Heads rolled from time to time in the history of the post-punks founded in Manchester in 1976. Until the turn of the millennium, autocrat Mark E. Smith was still able to control his Hire & Fire mania, after which the songwriter raged like a despot from “Game Of Thrones”. Of course there were no deaths, but the frontman could be vicious. When The Fall went into Lisa Stansfield’s studio in early 2005, everything seemed fine. They managed a beautiful acoustic ballad with “Early Days Of Channel Führer”, a snappy ska (“Ride Away”) and a wonderfully rumbling up-tempo number like “What About Us?”.
And then there is the incredibly good and rumbling “Blindness”, a classic Fall song that Smith later played live in a wheelchair and also on “Later” by Jools Holland. Nevertheless, when parts of the band had enough of the whims of their alcoholic boss, they quit in the middle of a US tour. Smith biliously commented: “The best thing that could ever happen.” Beforehand, a number of demos were recorded in the Chapel Studio, all of which can be found on the 4-CD box FALL HEADS ROLL with its excellent liner notes. Smith never released it, cynically describing the material as “The great lost album. What a load of shit.”
At least the first sentence is correct, and at least: his third wife, the keyboardist Elena Poulou, was spared from his criticism. She remained loyal to her husband until a year before his death and was also present at that Peel session in 2004, which can be found here with many alternative takes on another really good CD. In any case, this band line-up would have deserved nicer words from the master.
