If I ever get organised enough to pre-arrange my own funeral this track will definitely be bringing it to a close. I hope that everyone will be up and dancing, and that it gets played right until the end… to the bitter end.
The Stone Roses album, and the couple of singles that preceded it (Sally Cinnamon and Fools Gold) represents something of a sonic apogee for me, but coming at the start of something rather than the end. That’s because by the time the late ’80s had come around I had reached something of a nadir music-wise. Like many of my peers I had kept with the bands of my youth and they were, quite frankly, getting a bit long in the tooth. I hardly went to gigs, but when I did the words ‘here’s a new one’ didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
Only New Order kept me going really.
I went off to university… a late entrant after working for six years after school… hoping that would lead be down new exciting avenues, but the sounds that I most heard coming out of rooms were those of Dire Straits and Queen… conservative choices in Conservative Britain… I was so disappointed.
It took several years and meeting people who were older than me to get me out of my rut. My girlfriend at the time had got friendly with a couple who lived locally, people for whom I will be forever grateful for getting my out of that furrow into a new groove. Nights of drinking and smoking were accompanied by the early albums from the likes of The Pixies, Happy Mondays, Nirvana and… most memorably of all The Stone Roses.
That album hit me like a hazy bullet as track after track of glorious music swaggered out of the speakers. It was, in short, the album that I had been looking for for the previous ten years and captured a point in time that seemed just right. For me there remains a beautiful balance to the album, and every track on it… it’s not rock, but it’s also not purely dance music… it’s laid back but not ambient… it’s melodious but still packs a punch… it has an aggression to it but is not in your face.
It is for all these reasons, and I’m sure that I could think of many more, that meant that The Stones Roses could never repeat this feat… could never find that chemistry again, because the ingredients were no longer there to make it. It was a unique moment that, while never repeated, has for me stayed fresh and vibrant, and this is why I have chosen this, the final track on the album.
‘I Am The Resurrection’ has continued to pop up at key moments over the years and linked me with friends and times perhaps like no other track. It is a track that I find so glorious, so upbeat… but also one that you can just fully get your head into… a track that you can freak out to… but also one that you can sit back and marvel at.
Most of all though it’s a song of my life from an album of my life… I hope people will remember me and our times together when they remember it.
-o0o-
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