by Dave Simpson
To my late parents, Reginald and Florence Olive Simpson.
Thanks for the words, Dad.
There is variety in genius as there is talent and beauty. Some geniuses are innovators, some are deep thinkers and some are people of extraordinary skill; most are a volatile mixture of intellectual gifts and character traits. The intellectual gifts are an ability to see things from highly unusual angles, to overlook what is not essential, and to understand the true significance of the obvious. The character traits are persistence, obduracy, capacity for taking great pains, and indifference to ridicule.
A C Grayling, Professor of Philosophy, University of London, 2007
That’s my fucking aim in life, to keep it going as long as I can.
Mark E Smith, 1979
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
In Loving Memory of The Fallen
Prologue: Remembering The Fallen
Chapter One: ‘It’s like football. Every so often you’ve got to replace the centre-forward.’
Chapter Two: ‘The night it all went apeshit.’
Chapter Three: ‘Sorry, boss … I am only a drummer.’
Chapter Four: ‘After a while in the fall you’re no longer normal.’
Chapter Five: ‘I’m losing my hair through stress!’
Chapter Six: ‘We were best friends who fell out.’
Chapter Seven: ‘I knew Mark got me in to fuck off friel.’
Chapter Eight: ‘I took a lot of drugs and was a bit of a nutcase!’
Chapter Nine: ‘There was an outbreak of fleas.’
Chapter Ten: ‘I was living this incredible double life!’
Chapter Eleven: ‘There are a lot of skeletons in the fall cupboard, stories that haven’t been told.’
Chapter Twelve: ‘I’m not an arsonist, I work for the BBC!’
Chapter Thirteen: ‘A whole different universe.’
Chapter Fourteen: ‘’Ello, luv. are you having a nice holiday?’
Chapter Fifteen: ‘It was like some kind of medieval Italian principality. Or a Chinese court, full of would-be sycophants and mandarins.’
Chapter Sixteen: ‘Dependency on the organisation … attack the self.’
Chapter Seventeen: ‘Creative management, cock!’
Chapter Eighteen: ‘He looks much the same as he ever did – short hair, glass eye.’
Chapter Nineteen: ‘I neither left nor got sacked.’
Chapter Twenty: ‘He smashed up my keyboards quite often. It was an occupational hazard.’
Chapter Twenty-One: ‘It was like your last tour of Vietnam, with appropriate flashbacks and nightmares.’
Chapter Twenty-Two: ‘He had a face like a mouse’s snout.’
Chapter Twenty-Three: ‘Dear Mark, you’re my hero. Maybe when I’m of legal drinking age we could go for adrink?’
Chapter Twenty-Four: ‘We’d had abuse and death threats!’
Chapter Twenty-Five: ‘I’m proud that I survived three years before the first punch-up.’
Chapter Twenty-Six: ‘He’d knock on the windows or sing through the letter-box!’
Chapter Twenty-Seven: ‘So what do you do? Are you in a group?’
Chapter Twenty-Eight: ‘It was like spontaneous combustion.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine: ‘I’m becoming a travelling minstrel.’
Chapter Thirty: ‘Come on, cock, you can do it. We’ll have a rehearsal before you go on.’
Chapter Thirty-One: ‘If you’re a mate, you can tell him to fuck off!’
Chapter Thirty-Two: ‘It was all done very quietly, so no one knew I’d gone.’
Chapter Thirty-Three: ‘I found him barking like a dog.’
Chapter Thirty-Four: ‘I thought I was going insane. The only way I got through it was by taking up meditation.’
Chapter Thirty-Five: ‘My job was to stop the musicians having fun.’
Chapter Thirty-Six: ‘You’ve got the curse of the Fall!’
Acknowledgments
Photography Credits and Permissions Acknowledgments
Copyright
IN LOVING MEMORY OF THE FALLEN
Priest: Brethren, we are called upon to pay the last tributes of respect to brothers and sisters who have now gone. Places once filled are now vacant. Chairs once occupied are now empty. Hands, whose helpful clasp cheered us in days gone by, are folding in everlasting rest. It is fitting, therefore, that we should pause, no matter how engrossing our duties, and pay to our departed brothers and sisters the tribute due their memory.
Suggested music: ‘Hey! Luciani’ by The Fall
Brother scribe, the roll call.
Steve aka Dave (‘the unknown drummer’, 1976) ‘No longer with us’
Tony Friel (bass, 1976 – December 1977) ‘No longer with us’
Una Baines (keyboards, 1976 – March 1978) ‘No longer with us’
Martin Bramah (guitar/backing vocals, 1976 – April 1979; July 1989 – July 1990) ‘No longer with us’
Karl Burns (drums/guitar/bass/keyboards) (May 1977 – December 1978; October 1981 – June 1986; January 1993 – December 1996; May 1997 – April 1998) ‘No longer with us’
Kay Carroll (backing vocals, management 1977 – April 1983) ‘No longer with us’
Jonnie Brown (bass, January – March 1978) ‘No longer with us’
Eric McGann aka Rick Goldstraw aka Eric Echo aka Eric the Ferret (bass, March – June 1978) ‘No longer with us’
Yvonne Pawlett (keyboards, May 1978 – June 1979) ‘No longer with us’
Steve Davies (percussion/drums, 30 May 1978 and again in June 1980) ‘No longer with us’
Marc Riley (guitar, then bass, June 1978 – December 1982) ‘No longer with us’
Steve Hanley (bass, April 1979 – April 1998) ‘No longer with us’
Craig Scanlon (guitar, April 1979 – December 1995) ‘No longer with us’
Mike Leigh (drums, January 1979 – March 1980) ‘No longer with us’
Dave Tucker (clarinet, 1980–1) ‘No longer with us’
Paul Hanley (drums, March 1980 – March 1985) ‘No longer with us’
Brix Smith (guitar/backing vocals, September 1983 – July 1989; August 1994 – October 1996) ‘No longer with us’
Simon Rogers (bass/keyboards/guitar, March 1985 – October 1986) ‘No longer with us’
Simon Wolstencroft (drums/keyboards, June 1986 – August 1997) ‘No longer with us’
Marcia Schofield (keyboards, October 1986 – July 1990) ‘No longer with us’
Charlotte Bill (flute/oboe, 1990) ‘No longer with us’
Kenny Brady (violin/keyboards, July 1990 – June 1991) ‘No longer with us’
Dave Bush (keyboards, August 1991 – November 1995) ‘No longer with us’
Julia Nagle (keyboards/guitar, November 1995 – August 2001) ‘No longer with us’
Adrian Flanagan (guitar, December 1996 – February 1997) ‘No longer with us’
Keir Stewart (guitar, early 1997) ‘No longer with us’
Tommy Crooks (guitar, August 1997 – April 1998) ‘No longer with us’
Kate Themen (drums, April – May 1998) ‘No longer with us’
Stuart Estell (guitar, 30 April 1998) ‘No longer with us’
Karen Leatham (bass, August 1998 – December 1998) ‘No longer with us’
Tom Head aka Thomas Patrick Murphy (drums, August 1998 – November 2000) ‘No longer with us’
Neville Wilding (guitar, November 1998 – February 2001) ‘No longer with us’
Adam Helal (bass, December 1998 – February 2001) ‘No longer with us’
Nick Dewey (drums, 27 August 1999) ‘No longer with us’
Steve Evets (backing vocals/bass, 2000–2) ‘No longer with us’
Ed Blaney (guitar/backing vocals/management/’brokering’, 2000–4) ‘No longer with us’
Spencer Birtwistle (drums, November 2000 – November 2001; July 2004 – May 2006) ‘No longer with us’
Ben Pritchard (guitar, February 2001 – May 2006) ‘No longer with us’
Jim Watts (guitar/bass/keyboards/computers, February 2001 – March 2003; July – December 2004) ‘No longer with us’
Brian Fanning (guitar, mid to late 2001) ‘No longer with us’
Dave Milner (drums/backing vocals, November 2001 – June 2004) ‘No longer with us’
Ruth Daniel (keyboards, 22 September 2002) ‘No longer with us’
Simon Archer (bass, April 2003 – April 2004) ‘No longer with us’
Steven Trafford (bass, April 2004 – May 2006) ‘No longer with us’
Chris Evans (drums, 3 December 2004) ‘No longer with us’
Mark Edward Smith (vocals, 1976 to date) ‘Still with us. ALWAYS with us.’
This book documents a two-year period (2005–7) which I spent tracking
down the dozens of people who had once played in The Fall. By the
time the journey was over, what I refer to as ‘the current line-up’ had also
departed, joining the ranks of The Fallen.
PROLOGUE: REMEMBERING THE FALLEN
It was a Tuesday morning in December, and I was ringing people in Rotherham, all of them called Brown.
‘Hello,’ I began, for the fifth time that day, ‘I’m trying to trace Jonnie Brown who used to play in The Fall. I know he came from Rotherham and wondered if you might be a relative.’
‘The Who?’ asked the latest Mr Brown on the end of the line.
‘No. The Fall … the band from Salford. Jonnie played bass for three weeks in 1978.’
‘Is this some kind of joke?’
First I had become an internet stalker, now I was a telephone pest, all because of The Fall. Why was I doing this?
It started on 4 September 2005 when I drove to Manchester to interview Mark E Smith. I am a journalist and I’ve been interviewing pop stars for years but this encounter was different. Before the interview, even casual observers seemed to have a cautioning word. ‘You’d better take a crash helmet,’ joked one mate, aware of Smith’s colourful reputation – in particular, stubbing a cigarette out on a pesky journalist’s forehead. Days before my interview, I received a call from the paper’s photographer, who found the singer so ‘blotto’ at the photo session he’d come away with hundreds of shots of the venerable vocalist having to be held upright by bewildered passers-by.
I’d met Smith years before, in 1981. I had approached the notoriously opinionated frontman on the steps of Leeds University, where The Fall were about to play. Considering that even then he had a spiky public image, Smith was surprisingly polite, but I didn’t get the autograph I craved. Neither of us could produce a pen – instead the singer rather charmingly took a bite mark out of my ticket, leaving a lasting impression of his 1981 dental work and a DNA sample which remains in my possession in case any Fall-mad scientists ever wish to make a clone of Mark E Smith.
As I drove the 70 miles along the M62 to the interview, passing signs for Smith’s beloved Prestwich and Salford, something nagged at me all the way. What had happened in the intervening 24 years to transform the cheery ticket chomper into a character with a life seemingly as unique as his songbook and one of the true legends of British music?
If you’re reading this, there’s every chance you know a lot about The Fall. But if not, you should know the following:
The Fall are one of the most revered and influential bands in British pop, one who more than most lend themselves to obsession.
In John Peel’s Record Box – which contained the late DJ’s favourite records – Fall records had an entire section to themselves. Peel called them The Mighty Fall: ‘the band against which all others are judged’. Their audiences still include fans who don’t follow other bands, who never listen to anything else. Smith’s inspired, social sci-fi songs are beloved of everyone from comedians Frank Skinner (who uses 1981 Fall song ‘Jaw Bone and the Air Rifle’ to open his TV show) and Stewart Lee, to the designer Calvin Klein, artist Grayson Perry, and authors Irvine Welsh and the late Philip K Dick. Musicians and music critics love them, too. Julian Cope estimates he saw them 28 times in 1978 alone. David Bowie, Bo Diddley, Thom Yorke and Alex Kapranos all claim to be fans, and Fall albums still regularly receive rave reviews for their paint-stripping riffs, blood-racing rhythms and what one writer has called their ‘head-turning quality … a hail of one-liners, withering put-downs and bewildering images’.
Despite this acclaim, The Fall have never been a household name. They have had more hit singles that haven’t penetrated the Top 20 than any other band – 16 in total. I love this fact. It signifies The Fall’s complex relationship with pop and our culture in general: never quite in, but never quite out, maintaining a disaffected, opinionated presence on whatever landscape the music scene – and Britain’s social make-up – is occupying at the time.
When the Sex Pistols were taking ‘punk’ onto Top of the Pops, an embryonic Fall were taking pot shots at socio-culture from the unglamorous, un-pop environment of working men’s clubs. During the synthesiser boom of the early to mid 1980s, Smith hectored wildly over walls of guitars. In the 1990s, when Britpop brought a return to straightforward rock anthems, Smith, contrarily, added everything from violins to complex computerised sounds. Along the way, they have produced an enormous body of work. Reformation Post-TLC, the band’s 2007 studio album, was probably their twenty-seventh, although there have been so many nobody seems entirely sure.
The sheer longevity of The Fall is an achievement in itself. Through times when many bands have been lucky to make it to a second album, they have outlasted five prime ministers, the rise and decline of both Thatcherism and New Labour, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Falklands conflict, Bosnia, two Iraq wars, the fluctuating fortunes of many of England’s bigger football clubs – including Smith’s treasured Manchester City – and some terrifying vagaries of fashion. When Smith embarked on his mission in 1976 – sporting an anti-fashion tank top – many people wore flares and few households had a car or a colour television. Now we have the internet and rabid globalisation, although people still wear flares, which may suggest to Smith his work is far from done. The Fall have moved with their times but have sounded, as Peel once suggested, ‘always different, always the same’.
Throughout it all, Smith has maintained a fiercely uncompromising ‘no sell-out’ stance towards the music business that has survived apparent anomalies such as an advertising campaign for Vauxhall Corsa (featuring ‘Touch Sensitive”s ‘Hey hey hey hey!’ refrain), ironic given that Smith doesn’t hold a driving licence.
My own obsession with The Fall started that night, 17 March 1981 – I know the date because I still have the gaudy orange poster I ripped off the uni walls. Back then, the fact that they were playing the Riley-Smith Hall with a singer called Smith and a guitarist called (Marc) Riley seemed to bestow an almost mystical significance on the event. The gig was unlike anything I’d seen: the music was uncategorisable – Was it punk? Was it rockabilly? Was it experimental? All three? – but had a hypnotic tension that seemed to draw me in. Smith stalked the stage, radiating charisma and baffling but important-sounding words which seemed to convey urgent truths. Around the same time, I encountered other Fall fans who were convinced Smith was psychic.
From that day on, major developments in my life have seemed peculiarly bound up with The Fall. I had my first pint of bitter over the road from my first Fall gig. I lost my virginity – resulting in carpet burns from an orange nylon carpet, a feature of many a council semi at the time – to a girl called Carol, who also gave me my first Fall album, the 1980 masterpiece, Grotesque (After The Gramme), which contained ‘The Container Drivers’, a rollercoasting blast of Northern rockabilly that’s still my favourite Fall song of all time.
In the mid 1980s, when The Fall scored a big hit with a cover of The Kinks’ ‘Victoria’, I was dating a girl called Victoria. I’m not saying her being called Victoria made the relationship any more desirable, but it did give things a certain je ne sais quoi. Sorry, Victoria.
I’ve found most Fall fans have similar tales – as if Smith, pop’s ultimate ringmaster and provocateur, were wielding the same supernatural control over his audiences as he seems to hold over his group.
In fact, to call The Fall a group – a term Smith prefers to the apparently derogatory ‘band’ – is misleading. Apart from the erstwhile frontman, the line-up has endured so many upheavals that broadcaster Paul Morley, another Fall fanatic, has suggested there have been many different groups called The Fall, all fronted by Mark E Smith, all either wildly dark or wildly funny depending on the day of the week.
I should state now that like most Fall fans I regard Smith as a genius, although I’ve never been entirely sure just what his genius is. His splenetic observations and surreal, often slurred insights on everything from MI5 conspiracies to mythical Mancunian ‘city hobgoblins’ to the travails of British people in hot weather (and their resemblance to beached whales) – have earned him the tag of master lyricist and even seer for the way his songs seem to contain uncanny prophecies. For example, the song ‘Powder Keg’ – containing references to Manchester city centre – was released just weeks before the IRA bombing of central Manchester in 1996.
However, for me, the deeper aspect of Smith’s genius is somehow entwined with the way he runs his group. Smith is a ‘musical genius’ who is not a musician. He certainly has an ear for a tune but it’s debatable whether he can actually play a note. Smith distrusts musicians to the point of contempt but one of the many paradoxes in The Fall is that he is reliant on them to produce his lifetime’s work.
For years, Smith – whose father, a plumber, ran his own small business – has maintained The Fall using industrial techniques that were on their way out when the group formed in 1976. The Fall operate like an old-fashioned factory: Smith is the site manager, responsible for hiring and firing workers and overseeing their performances. This is the most precious and secretive area of his art. Smith somehow coaxes performances from musicians – most of them found in his local pub – who shouldn’t logically be up to the task of playing in a legendary group. Once musicians have outlived their usefulness, or, perhaps, become too bolshie, they are discarded and left to fend for themselves.
