Stone Roses’ The Stone Roses by Green Alex

Author:Green, Alex
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Continuum International Publishing
Published: 2010-04-29T04:00:00+00:00

7

“Elizabeth My Dear” (0:59)

… her very Lowness with her head in a sling

I’m truly sorry—but it sounds like a wonderful thing …

—The Smiths,

“The Queen Is Dead”

Although “Scarborough Faire” is an English ballad written in the 16th Century that—as far as we know—didn’t chart very high at the time, it did do very well years later for Simon and Garfunkel, who popularized the song with a dreamy, honeyed interpretation that is so far lodged in the listening public’s collective consciousness that many think the duo wrote the song themselves.36 So when the Stone Roses rightfully borrowed the melody from the public domain for “Elizabeth My Dear,” many were a bit stunned they would have the gall to reinterpret a Simon and Garfunkel classic. But the fact was, the Stone Roses were simply taking the song back for England and in the process, firing a shot straight at the monarchy. Comprised of one stanza, one acoustic guitar and one gunshot, “Elizabeth My Dear” is a gently strummed 59-second ad hominem attack on the Queen that in spite of its tranquil delivery is deeply vicious:

Tear me apart and boil my bones,

I’ll not rest till she’s lost her throne.

My aim is true,

My message is clear,

It’s curtains for you, Elizabeth my dear.

More than a mere repossession of the folk ballad, in spirit this is really the Stone Roses’ “God Save the Queen,” in that it openly rails against Queen Elizabeth much in the same way the Sex Pistols did in 1977. But while the Pistols’ protest took over three minutes, “Elizabeth My Dear” gets the job done in 2:18 less. Looking back, it very well may be the shortest protest song since those fiery and delicious 29 seconds of “Old Mother Reagan” by the Violent Femmes, who in 1986 howled their hope the First Lady would go “Far away / She better go far away.”

While it lacks the obvious sonic fire of “God Save the Queen,” “Elizabeth My Dear” is haunted by a subdued sense of menace, stemming from its eerie, conspiratorial insomnia that Brown tells us will only subside once she’s out of power. Meanwhile, the boastful attestation of the surety of both his aim and his intention, and the deadly promise of “It’s curtains for you / Elizabeth My Dear,” seem to be scribblings straight from an assassin’s notebook.

It should be pointed out that “Elizabeth My Dear” wasn’t included on the album as a quick political pose. In fact, the Stone Roses seemed to be dwelling on the subject of the Queen in several interviews. For example in NME, there was this exchange with the band:

NME: And who do you despise?

Mani: Maggie and the Royal Family. Six hundred years of piss-taking is long enough, don’t you agree?

Ian: The Queen Mother. Because she seems so aware of the hypocrisy of what she’s doing. I think that’s so patronising.

And in Melody Maker there was this:

Ian: We’re all anti-royalist, anti-patriarch. Cos it’s 1989. Time to get real. When the ravens leave The Tower, England shall fall, they say.

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