The wonderful and frightening world of the Fall has come to an end. Mark E. Smith, the hilarious, curmudgeonly singer and lyricist for the English post-punk iconoclasts, has died. He was 60. For more than 41 of those years, Smith led the Fall through countless lineup changes, the high turnover rate the result of his, one might say, difficult nature and very strong-willed vision for his band. I can't say I kept pace with the Fall's prolific output, but that doesn't mean their discography after Extricate (where my Fall fanaticism finished; it's on me, not them) isn't littered with great cuts. However, I can vouch that the Fall's run from 1977 to 1990 is one of the most fascinating and rewarding of any rock group from that time span.
If you're looking for the best entry points, go for Grotesque (After the Gramme), Hex Enduction Hour, and This Nation's Saving Grace. Then spring for every other blessed thing they released in the period listed above. (There are many other savants online and off who can guide you through the Fall's post-1990 oeuvre.) Trust me—you'll be hooked after a couple of listens. And if you're not, there'll be plenty of Fall fans to castigate you for your deficiencies. (At this juncture, if you've not done so yet, I advise you to read my colleague Sean Nelson's excellent obit. No, one eulogy isn't enough for an artist of Mark E. Smith's stature.)
In 1988, I had the extreme pleasure of interviewing Smith in Detroit for You Can't Hide Your Love Forever, a fanzine that I, my brother Michael, and Johnny Ray Huston created. Inside the Fall's tour van, Smith chain-smoked and drank beer after beer throughout the entire hour-long session; he was as over-the-top with his vices as he was with his artistic virtues.
But Smith was as incisive and funny as any journalist could've hoped for. He'd even read our career summary of his band in a previous issue, and admitted his personal favorite at that moment was Room to Live. I was gobsmacked. (Side note: That issue recently sold for over £13 on eBay. Had the seller waited a month, they could've made at least three times that figure.) Smith angered a lot of people in his life, including several band mates, but in our one encounter he was a total charmer, a true music head, and an original thinker. They don't make 'em like MES anymore, and that's both sad and a tribute to the cussed genius' distinctiveness.
Below are five absolute highlights from the Fall's massive catalog. I could conjure at least 10 times that figure, but I lack the time and you lack the patience. One of the great things about the Fall is that everyone's personal pantheon will likely be wildly varied—and equally interesting.
"Repetition" (from 1978's Bingo Master's Breakout): "We got repetition in our music and we're never gonna lose it" has stood as the definitive Fall ethos for four decades. And when your ideas are as trenchant and hypnotic as Smith's, that's a great thing. Making monotony compelling is a gift seldom mastered, but when it's done by geniuses, the results transport you to an exalted—or exhilaratingly debased—state like nothing else. After an intro that explodes in chaos not unlike that of Annette Peacock's "I'm the One," the simple yet sublimely keening guitar figure that runs through "Repetition" mesmerizes with a power that makes your eyes roll around their sockets like roulette balls. Smith has the ultimate answer for "all you daughters and sons who are sick of fancy music."
"Totally Wired" (1980 single): Has there ever been a more accurate rendering of the amphetamine rush on wax? Unlikely. It begins with drums that sound like a heart beating as if fittin' to burst out of a chest cavity, as MES relates how he's, like, totally wired, mate, and then the guitars start chattering and clanging like a fire alarm and the bass throbs like an erection the size of a Marshall stack. Smith and company make the speed experience seem utterly enticing, and I've been here for that message since the week this single came out.
"New Face in Hell" (from 1980's Grotesque [After the Gramme]): This sounds like the Fall were trying to cover the Velvet Underground's "What Goes On," flubbed it because they're too Mancunian, but the error was too god-damn riveting to scrap, so they splattered a killer kazoo riff over the shambling mess and let Smith freestyle some paranoiac scenarios. "Wireless enthusiast intercepts government secret radio band/And uncovers secrets and scandals of deceitful type proportions," he barks with utmost reasonableness, and then things get stranger from there. As with the main riff in "What Goes On," the one for "New Face in Hell" was built to choogle forever.
"The Classical" (from 1982's Hex Enduction Hour): Smith's inexcusable dropping of the n-bomb here reportedly torpedoed the Fall's chances of signing to Motown (a story just absurd enough to be true), but if you ignore that tragic flaw, "The Classical" is a motherfucking juggernaut of chime and jangle and clatter, boasting one of Smith's most majestic melodies. The "I never felt better in my life" refrain burned itself into Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus's brain at some point, and he took that motif to the bank. This is the way you begin an album, friends. Smith's at the top of his non-sequitur/illogically stunning slogan game here, and university profs will be trying to decipher the verbal convolutions for decades. "There is no culture is my brag/Your taste for bullshit reveals a lust for a home of office," indeed.
"I Am Damo Suzuki" (off 1985's This Nation's Saving Grace): Part of the Fall's m.o. has been to mimic Smith's heroes with both reverence and a certain obliqueness. They've done it with the Stooges, the Velvets (see above), the Monks, Van Der Graaf Generator, and others. Sometimes the homages come less veiled than others, as is the case with "I Am Damo Suzuki," which is obviously a paean to the mercurial Japanese vocalist who appeared on some of CAN's greatest LPs, as well as to the krautrock legends' enigmatic Tago Mago era ("Oh Yeah," to be precise); they really nailed Jaki Liebezeit's robust, machine-like propulsion here. Damo reputedly is happy with the tribute, as well he should be. This track is a gush of mysterious adrenaline.
