New Musical Express, August 19th 1978

REEL-TO-REEL life: patt-ur stagg-urs on... In bu-tween the s-o-n-g-s...

The lax Lucozade-oozing-rock pumps out in the form of The Godz, Sad Cafe, The Shirts. It pours out of the broadcast booth beside our senses. It is on one side, behind the glass. We are on the other, crawling up the walls. We have all been given... one can of beer. We are grateful. ‘We’ are Manchester band The Fall, their manager Kay Carroll, and me.

The Fall are here at BBC Radio Manchester to be interviewed for a Saturday-night-in-the-modern-music-world programme called Saturday Rock. I am present to interview The Fall. I have seen them perform on Friday night at Eric’s club, Liverpool. I have talked to the band’s leader-singer-songwriter, Mark E. Smith (21). (He has moaned a lot about record companies, rock music 'personalities' and musicians, and the media, unfolded the band's history, and explained a few of his songs.)

Now I confront The Fall as The Fall in the incubator 'interview studio' of BBC Radio Manchester. I interview:

Do you think some people might find you humourless? As much has been suggested in the rock press ...

"We're not a comedy act. We're not The Barron Knights. How many people laughed at The Sex Pistols?"

Malcolm McLaren (I keep this reply to myself). The Fall person who had posed the question apropos the spirit (presumably, as it was in the past tense) of The Sex Pistols was Martin Bramah (20, guitar). In Fall interview situations he contributes slightly less than Mark, who contributes practically everything.

Mark is relaxed, urbane, garrulous. Martin (who wishes he was Richard Hell) is tense, concise, wittier than Smith. There an three other young people in The Fall and between them they contribute practically nothing to interview situations. They are: Karl Burns (19, drums, cheap comment), Yvonne Pawlett (19, keyboards), and Marc Riley (16, bass). These are ordinary young people.

Karl is the best, the only 'musician' in The Fall - drumming since he was 13 in a succession of "cabaret and Heavy Metal bands". Yvonne has been to art school, left, plays minimal keyboards, says a minimal amount in interviews, but talks lengthily about Nico, Nico, Nico, and Jim Morrison - who she thinks is alive, well, and (I think) playing guitar solos for Talking Heads. Marc says and does even less than Yvonne.

At times it seems as though The Fall forget themselves. There is a group, but nothing behind it - like a billboard. This is perhaps hardly surprising: since their inception in late 1976 they have worked through three bass players and one keyboard player, Una Baines - who left the band to, uh, consider herself or something.

These constant line-up changes have, obviously, been a bugger for concerts, media portrayals, and records. The Fall appear on the recently released Virgin "Short Circuit - Live At The Electric Circus" 10-inch bloovineul artifact, for instance, but The Fall featured includes Una Baines on keyboards and Tony Friel (co-founder) on bass. (Their two tracks - "Stepping Out", "Last Orders" - are the only vaguely listenable things on the whole album.)

The same disorientating aspect crops up again on their debut EP - "Bingo Masters Breakout" - released by Step Forward on August 11 but recorded last autumn (ie before Yvonne or Marc had joined). It doesn't seem to bother the band themselves. Are they po-faced? Zen-wise? Or do they give a shit?

Mark: "We're serious about it ... but people misinterpret seriousness for humourlessness."

Mark is the sole writer in The Fall since the departure of Una Baines. Is anyone else thinking about contributing lyrics?

Mark: "We gotta learn them to spell yet..." Laughter.

There seems to be a Velvet Underground influence at large ...

Martin: "It's coming through less than it did, coming through in a different way..."

Do you think that perhaps you're moving away from your rough experimental beginnings - the wrong way - rather like Buzzcocks seem to be?

Marc: "Buzzcocks knew what they were doing when they went for that market. They're not stupid."

What market?

Marc: All this Daily Mirror Pop Club stuff... they're not daft, they want to make money out of it."

Don't you want to?

Marc: "Oh aye, I'd like a bit of money."

Martin (jokingly?): "You're gonna get stuck if you don't shut up."

Marc (jokingly?): "I am already..."


MIND YOU... Buzzcocks, they sound more and more like The Tremoloes or Herman's Hermits to this critic. But what of The Fall's EP? Three tracks, very rough, plain -- "Psycho Mafia", "Bingo Masters Breakout", and "Repetition". Live favourites, I believe. "Psycho Mafia" particularly seems to have been promoted to something approaching 'anthem' status:

"Spittin' on the streets/Shot heads and teeth/Our eyes are red/Our brains are dead/'Cos we know about drugs/And the psycho mafia."

Mark: "It's about the psycho mafia, which is a chemical mafia - the way mental hospitals are run, that whole thing..."

Oh. Mark, as is often the case, says a lot, quickly, but fails to convey much or to convince much. I suppose that's left up to the songs themselves. Which unfortunately... healthy cough... rely too often on current speed-oblique-is-justification-enough-said methods of communication.


FRIDAY, ERIC's, performance: and on stage, as in conversation, Mark dominates. He wears, indeed, the same clothes for conversation and performance (which is no 'performance' at all). All the band do. They are shabby, ordinary, have no 'image' but unlike certain other image-less people do not osmose any kind of urban commando tout-suite street chic.

In other words they do not exploit their background. They don't exploit anything, in fact, which is just their trouble. They, and their music, are ordinary: not 'uncompromising', just unadventurous, undynamic, monotonous.

This may be what you have been waiting for (from the New Wave), but I haven't. It does nothing for me.

The Fall do a song about repetition called "Repetition" which is repetitive (don't deny it Mark, you think this is clever): the immobility of motion. It's a drag. It's negative.

Other, more recent songs - "Industrial Estate", "Rebellious Jukebox", "Mother Sister", "(Envy Of) The Music Scene", "Mess Of My", "It's The New Thing" - all deal with numb frustration, anger, disillusionment, hostility toward environment:

"Leave a mark on the city/Oh smash your doors down/Become a demolition worker/A mental construction worker/Spat spat spat on the coat/Cut-hair-or-miss-boat.” (“[Envy Of] The Music Scene”)

But they never really transcend the emotions being presented. Nothing in the song, nothing in live performance is done which might cause people to stop and think.

Then is a lack of tension. I suspect this may have something to do with the departure of the more 'radical' members Baines and Friel: no more conflict.

(At one point in the interview I address myself to Yvonne, Marc, and Karl, and ask if they - individually or collectively - are content with policies As They Stand in The Fall: there is A PAUSE to end all pauses.)

On stage Mark stands still quite a lot. If he moves, he swivels round a little. He screws his face up a lot: he doesn't like The World As It Is. But his eyes don't light up a la Joe Strummer or David Thomas (Pere Ubu) or other people who despise most of the world most of the time (you know what I mean). Like that other great manic-obsessive, El Costello, Mark screams his state of mind and nothing more.

It's a drag. It's a negative.

Martin has been playing guitar for about a year and a half. (He started The Fall with Mark and Tony Friel - the original motivating force behind it all, apparently.) Onstage he doesn't look part of his instrument; this is something he should learn from his hero, Hell. He is left-handed, and plays in a series of rapid guillotine scraping scratching movements.

Marc doesn't do much. You can tell he is 16. Yvonne wishes she was Nico and as far as playing goes, gets there: plinkplink plonk plinkplink. In fact the only element of the band's sound which really makes itself felt (and how) is Karl's drumming. They lack a sense of purpose (but also lack primitive naivety). Mark knows what his lyrics are about but apparently not what he's using them for. Occasionally he'll give a mild scream, or make swallow-the-mike noises. The rest of the band comply with his commentaries: no conflict; repetition; no contact established.

Mark: "People come up now and say, 'Oh, you're not as spontaneous as you used to be' ... but that's crap. The feeling's still there, but now everybody knows what they're doing. I mean, I can't pretend that I'm not a better singer than I used to be..."

Martin: "We don't want to go anywhere, we're not planning to go somewhere... The music just progresses."

What do you see in the future - will you continue just to do sporadic gigs as you have in the past?

Mark: "No, we want some records, even if they're just as documents. And we have to make some money..."

Which certain bands have been given and squandered, no?

Mark: "The new wave is a sell-out. I mean, compared to the old wave it's all so tame, what they actually do... You think of what other people have tried out."

By 'other people' he means such as Cpt..Beefheart, (here I leave), The Velvet Underground, Dylan. The only new bands he feels have succeeded in any valid way are ATV, The Prefects, and The Worst (a recently deceased Manchester band who didn't get onto vinyl);

"lf we sign to Polydor for two grand or something weak like that, or something like Decca, then it'll all have been a waste, we might as well have done it six months ago .. ."

"Spend hours over clever art/And funny advertising quotes/Make you bite and raise your hopes/IT'S THE NEW LEATHER THING/SMASH CRASH SMASH RING.” ("It's The New Thing")

Well yes, in their favour The Fall have held out against the organised trendy-treats industry of this thing called rock. But it seems to be a quality through default. Hearts-in-the-right-place, but an unmemorable unstriking progress, a protest which is just the exchange of one set of limitations (and libellations) for another.

No new leather thing, but what is there?


SYMBOLIC SHIFT to discussion of The Fall as a 'political' band. Mark: "I was very involved in politics before the band, when I was working" (he has never been near university or art school) "but I was disillusioned very quickly. I always equated left-wing politics with revolution -- which is not what it's about at all...

"The way certain organisations - you know which ones I'm talking about - use the system... I mean we did a lot of gigs for Rock Against Racism, and what happens is before you go on they say, 'Will you hold this poster up?' - And it's a picture of Belsen, 'DON'T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN'...

"And I would say - we're a political band, that's what we sing about. But they want you to make announcements between songs; they see you as an entertainment - you might as well be singing Country and Western...

"SWP workers walking around with leather fists - that's the alternative?”

How did The Fall get their 'Henry Cow of the New Wave' image?

Mark: "RAR were the only people giving us gigs and we didn't have an agent; I was still working at the time... Una (Baines) was very into feminism. Tony (Friel) sort of flirted with Communism. It was just our stance, I suppose. We didn't wear the gear,” - still don't - “and then was the song 'Hey Fascist..."

"Car coat on/Steel boots on your feet/Write your letters to the Evening News..." ("Hey Fascist")

"We were always portrayed as the humourless idealists. We still find it hard to get gigs in our own right in Manchester."

Ideals persist. The EP, for instance:

Mark: "It was just bloody-mindedness; in the end the music wasn't important, it just became a matter of principle to get this EP out..."


SOFTLY, SOFTLY, Fall... Things begin to blur suspiciously here. For instance, manager Kay on the advantage of Miles Copeland over the other record company execs:

"He's gonna take your money but he tells you - it's dead honest, that."

Oh, I'm afraid that logic escapes me. It seems less the result of deliberation (the kind of band I'd been led to believe they were) than of idealistic self-imprisonment.

Just more anti-heroes thrashing through the night. I wish that they were even nasty, or ideologically repulsive, but they're not. They are not 'humourless'. They are not 'political'. Three of them can make quite a tidy thrashing noise. One can write words which oppose but never propose. Martin would be on the dole.

I suspect The Fall will never be the band they once were, even though they haven't 'sold out' or anything. They are, presently, monochromatic: record labels, TV shows, industrial estates - it all exists, it won't go away, it bores me stiff per se. No subtlety, no craziness, no frailty, nothing but a mirror (I got plenty). They do not reach heights of confrontation; states of mind, single individuals at special moments. They do not integrate sound and silence; highs and lows; good and bad; heavy and light. Music is not co-operative with performance.

I can't modern-dance to it (I think they'll be successful).

For in the folded wake of the original spirit of The Six Epistles (well, four), The People - lolling and eyebrow-pencil sharp - have plumped for: Penetration, who are innocence itself, whose wholeheartedness (provincial hearts) may yet be implosive, and - Siouxsie and The Banshees, who represent we shall say, forbidden knowledge. And.

BETWEEN INNOCENCE AND FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE COMES THE FALL.