The Fall In Fives

  G is for... Daren Garratt  Perhaps the most often misspelled of group members, he was (alongside Pete Greenway) in Pubic Fringe, who supported The Fall on several occasions. He first appeared on stage with the group in 2004, adding backing vocals to 'Touch Sensitive' at the 29 July gig in Stourbridge. He covered for Keiron Melling’s paternity leave in late 2013 before playing – highly effectively – as second drummer throughout much of 2014-2015; he also made a valuable contribution to The Remainderer . Daren played with The Nightingales as well, and made a fleeting appearance in the recent documentary King Rocker . German MES wasn't averse to throwing a bit of German into his lyrics, even if he couldn't actually speak the language at all (Brix suggested he tried to learn it from Nazi war movies). 'Das Vulture Ans Ein Nutter-Wain', for example, is grammatical nonsense; the closest you can get to a translation is ‘the vulture and another one’ or even ‘the vultur...

  F is for... Brian Fanning Played guitar on Are You Are Missing Winner and appeared at a handful of UK dates in the autumn of 2001. Quit because of the group’s eccentric touring schedule: ‘what do you do, just get the fuckin’ darts out and throw them at a map of Britain?’ Fat White Family At Glastonbury 2015, very visible stain on Smith’s trousers led some to suggest that he had had an unfortunate pre-gig accident, but it was actually the result of a backstage incident involving Fat White Family. Kieron Melling described what happened in a 2020 interview : 'One of them threw a drink, and Mark threw a drink. It was all in good faith. And Mark ended up with champagne down his pants in a place where everyone thought he’d pissed himself.' MES's version (from  The Guardian ): 'They came and sat next to us and thought they were it. Big mistake. I was giving a glass of champagne to the lads before we went on and one of them just walks up and I just threw it in his face. He w...

  E is for... Eagles Of Death Metal A Californian band co-founded by Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme. On 13 November 2015, a series of co-ordinated terrorist attacks took place in Paris; at Bataclan concert hall, where the Eagles of Death Metal were playing, gunmen killed 90 people. The band are referenced in the 2017 Fall track 'Couples Vs Jobless Mid 30s' (you can hear their name in the faux-operatic backing vocals from 3:46). Echo Beach A 1990 hit for Canadian band Martha and the Muffins. There are echoes (pardon the pun) of the guitar line in The Fall's 1994 cover of Henry Cow's ' War '. Ed In his excellent memoir, You Can Drum But You Can't Hide . Simon Wolstencroft recounts an episode from The Fall's May 1988 US tour involving him, MES and their soundman Ed. 'The sun was just coming up as we thundered down a stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway. Mark asked our driver to stop for a while so we could get out and breathe in some of the fre...