After the success of its musical shift with Sally Cinnamon in 1986, The Stone Roses began delving deeper into their new musical direction.

Elephant Stone was one off the results, a thumping and propulsive number with catchy hooks and enigmatic lyrics. Pretty much everything that makes the band great in one nifty little capsule!

It’s one of the band’s best songs and we’re here to explore its history, as well as dive into its various versions and thrilling live performances.

The Energetic Rush of Elephant Stone and its Danceable Heights

As was standard for the band, singer Ian Brown and guitarist John Squire penned the lyrics to Elephant Stone.

This new musical direction for Brown and Squire triggered off their peak, as they started pelting out masterpiece after masterpiece at an alarming rate.

Along with Sally Cinnamon, Elephant Stone kicked off that creative period.

Peter Hook, of New Order and Joy Division fame (see the Madchester film 24 Hour Party People), produced its first take. That’s the version you can hear above.

It was the third single released by the band and launched in October 1988. But it was recorded in January 1988. Why the delay? It just took a while for the band to get a label to release it.

It was recorded in Revolution Studios in the south of Manchester. The band’s label Rough Trade set them up with Hook for the recording time. John Robb notes of it in his book The Resurrection of British Pop:

“[The song] was another move forward, another hint at the golden groove that the band were about to hit. The song was pumped full of tunes and had those chops and changes that would eventually become a total feature of their sound. Riding on Squire’s choppy wah wah, it was a fast-paced rush through classic guitar pop. Ian Brown’s sugar-sweet vocals were dripping an unlikely innocence: how could such a yob sound so angelic!”

But what exactly is the song about? An unusual title, non? John Squire described its meaning like this:

“What is it about? Love and Death, War and Peace, Morecambe and Wise…”

Cryptic, then. Although it wasn’t a successful single when first launched, after the band’s rise to superstardom in during 1989 it was launched again as a single in 1990. Then it peaked at 8 in the UK charts.

Anyway, analysing the song and it’s clearly about… well? Perhaps a bad drug trip. Ecstasy was pretty rife in Madchester during the late ’80s.

Elephant Stone may actually refer to an ecstasy tablet. Here’s a portion of the lyrics:

Burst into heaven,
Kiss in the cotton clouds,
Arctic sheets and fields of wheat,
I can’t stop coming down.

Your shrunken head,
Looking down on me above,
Send me home like an elephant stone,
To smash my dream of love,

Dreaming ’til the sun goes down,
And night turns into day,
Rooms are empty, I’ve got plenty,
You could move in right away.

Seems like there’s a hole,
In my dreams.

Bear in mind The Who’s Pete Townshend had penned songs in the mid-late 1960s based on his experiences with drugs.

And Elephant Stone seems to be The Stone Roses’ delve into that world, along with nods to the likes of Love’s 1967 album Forever Changes.

All of which is wrapped around a catchy and rather exhilarating song that moves at quite the rate. Depending on which version you listen to.

Live, the band tended to choose the shorter three minute take as an earlier set opener after I Wanna Be Adored. That worked very effectively, as it got the audience full into dancing flow after the slower opening number.

But we do prefer the 12″ version, with Reni’s drum loop followed by jangly guitars and all the glory of it.

Elephant Stone shows Brown and Squire had made incredible strides with their song writing and structuring in the space of a few years.

It’s very assured and quite brilliant. But one of the crucial elements is the drummer. Hook said of him:

“Reni’s drumming lent such a character and identity to the songs. Ian and John had got it with the melodies and lyrics but they were lucky to get Reni because he took them from being a traditional, normal rock band into the stratosphere with other great groups.”

And that’s pretty telling here, as you wonder what a lesser drummer would have done with the song.

Just the usual dun-dun-clank? Instead, with the help of Reni it became an instantly memorable song with a driving, propulsive force behind it.

The Shorter Version of Elephant Stone (Complete With a Music Video!)

A shorter version was recorded, too, which features more of Squire’s famous wah-wah guitar playing with Mani’s bass buried a bit further back in the mix.

Reni’s drum intro is (unfortunately) also removed.

But it’s a fantastic version! Its fast-paced nature makes it even more joyous to listen to, we think, with a real soaring sense of harmony.

It’s also the version the band leaned on for live performances, preferring the manic three-minute over the slower 12″ release.

Also an excellent choice, we think, as the audience could really get behind this one for the ecstatic nature of The Stone Roses’ live performances—a celebration of youth, life, drugs, and the perfection of a moment.

Full Fathom Five and the Art of Reversing Elephant Stone

During their peak heyday, the band had a habit of reversing their songs. They did it with Waterfall to best effect, getting Don’t Stop out of the mix that features on their eponymous debut album.

For Elephant Stone, fans got Full Fathom Five (a reference to a Jackson Pollock painting). This was included as a B-side on the 12″ single release.

The 7″ single release got The Hardest Thing in the World, which is not a bad trade off (another excellent song from the band).

Bopping Along to Reni’s Elephant Stone Drumming

Elephant Stone is a very clever bit of drumming from Reni. It’s like John Bonham on When the Levee Breaks—so simple sounding, yet genius. Brilliant creativity.

His playing style was a huge part of the band’s appeal, fusing together all manner of drumming genres (rock, funk, jazz, his own creations). Together with Mani they easily formed the best rhythm section of their generation.

On Elephant Stone, Reni’s focus was a merger of funk and rock drumming, using a propulsive tom tom beat across the three-piece kit he’d cut back to.

There’s just a joy to listening to the repeating pattern. The danceability of it. Instantly catchy, deceptively simple, and also riveting to watch played (he also adapted it and slowed the pattern down for Standing Here).

Reni would thrash this out in spectacular fashion during live shows (more on that further below).

As for learning this drum pattern, there’s a great take on it above by Louie Malvessi on his YouTube channel. It’s become one of Reni’s most covered drum numbers on YouTube.

It’s worth watching the above and then going back above to see the Blackpool 1989 performance, as he’s full on there. Sensational, even.

But it’s just a great fun bit of drumming to play. One to impress people with, but also a good workout as it keeps your arms very busy.

Full credit to Reni on that one, as he’d cut back to a three-piece kit around 1986 and was relying on his creativity and natural feel to make it sound like he was on a 10-piece kit.

Notable Live Performances of Elephant Stone

Along with The Who’s Keith Moon, it was Reni who got us into drumming back around 2001.

We bought the VHS tape of Blackpool Live 1989 on a lunch break from college, getting the bus to Preston to check out the HMV (an entertainment shop here in England).

When we saw it we were blown away by Reni at this gig, right off the second number in and he’s delivering that superhuman effort. It’s blistering and incredible.

As one commenter on that YouTube video puts it:

“Reni is a marvellous drummer! He has this ability to be light, supple, funky and swing a song into a blissful rhythmic cloud.”

However, despite the popularity of the song with fans, the band didn’t include it in their 2012 reunion world tour set. It was strange in its absence.

It did eventually return, though, from 2013 onward until the band’s final gig in June 2017.

One of the best versions comes from a performance at Glasgow Green in 1990 (often cited as the band’s best ever gig). It shows them at their absolute peak.

And there’s also a very important early version of the song, which was played at Manchester’s Anti-Clause 28 gig in May 1988.

Anti-Clause 28 was a major LGTB movement in England against Thatcher’s Tory government, whose homophobic Clause 28 (also called Section 28) set out laws prohibiting the “promotion of homosexuality” in society.

Thatcher introduced that to tap into the general bigotry of the right-wing voters of the day, which backfired spectacularly when left-wing demonstrations led to major steps forward in gay rights across the country.

The Stone Roses, who all went on the march in May 1988 (pre-fame, we might add, it was no publicity stunt) were very much anti-Tory in general.

In fact, The Stone Roses (the eponymous debut) is an assault on the Tories and the monarchy system.

And this gig helped bring attention to the cause.

But another notable thing here is it’s such an early version of the song, including a lengthy drum intro.

This was eventually refined as The Stone Roses improved on their live act. Yet it’s impressive to see, even in 1988, they had it down as a number that’d come to define their sound.