2 Dec 2012

How minimal can you get? #42

The Fall
Songs like ‘Industrial Estate’  – that was the second or third song that I wrote the music for, but the lyrics came first – it's a sort of poem, a hard poem. You can tell it was written at work. It's about working on the docks, on a container base. So of course I presented it to the group and they want to know what it's all about. They would prefer me to write about velvet shiny leather, the moon and all that kind of thing, like Televisiono or The Velvets. As a compromise I wrote the chorus – ‘Yeah, yeah, industrial estate’ – to make it a bit more American rocky. And I wrote this sub-Stooges music to go with it, Stooges without the third chord. At the time, people thought it was terrible because it wasn't the way it should be, it wasn't ‘in tune’. But I never wanted The Fall to be like one of those groups. I didn't care what people thought. Mark E. Smith
 
The Fall – Psycho Mafia & Industrial Estate (So It Goes, 1978)