Down, down, you bring me down

The Stone Roses - 'I Am The Resurrection' (The Stone Roses - 1989)

I think there are two ways the universe leads you into this song; The first is just as those vocals of ‘This Is The One’ fade out, pulsing like a siren of a long since departed police car. The second is in a nightclub with a slightly too sticky floor from all the snakebite at about 0150 in the morning, that time where everyone either has their arms around each other and have probably just finished singing ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ or ‘Mr. Brightside’ or they’ve been bouncing to ‘Song 2’ or ‘Last Nite’.

Either way, when those fourteen seconds of naked drumming from Reni kick in, we know we are near the end but there is still a long way to go. On an album with a lot of treble and florid guitar parts that sound like delicate birds, this song really packs a punch from the start - earning it’s status an indie disco classic with that almost Motown stomp it begins with.

The song allegedly was borne out of Mani playing the bassline of The Beatles’ ‘Taxman’ backwards¹ during soundtracks and mutated from a joke into an actual song which closes the last eight minutes The Stone Roses, the band’s 1989 debut. Mani’s contribution starts at that fifteen second mark and then singer Ian Brown comes in with the quote from the subject line, words that do mean something to you if they activated an earworm already.

The lyrics themselves are absolutely loaded with messianic and religious imagery, to the extent that the song’s wikipedia page has a sub-section called that. Guitarist John Squire has said it is a “murderous attack” on one individual and both he and Brown know who it is. Brown seems to have kept his comments to saying it is anti-Christianity. He appears to be saying that there is no point in preaching to him, he feels he has seen enough in his life. Aside from the obviousness of the title phrase the rest of the song is full of biblical allusions to long tongues and stonings.

Brown feels a sense of self-righteous congratulations for not disliking the person in question as much as he thinks he could do, to the point where he develops a messiah complex himself. I struggle not to think of Brown arms aloft nodding his head in that way that invented Liam Gallagher as I’m hearing the post-chorus before Squire comes in noodling.

Aside from sounding like The Clash on MDMA for much of the record, there are a few songs where there is a notably chiming, Byrdsian swagger to the music - something that Indie music from The UK has been good at by virtue of putting on dark sunglasses and picking up a 12-string Rickenbacker for the last 45 years. This is brought home here by referencing The Byrds, who themselves were quoting a biblical verse (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8) in ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’

Calling the song ‘I Am The Resurrection’ is said to be the reason the band’s follow-up album was called The Second Coming. - Yet another example of the set-up for what comes next in an artist’s discography.

If you were only familiar with the single released in 1992, the 7th² from the album thanks to SIlvertone’s policy of trying to get blood from The Stone Roses but the full length version drops the vocals and becomes something else.

The outro is a rock/dance template that the Madchester sound grew on like mushrooms in the forest. It is funky, it shimmers and shines in a way Suede would do a few short years later, it has elements of Led Zeppelin and The Allman Brothers that the band would go overboard with on the next record. It weaves itself into small cul-de-sacs, pulls back and wiggles off somewhere else all the while incorporating snatches of melody from the song as well as going after the type of vibe given off by records like Love’s Forever Changes or Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968.

The Stone Roses had some decidedly mixed reviews on release, a decade later the record was frequently being cited as one of the best ever, something I’ve found to be an exaggeration, then another decade passes and the time has come to shoot it down and people are talking about it being an overrated record by a bunch of sixties retreat-nicks or that the record is overlong and repeats the same trick, bludgeoning you into submission. That view is certainly too far in the other direction for me.

I would say that the opening 1-2-3 is rightfully revered and this song is justifiably considered an indie dancefloor and guitar anthem and one that paved the way for a lot of the fusion that became known as Madchester in the early 1990s as well as sowing the seeds for Britpop by instilling a sense of confidence that the Brothers Gallagher would pick up and run with by the middle of the decade.

N.B. If you enjoy discovery and frustrating Sophie’s Choice polls check out Tom Ewing’s People’s Poll on Twitter, this month on the subject of closing tracks.

1. Many, many years ago I was in a sticky floor nightclub that played The Beatles’ ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ and segued straight into the outro of ‘I Am The Resurrection’ from 3:38 onwards it is lodged so permanently in my head that if I hear either song, I think of the other.

2. (SEVEN)