Chart entered : 13 September 1986
Chart peak : 75
Number of hits : 15
As single sales seriously slumped under the twin attack of CDs and computer games, cult acts with a small but loyal fanbase found that their market share was now enough to get them in the charts without compromising their art. It didn't make much difference to their bank balance but at least raised their profile. I'm not sure it was a good thing; having wilfully uncommercial music in there had the effect of turning less committed listeners away from the charts and diminished their status.
I have to be careful what I say because one or two close friends are passionate devotees of the band. My own introduction to the band was an unhappy one. In my first year at university I was in one of the halls of residence and had a ground floor room next to a bloke whose real name now escapes me but was known to all and sundry as "Joint". He was a polite guy during the day time but liked to listen to these lot late at night at high volume and the walls were not very thick. Nor were the likes of "Kicker Conspiracy" and "Eat Y'self Fitter" exactly lullaby material. That's rather poisoned my relationship with their music ever since.
The Fall take over from The Cocteaus as the most "cult" act in here as they've never got past number 30. Indeed two-thirds of their hits had no more than a single week in the chart ( like this one ).
The Fall did have a formidable ( in more ways than one ) back catalogue before this first hit. I really don't have the time to listen through nine albums now so I'll track them through the singles and try to make sense of the bewildering line up changes.
The Fall began 40 years ago when Mark E Smith ( born 1957 in Salford ) a shipping clerk at Salford Quays formed the band with Martin Bramah ( born 1957 ) and two other like-minded souls after seeing The Sex Pistols at the Free Trade Hall . Bookish outsiders from the lower middle class, they shared the same tastes in drugs, left wing politics, European literature and music that wasn't in the charts i.e. the usual pre-punk canon of Velvet Underground , Iggy Pop, Captain Beefheart, krautrock and of course the John Peel show . The Fall had a symbiotic relationship with Peel who championed them till the day he died. It was though a form of self-love. The Fall were his audience talking back to him, reflecting his own pre-punk tastes and validating them.
They played their first concert in May 1977 after which they lost their first drummer. He was replaced by Karl Burns ( born 1958 ) who had played with founding bassist Tony Friel in a band called Nuclear Angel. They soon caught the attention of Buzzcocks manager Richard Boon who recorded a session for them but found he couldn't afford to finance its release and so gave the tapes back to the group. The band were then featured on Virgin's Live At The Electric Circus compilation in October.
Mark then made his girlfriend Kay Carroll manager which prompted Friel's departure within weeks. In February 1978 they appeared on Tony Wilson's What's On for Granada. Another founding member Una Baines quit a month later suffering from mental health problems. She was replaced by Yvonne Pawlett while their teenage roadie Marc "Lard" Riley stepped up to replace Friel on bass. They played the first of many sessions for Peel that May.
In August they released their first studio recordings on Step Forward Records as the EP "Bingo Master's Breakout". There were three tracks. "Psycho-Mafia" is a rough punky number with Mark barking out the slogans like a Northern Lydon. " Bingo Master "is a spiky but coherent tale of middle age breakdown. It's "Repetition" though that points the way forward , an attritional grind that both defends their musical limitations and introduces enduring trademarks in Mark's more or less spoken drawl, stream-of-consciousness rambling lyrics and the extra syllable at the end of the line as in "Repetition-a !"
They followed it up two months later with "It's The New Thing" recorded by the new line up. Pawlett's more prominent keyboards are immediately evident which makes them sound like a ( lot ) less musicianly Magazine. Each pair of lines seems to be about a completely different subject, my favourite being. "As for new hotels, look like science fiction films or revival Gothic pigswill". They're slipped into a ramshackle musical framework in which they don't seem to be playing quite in time.
They recorded their debut album "Live at the Witch Trials which included quintessential Fall tracks "No Xmas for John Quays" and "Industrial Estate" in a single day after Mark was too ill to come in for the first part of the week booked. It was released in March 1979 by which time Karl had quit. He was replaced by Mike Leigh. In April Martin left to form Blue Orchids with a now-recovered Baines. This left Mark as the sole founding member in the group. Riley switched to guitar as his former band mates ( in The Sirens ) Craig Scanlon ( guitar ) and Steve Hanley ( bass ) joined the group. Steve was a 20 year old Irishman who was a cut above the others in terms of musicianship which might help explain his longevity in the band. Craig was from Manchester and he too was in it for the long haul.
The new six piece line up recorded the next single "Rowche Rumble" referring to the Swiss pharmaceutical company who produced Valium. The track is unusually coherent lyrically with Mark pointing out the hypocrisy of a society which outlaws the use of recreational drugs while doling out Valium pills by the ton - "While condemning speed and grass / They got an addiction like a hole in the ass". Steve's bass line gives the sound more structure but it still sounds like it was recorded in a garage.
It was released in June 1979. This was marked by Pawlett quitting the band , ostensibly to look after her dog, She doesn't feature on the next album "Dragnet" released in October 1979. It was recorded at Cargo Studios Rochdale . The band deliberately went for a rough murky sound and Cargo allegedly didn't want to be credited on the sleeve as a result.
They opened their eighties account with an EP "Fiery Jack". The title track is an interminable rant from the point of view of a hard drinker in his mid-forties set to a rockabilly riff that doesn't change for the whole of the song. "2nd Dark Age" is a state of the nation rant that takes in both Abba and the Sedgeley Park Police Training College in Prestwich ( where it has to be said they do a nice breakfast ) and owes a lot to the Velvets. "Psykick Dancehall #2" is a second stab at a song from "Dragnet" inspired by a psychic event Mark once attended and is pretty unlistenable.
The EP made number 4 in the new independent chart. Inevitably it was soon followed by a departure with Leigh leaving to get a regular wage on the cabaret circuit. He was replaced by Steve's 16 year old brother Paul. The band also waved goodbye to their label and signed for Rough Trade putting out a rather challenging live LP "Totale's Turn" almost immediately.
Their first single for the label , co-produced with Geoff Travis and Mayo Thompson was "How I Wrote Elastic Man" in July 1980. For the first time the band sound tight. This tale of a writer's trials and forever being asked to explain your art is repetitive and uncommercial but does have something resembling a hook. In September they followed it up with "Totally Wired". On the face of it a very matter of fact song about taking speed- "I drank a jar of coffee and then I took some of these" - the single sounds like Mark went into a Joy Division session by mistake so I'm guessing it might be some sort of tribute to his recently-deceased contemporary Ian Curtis. It's very hard to believe Martin Hannett didn't produce it so faithfully do they recreate that dry sound. Curiously, despite the prominence of his bass, Steve doesn't have a writing credit on the single. Towards the end Mark tries his hand at actually singing a couple of lines ; you wouldn't ask him to repeat the experiment !
Their next LP "Grotesque " followed shortly afterwards to decent reviews.
1981 would prove a difficult year. In April Rough Trade put out "Shales" a mini-LP on 10 inch retailing at £2. The band were not happy with this and decided to change labels again, alighting on Kamera despite their niche being heavy metal rather than post-punk. The band then went to America but Paul Hanley was too young to get a visa so Karl was invited back. After the tour he was retained in a two-drummer line up. They then did a short but well-received tour in Iceland and recorded a few tracks in a studio in Reykjavik. Their only single of the year "Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul" came out in November. In one of his most affecting lyrics Mark puts himself in the shoes of a soul boy coming back to his grim surroundings after a Wigan Casino weekender. Mark claimed in an NME interview in 1983 that The Fall's audience did contain some ex-soul fans. The music is fairly uncompromising with a swamp rock rhythm and some very rough keyboard work from Riley. Whether by intention or not the single's release did coincide with the closure of the Casino.
The band's next record was the album "Hex Enduction Hour" which incorporated the tracks recorded in Ireland. Mark believed it would probably be their last and it was recorded deliberately roughly to capture their live sound. Nevertheless it received positive reviews and more importantly made their first mark on the charts proper when it reached number 71. The next single ( not on the LP ) "Look, Know". The song is an attack on fashionistas - "I always have a wash and that's enough " - and rests on a swinging bass line and a sung refrain by Riley.
The band went back to Cargo in June to record a single but Mark told them he had enough material for an album which became "Room To Live" . It was recorded in a rush and not all the tracks feature the full band. They then went to Australia ,a tour marked by growing antipathy between Mark and Riley. The album was released in September but failed to chart.
In the meantime Kamera were experiencing severe financial difficulties and in desperation released "Marquis Cha-Cha " from the album as a single. The song is a pop at the hard left written as a result of Mark's support for the Falklands War imagining one of them as a propagandist broadcasting from Buenos Aires . The band make a valiant attempt at playing in a Latin American vein but are hardly Kid Creole and the Coconuts. It's hard to know what commercial potential Kamera thought it had and Mark was furious at the breach of their policy of keeping singles separate from the albums . In the end it didn't really matter as Kamera's difficulties overwhelmed them before enough copies were pressed creating a rarity for record collectors.
At the end of the year Riley was sacked . There was no immediate replacement. Around this time Mark's association with Kay Carroll also ended. The band then went over to America. In April 1983 Mark met Laura Salenger ( born 1962 ) at a gig in Chicago. She was a literature student in Vermont who had a college band Banda Dratsing in which she played guitar under the name "Brix" in reference to the Clash song Guns of Brixton. She followed him to England. On their return in June they released their next single "The Man Whose Head Expanded" a relatively accessible track about a man with an inflated ego who believes others are stealing his ideas.
The following month Mark married Brix and she took Riley's place in the band as second guitarist. The band had already recorded their next single "Kicker Conspiracy" , a prescient commentary on the way football was going with references to Bert Millichip , Jimmy Hill and George Best and most of their next album "Perverted By Language" but Brix co-wrote and sings the lead vocal on the track "Hotel Bloedel". The album was released in December 1983 but didn't chart perhaps because Rough Trade were now preoccupied with The Smiths. Mark wanted to make a fill length video for the album but the label wouldn't stump up the cash. It was eventually funded but band and label parted company again.
The band were picked up by Beggar's Banquet. Here begin their "commercial" period. Brix was a pop fan and her understanding of melody started to permeate their music helped along by new producer John Leckie cleaning up the sound. On the next single, "Oh ! Brother" Steve plays a poppy bass line in true Peter Hook fashion and Brix adds some girlie backing vocals towards the end. Mark's voice will be a stranger to melody until the day he dies but here it's a disciplined vocal staying within the metre. The song itself is partially a cover of the Blue Rondo's Little Baby. The single "bubbled under" the chart.
The following single, "C.R.E.E.P." therefore made it on to Radio One's Round Table show. Richard Skinner chanced his arm by mentioning that it was rumoured to be about another Mancunian singer who recorded for Rough Trade. By the time the record had finished Mark had rung in to nip that one in the bud. Riley has claimed the song is directed at him but Brix has since claimed that the song is mainly directed at their European tour manager, a German called Scumech to whom Mark took a strong dislike. The song had the same structure as its predecessor with Mark hanging his words on a tuneful riff, this time played on her keyboards and it too came close to charting.
This new-found interest in pop didn't prevent the next album "The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall" from incorporating some pretty challenging music but it still reached number 62 in the charts. A week later they put out an EP "Call For Escape Route" headed by a track called "Draygo's Guilt " a more abrasive rockabilly number but still with a modern production sheen . After completing the tour for the album Paul Hanley quit the band. At the same time his brother Steve took some paternity leave and was replaced by the classically trained Simon Rogers who was retained on guitar and keyboards when Steve returned. Simon had been working with ballet companies but had also been a member of the South American folk group Incantation at the time of their big hit album "Cacharpaya ( Panpipes of the Andes )" and the hit single of the same name in 1983.
Simon played bass on their next single "Couldn't Get Ahead" , probably their slightest to date with a string of everyday frustrations a la Buzzcocks' Something's Gone Wrong Again set to a very repetitive rockabilly riff.
Both Steve and Simon played on the next LP "This Nation's Saving Grace" in September 1985 which improved on its predecessor's chart placing by reaching number 54. The next single in October was "Cruiser's Creek " is based around a fat guitar riff with cavernous drums while Mark sounds off , unusually low in the mix , about office parties.
In the summer of 1986 Burns left and was replaced temporarily by Paul Hanley before Simon Wolstonecraft was recruited. Simon had been in Freak Party with Andy Rourke and Johnny Marr and had almost joined The Smiths but decided they weren't going to get anywhere with Morrissey's voice. His first recording with the band was this one.
If I'm not mistaken "Mr Pharmacist " was the band's first full cover version. The song was originally recorded by the Californian garage band The Other Half in 1966 and came to wider attention after being featured on the seminal Nuggets compilation LP in 1972. It could hardly be more blatant as a give me some drugs song. The Fall's version is pretty faithful to the original , keeping the main guitar riff intact and not supplementing it with additional lyrics. The heavier bass gives The Fall's version a sludgier Iggy Pop vibe. It checked in for a single week in the anchor position but it was a start.
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