The Fall

Many different musicians have passed through the ranks of The Fall since their formation during the punk era, but they will always be irrevocably associated with the highly individual character, distinctive vocal style and abstract lyrics of founder and front man Mark E. Smith. Taking the name from a 1956 Albert Camus novel, Smith originally formed The Fall with Martin Bramah, Una Baines, Karl Burns and Tony Friel, playing a raw, avant-garde style of punk music built around Smith's poetry. Despite - or maybe because of - their eccentric front man and a regularly changing line-up, The Fall's debut EP 'Bingo-Master's Breakout' was well received, as was their debut album 'Live at the Witch Trials' in 1979. Strongly championed by top Radio 1 DJ John Peel, who named them his favourite band, they even had a minor hit with 'How I Wrote Elastic Man' in 1980 with what many consider their classic line-up of Smith, Craig Scanlon, Marc Riley, Steve and Paul Hanley. The 1980s produced characteristically individual albums like 'Hex Enduction Hour', 'Perverted By Language' and 'The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall' and they became marginally more populist after the addition of Mark's future wife, American guitarist/singer Brix Smith. They even made a surprise move into theatre, collaborating with modern ballet dancer Michael Clark on 'I Am Kurious, Oranj' which, among other things, reworked William Blake's 'Jerusalem'. In 1986 Smith collaborated with performance artist Leigh Bowery on a controversial play, 'Hey Luciani: The Life and Codex of John Paul 1' - which voiced a conspiracy theory about the death of The Pope - and the band broke into the UK Singles Chart with covers of 'There's a Ghost in My House' by R Dean Taylor and the Kinks' 'Victoria'. The departure of Brix Smith in 1989 changed the dynamic but The Fall continued to plough their vigorously individual furrow with a string of edgy albums and an ever-changing line-up with occasionally disastrous results on stage. However, the addition of Elena Poulou - subsequently Smith's third wife - in 2002 gave them a new lease of life. 'Fall Heads Roll', their 25th album, was released in 2005, followed by 'Your Future Our Clutter' in 2010 and 'Ersatz GB' in 2011. Shortly before the announcement that Poulou had left the group, their 30th album, 'Sub-Lingual Tablet' was released and peaked at number 31 in the UK Albums Chart. Their first album as a four-piece, 'New Facts Emerge' was released in 2017 and this, their 31st studio album, turned out to be their last as shortly after, in January 2018, Mark E. Smith died at the age of 60 after a long illness.

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