurrection” differs from previous releases by the Roses that followed the traditional verse-chorus form. In “I Am the Resurrection”, there are three verses and choruses before the song goes into its culminating bridge. The song concludes with a nearly five minute jam that highlights the musical prowess of each of the band’s members. Brown even joins in on the bongos.

The lyrics of “I Am the Resurrection” describe a broken down relationship between two people, one of whom is the messiah. The song is told from the messianic narrator’s point of view and reads like a hate letter for most of the song, with the verses being filled with lines such as, “Stone me why can’t you see, you’re a no one no where washed up baby who’d look better dead.” The tone shifts in the bridge though, with the lines, “I am the resurrection and I am the life, I couldn’t ever bring myself to hate you as I’d like,” lampooning the narrator’s god-complex along with religion in general.

Although “She Bangs the Drums” is my favorite song by the Roses, I believe that “I Am the Resurrection” contains perhaps the greatest single minute of sound in the history of pop music. The song’s minute long bridge that precedes the instrumental outro caught me off guard the first time I listened to it. The first couple minutes of “I Am the Resurrection” are very rhythmic and somewhat rigid, but after the third chorus there is an unexpected drum fill that leads directly into the bridge with Brown proudly proclaiming, “I am the resurrection.” This is one of the best examples of how amazing the production is on the Roses’ debut. I can’t even really tell what’s going on for the most part, I just know that it sounds fantastic.

Typically, I don’t listen to many of the Roses’ live performances specifically because of what a terrible live singer Ian Brown is. However, with “I Am the Resurrection”, Brown’s vocals are the draw for the live recordings. Despite still being horribly off-key, Brown delivers the lyrics with such passion that he could have the voice of Kermit the Frog and I would still happily listen.

Next week I will be discussing the Roses’ first top-10 hit: “Fool’s Gold”.

The Stone Roses | I Am the Resurrection

For those who were musically aware during the late 80s and early 90s but not actual fans of The Stone Roses, there are two songs by the band that they will likely still know. The first of these is “I Wanna Be Adored”. The first single released after the band put out their debut album, The Stone Roses, “I Wanna Be Adored” is one of the Roses’ most beloved songs.

“I Wanna Be Adored” has a strange yet gripping intro. There are no distinguishable instruments for the first 40 seconds of the song, only a mysterious whirring mixture of noises. The best way I could describe the song’s opening sounds is the northern lights in sonic form. The noises’ dominance over the intro ends with the appearance of Mani’s bass. For a band as bass heavy as the Roses were, it is a big deal to award one of their songs the title of “best bassline”, but I have to give it to “I Wanna Be Adored”. Although it is very simple musically, the bassline absolutely makes the song, putting the listener into a hypnotic trance which only deepens with the first notes played by John Squire’s guitar. When I listen to this song I’ll often repeatedly rewind it to hear Squire’s intro over and over. The beginning of “I Wanna Be Adored” is second only to “Elephant Stone” in terms of Roses intros.

The lyrics of “I Wanna Be Adored” are very sparse. There are only three different lines in the main portion of the song. The first two, “I don’t have to sell my soul, he’s already in me”, make up the song’s verses, while the chorus contains the song’s titular line, “I wanna be adored”. While the chorus might fool listeners into thinking the song is about wanting to be loved, the true meaning is more apparent when one focuses on the verse lyrics. In the first two lines, the narrator discusses how he has been possessed by the devil. With this in mind, the “I wanna be adored” line sounds more like a confession of sin than the sigh of a hopeless romantic. The song ridicules those who are vainly obsessed with gaining the approval and adoration of others.

With its position as the first track on The Stone Roses’ legendary self-titled debut album, “I Wanna be Adored” has been the first Roses song that many, including myself, have ever heard. Before I started listening to the Roses, I had been a big fan of the band Oasis. I was listening to an interview with the lead singer of Oasis, Liam Gallagher, and he mentioned that he first knew he wanted to pursue a career in music after attending a Roses show in 1988. Trusting the word of the lee man, I decided to give them a listen starting with their debut album. I was skeptical of the band at first because of the slow buildup of “I Wanna be Adored”, but once that bassline began I was hooked.

Next week I will be discussing the closing track of The Stone Roses’ debut album: “I Am the Resurrection”.

The Stone Roses | I Wanna Be Adored

Expansive theatres were beginning to replace the dingy clubs the Roses had toiled in for years since their founding. With the release of “She Bangs the Drums”, The Stone Roses entered the mainstream. The single was the Roses’ first top-40 hit, peaking at number 36 on the UK Singles Chart in the summer of 1989. “She Bangs the Drums” was also the first Roses song to achieve significant airplay in the United States, reaching number nine on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay Chart.

The song begins with a few seconds of Reni’s hi-hat which is quickly joined by Mani playing the song’s rumbling bass line. About ten seconds in, John Squire’s guitar whooshes in with a brightness that signals the euphoria awaiting the listener for the next four minutes. With the entrance of the guitar, Reni switches to a more exuberant style of drumming that carries the rest of the tune. Ian Brown delivers the verse vocal in his trademark hushed tone before switching to more conventional singing in the choruses.

Like “Elephant Stone”, “She Bangs the Drums” is about a couple that has fallen out of love with each other. The first verse takes place in the present with the narrator expressing disdain for his former lover in lines such as, “Kiss me where the sun don’t sun, the past was yours but the future’s mine, you’re all out of time.” The mood quickly changes for the rest of the song though, as the lyrics go back to the past and detail the joy felt by the narrator when they first fell in love with their former partner. One line from the second verse, the line from which “She Bangs the Drums” takes its name, adequately sums up the rest of the song’s vibe: “I can hear her here she comes, she bangs the drums.” It’s talking about when you have feelings for someone that are so strong it’s like they’re playing drums within your soul that reverberate through every aspect of your being and leave you in a state of absolute euphoria.

Although I started listening to the Roses independently of my parents, I found out through “She Bangs the Drums” that they had been a staple of my mother’s youth. Last May, I was controlling the music in the car on a road trip with my Mom. I had played a couple of Roses songs around her before and she had never commented on them until that day when I put on “She Bangs the Drums”. The second Mani’s bassline started up her face burst into excitement as she exasperatedly started trying to place the band’s name. She recognized the song and a few others from clubs she had been to in the 80s. We never had many common musical interests before this, so it was a great bonding experience for the two of us.

“She Bangs the Drums” is easily my favorite song by The Stone Roses. It may even be my favorite song by any band. The classic Roses jangling guitar, groovy bassline, energetic drumming, and cosmic vocals combine with the finest lyrics Brown and Squire ever penned to create a tune that could turn a dreary trudge through a February blizzard into a summertime beachside skip. 

Next week I will be discussing the Roses’ biggest hit from their debut album: “I Wanna Be Adored”.

The Stone Roses | She Bangs the Drums

In 1989, The Stone Roses would finally start to bloom. By February, the Roses had finished recording all of the songs for their debut album which would be released that June. In March, they released the album’s lead single: “Made of Stone”. Though it wasn’t a massive hit, “Made of Stone” was the Roses’ first single to enter the national charts, peaking at number 90 on the UK Singles Chart.

“Made of Stone” opens with a few seconds of just John Squire playing an arpeggiated riff on guitar before the rest of the band jumps in. The contrast between the rhythm section and the lead guitar parts on this song is mesmerizing. If one were to take apart the different elements of the song and listen to just one at a time, they would have widely different guesses as to what genre of music they were listening to. Squire’s guitar work is straight jangle pop, while Reni’s drums and Mani’s bass could fool one into thinking they were grooving to an EDM backing track.

With “Made of Stone”, we’re starting to get into the territory of Roses’ songs with lyrics that I can’t figure out the overall meaning of. The verses of the song seem like they are detailing a car crash. The lines, “Your knuckles whiten on the wheel, the last thing that your hands will feel, your final flight can’t be delayed,” could describe the crash itself, and later verses such as, “I fall as far as I can see, ten twisted ghouls grin back at me, bad money dies I love the scene,” talk about the crash victim entering hell. This interpretation goes out the window during the choruses though. There is still crash-like imagery in the line, “The cars they burn below me,” but the main refrain, “Sometimes I fantasize, when the streets are cold and lonely,” throws me off. John Squire once said that the song is about having a wish come true. I really don’t see how that relates to the lyrics, but it’s the best explanation that’s been given.

A funny story came from one of the Roses’ performances of the song. For their first national television appearance, the Roses’ played “Made of Stone” on BBC’s The Late Show in late 1989. The song started out fantastic until the first chorus, when all the band’s amplifiers suddenly went dead in the middle of the show. As the presenter tried to transition to the next segment, Ian Brown started ranting in the background about how the show was wasting the band’s time. He loudly shouted “amateurs” several times on live television before the broadcast cut away. The incident amused viewers across the country and helped increase the band’s national profile.

“Made of Stone” isn’t one of my favorite Roses’ songs, but it’s still a classic. I have had a lot of fun picking out the introductory riff on guitar from time to time. Next week I will be discussing the Roses’ first top 40 hit: “She Bangs the Drums”.

The Stone Roses | Made of Stone