An Older Lover Etc.

You'd better take an older lover (1)
You'd better take an older lover

You'll soon get tired of her
 

To take an older lover
Get ready for old stories
Of teenage sex
From the early sixties
Under cover
Behind office desks
Old divorces
Children's faces
 

You'd better take a younger lover
You'd better take a younger lover
Or take an older lover
You'll soon get tired of her
(She'll shag you out on the table)

Dear girls
Doctor Annabel lies! (2)
Doctor Annabel lies!
Doctor Annabel lies!
You raced before
It's been done
Tripped and stepped on

You'd better take an older lover
You'd better take an older lover
Or take a younger monster
But deserve better

You'd better take a younger lover
You'd better take a younger lover
You'll miss your older lover
Her love was like your Mother's
With added attractions
You'd better take a younger lover 
You'd better take an older lover
You'd better take an older lover
You'd better take a younger lover
 

Doctor Annabel lies!
Doctor Annabel lies!
Doctor Annabel lies!
Doctor Annabel lies!
On the colour page (3)
French fries spread on her face   (4)
On the future autolytic enzyme son (5)

1. Mark Smith's lover at the time was Fall manager Kay Carroll, 11 years his senior; reportedly, she was not amused.

From Dan:

From the back cover of Slates:

"AN OLDER LOVER ETC.

real Bert Finn stuff"

In her book, Brix picks this out as something that intrigued and baffled her. Well, who is "Bert Finn"? Could it be a reference to Albert Finney?

Commenter "oates" on the Steve Hoffman forums points out "This is a reference to Salford actor Albert Finney who in his most iconic role in the film Saturday Night And Sunday Morning has an affair with an older woman."

According to Jonder:

I watched Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and enjoyed it, but found no clues. The female lead is a housewife with a young son. Her husband works in a factory with Finney's character. Nobody works in an office, and there's no shagging behind desks or on tables. Finney then takes a younger lover, but she is no monster, and it cannot truly be said that he deserves better. Nor did he get tired of his older lover; they were found out by her husband, and were forced to end the relationship. There was no divorce.

There is no doctor in the film. No characters named Annabel, and no french fries. The film came out in 1961, so no tales of teenage sex from the sixties. One interesting bit: near the end of the film, Finney says, "Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not."

Dan mentions a book called In Praise of Older Women, which according to Wikipedia is "a bildungsroman whose young narrator has sexual encounters with women in their thirties and forties in Hungary, Italy, and Canada. 'The book is dedicated to older women and is addressed to young men--and the connection between the two is my proposition' is the book's epigraph."

^

2. Doctor Annabel may be a real person, but I have not figured out who she is. From the context she seems to have been some sort of provider of advice. Some have suggested that she is Alan Wise, a promoter sometimes associated with the Fall, although in context I don't know what he would be doing in the song. Supermercado points out that it sounds like a pun on "Doctor, analyze!"

Again from commenter "oates" on the Steve Hoffman forums (see note 1 above):

"The line 'Doctor, Annabel lies' challenges the women's magazine of the 1970s-1980s." 

Annabel was indeed a women's magazine, which was published from March 1966 to May 1994. According to Dan "it was first subtitled 'the new magazine for the young wife.' By the late 1980s [hence, after our time] it was subtitled 'the magazine women really enjoy.'" This is a neat interpretation of a recalcitrant line, and seems plausible enough; however, it creates a new problem--if Annabel is intended, who is being addressed as "Doctor?" On the other hand, Dan has discovered that there was a page dedicated to people writing in about medical problems called "The Annabel Doctor," which could be the inspiration for the lyric indeed.

Note there is also an Annabelle magazine from Germany which covers fashion, but also women's issues with a feminist slant. "An Older Lover, Etc." does not appear in a lyrics book, and thus the spelling of "Annabel[le]" cannot be determined with 100% accuracy; even if it could, this would hardly be dispositive, as MES is hardly fastidious about such things. So both magazines would seem to be in play (but the former seems more likely in light of "The Annabel Doctor").

Csonic: "At the time I thought the brilliantly sinister 'Dr Annabel lies' refrain was a reference to Capital radio's phone-in sex therapy programme featuring 'Anna and the Doctor' which used to follow the Nicky Horne Show (if I remember rightly). It was definitely the sort of thing that MES would destroy mercilessly for lyrical purposes. Knowing MES, it could easily be a composite reference to that AND the Annabelle Magazine problem page."

^

3. Robert points out that on A Part of America, Therein MES sings "on the problem page." As Robert says, this may support the "agony aunt" interpretation, but then again, who knows?

^

4. The reference to a color page housing french fries again seems to point to a magazine, and perhaps Annabel magazine (see note 2) is lining a basket of fish and chips.  From Michael F: "I think this refers to the Sun (not son) newspaper who I'm pretty sure had a doc/agony aunt called Annabel. The Sun always referred to itself with superlatives in S 'super soaraway,' etc. I think the line may be a take off of that. It fits with the french fries (but they're not known as this in the North as you rightly point out)." I haven't found any evidence of a columnist for the Sun called Annabel, however; Dan points out that since 1980 the Sun's agony aunt has been named "Deidre" (née June Deidre Sanders). See note 2 above.

^

5. An autolytic enzyme is an enzyme that destroys the cell in which it was produced ("autolysis" is self-digestion); thus it may be that the son would be destroying his mother from the inside, but as Dan points out it is also possible that this could refer to "maceration" or the absorption of a foetus that has died in the womb.

Autolytic Enzyme submits:

Colin Wilson,The Philosophers Stone:

"But don’t you think there might be some connection here with the business of the enzymes?’ He looked baffled, and I tried to explain. ‘It’s the same thing, isn’t it? Something about the will that prevents the autolytic enzymes from destroying the flesh .while it’s alive."

^

An Older Lover Etc.: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1980

Paul Hanley (during a Tim Burgess-organised twitter listening party:
 

To get the drum sound on Older Lover I had bits of wood taped all over my kit and a tea towel over the floor tom (which I copped from Ringo after seeing Let it Be. It must have been in the telly around then. One for
@dannyno
#TimsTwitterListeningParty
9:04 PM · Oct 18, 2020