More backwards Stone Roses

When I put together a post about The Stone Roses and backwards music around 2012, I mentioned;

The first bit of experimentation was on their first single on Silvertone, Elephant Stone, which has a backwards version on the B-Side of the 12" single (titled "Full Fathom Five".) If you listen to it backwards, you hear that its a pretty straightforward backward version of the recording. (Specifically, the 7" mix.)

Anyway - I didn't think it was interesting enough to bother with a backwards/forwards comparison, so I hadn't really paid much attention to it. But I only recently realised there's another 'Full Fathom Five', apparently the original b-side, and also the version on the 20th Anniversary reissue box set thats a very different track. The version on reissues of the single was simply a reversed version of a different mix of the 7" (this is the re-reversed version on YouTube) - rumoured to be the original Peter Hook mix. 1.

Which I guess meams that my 12" vinyl isn't the original release. (Annoyingly, I don't have a record player that I can hook up to my computer to reverse it - my "manual" attempts to play it backwards isn't steady enough to be able to notice the subtle differences in the mix…)

So - in the spirit of completion, I had a quick go at aligning the backwards version of the backwards track with the forwards-version of the original (its considerably shorter); the original track is on the left, the reversed Full Fathom Five is on the right. (But it doesn't kick in until the end of the intro, around 1:35 in.)

Its a weird one; obviously not the same track - but at the same time, obviously not a completely different one either. The best way I can describe it is that I could imagine this coming out of the rear speakers, if I was listening to a surround sound version of the original.

(Unfortunately, the audio in the right channel is very glitchy when its supposed to be silent, and although the audio ends altogether at 4:50, there's another couple of minutes of silence at the end - but I was tired of re-re-editing the file, and it does the job for now. I might revisit it and tweak it a little later.)

(Standard disclaimers apply; don't listen if you don't own the records… or a streaming subscription, I guess? Transformative work for educational/research purposes - basically, please don't sue me; I can't be bothered with the admin.)

Wikipedia's Elephant Stone page lists a 2:56 version, and a longer 3:20 version on the cassette single. The version on Apple Music (from the 20th Anniversary collectors edition) is 3:03 though. Perhaps that's just a slightly longer fade in/out from the 2:56 version? After all, we're talking about a vinyl record that didn't have CD-like timestamps. If anyone out there has (or knows where to find) the 3:20 version, I'd love to hear it.

The title "Full fathom five" is taken from Ariel's song, from Shakespeare's The Tempest, addressing a character whose father has (spoliers: supposedly) died in a shipwreck.

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them — Ding-dong, bell.

Its also the title of a 1947 Jackson Pollock painting (and if you know Stone Roses record covers, you know that this is more likely to be John Squire's inspiration) - one of his early "drip" paintings.

You can see the painting on the MOMA website, and on the Jackson-pollock.org website. Interestingly, MOMA's website has it in portrait (as it was hung there about fifteen years ago when I saw it), but jackson-pollock.org presents it in landscape. So it seems entirely possible that one or the other is upside down - or maybe even reversed…

What you don't see from photos (I tried and failed to get some in some close-ups of my own) are the bits of detritus underneath the paint - coins, cigarette butts, scraps of paper, nails, paint tube caps etc. Beneath the surface of the mess of paint is… more mess.

My wife in front of Jackson Pollock's Full Fathom Five painting at the MOMA in New York, 2009

My wife and (unborn) son, in front of Full Fathom Five in the MOMA, New York, c. 2009

Trivia: The title of Elephant Stone might be a reference to Major General William George Keith Elphinstone. Send me home like an Elephant Stone being - perhaps - a reference to his disastrous military retreat, death, and while his body was being taken home, attacked "by a band of tribesmen who stripped and abused the corpse". Grim…

Other backwards tracks

While I'm revisiting the old backwards tracks, I should also note the versions of the EPs (listed with a 2009 copyright on Spotify and a more specific 17th July 2009 date on Apple Music- but I swear they haven't been around that long; Apple Music only launched in 2015 and I'm certain they weren't there then.)

Anyway - these EPs all have "untitled" backwards tracks; but its anyone's guess where they came from. (They were released on a USB stick that came with the 20th Anniversary re-release, if you bought the expensive box set - but whether they were rustled up by Silvertone for the re-release or actually produced by the band 'back in the day', I have no idea.)

I've not yet found any that sound interesting enough to inspire me to jump through the DRM-related hoops to try a backwards/forwards comparison on them.

And for a final bonus listen - there's a video of the reformed Roses rehearsing Don't Stop - that is, playing the backwards version of 1989's Waterfall, forwards in 2012. (Worth listening to for Reni's backing vocals alone.)

"Yet nothing means anything anymore"

  1. The song was originally recorded by Peter Hook, in his own studio before the Roses got their Silvertone deal - the released version was later remixed by John Leckie. ↩

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