POLL: Favorite Former Member of The Fall

for me it's split between Karl Burns and Steve Hanley.

Smith quoted sometime in the early 80s: "Steve Hanley is The Fall." Or words to that effect.

Steve Hanley.

Yeah, it has to be S. Hanley.

I always liked Simon Wolstencroft though.

Would have once said Hanley, but I'm going for Scanlon. Responsible for the beauty of The Fall.

Voted for Scanlon also, but really wanted to vote for Brix.

Voted for Scanlon also, but really wanted to vote for Brix.

karl burns. total drum genius.

scanlon

Karl Burns aka "Scottish man, the fuckin animal on drums"

"You be witness to this!"

Marc Riley because I like The Creepers more than The Fall.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

agreed mostly with everybody here...ie Steve Hanley wins , with Karl as close second (and Scanlon somewhat unjustly as third) also really like Paul Hanley, played drums on New Face in Hell, y'know...

These Fall polls are grebt.

Steve Hanley is my fav bassist evar so him.
But Scanlon and Burns and other Hanley and Brix I'd all like to hug too

Oh come on, Martin Bramah for sure.

you crazy

gotta be scanlon

woops i already said that

Hard to argue against S. Hanley + Scanlon. But for work outwith The Fall, Bramah + Baines obviously. All things considered, Steve gets my vote.

Would have been interested to hear the Granny on Bongos line-up, couldn't imagine mine taking much shit off Mark E Smith either.

I'm slightly shocked Marc Riley doesn't get more love...he was like the John Cale of the Fall...(he's still tied w/Brix for 5th in my eyes, but still...)

is st just his goofy disc jockey career thats obscuring this?

John Cale never became a goofy DJ and comedy sidekick, afaik

question answered

MES's various stories about Marc Riley undermine him too, I think

being an Amerikan, I have had fortunately little exposure of his DJ/comedy routines...all I know is the version of Man Whose Head Expanded that he played on in the In a Hole album is dramatically different and quite possibly better than the single version...

xpost...yes but its not like MES has anything nice to say about any of these guys (at least nowadays)

(guys = guys + girls)

Riley is great but look what he's up against

Isn't Scanlon the only one he claims he shouldn't have kicked out?

Actually MES is pretty complimentary about S. Hanley and Craig Scanlon in his book. I think MES' claim, in the same book, that Marc Riley wanted to play "Container Drivers" while wearing a cowboy hat may have helped knock a few points off.

rofl I really have to read that book...

i never knew MES was so into psychedelics until i read it

really? had no clue huh? say, Jawbone and the Air Rifle or Wings didnt tip you off just a little bit?

(sry dude thats snarky, but MES definitely always seemed like a traveller to me...)

well, yeah, i figured he was into them
but halfway through the book and it's the only drug he really talks about (and quite a bit) which i was surprised by

wow I really have to read this book...

Whisky takes over, in a big way, in the second half

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h279/juicyfrt/0595321984.jpg

damn...wrong one.

Steve Hanley is a nice sensible answer but unfortunately I saw Ark live and thus cannot vote for anyone involved.

No Kay Carroll? For shame! (I know you guys seem to be going for proper musical reasons and all but I'm probably going to vote based on who intrigues me most in bios etc)

burns, scanlan and hanley, s. should walk this between them. i'd vote for martin bramah more for the blue orchids than his contribution to the fall

I vote Karl, purely for being more mad than Mark E.

(Tony Friel seems a nice bloke)

Mike Leigh did well for himself

different Mike Leigh!

Marc Riley

(not that I remember many of these names bsides Brix)

different Mike Leigh!

I am aware of that

Mind you, check pictures! They do look identical!

Marc Riley. For playing on tons of brilliant Fall songs; for The Creepers who had tons of ace material and were great live despite some patchy albums; for being part of Oink Comic; for the Smith/Riley animosity which was entertaining and possibly inspired a few good songs etc; for bringing the world's attention to Yeah Yeah Noh, Rote Kapelle, Gaye Bykers On Acid etc via Intape Records; for Mark & Lard who were hilarious for a time and played good music; for the two or three Shirehorses songs that are funny; for liking Cardiacs and having them on his BBC6 show a bunch of times.

Also, for zinging Paul Weller 2 decades before y'all.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

WOAH! Didn't expect that one! And what is Hanley doing in third place???

What happened? I'm confused.

and what's up with the Virgin Prunes fan who hates The Fall

meh

brix probably gets the most name recognition votes

missed voting but i worked in art dept of a school for the blind until last year and steve hanley was the caretaker, lovely bloke

Oh man I had no idea this came up yesterday because of its ending bump, I thought it started yesterday and I had another week to think about it. Would probably have voted Una Baines, for reasoning listed above and for her dayjob bringing us Psychomafia.

Whose was the website that had 70s letters from MES scanned on it until he had to take them down? Spent a good few hours poking round that, which wins the owner instant love from me regardless of any musical input...

think that was on tony friel's page. it was fascinating stuff.

Thought it was MBramah's? (according to the "Fallen" book)

i remember looking at them. they were letters from a young mes to tony friel. the site was atomic soup, but they got taken down within days

white boots walk to victory.

WOAH! Didn't expect that one! And what is Hanley doing in third place???

― I Harbour Multitudes (Bimble), Thursday, March 12, 2009 8:03 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

(actually WHOA'd out loud foax...mom said what?)

I recently read "The Fallen" - the book which tracks down most of the ex-Fall musicians. I thought it was a good read for Fall fans but not particularly well written. Certainly the worst attempt at gonzo-style writing I can recall. The author seems like a nice guy but he's really not part of the story so it's just irritating that he continually tries to frame the whole thing as part of "his" obsession etc. The absolute nadir is when he drives to a remote house where Karl Burns might be living but then decides to not bother ringing the bell and instead drives home. That's not a fucking story, that a tragedy. It ends up being really detrimental to the whole concept, which is quite an excellent one.

My other gripe is that he is not a particularly insightful interviewer. He goes into every interview with very fixed opinions: that MES is a genius/tyrant, that The Fall is the weirdest band ever and that everyone who was ever in the band suffered severe mental problems as a result. That most of the interviewees contradict these assumptions (most say they'd rejoin anytime, many say he's friendly) fails to alter his agenda. He paraphrases a lot which prevents the ex-Fall members personalities from getting through.

Still worth reading just to hear these people talk for once.

kinda wanna hear julia nagle's testimony (I think I voted for her in this poll, being as she was the main spur behind the insaniacked fucknoise of '97-'00)

I read this at the weekend; it's an enjoyable book.

V enjoyable, agree that it's v annoyingly written tho.

What did you guys think of Mick Middles' Fall book?

I'm currently part-way through MES' autobiography fwiw

it's awesome and is only deepening my <3

I've only read Simon Ford's book which good on the early years, then trailed off a bit.

was good

I want to get MES's book too.

Julia's chapter in The Fallen is actually one of the best and most enlightening (if true) as that was one of the most turbulent times for MES and The Fall.

Which reminds me that another thing that bothered me was that he shied away from was addressing MES's alcholism more directly. It's brought up over and over by ex-members describing how he drinks hard all day every day and of course there's dozens of drunken incidents, fights, broken relationships, bad business decisions etc where booze is implicated.

But instead of concluding "okay - so he's an alcoholic then" there's a certain amount of trying to get around it by suggesting that he's less like a normal human who needs food and water and a bit more like that robot on Futureworld who is programmed to be boozed up continually and that it actually normalizes him. Many of the wacky business choices or performance disasters are then rationalized as being part of his creative process rather than as the predictable work of a chronic alcoholic.

Re: Mick Middles.

He's obsessed with the word braggadocio, but I liked this one probably the most out of all the third party books since Paintwork - worth it for the interview with Smith's mum alone. Plenty of faults as well of course, and curiously Nabokovian in its unreliable feeling in places.

Yeah, the Mick Middles book is definitely in the self-aggrandizing 'gonzo' style, but passably so, and as Middles is actually a sort of friend of MES it works out to be pretty satisfying. I never picked up the Simon Ford one, it just sounded too book-report dry to me. The article from which The Fallen was expanded was crap so I haven't been moved to check that out but y'all are making it sound kinda interesting. Renegade I will def read at some point, after swallowing 8 oz of salt.

hahahahaha Renegade doesn't seem THAT unreliable

well maybe

but hey it makes a damn good written accompaniment to the music of The Fall which is the only truth I need sometimes

Another thing about The Fallen: the author is so obsessed with the idea of continual turbulence that he cannot ever acknowledge that for long periods the core membership of the band was pretty stable. Or that the turnover could've been fairly natural. I realize that The Fall are an extreme example but lots of bands that have been going for four decades have a couple of dozen ex-members, especially if they had a few early line-ups before really getting going.

The Fallen author wrote a decent Quietus article about how his own fortunes had mirrored those of The Fallen. Very self-indulgent but pretty enjoyable nonetheless.

That's all mentioned in the book.

Or at least in the second edition I have.

I ended up hating the guy by the end of the book. I almost cheered when his girlfriend dumped him.

xpost

Oh yes, it's a total work of fiction. I must admit I kind of found the tone a bit monotonous - an interview extended over the course of a book. It's amusing of course, but I prefer him as a singer/songwriter/artist whatever. It's a shame in a way, because some of the stuff he wrote himself back in the 80s (Hot Dogs in the Far Out Zone eg) for the NME and suchlike was really good. But not really sure he's up to that sort of thing these days, so I guess the ghost writing was kind of necessary.

The Simon Ford book is boring and neither for the expert or the novice. Kinda pointless.

lol everything, same here.

Hanley's book is being released in September.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41kUmmZ7pGL._SY300_.jpg

Cannot fucking wait!

yeah this sounds great

Yessssss

Recommend. It's Animal Farm reimagined as a rock bio.

MES - Napoleon obv
Kay Caroll: Old Major
Martin Bramah: Snowball (twice)
Boxer: S Hanley
The cat: Karl Burns
The goat: Riley
The donkey - Scanlon
Clover/Molly: Brix
The piglets: the Fall members after all that lot bailed or were killed off.