The band's work has also been the subject of numerous compilation albums,
including a collection of material recorded for the John Peel
show between 1978 and 2004. Peel was a staunch supporter of the band,
and as of 2007 they have made a record twenty-four sessions for the
programme - a feat which has led to the widespread belief that The Fall
were one of Peel's favourite bands.
Since their inception, The Fall have been through fifty-eight
line-up changes, with leader Mark E. Smith being the only
constant member.
Smith's enigmatic lyrics and drawling delivery, coupled with the
idiosyncratic and innovative music of the band, has resulted in a
subtle influence on several generations of musicians.
The current line up is Mark E. Smith, his wife Elena Poulou,
who plays keyboards, and drummer Orpheo McCord.
They are augmented by a 'squad rotation system' of
accompanying musicians made up of Tim Presley (guitar), Pete Greenway
(guitar), Rob 'Spanners' Barbato (bass), Dave 'The Eagle of Ramsbottom'
Spurr (bass) and Keiron Melling (drums). The Fall's most recent album, Reformation
Post TLC , was released by Narnack
Records on February 12 2007.
|
Contents
- 1 History
- 1.1 1976
- 1.2 1977
- 1.3 1978
- 1.4 1979
- 1.5 1980s
- 1.6 1990s
- 1.7 2000–present
- 2 Influence
- 3 Songs
in other media
- 4 Discography
- 5 Sound
files
- 6 References
- 7 Bibliography
- 8 External
links
|
History
1976
The Fall formed in Prestwich during 1976. They would meet at
Kingswood Road, Prestwich and rehearse material in Smith's/Baines'
flat. The original line up was to be Bramah -vocal, Smith - guitar,
Friel - bass and Baines - drums.
1977
From their first live lineup of Mark E. Smith (vocal), Martin
Bramah (guitar), Tony Friel (bass) and Dave?
Steve?...no-one can remeber his real name (drums), on Monday, May 23
1977 North West Arts basement, King Street, Manchester, the group
produced a sound quite unlike anything else being played in the
run-down dancehalls of northern England's new wave scene.
After this first gig the line up would change, losing Dave the
drummer (years later Smith referred to Dave as "that little bald fellow
that died from Stockport" and Tony Friel remembered Dave actually being
called Steve and claimed that "some years later he killed himself by
throwing himself under a train") and adding Una Baines keyboard and
Karl Burns drums for the second gig on Friday, 3 June 1977 at the Squat
Club, Manchester. It was this line up of Smith, Bramah, Friel Baines
and Burns that recorded Bingo-Master's Break-Out!, Psycho Mafia,
Repetition and Frightened on Thursday, 9 November 1977 at Indigo
Studios, Manchester. The session was funded by Richard Boon, manager of
Buzzcocks, and he planned to release the tracks on his New Hormones
label. Boon later gave the tapes back to the band as he decided to
concentrate on Buzzcocks.
Two tracks, Stepping Out and Last Orders, were released on the
compilation Short Circuit - live at the Electric Circus
in June 1978, a compilation album recorded at the Manchester venue The
Electric Circus on Sunday, 2 October 1977.
Founder member and bassist Tony Friel left, to form The
Passage, after the gig on Friday, 23 December 1977 at Stretford Civic
Centre, Manchester.
1978
Friel's replacement Jonnie Brown lasted from January 1978 to
March 1978 appearing at several gigs and taking part in the Granada TV
show So It Goes hosted by Tony Wilson. The Fall were filmed by Granada
for the show in Prestwich on Monday, 13 February 1978 performing Psycho
Mafia, Industrial Estate and Dresden Dolls.
In early April 1978 Una Baines left The Fall. This was in part
due to her relationship with Jonnie Brown, who allegedly was a heroin
addict (Brown still thinks No Xmas For John Quays is about him). He and
Baines struck up a relationship and when Brown left Baines followed
soon after. Baines stated in interviews years later that when Brown
walked in there was an abvious attraction between them. She also added
that Brown said if they were going to get together then he had a secret
and to be with him she'd have to share it... she did and they had a
short relationship.
Replacing Una Baines came Yvonne Pawlett in late April 1978,
with Jonnie Brown also replaced in April by Eric McGann (aka Eric
Random and Rick Goldstraw) but he again lasted only a short time until
Tuesday, 30 May 1978. Eric's departure was due to the Fall's then van
driver and conga player Steve Davis showing up to take the band to
London to record their first John Peel session in an Hawaiin shirt.
Such was Eric's disgust he refused to get in the van and was summarily
sacked. During the recording of the Peel session Martin Bramah played
the bass parts.
New bass player Marc Riley joined and appeared with The Fall
on Sunday, 11 June 1978 at Band on the Wall, Manchester.
The debut EP Bingo-Master's Break-Out! was finally released 11
August 1978. The next single from The Fall was It's The New Thing
released November 1978
Their debut album Live at the Witch Trials
recorded in one day at Camden Sound Suite, London on Friday, 15
December 1978, featured the new line up of Mark Smith, Martin Bramah,
Mark Riley, Yvonne Pawlett and Karl Burns and served up a caustic mix
of belligerently provincial urban paranoia and scorn for cultural norms.
Further line up changes were afoot with the departure of Karl
Burns, his last appearance was on Saturday, 30 December 1978 The Venue,
Manchester.
1979
Burns replacement, Mike Leigh, first appeared live on
Wednesday, 14 February 1979 at Bowden Vale Social Club, Altrincham.
The debut LP by The Fall titled Live At The Witch Trials is
released on 16 March 1979.
Founder member Martin Bramah quiting the band during late
April 1979, to from The Blue Orchids, created a significant shift in
band dynamics with the replacements Steve Hanley and Craig Scanlon
first appearing live on Wednesday, 9 May 1979 at Music Hall, Aberdeen.
In July 1979 Rowche Rumble The Fall's third single is released.
Yvonne Pawlett's last appearance with The Fall came on
Saturday, 28 July 1979 at the Mayflower Club, Gorton, Manchester. She
left to look after her sick dog. Years later she appeared in The Shy
Tots releasing a single Gallery in 1982.
Dragnet, The Fall's second album is recorded on 2 - 4 August
1979 at Cargo Studios, Rochdale and is released on 26 October 1979.
In 1978, 1979 & 1980 The Fall played the Deeply
Vale Festivals and Mark E Smith said in a 2004 TV interview that the
Deeply Vale events were his all time favourite festivals despite in
later years having performed at many larger festivals.Smith also said
his favourite place to record albums was in Rochdale which has featured
heavily throughout their career as a town where The Fall have gone to
record initially at Cargo / Suite Sixteen and later at Gracieland. John Peel
also had a close affinity with Rochdale helping to finance early
recording studios there.
With Craig Scanlon and Marc
Riley on guitar, Steve Hanley on
bass and Mike Leigh on drums (subsequently to be replaced by Paul Hanley, and
then a two-drummer lineup with a returned Burns), 1979's low-fi L.P. Dragnet
signalled a sparser, more jagged feel, which on subsequent albums
filled out into a more grinding, industrial sound. The live album Totale's Turns
(It's Now or Never) documents the band during
various appearances, with Smith announcing last orders at the bar and
berating his band members throughout.
1980s
With the album Grotesque (After the
Gramme) (1980) came a significant improvement
in production and content, which continued throughout the period which
saw the release of 10-inch Slates
(1981), Hex Enduction Hour
(1982) and Room to Live
(1982). Arguably the most experimental and consistently brilliant
period of the group's career, this was perhaps reflected by the
relatively settled band line-up. The autumn of 1983 heralded another
dramatic change, this time to a relatively more conventional
rock-oriented sound, with the departure of Riley and the arrival of
Smith's American girlfriend and later wife, Californian
Brix
Smith, as guitarist alongside Scanlon. A last album for Rough
Trade Records (Perverted by Language,
1983) was followed by the Fall signing to Beggars Banquet Records, a
more sympathetic and supportive label than any they had been signed to
before. This era found The Fall scoring a few modest hits with singles
from a string of highly acclaimed albums: The
Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall
(1984), This Nation's Saving Grace
(1985), Bend Sinister
(1986), The Frenz Experiment
(1988). I Am Kurious, Oranj
is notable as the fruit of a ballet project between Smith and dancer Michael Clark. Simon Rogers
and later Marcia Schofield played keyboards, and Simon Wolstencroft
replaced Burns on drums after This Nation's Saving Grace.
1990s
With Brix's departure in 1989, Bramah returned briefly for
1990s Extricate, the
first of the Fall's three albums for Phonogram
Records. Bramah and Schofield left in advance of 1991's Shift-Work.
Dave Bush joined on keyboards for 1992's Code:
Selfish, followed by the band's return to an
independent record label for The
Infotainment Scan (1993), Middle
Class Revolt (1994) and Cerebral
Caustic (1995). The latter album saw the
unexpected return of Smith's ex-wife Brix, who left again in 1996. With
Bush gone and Scanlon sacked after 16 years (a decision later regretted
by Smith), 1996 saw the arrival on keyboards, guitars and computers of Julia
Nagle for The Light User Syndrome.
That year also saw the start of a torrent of
compilations of live, demo and alternate versions of songs, on the
Fall's new label Receiver Records.
In 1995 and 1996 The Fall played at the Phoenix Festival in
Stratford, England - the 1996 appearance being one of much surprise to
many fans as they were not scheduled to play. They followed novelty
keyboardist, Margarita Pracatan. The next
album, Levitate
(1997), toyed with drum and bass and polarised opinion
(long-serving drummer Simon Wolstencroft left halfway through the
recording sessions, and was replaced by Karl Burns). Steven
Wells in the NME
(11
October 1997)
wrote, "Imagine pop without perimeters. Imagine rock without rules.
Imagine art without the wank. If you've never heard The Fall then Levitate
will be either the best or the worst record you've ever heard." The
group was temporarily reduced to Smith and Nagle when a disastrous U.S.
tour ended in April 1998 with a violent onstage row and the departure
of Hanley (bassist for 19 years), Burns and guitarist Tommy Crooks. The
following day, Smith was arrested and charged with assaulting Nagle in
their hotel.
2000–present
From this nadir, the Fall achieved another comeback with Smith
and Nagle being joined by Neville Wilding on guitar, Karen Leatham and
later Adam Halal on bass, and Tom Head on drums for the albums The
Marshall Suite (1999) and The
Unutterable (2000). Further rifts followed in
2001, in which the new lineup of Smith, Ben Pritchard (guitar), Jim
Watts (bass) and Spencer Birtwistle (drums) released Are You Are Missing Winner
to mixed reviews. In September 2002 Elena Poulou - Smith's third and
current wife - filled the vacant position of keyboards player. The
Real New Fall LP (reputedly renamed from Country
on the Click after an earlier mix of the album appeared on
Internet file sharing networks) followed in
2003, with a slightly different mix and some extra tracks for the US
version. Interim, was
released in November, 2004. In 2002 Q magazine named The
Fall one of the "50 Bands to See
Before You Die".
In January 2005, The Fall (described as "one of the most
enigmatic, idiosyncratic and chaotic garage bands of the last 30
years") were the subject of a BBC Four TV documentary, The
Fall: The Wonderful and Frightening World of Mark E Smith.
Later that year, a 97-song box set containing all of the sessions the
group recorded for John Peel's BBC
Radio 1 programme was issued to widespread acclaim. Their 25th studio
album, entitled Fall Heads Roll,
was issued on 3
October 2005,
preceded by a single "I Can Hear the Grass Grow" (a cover of a song by The
Move) on 6 September 2005 (US) and 19
September 2005
(UK). Ben Pritchard (guitar), Steve Trafford (bass), Spencer Birtwistle
(drums), all of whom played on Fall
Heads Roll, left the group somewhat
acrimoniously during the group's Summer 2006 tour of the US after just
four dates. In a US radio interview, Smith described their departures
as "the best thing that ever happened" to The Fall, although it was
some months before he confirmed that they would not be returning to the
group.
From May
9, 2006,
Smith and Poulou were joined by Tim Presley (guitar), Rob Barbato
(bass) and Orpheo McCord (drums) who joined them for the remainder of
the US tour, a flagship show in Manchester held in June 2006 and an
appearance at the Oya Festival in Oslo, Norway in August 2006. Presley
and Barbato are members of the band Darker
My Love while McCord was one half of the experimental duo The
Hill. With Barbato and Presley fulfilling Darker My Love
commitments back in the US in late August, the first 'squad rotation
system' of Fall musicians emerged with new members Pete Greenway
(guitar) of West Midlands group Pubic Fringe (more recently known as
Das Fringe), and Dave Spurr (bass) making their Fall debuts alongside
Smith, Poulou and McCord at the Reading and Leeds festivals in August
2006. Since that time, the group has taken many forms on stage, at
various times incorporating either one or even two of the bass
guitarists alongside just the one lead guitarist. Drummer Keiron
Melling has since been added to the 'squad' having replaced McCord for
a Dublin show in October 2006. Melling and Spurr play together in the
group MotherJohn.
Influence
Of the group's influence, Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote that
"the Fall, like many cult bands, inspired a new generation of underground
bands, ranging from waves of sound-alike indie rockers in the U.K.
to acts in America and New
Zealand, which is only one indication of the size and dedication of
their small, devoted fan base."
The
Jazz Butcher's debut single from 1983 was "Southern Mark Smith".
According to the band's singer/songwriter Pat
Fish, "Mark E. Smith is so stereotypically northern that the
very phrase 'southern Mark Smith' comes across to me like 'lush Sahara'
or 'wise and noble Bush'." Sonic
Youth covered three Fall songs (and "Victoria" by the
Kinks, also covered by the Fall) in a 1988 Peel
Session, which was released in 1990 as the "4 Tunna Brix" EP on Sonic
Youth's own Goofin' label. The 1990s indie acts Pavement
and Elastica
(Smith contributed vocals their final EP and album) showed an influence
of The Fall, while Suede parodied the band with
"Implement Yeah!", a song found on the cassette edition of their 1999
single "Electricity". The Fall is referenced in the Jens
Lekman song "Maple Leaves" with the lyrics "And when she
talked about her fall, I thought she talked about Mark E.
Smith". The Electric Soft Parade
album No Need to Be Downhearted
is named after a lyric from The Fall song "15 Ways".
Songs in other media
Many Fall songs have been in other media. The 1982 song "Hip
Priest" was used as the soundtrack to the climax of the 1991 film The Silence of the
Lambs. From Saturday 6 August 2005, The Fall's
"Theme From Sparta F.C." (2003) was used as the theme music to the
Final Score section on BBC Television's afternoon sports show Grandstand.
Also, Smith was recently invited to read out the classified football
results on the BBCi interactive service "Score". "Touch Sensitive" from
The Marshall Suite
was used in the UK as a soundtrack to an advert for the Vauxhall
Corsa, for which Smith claims he was not paid. This Morning With
Richard Not Judy – a late-nineties British
comedy programme – had a regular sketch involving a creature called The
Curious Orange. Its name was derived from the song Kurious
Oranj (from I
Am Kurious Oranj), which was played at the
beginning of each sketch. The title is a play on the Swedish arthouse
film I am curious (Yellow). Stewart
Lee, one half of the comedy partnership who wrote the show, is an
ardent Fall fan and regularly promotes the group in his articles for
such publications as The Wire and The
Guardian. "Blindness", a track off 2005's Fall
Heads Roll, is being used as the soundtrack to
Japanese automaker Mitsubishi's current U.S. broadcast
advertising campaign (the "Out Everything" one). Rod
Stewart used to use the Fall's "Totally Wired" as
introductory music before he took to the stage. UK comedians Frank
Skinner and David Baddiel covered How I Wrote Elastic Man
as part of their Unplanned series on ITV in 2005,
after Skinner had belatedly immersed himself in the band's wealth of
material.
Discography
- For a detailed discography, see The
Fall discography.
Studio albums
- Live at the Witch Trials
(1979)
- Dragnet
(1979)
- Grotesque (After the
Gramme) (1980)
- Slates (1981)
- Hex Enduction Hour
(1982)
- Room to Live (Undilutable Slang Truth!)
(1982)
- Perverted by Language
(1983)
- The
Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall
(1984)
- This Nation's Saving Grace
(1985)
- Bend Sinister
(1986)
- The Frenz Experiment
(1988)
- I Am Kurious, Oranj
(1988)
- Extricate (1990)
- Shift-Work (1991)
- Code: Selfish
(1992)
- The Infotainment Scan
(1993)
- Middle Class Revolt
(1994)
- Cerebral Caustic
(1995)
- The Light User Syndrome
(1996)
- Levitate
(1997)
- The Marshall Suite
(1999)
- The Unutterable
(2000)
- Are You Are Missing Winner
(2001)
- The
Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country on the Click)
(2003)
- Fall Heads Roll
(2005)
- Reformation Post TLC
(2007)
Sound files
| Year |
Song title |
Sample |
Album |
Label |
| 1980 |
"Totally Wired" |
Listen (help·
References
Bibliography
- Smith, Mark E (1985). The Fall
Lyrics. Berlin: Lough Press.
- Edge, Brian (1989). Paintwork:
A Portrait of The Fall. London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-1740-X
- Ford, Simon (2003). Hip
Priest: The Story Of Mark E Smith And The Fall. London:
Quartet Books. ISBN
0-7043-8167-2
- Middles, Mick & Smith, Mark E
(2003). The Fall. London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-9762-4
- Thompson, Dave (2003). A
User's Guide To The Fall. London: Helter Skelter Publishing. ISBN 1-900924-57-9.
External links
| v • d • e The Fall |
| Mark E. Smith | Other
members |
| Studio
albums |
Live at the Witch Trials
| Dragnet | Grotesque
| Slates | Hex
Enduction Hour
Room to Live | Perverted
by Language | The
Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall
This Nation's Saving Grace
| Bend Sinister
| The Frenz Experiment
| I Am Kurious Oranj
Extricate | Shift-Work
| Code: Selfish
| The Infotainment Scan
| Middle Class Revolt
Cerebral Caustic
| The Light User Syndrome
| Levitate | The
Marshall Suite | The
Unutterable
Are You Are Missing Winner
| The
Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country on the Click)
| Fall Heads Roll
| Reformation Post TLC |
| Related
articles |
| Discography | Manchester
| John
Peel |
|
