This Cracked.com article on 10 mind blowing easter eggs hidden in famous albums got me thinking about some Stone Roses tracks. Now, anyone who has heard "The Stone Roses" album will probably be aware of a few things about track 4 (Don't Stop.) Firstly, it has a lot of backwards-sounding guitars. Secondly, it sounds a bit like track 3 (Waterfall)— in a backwards-sounding kind of way. In other words, you might describe it as "Waterfall, backwards." Which it kind of is – and kind of isn't.
A brief overview of the Stone Roses' backwards tracks.
Don't Stop isn't the only piece of "backwards music" that the Roses released. 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.)
Their second, "Guernica", is on the b-side of the Made of Stone single (their second on Silvertone– released in February 1989, which would have been around the time the recording of the album was finishing up.) Like Full Fathom Five, it's a backwards version of the a-side, but with a slight difference; although it comes in with what sounds quite clearly like backwards guitars, joined by backwards drums and a backwards bassline, the lyrics aren't backwards. The lyrics sound quite nonsensical — at least, I've never been able to make any sense of them. But they are definitely sung, rather than reversed.
Don't Stop seems (to me, anyway) to take this idea a step further. The vocals are "forwards", and the lyrics make more sense than Guernica (or at least they seem to – of course, that might be a case of my being more familiar with them and having built up my own meaning after countless listens; I must have listened to the Stone Roses album more than any other I own. Probably more times than I've seen Star Wars– which is saying something…) But again, it's essentially a backwards version of Waterfall.
…Or is it? Because whichever one you play backwards, you can hear the other song. My guess is that both songs were written together, with the backwards lyric of one feeding into the other.
Finally, "Simone" is a track that appeared on the B-side to She Bangs The Drums, and is a backwards version of "Where Angels Play"— which itself appeared on the B-side of "I Wanna Be Adored", which means (if the information I've found online is complete and accurate) that the backwards version was released before the forwards version.
This is a snippet- read the full post.
