First published in 2015, Steve Hanley’s memoir The Big Midweek (co-written with Olivia Piekarski) details his 19 years as the ‘backbone’ of The Fall.
Perhaps second only to Mark E. Smith himself when it came to shaping the group’s sound during his tenure, Hanley joined as bassist aged just 19 in 1979, and stayed the course until a now-infamously acrimonious departure, which followed a physical altercation between Smith and his bandmates onstage in New York in 1998
During that time, the band released some of their most enduring albums including Hex Enduction Hour, Perverted By Language, This Nation’s Saving Grace and Hanley’s final appearance Levitate, also working with Michael Clark on his ballet I Am Curious, Orange.
Now, marking a decade since its original publication, The Big Midweek is being made available in audio form for the very first time, with comedian, writer and avowed Fall mega-fan Stewart Lee providing narration for a new audiobook. It’s released on Amazon, Audible and iTunes on 26 November via Route Publishing, and can be pre-ordered here.
To celebrate tQ has secured new footage of Lee interviewing Hanley, which you can watch exclusively below.
In the video, the pair discuss everything from how Hanley balanced working in his family’s pie shop alongside Fall duties, redressing the narrative of just who contributed what within The Fall, whether or not a working-class band of their ilk would have the opportunity to exist in the modern world, rejoining former members in new project House Of All, as well as that disastrous 1998 tour of America.
“All any of us were asking of Mark was to stand on that stage for an hour, he didn’t have to do the soundcheck if he didn’t want, stand there for an hour, sing the songs,” Hanley says. “At that time, sometimes he was singing the verse over the chorus and the chorus over the verse. That was all we asked of him, and he wouldn’t do it.”
Elsewhere, Hanley says that while he’s received pushback from some fans of the group, he still wishes The Fall had secured a hit single during their time. “When you’ve done all the albums, you’ve done a ballet, a play, music that ends up in films, you’ve pretty much covered everything except [a hit single]. I think ti would be nice to go into the collective consciousness like ‘Pretty In Pink’, ‘Another Girl Another Planet’, ‘Reward’, ‘A Girl Like You’, something that just crosses that line.”
The Big Midweek by Steve Hanley is published by Route. The new audiobook edition, narrated by Stewart Lee, is released on 26 November and can be pre-ordered here.
