Stone

Song written by Ricky, Kim and Marty Wilde. Ninth track of the album Close. It was also released as the B-side of the single You Came. The lyrics are about environmental waste, and mention the phrase “dangerous fools”.
Stone was included in a DJ remix of You came by Joseph Watt, which was released by Razormaid.

Live performances

‘Stone’ was performed live during the German tour in December 1992, the Hits Tour in 1994, the Perfect Girl Tour in 2007, live dates in 2008, Christmas gigs in December 2013, the Dutch tour in October 2015, and the Dutch tour in November 2017.

Kim about ‘Stone’

It’s about the environment. With this song I tell people that they should feel responsible. You must not think that you can’t do anything about a better environment. Yes, I am doing it myself. I don’t use hairspray. My car can’t ride on unleaded petrol, so I’ll sell it and buy one that can. I’m not perfect. I do eat meat. But I also give money to Greenpeace. can you remember the top conference between Reagan and Gorbachev on Iceland? They were there to abandon short-range missiles, but it was just a publicity stunt from both sides, to win votes. I didn’t like it! That’s when I wrote ‘Stone’. (1)

Fools are only dangerous when they have power. The finger points at governments of all nations who stand by and allow their industries to pollute and kill our world. They then lie to cover up their ignorance and greed, to try to lull us into a false sense of security. Each of us must take our own personal stand, and not grow up to be the dangerous fools of tomorrow. (2)

This song was written with two big environmental disaster events in mind, but of course also with my more general growing unease as to the damage human kind continued to bring to our fragile planet in the name of ‘progress’. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine exploded in April 1986. At the time it was the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, and it has left a huge area with a radius of 30 kilometres from the site of the explosion completely uninhabitable now and for thousands of years to come. Also in 1986 the river Rhine was poisoned by the chemical firm Sandoz, contaminating the entire Rhine to the North Sea and reversing 10 years of work to clean up the river. The same year I felt inspired to become a member of Greenpeace. (3)

Credits

Keyboards & programming: Ricky Wilde, Tony Swain
Guitars: Steve Byrd, Ricky Wilde
Produced by Ricky Wilde and Tony Swain
Engineered by James Richards.
Mix engineered by Richard Lengyel

Interview sources

(1) I really have been desperate, Popfoto (Netherlands), March 1989
(2) Kim Wilde Fanclub magazine, vol. 8 no. 1
(3) Facebook Track by Track commentary, published 3 September 2013


Lyrics

Most people wake
From a nightmare to find
Everything’s great
It was all in their mind
So am I still sleeping
Or is this all real
If I keep on pinching myself
Will the fear disappear, oh no

It’s like a stone hanging over our heads
Ready to blow
Cos this is our time
You’ve got to believe
That it’s yours and it’s mine
You can’t close your eyes to the lies
Perpetrated by dangerous fools
Cos they’re handing out rules
Like a prophecy chiselled in stone
Stone
They’re carving out our fate
Why can’t they leave us alone
Stone, stone
And messing up the world
They’ve got to leave it alone

They’ve signed on some paper
To end all the fear
But this propaganda
Is perfectly clear
They’re still building and testing
But what can we do
Condemning the seas
And the land and the trees to a tomb
Oh no

It’s like a stone hanging over your heads
Where do we go
Cos this is your time
You’ve got to believe
That it’s yours and it’s mine
You can’t close your eyes to the lies
Perpetrated by dangerous fools
Cos they’re handing out rules
Like a prophecy chiselled in stone