by Dave Simpson
But why?
‘His name says why. He was wild!’
Although Watts wasn’t in The Fall with Wilding, he seems to have heard the tales. One of them is that Helal and Wilding actually left over a ‘faceoff ’ with Smith over money from The Fall or from the label. The pair apparently phoned Smith to tell him they’d left and were on a train to London – expecting him to back down. Instead, Smith called their bluff.
Watts suggests that the two guitarists probably thought they could get away with it because Fall guitarists are ‘fired’ all the time. ‘It starts as a joke, although sometimes the laughing stops and that person isn’t there anymore.’ Watts’ first exit was a sacking after Smith said he’d found out he was planning to play with a heavy metal band by ‘intercepting’ his phone calls.
‘I’ve been fired every half an hour,’ he grins. ‘Then Mark will come over and say, “Obviously you’re not fired, cock. Not yet!”’ Watts gave up a lucrative job in IT to play in The Fall, relishing the break from nine-to-five employment, and was actually paid Fall royalties, although he admits he discovered ‘a whole new world of pain’.
His second exit was due to ‘the pain’ of making records.
Like Simon Rogers in the 1980s, Watts says he found The Fall’s recording process ‘pretty odd’ – in fact, he makes it sounds even odder than it was back then. He describes rarely entering the studio familiar with songs they’d be recording (a situation Smith told him he prefers); songs being credited to people who haven’t written them and vice versa; weird commands like, ‘Give me more of the fookin’ top drums.’ ‘Mark, what are the top drums?’
Apparently, one of Smith’s tricks in the studio is to assemble the controls into the shape of a ‘big wave’, then inform startled producers, ‘That’s the Fall sound’. The way Smith ‘winds up’ his musicians sounds odd too – bombarding them for hours with tapes of Bernard Manning or playing them a Dylan album with the specific instruction, ‘This is what not to do’.
One of the more celebrated Fall fans is Frank Skinner, who opens his TV show with their 1982 song ‘Jawbone and the Air Rifle’. According to Watts, Smith does not appreciate the honour and views Skinner – a multimillionaire and hardly short of exposure – as somehow trading off The Fall.
Again, Smith seems impossible to second guess.
‘Mark’s difficult to get close to,’ Watts ponders, implying the main reason for this is because Smith knows he’ll eventually lose or sack them all. However, Watts found himself unusually honoured when his songwriting on the opening track of Are You Are Missing Winner was reflected in the title, ‘Jim’s The Fall’. While Watts says he was never privy to Smith’s mythical ‘secrets’, he admits he worked some out after a while.
He describes seeing Smith ‘screaming at people’ and then trotting away, laughing. As for Smith’s drinking, he says he’s often seen people think the singer’s drunk when he’s actually been acting – a favourite trick of boozy actor Oliver Reed. Which makes me wonder whether he was putting on an act for musicians like Marcia Schofield, all those supposedly whisky-sozzled years ago. To freak them out? To trigger more creative tension?
‘His stagecraft can’t be underestimated,’ concedes Watts. ‘He’s a stage person. He can go, “Move that amp four inches to the right and two inches back”. He has a look at the stage to see how it looks visually. It’s easy to think that he just stumbles around the stage. It’s not staged but he is a consummate showman.’
Watts played on The Real New Fall LP – another storming example of later Fall – released in the UK in October 2003 and in the US in June 2004. It contains a bona fide classic – ‘Theme from Sparta FC’. It’s another football-themed Fall song (albeit about hooliganism rather than the game, a colourful account of Chelsea fans receiving a beating in Eastern Europe) which became a minor hit – Number 66 – on release as a 2004 single and grew in status when it became used as the theme music to the BBC’s Saturday afternoon sports coverage, The Fall’s first connection with BBC Sport before Smith was called on to read the football results. For Watts, however, the peculiarities of making the music finally got too much and he quit to enjoy life in a more straightforward world. He’s currently leafleting for Salford Council – reliable employers who pay £1.75 per door – and planning to launch his own band which he says will sound ‘absolutely nothing like’ The Fall.
CHAPTER 31
‘If you’re a mate, you can tell
him to fuck off!’
Shortly after saying good-bye to Jim Watts, I speak to the man who stepped into the breach when Watts was sacked the first time, although the circumstances of the interview are as odd as Watts’ first departure. Over a crackling phone line from Saddleworth Moor, Steve Evets – who calls himself a ‘Fall musician in emergencies’ – relates how he’s spent the day watching Myra Hindley and Ian Brady burying bodies. How lovely.
Luckily, both are actors – Evets is currently shooting scenes for See No Evil, a film where he plays ‘David Smith … the bloke who was with Ian Brady when he axed [final victim] Edward Evans,’ he says excitedly, although in fact the shocked Smith then made the call that led to Brady’s arrest.
Acting and drama, it turns out, is Evets’ usual profession, although he does have his own acid house band called, unsurprisingly, Dr Freak’s Padded Cell, who, equally unsurprisingly, sometimes open for The Fall.
Evets is also one of Smith’s few best friends, meaning he will step up to the plate when he really needs him – like when a bass guitarist has been fired or abandoned at a foreign airport. ‘I first stepped up in Istanbul,’ he says of the gig (5 March 2003) after Jim Watts resigned. It was ‘cracking’, but he’d never consider making the role permanent. ‘You’re joking aren’t you?’ he shouts. ‘I value our friendship.’ He believes the difference between being a mate and being a Fall musician is ‘if you’re a mate, you can tell him to fuck off!’
He laughs, and the phone goes dead.
I contact him again, and Evets expands a little on the difference between Smith at home and Smith in The Fall, suggesting that perhaps it’s not quite ‘24-7’. ‘We go for a pint and take the piss out of everything. He’s got a great sense of humour. He just gets a bit stressed out when he’s on the road.’ In fact, Evets confirms what Smith said to me about getting ‘nervous’.
‘When he’s relaxing in the pub he’s fine,’ he says. ‘He gets bothered a lot on tour, y’know, sycophants,’ and the line goes dead for good. I’m getting slightly paranoid now. Is MES briefing against me?
At least all this time on the phone is made slightly easier by no longer having to ferry Suzanne to and from work. She’s been coming home later and later, and to make it easier for me has started cycling. I was Suzanne’s Ben Pritchard, but in the chauffeuring department at least, it seems my services are suddenly no longer required.
CHAPTER 32
‘It was all done very quietly, so no
one knew I’d gone.’
In a way, interviewing a Fallen musician can be like being in The Fall – you never know when you’ll be cut off in full flow.
I get more of a sense of this, and a few more examples of cult-like behaviour, from Simon ‘Dingo’ Archer, Watts’ replacement and the forty-third person to join The Fall.
What I know about Dingo is this: he was introduced to Smith by a mutual friend, but as a sound engineer, not a bassist. He runs 6dB Studio in Manchester, where he helped Smith record a solo album, Pander! Panda! Panza!, in 2002. Shortly after that, Smith asked him to remix some tracks from what eventually became The Real New Fall LP. Once Watts was gone, the man nicknamed ‘Dingo’ was given the job of ‘watering down’ or getting rid of Watts’ parts on the record.
‘So, I first played for The Fall then, in the studio,’ he explains. As usual, Smith had realised Archer’s suitability for the role when he’d seen him in a small role in the movie 24 Hour Party People playing Sex Pistols bass player Glen Matlock.
‘One night after a recordin
g session, Mark asked if I would like to play bass for two gigs that he had coming up. I said “yes”, obviously, and in typical Fall fashion, I didn’t hear from anyone until about two days before the first show.’
As with Jim Watts, Archer’s induction didn’t involve anything as conventional as a rehearsal. Instead, Ben Pritchard was despatched to Archer’s place to show him the music – but the guitar parts, not the bass. ‘It was very much a case of winging it,’ he says, fitting the classic bassist’s profile – tall, with long arms that enable the instrument to be flailed around. He did well enough – if ‘well’ is a Fall concept – to be offered the job. He says that for him the only possible comparison between being in The Fall and being in any other group is the act of actually picking up the bass guitar.
‘Working with Mark can take you to any extreme emotion you can imagine on any day of the week,’ he says. ‘That’s the essence of it, that word “extreme”. There are no “average” moments, no “typical” days. You can’t take anything for granted and you definitely can’t assume anything. If you think something is good, Mark will see it differently, and vice versa. There is room for creative freedom and it’s encouraged, but you never get to embellish it, you watch it metamorphose into something else when Mark gets to work on it. It means you can’t be precious about anything.’
Even The Fall. Archer was a long-term fan, though he wised up enough to keep quiet about it. He makes clear that ‘all the stories and rumours are true’, which makes me fret again about Karl Burns.
Even the psychic ability – sort of. When Archer joined, Smith whispered to his musicians that Australian singer Nick Cave was trying to poach his group. In fact, Archer was poached by singer PJ Harvey, former girlfriend and confidante of Nick Cave.
However, after a period ‘on loan’ – much like a football club might borrow a central defender – Archer returned, co-producing and playing on 2005’s Fall Heads Roll. But something had changed. Shortly afterwards, he was taken to one side and quietly dispensed with – the way he describes it almost sounds as if he’d been shot.
‘It was done kind of quietly and without any blazing rows, so no one knew that I’d gone,’ he says. He hasn’t joined the disappeared though – he’s keeping very, very busy, but misses the ‘lunacy’ of The Fall.
‘As much as it was never “right”,’ he concludes, ‘the random nature of being in that band is highly addictive.’ He makes me think: what will I do when I have found all The Fallen? What will I do next?
CHAPTER 33
‘I found him barking like a dog.’
I’m nearing the end of the road. Shortly after speaking to Archer, I find Ruth Daniel, who spent a day in The Fall playing keyboards on 22 September 2002. Daniel is the forty-second. Unless Tom Head or Neville Wilding suddenly turn up, there’s only Ed Blaney and drummers Dave Milner and Karl Burns left. I email Manchester University asking, ‘Are you the Ruth Daniel who used to be in The Fall?’ We eventually meet up in Manchester’s Kro bar, over the road from where she works at the university on a project called In Place of War, investigating ‘theatre performance in war zones’ – which she assures me has nothing to do with The Fall. Now in her mid twenties, Daniel is a slightly-built, pretty girl with deep plum-coloured hair and an infectious, excited manner. Hardly a typical Fall musician but, then again, who is? She cradles a Corona lager as she tells her story, and it turns out that Nick Dewey isn’t the only person to spend an insane day in The Fall.
Having played in bands for years, Daniel was fronting an all-girl band one night at Manchester’s Night & Day Café, when up strode Jim Watts and Ed Blaney. The request from Fall manager/sometime member Blaney was simple but unexpected: ‘How do you fancy playing with The Fall?’ Daniel’s parents are massive Fall fans and any doubt in her mind was immediately overruled as her father told Blaney, ‘Yes, she’ll do it.’
‘So, then I said, “Er, yes, I’ll do it!”’ hoots Daniel. She was told to attend Manchester’s Sankeys Soap club for rehearsals, which went very well. There was just one tiny problem. There was no sign of Mark E Smith.
‘I kept asking, “When’s Mark arriving?”’ she says, ‘and they kept putting me off. Then Ed took this phone call and the whole atmosphere in the room changed.’ Blaney told her she’d have to leave immediately. Elena, Smith’s then new wife, was playing keyboards, and no one had informed Smith there would be another keyboard player too.
Quite why The Fall needed an extra keyboard player is a moot point, although they were due to film a live DVD and Daniel suggests there might have been ‘some question over the ability of the keyboard player from the other members’.
‘Which was a big problem for me,’ she says, realistically. ‘Knowing what Mark’s like, I couldn’t turn up at his gig and start playing, knowing that his wife’s going to hate me and that I’m probably going to get stopped by Mark.’ She mentioned the problems to her father, who declared, ‘That’s fine by me! Even if you get fired, you’ll have still been in The Fall!’
Daniel duly turned up at King George’s Hall in Blackburn and despite being primarily a guitarist she’d written the songs on sheets of paper. By this time, Smith had apparently been informed that she was playing, as had Elena. Daniel suggests that, after all the apprehension, she ‘bonded’ with Smith’s wife over keyboards, not least because Elena admired Daniel’s set-up more than the ‘little Casio keyboard she found on a skip, that had melted!’ she was playing at the time.
Daniel was told ‘under no circumstances’ must she enter the dressing room and disturb Smith 30 minutes before the gig. Alas, she suddenly realised that she’d left all her notes in there and couldn’t do the gig without them.
‘I walked in and found Mark walking in circles yelping and barking like a dog, which is obviously how he warms up his vocals. I knocked on the door and he ignored me and just stood still in silence.’ Daniel got her things, closed the door and walked away to the unmistakable sound of Smith barking away.
The gig was equally eventful. She remembers ‘crazies’ in the crowd – Ed Blaney leaping on for a drum solo and Elena playing all the wrong notes.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ she grimaces. ‘When does the manager play a drum solo?! It was bizarre to play a gig that unprofessionally but everyone was so into it and I have to say it was fantastic.’
After the gig, Daniel went up to Smith to thank him for letting her play and took her parents into the dressing room to meet the band. Smith closed the door and the three of them stood in silence for several minutes, Smith just staring and holding the door shut.
‘It was like he was keeping us hostage. Then he opened the door and just went, “Ta very much”.’
Daniel wasn’t asked to play with The Fall again, but that same night she met the person who helped her set up her record label, Fat Northerner. A few hours in The Fall had changed her life.
CHAPTER 34
‘I thought I was going insane. The only way
I got through it was by
taking up meditation.’
When I was a child, I used to while away hours doing jigsaws of things like dogs and trains. Now I’m doing a jigsaw of The Wonderful and Frightening World and, there, the pieces that will complete the picture can sometimes lurk where you least expect.
I’m back in the Peak District where I encountered Tony Friel and holidayed with Suzanne and Guinness. This time, I’ve journeyed to the rural New Mills in Derbyshire to find Dave Milner, drummer on The Real New Fall LP and custodian of the honoured, if precarious, drum stool from November 2001 to June 2004.
Milner’s in his thirties now and a teacher of drums and music technology, so I consider asking him for a drum lesson – perhaps I’ll be fined a fiver every time I hit the tom tom. I’m having trouble finding his house. He lives in a street where the house numbers follow no discernible logic – a street pattern that could have been designed by the architect of The Wonderful and Frightening World. Finally, I spot him loading suitcases into a
car, as if he’s about to make a hasty exit, but this turns out to be nothing more sinister than taking the wife and two kids on holiday.
We sit outside his terraced house on two stools. I can’t help thinking how much Smith would hate this scene. A journalist-drummer interviewing a Fallen drummer. In the country. All I need is the dog.
‘Those lyrics about hating the countryside were directly inspired by this place,’ proclaims Milner, grinning. It seems the Fall van used to have to negotiate Snake Pass to pick the drummer up, at which point Smith would grumble, ‘Where the fook are we going now?’
Milner is funny, thoughtful, and looks different to every other Fallen. In shades and shorts, he looks more rock star than worker – perhaps an act of quiet rebellion now he’s left the cult. But perhaps the most unusual thing about Dave Milner is that I’m here with him at all.
In spoof ‘rockumentary’ Spinal Tap, the band’s drummers keep disappearing in every which way, from bizarre gardening accidents to spontaneous combustion, but it seems genuinely like that in The Fall, to me. I’ve found drummers Paul Hanley, Steve Davies and Simon Wolstencroft, but people like Tom Head and, especially, Karl Burns seem to have gone up in smoke.
The non-disappeared drummer Milner has a theory – that people dream about being rock stars but The Fall is the worst band in which to have that dream. It’s inevitable that ‘the rug will be pulled from under you’, especially if you’re a drummer, in which case you disappear to lick your wounds. He says he avoided that fate because he was genuinely in it for the music, and his only regrets are that ‘reasons in Mark’s head’ meant they didn’t make any more music together than they did. Still, he may have been ‘only the drummer’, but Dave Milner will tell me as much as anyone about the curious workings of The Fall.
