THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

Let’s get a misconception about this one right out of the way.

C.R.E.E.P. is not about recently departed band member, Marc Riley.

Brix Smith‘s book, The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise (2016) devotes a few paragraphs to the song, saying that she was excited by it, not least as she provides ‘bratty backing vocals that contested well with the darkness of The Fall’, and firmly believed it had a chance of cracking the singles chart. She also explains that the lyrics were aimed at another of the many hundreds of individuals who had upset Mark E Smith somewhere along the way, a German tour manager by the name of Scumech, whose name was turned into scum-egg as part of the lyric.  A bit of investigatory work by fans of the band later unearthed that the man in question was most likely Scumeck Sabottka, who would later make a fortune as the founder of one of the biggest online ticketing agencies in Germany – and looking at some of the photos of the man that can be found online, he does look something of a peace-loving, trendy wretch who was fond of ABC.  It would appear therefore that MES never gave him the look of love….

C.R.E.E.P. didn’t sound like anything the band had written, recorded and released up to this point.  It was even more ‘pop’ orientated than Oh! Brother.  It is very much a record on which the guiding influence of John Leckie in the producer’s chair is obvious, and the folk at Beggars Banquet must have been pleased at how it was all going.

Many years later, it would emerge that the tune had been written by the brothers Steve and Paul Hanley together with Craig Scanlon, just after The Man Whose Head Expanded had been recorded, but MES had hated it, throwing the cassette down in disdain, seemingly lost forever.  Brix, while doing a bit of serious cleaning in her new matrimonial abode, found the discarded tape and suggested that it would make for a good song if MES could come up with a lyric.  Still very much in love with his new wife, the cantankerous frontman didn’t let on what he really thought of the tune and in due course came up with the words. Oh, and Brix somehow manages to get a writing credit on the final version, possibly/probably because of the bratty backing vocal…..

I should at this stage owning up to having a real liking for C.R.E.E.P. but not buying it at the time of release, being content to hear it played on a reasonably regular basis at one disco or other in the Students; Union. The problem, however, was that the music critics weren’t all that keen, with some barbed comments that the new-look band, which had undergone a fairly radical image transformation, was now being fronted by the new wave equivalent of Dollar (click here if you need an explanation).  Many fans from way back didn’t care for it either, thinking it was clear evidence of the band selling-out to the man.

Similar to last time out, C.R.E.E.P., released on 24 August 1984, was made available on 7″ and 12″, with the latter being on green vinyl and containing a version which is almost two minutes longer, with particular prominence given to the bass playing skills of Steve Hanley:-

mp3: The Fall – C.R.E.E.P.
mp3: The Fall – C.R.E.E.P. (12″ version)

Despite Brix’s hopes, it stalled at #91, just two places higher than Oh! Brother. You might well be able to easily dance in the student unions to the music The Fall were now making, but it still wasn’t making any impact on the wider market of record buyers.

The b-side to the single was inspired by another individual whom The Fall had dealt with while on tour. Again, let’s turn to Brix’s book for the details:-

“The Fall’s American tour manager, Pat was a plump fellow from Hoboken, New Jersey. He was a fun-loving, beer-drinking kind of guy. Mark went to Pat and asked him for some pills. Pat removed a plastic bag full of colourful capsules.”

The capsules were emptied out and duly snorted, but instead of it being the anticipated speed it turned out to be nothing more than powdered caffeine….

mp3: The Fall – Pat-Trip Dispenser

It’s an absolute belter of a song…..one which benefits from the polish offered up by Leckie but without going down the truly commercial road. It seemed to bode well for the album that was being worked up……

JC

Do you remember a few weeks back when I highlighted that The Fall had just one entry in the Peel Festive 60 (as was) of 1982, and that none of the tracks from Hex Enduction Hour had gathered enough votes?  Well, 1983 was significantly better in that both of the year’s 45s, The Man Whose Head Expanded and Kicker Conspiracy, along with its b-side, Wings, were prominent, but pride of place went to a Peel Session version of Eat Y’Self Fitter, the track which had opened the album, Perverted By Language, with it being voted in at #8, headed only by songs from Billy Bragg, The Smiths, Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil and New Order.

MES, however, was disillusioned at Rough Trade, and he began 1984 on the look-out for a new home.  Some major labels were taking notice of the increasingly positive press coming the way of The Fall, and, let’s not pretend otherwise, the addition of an attractive female member made the band a much more marketable proposition.  The music weeklies, in the first week of May 1984, announced that the band had signed a deal with Beggars Banquet, and were currently holed up in a studio with producer John Leckie who had brought success to a number of other bands including Magazine, Simple Minds, XTC, The Skids and Public Image Limited.

One month later, and the first fruits of the new labour were unleashed on the listening public.

mp3: The Fall – Oh! Brother

It was The Fall, but not as we, or indeed anyone, knew them.

It was a pop song, one which would have sat easily alongside those that were being released on a regular basis by Rough Trade.  I’m sure that Geoff Travis would have been scratching his head and wondering just what he had ever done to upset MES to the extent that the thrawn bastard continuously refused to contemplate anything akin to radio friendly songs, only for him to come up with this absolute monster once he’d moved to a major label.

Right away, the music press suggested that it was the pop sensibilities of Brix Smith that had led the band down this particular path. After all, the line-up was still the same as it had been since the departure of Marc Riley, but with the addition of this American guitarist and vocalist who might have been a fan but had not been part of the rough and ready apprenticeship going back what was now six studio albums, an EP, ten singles and many hundreds of gigs in toilets all across the UK and further afield.

But……why let the facts get in the way of a good story?  It turned out that Oh! Brother, or at least a version of it, dated back to 1977/78, and had been resurrected as being a tune that Brix Smith could quickly get to grips with in the live setting and in the studio.   The person who was really most responsible for bringing about this change in sound and dynamics was John Leckie as his production techniques and fingerprints are all over the 45.

Suffice to say, some fans were horrified.  But at the same time, the Leckie name being attached to the band likely opened The Fall up to a whole new audience – I can vouch for that as, not withstanding the home recording of Hex Enduction Hour in advance of the 1982 gig in Glasgow, this was the first single of The Fall that I bought at the time of its actual release.  On 12″ vinyl, and I was completely unaware that this was the first single by the band that had been issued on that format, with everything previous being on 7″ only.  My copy from back in 1984 didn’t survive being constantly played on record players with needles in less than perfect condition, nor a few moves across student and workplace flats across the remainder of the decade.  But I’m pleased to say I’ve since picked up a second-hand copy in decent nick:-

mp3: The Fall – God-Box
mp3: The Fall – Oh! Brother (12″ mix)

God-Box was the first song on which Brix Smith received a writing credit for The Fall. In fact, it goes well beyond that with the lyrics attributed jointly to Mark E Smith and Brix Smith, but with the music and arrangement being solely in the hand of Brix. It was almost as if MES was announcing that she was here to stay, and far from being just a pretty face, was going to bring something concrete and meaningful to bring to the band.

Oh! Brother did what no other previous single had done in that entered the mainstream singles chart at #93. Thanks to it being on a major label, it didn’t qualify for the indie singles chart.

JC

The summer of 1983.  The Fall are signed to Rough Trade.  Their label mates included The Smiths, Aztec Camera, The Go-Betweens, Jazzateers and Violent Femmes, all of whom were recording and issuing what Mark E Smith regarded as bog-standard tuneful indie-pop, often with jangly guitars at the centre of the sound.  Rough Trade did not feel like a natural home, but hey-ho, a contract is a contract, and a single and album are required by the end of 1983.

The current five-man line-up of MES, Craig Scanlon, Paul Hanley, Steve Hanley and Karl Burns convene in a London studio to record the contractual new single. It’s a song they have played a great deal while touring throughout the previous six months, mainly in Europe, but also over in the USA on the tour when MES had first met Brix Salenger after a gig in Chicago. Brix had followed MES back to England, and as recounted in last week’s tale, the couple had married in July 1983.

It’s a song about football.  A sport which was at something of a low in England (and indeed Scotland) in 1983.  It was often a brutal watch, with skilful players all too often at the mercy of no-nonsense defenders, played in front of hostile and aggressive crowds.  Hooliganism was rife.   Fighting broke out on the terraces, in the surrounding streets, on public transport, at motorway service stations and was often at its worst when English clubs or the England national team played in European competitions.

It was as far from trendy as could be imagined, so there’s no real surprise that MES spent months crafting lyrics which had a go at those in charge of the sport, who were all too often and willing to do it down instead of looking for ways to bring about positive change. Oh, and as a reminder to Rough Trade that music wasn’t and shouldn’t always be instantly accessible and appealing to the masses, he came up with a tune which, for the early verses, leans on that rockabilly rift the band had used to great effect so often, but is mixed in with a degree of brutalism around the chorus and middle section of the song:-

mp3: The Fall – Kicker Conspiracy

It came out in September 1983 as a 2×7″ package with an original track on the b-side of Kicker Conspiracy, with the bonus 7″ having two songs taken from a John Peel session dating back to 1980:-

mp3: The Fall – Wings
mp3: The Fall – Container Drivers (Peel Session)
mp3: The Fall – New Puritan (Peel Session)

The writing credits on Wings are given to the Hanley brothers and MES. It’s one of those tracks which quite likely delighted most long-standing fans, but confirmed the prejudices held by the haters. I’ll hold my hands up…..it’s a song I didn’t discover until many years later and my first thought was that this was the sort of hard-to-take-in music I had experienced at the Glasgow Night Moves gig in April 1982, as mentioned a couple of weeks back. And sure enough, I’ve since been able to check and confirm that it was on the set-list that night, seemingly just the fourth time it had ever been aired. I’ve still never really taken to it……

Kicker Conspiracy reached #5 in the Indie Charts. MES wasn’t happy at how little promotional support was offered, despite it being the first Fall song to have an accompanying video, part of which was filmed at Turf Moor, the home of Burnley FC. He likely had a point in that Rough Trade was devoting resources to the charts and would-be chart bands, and not pressing enough copies of the records by other acts, which is why it is one of the rarer 45s of the era to track down with second-hand copies starting at £30 and going all the way up to £75 for a mint condition offering.

A few postscripts.

There are many fans out there who reckon that the Peel Sessions brought out the best in The Fall, and there’s plenty of evidence to back this up when you listen to the tracks collected on the compilation box set released back in 2005.  Marc Riley, in a radio interview in 1999 had this to say, specifically about the third Peel Session from which Container Drivers and New Puritan are taken:-

“The thing about recording a John Peel session is that you get in the van in the morning, in our case you drive two hundred miles, get out, unload the gear, and record everything in a pretty quick time.  I mean you would do four songs for a session. Now normally, even for band like The Fall, you would have to take two or three days to record four tunes.  In this case you have to get it all done and dusted by ten o’clock at night. So you would get into the studio, wheel everything down into the catacombs in Maida Vale, set up and do the deed. And I remember, I think it was the third session we did, we recorded the first track, made a right old racket, as we did, went in to start listening back to it, make sure we were happy with it, and I turned round to see the producer (John Sparrow), and his pipe had gone out. This is the truth, his pipe had actually gone out and he was asleep.”

As a bonus, here’s the other two tracks from that same session, recorded on 16 September 1980 and first broadcast 24 September 1980:-

mp3: The Fall – Jawbone and The Air-Rifle (Peel Session)
mp3: The Fall – New Face In Hell (Peel Session)

Mark E Smith – vocals; Marc Riley – guitar; Craig Scanlon – guitar; Steve Hanley – bass; Paul Hanley – drums

I made mention last week that Kamera Records had hoped, in late 1982, to issue a 7″ single containing two tracks from the album Room To Live. The label was in its dying days when it arranged for the pressing and issuing of this single in September 1983 only to find itself in a position that it couldn’t afford to do so. My understanding is that just 200 copies ever found their way into some shops, and even then, it was a real peculiarity. It had which had Marquis Cha Cha on its a-side, and Room To Live on its b-side, but the sleeve and the actual info on the vinyl for the b-side states the track is Papal Visit. All of which means I’m not inclined to include it in this series.

Finally, the contractually obligatory album for Rough Trade was also recorded in the summer of 1983. Perverted By Language was released on 5 December 1983 and its credits revealed that The Fall had undergone another line-up change. The five who had made Kicker Conspiracy had been joined, on two of the album tracks, by an additional guitarist and vocalist.

Welcome to The Fall, Brix Smith. Things weren’t quite ever the same after you joined, were they?

JC