Fall Monday Playlist #18 - "Borrows" part 1
This playlist features ten of the more notable examples:
Gut of the Quantifier
The muscular riff bears a striking similarity to 'The Changeling', the opening track on The Doors' 1970 album, L.A. Woman. In turn, Jim Morrison and co. may well have been inspired by Jr. Walker & The All-Stars' 1965 single 'Shotgun'.
Crop-Dust
The strongest feature of 2001's patchy and difficult Are You Are Missing Winner, 'Crop-Dust's churning riff is lifted virtually wholesale from The Trogg’s ‘I Just Sing’, a track from their 1966 debut album From Nowhere. The snake-charming lead guitar fuzz is all The Fall's own, however.
Athlete Cured
Perhaps the most brazen of all The Fall's 'lifts'. This Is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner’s 1984 mockumentary, was one of only two films that Smith permitted on the tour bus in the late 80s (the other being Zulu). Steve Hanley recounts in The Big Midweek how repeated exposure to the film led him to be 'doodling' 'Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight' in a soundcheck, whereupon Smith walked in and declared 'we’ll use that'. Despite Simon Rogers' protestations ('it’s a total rip-off!') the group ended up using the riff, 'note-for-note, exactly the same, not altered in the slightest by key changes, time changes, chord changes or any other sort of disguise'.
Fol De Rol
The first 'proper' track on New Facts Emerge is framed around a weighty riff derived from Black Sabbath via Rocket From The Crypt. The lyric ('you block hotel area / with metal wedge potato') is 100% MES though.
Ketamine Sun
The hazy, psychedelic riff is clearly indebted to Lou Reed's 'Kill Your Sons', from his 1974 album Sally Can’t Dance.
The Remainderer
It seems a little far-fetched, even given Smith's fondness for daytime TV, but the lead track on the excellent 2013 Remainderer EP has an undeniable melodic similarity to the Baywatch theme tune. As unlikely as it sounds, the 'borrow' was confirmed by Pete Greenway via Twitter.
Wrong Place, Right Time
'One of my best songs', MES asserted, 'I wrote every note and every word of it.' He'd clearly been listening to 'Gloomy' - from Creedence Clearwater Revival’s 1968 eponymous debut album - whilst he did so. This 'No. 2' version is from the 'Jerusalem/Big New Prinz' single.
Barmy
One of the group's greatest albums (arguably the greatest), This Nation's Saving Grace also has the largest proportion of 'borrows' of any Fall LP (6 out of 11). 'Barmy's riff is pinched from The Monkees’ 1967 single ‘Valleri’.
Stout Man
The last song that The Fall ever played live was based around The Stooges' 'Cock In My Pocket', a track that never received a proper studio release, although it did appear on the band's infamous Metallic KO live album. Smith discussed the song with Daniel Dylan Wray in a 2015 interview: he challenged the rest of the group to learn the relatively obscure track, and when they did so he scornfully accused them of having 'shazammed it' (an interesting choice of verb, given Smith’s professed obliviousness to all things internet or technology-related).
'They’d been tricking me, they’d been sneaking back into the studio to keep tightening it up. I couldn’t catch them out but in a car on the way down to London I was looking behind the seat and there was this CD, covered in dirt, with the original rough mix of it. I made them use that; they’d been doing about eight or nine different versions of it, it was pathetic. They must have worked more on that song more than any other on the whole album.'
Rememberance R
Nearly 30 years on, the group returned to The Stooges' 'I Wanna Be Your Dog', from which Brix had borrowed back in 1984.
Thanks for reading and listening. Next week's list will be a second set of The Fall's cover versions.
Take care everyone.
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