In retrospect, Mark E. Smith was best considered from at least a relative distance. Born in the northwest English community of Salford, eventually subsumed by the expansion of Manchester during the 19th century, Smith was a classic example of a striver who found a space for himself in a society that happily wrote off working class people. He did so by cofounding and then swiftly coming to lead the Fall, whose thirty-plus studio albums, many compilations, steady output of singles and innumerable live albums of varying quality and legality is a daunting but fascinating body of work. The band itself went through a series of lineup reworkings, departures and firings and reappearances and full resets, with Smith its only constant member. It underscored Smith’s own all too human personality, a mix of rough but readily apparent charisma, a constant drive to create new work, an abiding love of his local roots, deep knowledge of a wide range of favorite authors in speculative fiction, increasing struggles with alcohol and tobacco addiction and drug use, more than a few beyond-contrary opinions plus proto-edgelord moments and much more besides. It’s safe enough to say that the Fall wouldn’t have happened without him, but there’s no question that it’s impossible to imagine a version lacking him.
The Fall coalesced around a quartet in 1976 as punk rock made its initial waves: Smith, his then-partner Una Baines, Martin Bramah and Tony Friel, all attendees of a legendary Sex Pistols show in Manchester that inspired them. When their debut EP Bingo Master’s Breakout! appeared in 1978, that lineup had already changed, presaging that defining feature of the band’s existence; Bramah was the last to leave Smith a year later after the release of their full-length debut Live At The Witch Trials. A few months prior to that album, they had also begun what would be the group’s longest standing professional association, recording the first of twenty-four John Peel radio sessions for the BBC that appeared over the course of 26 years. (Peel, who famously declared that the group was his all time favorite band and continued to say so until his death, was also the source of the allegedly-by-Smith quip regarding their ever changing lineup: “If it’s me and your granny on bongos, it’s the Fall.”)
Over the next few years on a variety of labels, the group steadily built a fanbase and reputation via a series of striking albums such as Grotesque (After the Gramme), Hex Enduction Hour and Perverted by Language, along with numerous singles and EPs. Their regular touring led to wider international attention, with one particular stint leading to a standout live album from New Zealand, Fall In A Hole. Notable players included semi-regular drummer Karl Burns, bassist/guitarist Marc Riley before his departure in 1982, and two key performers starting in 1979 who stayed for the better part of two decades: guitarist Craig Scanlon and in particular bassist Steve Hanley, who Smith specifically credited as key to the group’s overall approach, and whose brother Paul also pulled a general stint in the first half of the 1980s. This era fully formalized an idea of what ‘the Fall’ was for many, mixing up a variety of musical approaches, from revamped rockabilly to electronic twists and turns to exploratory jams, owing more than a little to Smith’s love of the German group Can. It all provided the bedrock for the band’s ultimate calling card: Smith’s vocals and lyrics. Eschewing a formal singing style in favor of a Sprechgesang delivery that never downplayed his regional English tones and his own particular tics and interjections, Smith created any number of astonishing character portraits and often lysergic, combative or dour visions of an England and a general society that bubbled up in reaction to cheaply cheery visions of same.
The later 1980s brought the Fall to a more prominent level at home, with other new key members including Brix Smith, an American singer/guitarist who joined the band in 1983 and married Smith two years later, and Simon Wolstencroft, joining in 1986 as (usually) a drummer. Beginning in 1984, the group started their longest-yet general run on a label with Beggars Banquet, which in combination with Brix’s songwriting efforts and collaborations and some inspired covers of R. Dean Taylor and the Kinks led to modest but still notable charting singles beyond their usual underground reach, as well as other key albums like The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall, This Nation’s Saving Grace and the remarkable collaboration with avant-garde dancer Michael Clark, I Am Kurious Oranj. Smith and Brix’s relationship began to fray by the end of the decade, leading to her departure to concentrate on solo work as the Adult Net, though she would return for a couple of years in the mid-90s, while, remarkably, Martin Bramah returned briefly to appear on their 1990 album Extricate.
From there, the 1990s continued well enough for the group, with another notable member joining in 1991: keyboardist/programmer Dave Bush, who brought a greater familiarity with the rising dance scene in the UK during those years. The albums during his stint showcased newer electronic styles among the band’s more well established approaches, including Shift-Work, Code: Selfish and The Infotainment Scan, the latter of which ended up being their only UK top ten album and thus their highest charting effort all around. By this point Smith and the band’s earlier work had increasingly become direct or indirect role models for other acts worldwide, including Sonic Youth, the Sugarcubes and, perhaps most notably, Pavement, who Smith had some tart thoughts about. Meanwhile, from the late 1980s forward, Smith himself increasingly did guest appearances with many others in turn, from Coldcut to the Inspiral Carpets (leading to his sole Top of the Pops appearance in the UK via their joint 1994 single “I Want You”) to Long Fin Killie to Elastica to Gorillaz to Edwyn Collins and more besides, eventually including a remarkable collaborative album in 2007 with the German electronic duo Mouse on Mars as Von Südenfed.
However, for the Fall itself things irrevocably changed in the mid to late 1990s. They’d never quite become a heritage act – something the generally allergic to nostalgia Smith wouldn’t’ve wanted in any event – but had never broken out beyond what they’d already achieved. A stretch of albums from Cerebral Caustic on partially showcased further explorations into techno as much as more typical Fall sounds as such, demonstrating Smith’s own restless drive readily enough, but they sold less than many previous efforts amid the emergence of a steady stream of reissues, compilations and “rarities” packages. Meanwhile, Smith’s alcoholism and other indulgences were increasingly hard to work around on top of his personality in general. Key members were already out beforehand – after dismissing Bush following the recording of Cerebral, Smith sacked Scanlon in 1996, a decision he later said was the only firing from the band he regretted, while Wolstencroft left in 1997, prompting one last return of Burns. But it was a notorious 1998 tour stop in New York that was the final straw. A brief onstage fight led not only to Burns leaving but also the stalwart Steve Hanley, neither of them ever to return; the following day, Smith himself was arrested for assault on his then-partner, keyboardist/backing singer Julia Nagle, leading to a court order to seek treatment. Nagle remained with the group for two more albums, including the especially striking The Unutterable in 2000, but the wider repercussions of so many core players gone couldn’t be ignored.
For the next few years, Smith fielded a series of ever changing lineups, with the exception of keyboardist and backing singer Elena Poulou, who joined in 2002 and stayed for fourteen years until her own breakup with him. This period had a run of albums that often felt haphazard despite flashes of individual brilliance such as The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country on the Click) and Reformation Post TLC as well as a long-necessary general overview, 50,000 Fall Fans Can’t Be Wrong: 39 Golden Greats. Things finally stabilized towards the end of the 2000s around a lineup of Smith, Poulou, guitarist Peter Greenway, bassist Dave Spurr and drummer Keiron Melling. However, with John Peel’s death in 2004 depriving the band of its greatest champion, the general instability of the record industry and music media as a whole during those years and Smith’s increasingly visible early aging and poor health, the Fall’s fortunes never fully recovered. The work that emerged based around this new core could often be quite good, including Imperial Wax Solvent and Your Future Our Clutter, but the continuing flood of live releases of various origins and quality, on top of a swathe of general compilations, often meant the newer work got a little lost along the way.
The band continued to play and record following Poulou’s departure in 2016, but Smith’s health problems were evident, and he regularly performed in a wheelchair during 2017. Smith’s death in early 2018 at the age of sixty, brought on by cancer due to a lifetime of heavy smoking, was regrettably unsurprising; the Fall then understandably broke up, though some further sessions emerged among a continuing welter of back catalog reissues and other material. Smith himself had published an autobiography in 2008, Renegade, providing his own very specific take on both his work and the band’s tortured history to that point, while further memoirs over the years from Brix Smith, Wolstencroft and both Steve and Paul Hanley, among other books, critical appreciations and overviews, helped to place the band’s story in a wider context. Smith made a mark, and his impact is still playing out among younger bands like Dry Cleaning and black midi among many others. There’s little doubt Smith and the Fall will remain a lodestone for a long while to come.