An A-Z of The Fall - P & Q
P is for...
Palais
The Hammersmith Palais closed its doors for the last time in 2007, 88 years after it opened as Hammersmith Palais de Danse. It was demolished in 2012, and the site is now occupied by student accommodation.
The Fall's performance on 1 April 2007 was released in 2009 on CD and DVD as Last Night At The Palais, and is one of their best live albums, in the author's opinion. Damon Albarn's 'supergroup The Good, the Bad & the Queen had played the venue the night before, a gig that was billed as the venue's final show. However, neither this nor The Fall's performance were actually the last concert to be played there, as Groove Armada played there on 3 May.
Pan Bahar
The rather startling opening line to 'Dedication Not Medication' – 'Pierce Brosnan how dare you prescribe / sad grief and bed wet pills?' – refers to the ex-Bond actor's role in promoting Indian chewing tobacco Pan Bahar, one of the side effects of which is incontinence.
Pavement
There are many bands whose sound shows a clear Fall influence, but Pavement's 1992 debut Slanted and Enchanted appeared to be almost entirely based on Slates and Hex. MES was famously derisive about Fall copyists (as he saw them) and was particularly scornful of Stephen Malkmus and co., for example in this 1993 interview for Melody Maker:
People were coming up to me saying 'listen to this', and playing me Pavement records on a Walkman, and I just asked, 'What live tape is that of ours? Is that from Holland in 1987 or something? That's a fucking drum riff I wrote. The cheek!' They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I don't hold with that. I feel sorry for them, actually. I don't get mad, I just can't see the point of forming a group if you're imitating someone else, it's like, get a life, man. Get a real job!
Maxine Peake
The British actress, best known for her roles in dinnerladies and Shameless, is a Fall fan. She was one of many to pay tribute to MES after his death, and told this anecdote to The Guardian:
I went to see the Fall perform at the Cartoon Club in Croydon and I found myself in the tiny dressing room after the gig, face to face with Mr Smith. I was starstruck. Just as I was about to pluck up the courage to say something, Mark turned to Steve Trafford, his then bassist, and said: “What does that slapper want?” For a split-second my heart was broken, but then I thought, “Hey, at least he noticed me.”
She also got a mention in Renegade:
‘[Steve Trafford] started losing it when he met that actress out of Shameless, Maxine Peake. He didn't realize she was only hanging around with him because he was in The Fall.’
Peake is one of the narrators featured on the audiobook version of recently published Fall book Excavate.
John Perry
Interviewers never knew what they were going to get with Smith. He could often be warm, funny and engaging; he could also be difficult, hostile and aggressive. It was certainly the latter MES that the hapless John Perry was faced with when he interviewed him for Loaded in 1997. He called Perry ‘a c*nt’, tried to stub a cigarette out in his face, described John Peel as ‘a bastard’ and abused Tim Wheeler of Ash, who happened to be in the pub in which the interview took place.
Plastic Man
It's not entirely clear why MES sang 'plastic man' rather than 'elastic man' in 'How I Wrote Elastic Man', but, as ever, there are lots of suggestions to consider on The Annotated Fall. The Marvel version of Plastic Man first appeared as an enemy of Captain Marvel in 1966, but he was renamed Elastic Man because DC owned the rights to Plastic Man.
'Ping the Elastic Man' appeared in the Beano in the late 1930s, but asides from the fact that artist Hugh McNeill was born in Manchester, there's not a strong case for making a Fall connection.
Pomerania
As well as being one of several Fall songs to mention insects (see I), 'Ladybird (Green Grass)' contains the line ‘Pomerania is burning down’. 'Ladybird' deals with that ubiquitous rock ‘n’ roll topic, the Thirty Years’ War. The German version of the ‘ladybird, ladybird fly away home’ nursery rhyme referred to in the song is thought to be about the seventeenth century conflict. Fought between 1618 and 1648, the war saw the deaths of around half of the population of Pomerania.
'Printer's Devil’
References to MES's favourite TV show, The Twilight Zone can be found across the group's back catalogue (see this Monday playlist), but 'Wolf Kidult Man' actually contains some audio from an episode at the end of the song.
The episode in question is 'Printer's Devil', first shown in 1963. (A printer's devil was an apprentice to a printer - Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman and Mark Twain all served as one in their youth.) It's a 'Faustus'-esque tale starring Burgess Meredith (see M part 1).
The Priors
Saffron Prior was Smith's second wife: they married in 1991 and separated in 1995. According to Steve Hanley, she was briefly considered as a replacement for Marcia Schofield in 1990 but was unable to master even the five-note riff to ‘Hit The North’.
Saffron's mother Tina designed the cover art for Dragnet, which was most likely influenced by the opening credits of 1963 film The Haunted Palace (see H).
Tina's father was Alfred Valler, who appeared on the Cog Sinister compilation The Disparate Cogscienti (see C part 2) as Mr A. Valler. This was only recently unearthed by - you guessed it - dannyno.
Q is for...
Quatermass
The ‘lay, lay’ chant used at the beginning of 'Lay of the Land' comes from the 1979 ITV series Quatermass, starring John Mills as Professor Bernard Quatermass, a character (created by Nigel Kneale) who first appeared in 1953’s The Quatermass Experiment.
Queen Margaret Union
The Fall’s final live performance took place on Saturday 4 November 2017 in Glasgow. The gig had been due to take place at Òran Mór, where the group had played the previous year. On the 25 August, however, it was announced that demand for tickets had been such that it was to be moved to the larger Queen Margaret Union. Peter Ross, reviewing the gig for The Telegraph, described Smith’s entrance:
‘Smith had begun singing the opener, Wolf Kidult Man, from the wings, rising up behind a speaker stack on a wheelchair lift and then wheeled centre-stage to cheers and raised fists. It didn’t feel awkward or pitiable, it felt triumphant, a grand entrance...’
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