A Figure Walks
Lyrics
A figure walks behind you
A figure walks behind you
A shadow walks behind you
A figure walks behind you
Days of booze and roses (2)
Shine on us, free us all (3)
Who is not irascible
He is no genius (4)
A figure walks behind you
A figure walks behind you
A shadow walks behind you
A figure walks behind you
The old golden savages
Killed their philosophers (5)
Thought brought the drought about
Something followed me out
Goes out again
A figure walks behind you
A shadow walks behind you
A figure walks behind you
A shadow walks behind you
And if it grabs my coat tail
I will turn and hit it
It may remove the pegs
Keeping my eyes open
A figure walks behind you
A shadow walks behind you
A figure walks behind you
A shadow walks behind you
It's got eyes of brown, watery
Nails of pointed yellow
Hands of black carpet
It's a quick trip to the ice house
A quick trip to the ice house
A figure walks behind you
A shadow walks behind you
A figure walks behind you
A shadow walks behind you
You
A figure walks behind you
A shadow walks behind you
A figure walks behind you
A shadow walks behind you
You
And tales of terror
Which my father told me
They never scared me
But not only is it the blind
Who cannot see (6)
That figure behind you
Behind you
You
That figure kept on walking
Behind you
There's a man on my trail
He's also behind you
Behind you
That figure kept on walking
Behind you
A figure walks
Notes
1.
From the interview Looking at the Fall Guise, by Don Watson, NME 1 October 1983, p.7:
[Dragnet's] saving grace is 'A Figure Walks', perhaps the funniest of Smith's distortions of industrial clichés - "a song written during a long walk home wearing an anorak which restricted vision by two thirds". It sounded like urban paranoia revisited.
"If you actually listen closely though," he points out, "It's not a human being at all that's following the character, it's actually this monster from outer space. I like to think of it as my big Stephen King outing."
And Dan reports:
At the gig at the Lyceum, London, 25 March 1979, MES introduces this song with these words:
This one's a slow one, dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft. The psychologist said that he thought the shadow was his father. The shad was his dad.
Dan reminds us that in Carl Jung's thought, the shadow is an aspect of the unconscious which represents the dark side of the self, which must be integrated into the personality for the sake of mental health, and remarks "Since MES dedicated the song to Lovecraft, maybe MES read something which psychoanalysed Lovecraft and linked his writing in some way to the fate of his father, who was declared insane and died in an asylum." See More Information for more Jung.
Also from Dan:
Some echoes here of William Blake's "My Spectre around me night & day": "My Spectre follows thee behind."
From the sleevenotes to the expanded edition: "A FIGURE WALKS (MES) ... a song written during a long walk home wearing an anorak which restricted vision by 2 thirds. Fiction breaks away from fact at the end i.e. it didn't catch me, obviously (?)"
Dan:
from TS Eliot's The Waste Land
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
2. Days of Wine and Roses was originally a 1958 teleplay on CBS, and more famously a 1962 movie directed by Blake Edwards and starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. The film is about a couple that gradually succumb to alcoholism. The movie also spawned a hit song sung by Andy Williams, and Merle Haggard later copped the title line for his classic "I Threw Away the Rose."
The ultimate source of the phrase seems to be a poem by Ernest Dowson, as Aubrey the Cat points out on the Fall online forum:
The "Days of Booze and Roses" lift/quote/parody is duly noted on bz's Annotated Fall site as being the title of a film and song, etc., but that title came from a poem by Ernest Dowson (a friend of Oscar Wilde's, sticking with him through and after the trial and staying with him in France once he came out of prison):
THEY are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
Even kind of fits the song, kind of.
(A Dowson poem also provided the title for Gone with the Wind.)
3. The lyrics of Todd Rundgren's 1977 song, "Love is the Answer" (from the Utopia album, "Oops! Wrong Planet") contain the following:
Light of the world, shine on me
Love is the answer
Shine on us all, set us free
Love is the answer
4. There is a 1964 biography of Charles Babbage (1791-1871) entitled Irascible Genius: The Life of Charles Babbage. Babbage was a mathematician and inventor who is credited with being the first programmable mechanical computer. Whether or not Smith had this in mind, it may be where he encountered the phrase; on the other hand, a Google search reveals that "irascible genius" is not an uncommon combination of words. There is probably something in the way we conceive of genius that makes such a phrase likely; geniuses are often assumed to be difficult people in many ways, and MES himself, if we consider him a genius, certainly fits the bill. As is so often the case with Fall lyrics, it may be possible to detect an echo of William Blake here; in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, one of the "Proverbs of Hell" runs: "Improvement makes strait roads, but crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius." It's notable, however, that Blake's proverb does not imply a cult of great men; he talks of genius as a quality or capacity, rather than saying what is required to be a genius.
5. Possibly a reference to the death sentence doled out to Socrates in 399 BCE; although the Athenians were hardly "golden savages," 500-300 BCE is sometimes called the "Golden Age" in the Greek culture (although the phrase in Hesiod refers to more ancient times).
The phrase also recalls Nietzsche's "blond beast," the unreflective and nobly born ancient who is likened to a lion, although the Nazis read a racial descriptor into it. From Nietzsche's perspective, the citizens of 4th-century Athens could be seen as upholding the "noble ideal" against the incursion of Socratic rationalism. Nietzsche is one of the authors that MES has mentioned appreciatively in interviews (his laconic but hilariously effective takedown of Shane McGowan on the subject is well worth checking out ).
Also, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who unlike Hobbes and Locke thought that human beings were pretty decent folk in their natural state, is often referred to as having an idea of a "noble savage" or, less commonly, "golden savage," probably in reference to a purported "golden age" (the periodization of ages in terms of metals comes from Hesiod). Neither phrase actually appears in Rousseau.
Dan: "Difference between savage and civilized man: one is painted, the other gilded." That's Mark Twain, usually cited to More Maxims of Mark (1927). I think it comes from his notebooks.
SRH wonders if there's an allusion to Frazer's Golden Bough, which speaks of primitive cultures sacrificing kings and/or priests...
6. This is a line that MES may have heard or picked up somewhere; it's not unique to this song, in any case. Dan cites an instance; this is the earliest of several he found, but it's not particularly likely it's directly a source here:
In The Best of Herb Caen: 1960-1975, published in 1991 by Chronicle Books (Caen was a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle:
Another April in the city, and it is not only the blind who cannot see.
More Information
A Figure Walks: Fall Tracks A-Z
Dan submits, from Carl Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections:
About this time I had a dream which both frightened and encouraged me. It was night in some unknown place, and I was making slow and painful headway against a mighty wind. Dense fog was flying along everywhere. I had my hands cupped around a tiny
light which threatened to go out at any moment. Everything depended on my keeping this little light alive. Suddenly I had the
feeling that something was coming up behind me. I looked back, and saw a gigantic black figure following me. But at the same
moment I was conscious, in spite of my terror, that I must keep my little light going through night and wind, regardless of all dangers. When I awoke I realized at once that the figure was a "specter of the Bracken," my own shadow on the swirling mists, brought into being by the little light I was carrying. I knew, too, that this little light was my consciousness, the only light I have. My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light.
Dan points out that MES has quoted, or alluded to, the "Proverbs of Hell" from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell numerous times:
"The selfish smiling fool and the sullen frowning fool shall both be thought wise" (quoted in "So-Called Dangerous," also on Code: Selfish; also, in "Mere Pseud Mag. Ed.": "Beware the sullen smiling fool/And the shallow frowning fool/Both will be thought wise")
"He thinks at dawn / He acts at noon / He stays alone / And in the evening.." (paraphrased version of "Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.", "Two Face!," from Code: Selfish)
"Folly is the cloak of knavery", ("Ed's Babe," 1992, the Code: Selfish era)
"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" (adapted for "Lost in Music," which is on the next album, The Infotainment Scan)
Also there are a bunch of references to Blake, including a reference to "Heaven and Hell" in "W.B.."
See also "That Man" and "A Figure Walks" for lines that appear to be nods at this source.
Anyway, it is interesting that so many lines emerged c1992.
Comments (48)
"Two shadows at noon, abba zaba zoom
Gonna zaba her soon
Babbette baboon abba zaba zoom
Gonna catch her soon"
Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread
And having once turned round walks on
And turns no more his head
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread
On 25 December 1978, the BBC aired a short film entitled "The Ice House" as part of its "A Ghost Story for Christmas" series, which ran each Christmas from 1971-1978. It's not really a ghost story, mind you.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ice_House_(short_film)
I suspect a lyrical influence!
"Shine on us, free us all"
The lyrics of Todd Rundgren's 1977 song, "Love is the Answer" (from the Utopia album, "Oops! Wrong Planet") contain the following:
The song was a hit for England Dan & John Ford Coley in 1979.
https://sites.google.com/site/reformationposttpm/pithy-smithyisms/in-the-1970s
Reminiscent of Rousseau's Golden Savage, the setting is 1839 in Bass Strait, and the most celebrated explorer of the age and his wife adopts a young aboriginal girl, Mathinna as an experiment to prove that the savage can be civilised -- only to discover that within the most civilised can lurk the most savage.
If it's George that would be like saying "When Washington crossed the Delaware..." and meaning when the students on "Welcome Back, Kotter" took a field trip to Philadelphia.
In Jungian terms, the shadow is an aspect of the unconscious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology)
Since MES dedicated the song to Lovecraft, maybe MES read something which psychoanalysed Lovecraft and linked his writing in some way to the fate of his father, who was declared insane and died in an asylum..
Killed their philosophers"
I still think there's an Athenian reference in there, but I also found this:
"Difference between savage and civilized man: one is painted, the other gilded."
That's Mark Twain, usually cited to "More Maxims of Mark" (1927). I think it comes from his notebooks.
This quotation in fact comes from the interview Looking at the Fall Guise, by Don Watson, NME 1 October 1983.p.7:
http://thefall.org/news/pics/83oct01_nme/83oct01_nme.html
The actual original quote is slightly different than as reproduced at Reformation! (or in TBLY which is their proximate source). The "Its saving grace bit", by the way, is in relation to Dragnet:
I don't know and cannot establish whether this is the source, but it is similar to something Herb Caen wrote. He was the famous and long serving San Francisco Chronicle columnist. The line in question I found in The Best of Herb Caen: 1960-1975, published in 1991 by Chronicle Books (so where might MES have read it, if he did?).
Anyway, the line is:
From the SF Chronicle, 12 April 1964.
From T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land:
From T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land:
From the interview with Escape (http://thefall.org/news/990314.html#escape), Spring 1989:
Anyway, I found this in another novel by Singer, The Slave (1962, my edition is a Penguin reprint, 1974) (p.153):
I just offer it as another echo. We don't know whether MES read The Slave, and there are after all several other notable literary echoes.
Killed their philosophers"
Possibly a ref to J G Frazer's The Golden Bough.
Terribly outmoded as an anthropological work, it was highly influential on literary figures in the 20th century. Frazer saw the killing of kings/priests as central to older forms of religion:
"The man-god must be killed as soon as he shows symptoms that his powers are beginning to fail, and his soul must be transferred to a vigorous successor before it has been seriously impaired by the threatened decay. The advantages of thus putting the man-god to death instead of allowing him to die of old age and disease are, to the savage, obvious enough. For if the man-god dies what we call a natural death, it means, according to the savage, that his soul has either voluntarily departed from his body and refuses to return, or more commonly that it has been extracted, or at least detained in its wanderings, by a demon or sorcerer. In any of these cases the soul of the man-god is lost to his worshippers, and with it their prosperity is gone and their very existence endangered. Even if they could arrange to catch the soul of the dying god as it left his lips or his nostrils and so transfer it to a successor, this would not effect their purpose; for, dying of disease, his soul would necessarily leave his body in the last stage of weakness and exhaustion, and so enfeebled it would continue to drag out a languid, inert existence in any body to which it might be transferred. Whereas by slaying him his worshippers could, in the first place, make sure of catching his soul as it escaped and transferring it to a suitable successor; and, in the second place, by putting him to death before his natural force was abated, they would secure that the world should not fall into decay with the decay of the man-god. Every purpose, therefore, was answered, and all dangers averted by thus killing the man-god and transferring his soul, while yet at its prime, to a vigorous successor."
T S Eliot mentions the book in his notes to 'The Waste Land' and H P Lovecraft mentions it in 'The Call of Cthulhu'.
https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101200809-heaton-hall-higher-blackley-ward/photos/72569
The first documented performance of this song dates to 14 February 1979, which perhaps may be significant in terms of lines like this - Valentines Day, after all. I've listed to the bootleg and the lyrics were in place.
Also, and it's surprising I haven't checked this until now, Days of Wine and Roses was shown on BBC 2 on Friday 29 December 1978. For The Fall, that night was a day off between a gig at the Electric Ballroom in London on the 28th, and a gig at The Vanue, Manchester, on the 30th.
So I think it's likely MES watched the film on TV on that day, just a matter of weeks before the debut of the song.
The suggestion seems to be that the shadow will put the narrator to sleep, which suggests we should see the "figure"/"shadow" as a Sandman or Sandman-like being.
I wondered if that thought might lead us to Freud (see the psychologist comment in note 1), whose essay "The Uncanny" takes Hoffmann's short-story The Sandman as its starting point. But while there may be echoes I don't see anything more substantive than that.
This one is at Worsley Hall, Salford. Further away than the one at Heaton Park, but better condition.
https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101162987-worsley-hall-ice-house-worsley-ward
The poem is quoted in Colin Wilson's The Outsider (p.222 of my 2001 Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Orion reissue of the 1997 updated edition).. Specifically these lines:
While the original name of the Bramah-Friel-Baines-Smith group was "The Outsiders", it is usually said by all involved that this was because of the Camus novel rather than Wilson's book. However, Smith et al would hardly have been unaware of Wilson's book in this connection, and we know Smith at least was a reader of Wilson.
It still strikes me as plausible that MES might have been paraphrasing the film title, which as I pointed out above had been shown on TV not so long ago.
But the fact that Colin Wilson also quotes the Dowson poem could mean that MES adapted the phrase from there instead. Or perhaps that the one reminded him of the other.
MES might have read Dowson, of course. Or he might not have been quoting anyone deliberately.
But the point here is that the phrase comes up in a book that MES surely read, and in a film he could have watched only a few weeks before the song's debut. Perhaps we might say it's part of MES' culture.
"I'll go back in"
"Danny, no"
(later in same ep)