#simon wolstencroft

[musickickztoo]

Simon Wolstencroft *January 19, 1963

[evil-wawe-form]

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[spilladabalia]

The Fall - The Knight the Devil and Death

[hippriestess]

Fantastic Life: The 20 Greatest Fall Songs In No Order Whatsoever. No.16 - Auto-Tech Pilot

For this listener, it’s still a bit odd to consider how 1986 is considered by many to be beginning of a decline of sorts. Each single was charting higher than the next and “Bend Sinister” put the in the Top 40 of the UK Album Chart for the first time. Considered now, it’s easier to see than it has been for a while. Much of “Bend Sinister” and its surrounding singles was a return to the shadows. Having stood proudly in broad daylight on “This Nation’s Saving Grace”, there is, in a way, a retreat of sorts in evidence as the group move towards the audibly crepuscular. But “retreat” is the wrong word as this implies avoidance as opposed to pursuance. In amongst the pop covers and brightly hewn 7″ a-sides, Smith and Co. were exploring dark corners. One of the darkest, most prescient and very very best was found on the 12″ of “Mr Pharmacist” and on cassette and CD formats of “Bend Sinister”. I’ve argued for this before - and much of what’s below will be familiar to anyone who read the Forgotten Frenz series - but I can’t leave it out because “Auto-Tech Pilot” is one of the very best Fall songs ever.

Built around a descending 4 note bassline from Steve Hanley, the song arrives in a musical stealth attack, the group coming creeping over the horizon - the tension is palpable and is created by a single note guitar twang lulling away at the back and the slow arrival on all sides of various eerie clanks, bleeps and plucks, odd unplaceable noises and burbling computer sounds, likely the product of some of the machines that Simon Rogers was wont to bring to Fall sessions (see also - his sampling keyboard, without which “Shoulder Pads” would never have existed). A distant piano line arrives, also likely to be Rogers - it feels like distant bells when set against such a dark, dank sound picture. The overall effect of these ever building intrusions is that Hanley is being staked out then ganged up on, as if the group are trying to overwhelm him, throw him off-course. At 1m 33s, they almost succeed but Hanley out manoeuvers the bastards, shifts gear, accelerates and gets the fuck out of there. Wolstencroft is first on his tail, hammering away at his kick drum and Smith makes a superbly timed entrance, his delivery staccato and panicky, his lyric darkly predictive. Indeed, his suggestion that “this computer thing is getting out of hand” has proved one of his most prescient lyrics. The song’s thrust appears to foresee a future in which technology has become overly dominant and what happens the night some/all of that technology fails and pilot-less aircraft start to fall from the sky; sound effects are used to reinforce this, starting low in the mix at 2m 17s and at their most prominent at 3m 14s. Given that Smith has left the building at a time in which we are to expect driverless cars on our roads any month now, the song now has an extra chill. Brix is unusually quiet; she doesn’t appear vocally and only after what seems to be a sharp edit at 2m 42s is there any guitar which I would identify with her style - a harmonised riff sitting nicely to the front and side of the bassline. There are a few minor fluffs to indicate that the song was completed quickly but given how much has emerged about The Fall’s recording strategy during this period, it would be wrong to infer that it was rushed or intended for b-side status - “R. O. D.“ and, in particular, “Gross Chapel/British Grenadiers” also have mistakes that were let through. 

Shortly before Smith’s death, in a what-to-expect round-up, Beggars Banquet’s catalogue arm, The Arkive, confirmed that work was finally in genuine progress on a remastered and expanded “Bend Sinister”. It is unclear if and when this will emerge but I hope it does - as, more than any discussions about whether or not certain songs play at the right speed, it will be a superb opportunity to finally given “Auto Tech Pilot” its due as one of The Fall’s most grippingly tense and thoroughly idiosyncratic creations.

[i-dream-of-emus]

Nico outside Salford Lads Club with his Uncle Si, and some drummer from an 80s band.

(Image via Louise Antoinette Watson on Instagram.)

[hippriestess]

Fantastic Life: The 20 Greatest Fall Songs In No Order Whatsoever. No. 19 - Free Range

By the time The Fall came to record “Code: Selfish”, they were on a bit of a shaky peg with Phonogram and the initial sessions were hard going. A month in Cava Studios in Glasgow (since converted into flats) produced, according to Steve Hanley in “The Big Midweek” just 5 finished songs. A speedy job for, say, U2 or Tears For Fears but perilously slow for The Fall and a worrying indicator.  

One would never have known as the first song to be heard was certainly their best single for Phonogram and one of their very best overall. The music was written by Simon Wolstencroft and, broadly, is what might have happened had “So What About It” from “Shift-Work” been worked on by the full band rather than Smith adding a vocal to the demo. Fading in on a distant keyboard and sampled radio sounds, it bursts into full view on its sharp synth riff and the second the group fall into place behind it, we’re cruising. Smith delivers a dense, cryptic lyric which never overwhelm the track, fitting in well with all the synth swooshes and occasion programmed interjections. Scanlon’s sea-sick guitar interjections keep things human (and indeed, distinctly Fall) and the track appears to finish with an audible sigh of exhaustion. A video was made, which is worth viewing if only to see The Fall having a Who’s The Most Uncomfortable contest while they ride around London in an army truck. This was The Fall at their most accessible and energetic but with Smith sacrificing none of his desire to apply his lengthy, encoded tracts to even the group’s most ostensibly commercial work. 

At first, it looked like it had worked, when “Free Range” became the group’s first self-panned single to make the top 40, albeit at 40. But it turned out the album’s birth pains were ominous. Whilst to these ears, “Code: Selfish” was a cracker, it received divided reviews with many finding the album a tough chew. Also, in a ridiculous own goal, the album version of “Free Range” cuts into a markedly inferior mix after the first minute. Before long, Phonogram were asking for demos of the group’s new material. An affronted Smith declined to co-operate and the group were let go with a severance payment which they duly spent recording “The Infotainment Scan”. But no matter what happened next, this is one of The Fall’s finest singles and it still sounds fresh, vibrant and - oh, come on, why not - as much FUN as it did in 1992.  

[hippriestess]

Fantastic Life: The 20 Greatest Fall Songs In No Order Whatsoever. No. 13 - M5

A quintessential Fall track, “M5″ has a slightly odd history.

It was originally released on the limited edition second 12″ of “Behind The Counter” at the end of 1993 but as the A-side of said platter. Also, the track is credited to Smith/Bush/Wolstencroft on this record but to Smith/Scanlon/Hanley when it was included on “Middle Class Revolt” in a different mix the following year. It was given a Peel Session airing but that version took the song a bit too fast for these ears.

The lyric appears to refer to the M5 motorway which runs from Birmingham to Exeter hence, one presumes “there's a slip-road up right ahead, leading to the agragarian” (likely a deliberate chew on “agrarian”). However, it’s also worth noting that M5, M6 and M7 are all postcodes in the Salford area which would tie well with “But I'm city born and bred, too many car fumes in my head, just a well read punk peasant”. The “PM” is therefore obscure. Is it the M5 at rush hour, Salford at rush hour or some connection between the two that I’m not smart (or local) enough to understand? One way or another, this should have been an A-side in its own right as it captures both the motorik feel of haring down the titular motorway and the intensity of an urban sprawl. Smith’s lyric borders on the wistful but, in a cunning inversion of the usual rock musician moan of wanting to escape the smoke for the fresh air (”we’re getting our heads together in the country, man”), Smith instead rejects rural living as his idea of hell, not just preferring but advocating the inner city; “M5 to the country straight ahead, it's stuffed to the gills with crusty brown bread, can they not understand, there's nothing worse than a bored man?” Indeed, he goes so far as to include the truism that the devil makes work for idle hands, which makes it likely that the brown bread is representative of someone with too much time to kill (and therefore, the time and energy to make their own bread) rather than him being anti-bread. For Smith, having such time to spare was the worst fate he could imagine, his work ethic rejecting the very thought. Meanwhile, the group clearly enjoy going for a burn down the highway with Dave Bush’s swirling synths front and centre and a cracking Hanley bassline taking the rear for once. Scanlon’s guitar chimes rather than roars, leaving space for Bush and MES to dominate the track. Karl Burns was back playing with the group again by this time, having rejoined in 1993 - my ears only hear one drummer but Wolstencroft was also contributing keyboards and programming around this time. My ears think it’s Burns on drums by dint of being that tiny smidge behind the beat but they’ve been wrong before...

I’ve picked this because I think circumstance has caused it to be undervalued when it should be heralded as one of Smith’s most revealing character pieces. The relative failure of “Middle Class Revolt” remains a bit of a mystery and the album deserves a reappraisal. “M5″ has such a joyful forward thrust that Smith’s hangdog distaste creates a real tension.That the man who wrote about how much he hated London would find the countryside even worse (a theme also covered in “Contraflow” in 2003) speaks of someone who had long since found home and was, perhaps, becoming progressively more and more irritated by what he found when he left it. Just two years later, The Fall would have one of their lightest years as a live act in their entire history. 

[hippriestess]

Fantastic Life: The 20 Greatest Fall Songs In No Order Whatsoever. No.6 - Bill Is Dead

Again, this is one that almost chooses itself and was probably the song that featured most across media and social media tributes. Its poignancy was evident at the time, a rare sight of Smith with his guard down, the words some of his most straightforward. In fact, only the title is evasive here, the song being a story of MES falling out of love and then back in again rather than a memorial. But I’m going to ask your indulgence because my reason for selecting this is a bit different.

I first heard the Fall when I was 12 - “Spoilt Victoria Child” was featured on a Beggars Banquet sampler LP called “One Pound Ninety Nine”, a price tag that suited my paper-round/pocket money budget. I kinda liked the song but was also put off by it for some reason. Mainly the shouty bloke. But it was cleverly put together and the quiet bits reminded me of “Close To Me” by The Cure. I didn’t think too much more about it. I remember hearing “Living Too Late” on Janice Long’s radio show and being repelled by the noisy bits with the shouty bloke yodelling. Ouch. Then “The Chart Show” - then a Channel 4 programme that covered indie, metal and dance charts as well as the Fab Forty - had an “indie” week and they showed “Mr Pharmacist”. Now, that was something else. I liked *that*. One of my school fiend’s bought the 7″. He played me the b-side; “Lucifer Over Lancashire”. It was even better. Jeez, who ARE these people? It had started. From there forwards, each subsequent Fall release would be snapped up in some format at the earliest possible moment. It was the Palace Of Swords Reversed compilation from 1987 that turned The Fall from merely ace into absolutely vital, a lifeline, a refuge and , at times, an obsession. Hours were spent in second hand shops trying to find Hex Enduction Hour...white vinyl reprints of “Perverted By Language” and “Room To Live” were tracked and absorbed. Essential compilations like Hip Priest And Kamerads and Early Fall 77-79 filled otherwise unpluggable gaps. It had happened. They’d got me. I was lost.

My parents hated them. “That’s not even music” was a common response. Pah. What did they know with their Abba and their Carpenters and their Beatles, eh? Pfft. 

We fast-forward, dear reader, to 1990. The clip you see here was filmed for SnubTV, a BBC programme that ran during the late 80′s and early 90′s. I would inevitably videotape each episode, in case there was anything that was worth watching again. The Fall featured several times, of course, and always merited this response. I recall my mum being intrigued when they had a ballet dancer join them for “Dead Beat Descendant”; the juxtaposition may have jarred but also connected in an odd way. Still, the mimed “Bill Is Dead” was being rewound and rewatched a few times one morning early 1990; I was off school on study-leave and taking a break. My mum came into the living room with a cuppa and sat down wordlessly, watching. I think the cat followed her in. We watched for most of the song. As Smith came to the final repeated lines, she commented;  “You know, he’s not even trying to sing”. I smiled. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that this was one of the strongest attempts Smith had made at singing in many a year and that the effort he was making was adding to the exceptional emotional weight of the song. I let her comment stand. What would be the point of doing anything else?

My mum died in 1993. I was 20, she was 45. As time of writing (30th January 2018) I’m 44. I am close to the age she was when she was taken from us (leukemia) and I would be in no mood to go. My love of The Fall is over 30 years strong, longer than I had my mum in my life.

When I hear “Bill Is Dead” that’s the scene I see in my head. That living room, that performance, that videotape. That cast: me, mum, maybe Cheeky (the cat). And I think of my mum. And I miss her with every molecule of my being.

“These are the finest times of my life...”