11. The FallThis Nation’s Saving Grace
When I read that Liverpool Explodes magazine, Bunnymen and Julian Cope were singing the praises of The Fall. I thought it was something I should check out. It is a fucking hard listen when you’re a 15-year-old pop fan to dive straight into The Fall. I think I bought a couple of singles and I actually had to make myself like it because I didn’t know what was going on.
I went to go see them live in 1982 at the Lyceum. It was the first gig I went to on my own so I was slightly terrified and it was again an incredibly male audience. What I needed was a few hooks, so I remember them playing that ‘Marquis Cha Cha’. What I really liked about that gig was, although it was very male, that was where the tribes all broke down. There were goths in the audience, there were punks, there were people who literally looked like they’d come from the office. A proper melting pot of people from all corners.
Obviously, The Fall are now universally acknowledged as being a hugely influential band, but I did think ‘Do I put a Fall record in there?’ Everybody puts a Fall record in there, but for me, it was the idea of being able to get into something that would have literally been a million miles away from anything I would have listened to. The Fall played at Camp Bestival, and I remember Jon Ronson, the journalist, I saw him down front with his son, who was probably only about 13 or 14 at the time. I remember it looked like he was sort of like begging him to give it another song, like ‘stay because this next one’s really good’ kind of thing. Again, quite a hard listen for a 13-year-old.
