Monday's Long Song

Over- familiarity can be a curse with songs. Sometimes you have to hear a song differently to appreciate it again, in a different context or space or just at volume. Since it was released on November 9th 1989 Fool's Gold has become one of those overplayed songs but occasionally I can hear it for what it is again. It stands on its own in The Stone Roses back catalogue, a 9 minute 53 seconds B-side that became an A-side, a long way from the 60s inspired songs on the debut, a fair distance too from the extended jam section of I Am The Resurrection (which is much more indebted to rock music than Fool's Gold is).

Fool's Gold is effortless, ice cool, ghostly northern funk, with menacing whispered vocals and all manner of effects pulled out of John Squire's guitar and pedals. Squire and Brown wrote it at Sawmills in Cornwall, based a four bar drum loop from a James Brown record with Reni adding live drums later to toughen it up. Ian Brown's lyrics were inspired by Humphrey Bogart film The Treasure Of Sierra Madre, the story of 3 prospectors betraying each other. Squire's wah wah guitar part sounds like a helicopter, rising and falling while Mani's tight but rubbery bassline holds things together. It doesn't really sound like anything else they recorded (the follow up One Love is more song based with a Resurrection style jam section). It doesn't really sound like anything anybody else at the time recorded either.

Fool's Gold

Initially the 12" single was released with What The World Is Waiting For as the A-side but it was Fool's Gold that radio picked up on, that was switched around on subsequent pressings of the single and it was Fool's Gold that saw them crash-land into Top Of The Pops in November 1989. The band look brilliant in the clip, insouciant, cocksure and calm in the knowledge it has been their year- especially the moment where Ian raises the microphone above his head and stares down the camera lens while miming the words, not playing along with the pretence that it could be live. A little act that speaks volumes.