Backdrop
Lyrics
The Leicester YOP/TEP instructor (2)
Emerged from corridor (3)
His state-subsidized cannabis haze (4)
Moved reptilian in its all-levelling routine
I said to him
It's about time you started thinking
About the black dog on your back (5)
I said it's about time you started thinking
About the rerun which is your life
Moveable backdrop
The Leicester YOP instructor
Emerged from corridor
His state-subsidized cannabis haze
Moved reptilian
Moveable backdrop
The backdrop shifted and changed, shifted and changed
The Manchester regiment of the Stuarts
Would not tread on your patch
Got nearly down to Derby, you know
Was stopped by stinking Billy (6)
And rode a racing horse which I had liberated
From a Tyneside Lord (7)
I said to the men
It's about time you started thinking
About the black dog on your back
It's about time you started thinking
About the void in your life
A military prison or worse, or worse
Moveable backdrop
The backdrop shifted and changed
The semite man's home was full of sperm (8)
And pulled down
His Mezuzah was kicked around (9)
As I did it I said to them
It's about time you started thinking about the black dog on your back
It's about time you started thinking about the void which is your life
But the backdrop shifted and changed
So did not even know what song was, what it was (10)
The backdrop shifted and changed
Moveable backdrop, moveable backdrop
The backdrop shifted and drifted
Who put the yellow pills in the Gordon's gin? (11)
The backdrop shifted and changed
Until did not even know
When the lot come up
Bomb-hole in our sched..., bomb-hole in our sched-ULE, sched-ULE (12)
Who put the yellow pills in the Gordon's gin?Who put the yellow pills in the Gordon's gin?
Who put the yellow pills in the Gordon's gin?
The backdrop shifted and changed
Till the reptillian TEP instructor merged
With stinking Billy's morass of flesh
And the Yorkies drifted
1902 Metropole (14)
The Yorkies, Ripley Yorks, shifted and drifted (15)
I said to them it's about time you started thinking about the black dog on your back
I said it's about time you started thinking about the void in your life
Moveable backdrop, moveable backdrop
The backdrop shifted, the backdrop shifted and changed
And this was The Fall
Goodnight (16)
Notes
1. The lyrics here are from the version on In a Hole, from a performance on August 21, 1982. There is no studio version of the song; In A Hole is the version on the Lyrics Parade, which was my template. But there are certain lyrics missing that appear on other versions; these will be filled in in the footnotes.
"Bournemouth Runner" is about a Fall backdrop that got stolen. Whereas the "backdrop" in this song is not simply a literal stage prop, it is nevertheless enlightening to reflect that the author of the lyrics has spent a good part of his life playing music in front of a moveable backdrop. Here there seems to be a suggestion that a variety of times, settings and even events are a moveable backdrop before which the same scene continutally plays out. Either the characters are essentially the same, or their actions repeat the same sort of pattern, regardless of the varying details. This conceit is reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's notion that history is a "Black Iron Prison"; Dick (a writer for whom MES has expressed admiration numerous times, and see "The Aphid") speculates that time stopped in the early centuries C.E. (during the time when the Roman Empire persecuted early Christians), and the trappings of subsequent times are a thin veneer masking this fact.
2. YOP stands for Youth Opportunites Programme. The Wikipedia entry for the latter is short, so I reproduce it here in its entirety:
"The Youth Opportunities Programme was a UK government scheme for helping 16- to 18-year-olds into employment. It was introduced in 1978 under the government of James Callaghan, was expanded in 1980 by Margaret Thatcher's government, and ran until 1983 when it was replaced by the Youth Training Scheme.
People taking part in the YOP scheme were informally known as YOPpers."
On the version from the bonus disc of Perverted by Language (from 10/27/1983), MES keeps up with the times by substituting "YTS" for "YOP," and the character is now an "inspector." TEP could stand for Teacher Education Program, as I had initally surmised, since the protagonist is an "instructor," but it seems more likely to be a shortened form of STEP, or Special Temporary Employment Programme, a program that began in 1978 and provided temporary government jobs to the indigent.
Dan:
The Puritan's Guide to Fall Songs Guide podcast episode for this song makes explicit something which is currently only implicit here, which is that the historical Manchester regiment must surely be intentionally connected to the contemporary YOP. They're both schemes for the unemployed!
https://www.podbean.com/eu/pb-d86ct-f8d554
3. Egg:
"Just been listening to a recording of the 15 April 1983 performance (at the Danceteria, New York), in which MES adds another clarification for his non-British audience: he doesn't explain what YOP is this time, but says 'polytechnic corridor' instead of 'corridor.'"
4. In 2010 a cannabis-based pill was approved for medical use in England. Since this post-dates the song under consideration by around 30 years, it seems more likely that the state was unwittingly subsidizing the instructor's marijuana habit.
5. The phrase "a black dog on [one's] back" is sometimes used as a metaphor for depression.
6. The Manchester Regiment were a unit of Jacobite soldiers, who attempted to place the Catholic Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charley," 1720-1788) on the throne of Scotland and England during the Jacobite Rising of 1745. Having scored some military victories in Scotland, Stuart's Jacobites marched into England, where they recruited some 300 men in Manchester, mostly from the ranks of the unemployed. English support for a Catholic restoration wasn't as strong as Stuart had figured, and the Jacobites soon retreated back into Scotland. Many of the Manchester men were imprisoned or executed, and the remainder returned to Scotland with the Jacobites, where the rebellion was put down by the Hanoverian Prince William, Duke of Cumberland (known as "Stinking Billy") at the Battle of Culloden. See also "The N.W.R.A." As with the latter song, there seem to be time shifts or jumps going on, here indicated in the lyrics by the line "the backdrop shifted and changed." William was born in a house called "Leicester House," which is a connection back to the first verse. On the 10/27/83 version, MES sings "Lancashire regiment."
7. Tyneside is in northern England. On some live versions, the racing horse is "crucifixed."
8. The word "semite" looks like it may be etymologically related to "semen," although it is not. "Semen" comes from the Latin word for "seed." "Semite" derives from Shem, a son of Noah. The name "Shem" itself means "name" in Hebrew. On the PBL version (27 October 1983) the lyrics include the following lines: "His math map metaphysics was strewn around/Had to sleep with his girlfriend in chains/Ha ha, ha ha....you wouldn't laugh if you had to take them off her..."
9. A Mezuzah (MES pronounces it "Mezuzo") is a small scroll or sheet of parchment, containing verses of the Torah, that is affixed to the doorpost in a Jewish home.
10. Sometimes "Did not know where the bathroom was" is added.
11. Gordon's is a London dry gin, originally produced in 1769. "London dry" is a variety of gin; Gordon's is mostly produced in Scotland. Yellow pills could be a variety of drugs; the most famous lyrical reference to yellow pills, from the Rolling Stones song "Mother's Little Helper" ("and though she's not really ill, there's a little yellow pill") is variously thought to be about either Valium, Quaaludes, or Nembutal.
We should also consider this comment from Zack:
"Whilst discussing yellow pills and Gordon's gin on The Mighty Fall Facebook group yesterday, a Fall fan posted a link to a YouTube video of a song called "Who Put The Benzadrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?" by Harry "the Hipster" Gordon (1944).
A bit of cursory googling reveals an older (likely related) song: "Who Threw The Overalls In Mrs. Murphy's Chowder?" (1898).
I'll let you connect the dots."
Dan: Gordon's gin is named after Clan Gordon, from which the Gordon Highlanders take their name. The Gordon Highlanders regiment postdates the Jacobite rebellions, but the Gordon clan supported the Jacobite cause.
At this point in the song, MES usually sings, "The stars drip from the sky/ In a race upside down." See also "Birtwistle's Girl in Shop." Dan points out:
MES will probably have been familiar with the Albert Camus line:
"Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed under a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then."
Whether he nicked the line we are not in a position to say, but it's possible he remembered it. The image of a sky dripping with stars is not unique, at any rate.
StrtArnt points out that the Rolling Stones described "Mother's Little Helper" as a "yellow pill," whereas gin has long been colloquially referred to as "Mother's Ruin"...
12. From the liner notes to Grotesque: "GRAB before all bands sign on for e.m.i. pension scheme and over-reactive elements in their discomfort try to bomb a hole on [sic] the Falls' [sic] schedule..."
Dan:
See also the "Slates and Dates" 1981 US tour press kit which has some text attributed to MSS' alter ego Joe Totale, which begins: "Despite efforts by conniving elements to bomb a hole in The Falls' sched., under my fresh leadership The Fall have again produced an innovation..."
13. At roughly this point in the song, the following lyrics appear in the PBL rendition: "The steak was friendly and bendy/And lumbered into the incensed restaurant/The steak was six foot cooked/The backdrop shifted and changed/Til did not know what song what it, what it, what it, what it, what it..." And from the Austurbaejarbio version (May 6, 1983): "Was cast as adulterous schemer/The steak was friendly and bendy/And lumbered into the hotel/The steak was six foot cooked/Had a palm buzzer in Brisbane/Bomb a hole in our sched...bomb a hole in our sched-ULE...bomb a hole in our sched-ULE/Had a palm buzzer in Brisbane/Was cast...adulterous shemer/The backdrop shifted and changed!"
14. There are numerous places called Metropole, including the following:
In 1902 the Metropole Hotel in Catalina Island, California was the scene of a famous murder (from WIkipedia):
"[Earl] Rogers is also remembered for the defense in the Catalina Island murder case. In the early morning hours of August 13, 1902 at the Metropole Hotel, a colorful gambler and cardsharp named William A. Yeagar, known as "the Louisville Sport", was murdered during a cardgame. Alfred Boyd was one of three men in a room playing poker. Upon hearing the sound of gunshots, a bartender entered the room, and saw two men and the dead body of the third, bleeding over the Ace of Spades. Harry Johnson, the third man at the table, ran from the room yelling "He shot him, he shot him!" and handed Boyd's gun to the bartender. The first man on the scene and almost-witness bartender Jim Davin thought there was no question that Boyd was the killer. Boyd was charged with the murder, and Rogers won his acquittal after getting Johnson effectively to confess under masterful cross-examination."
MES sometimes says "the Metropole, Brighton." The Hilton Metropole Brighton is a four-star hotel which was built in 1890. Dan points out that it is mentioned in Eliot's The Waste Land.
The Metropole Cinema, London was opened in 1929, but the last film shown was Burnt Offerings, starring Bette Davis on 11 June 1977. Eventually, Virgin Records took over and it ran as a concert venue from 1978-1984.
They called it The Venue. This is mentioned in the sleeve notes to Hex - The Fall played there just twice: 7 December 1981 (just a few months before this song made its live debut), and 22 March 1983.
15. Ripley is a village in North Yorkshire. Ripley Castle, built in the 14th century, has been continuously occupied by the Ingleby (after 1780, "Ingilby") family from that time until the present day. The Inglebys were at one time recusant Catholics; the castle contains a "priest hole," a nook behind wall panelling in which a priest could hide from Protestant pursuers. Francis Ingleby was hung, drawn and quartered in 1586 for the crime of being a practicing Catholic priest (he was beatified in 1987 by John Paul II). In 1605, Sir William Ingleby was accused of participating in the Gunpowder Plot, an attempt to kill the Protestant James I by blowing up the House of Lords (still commemorated every November 5 on Guy Fawkes Day); conspirators Robert and Thomas WIntour were his grandsons. The plotters had apparently stayed at Ripley Castle for a while during the planning stages of the assassination; however, William was acquitted. I have been unable to find any record of the doings of the Inglebys during the second Jacobite Rising; either in 1617, or at some point in the 18th century, depending on the source, the family became Protestant, and I have been unable to determine whether their true sympathies might have remained, for a time, with the religion of Bonnie Prince Charley. In general, Ripley seems to have been somewhat of a hotbed of Catholic dissent, and in the 18th century--the time of the Jacobite Risings--their numbers were reportedly growing; around the middle of the 1700s, Catholics are reported to have made up a quarter of the population of the parish of the Church of England that included Ripley Castle. Twenty-two Jacobite rebels were executed in York in 1745, and their heads were displayed on one of the gates of the city, the Micklegate Bar--such were the men the song's narrator warns of "a military prison or worse."
16. Five more songs appear on the setlist for the evening; its not clear whether this was a set closer and they were all encores, or whether MES's "goodnight" was premature.
More Information
The Fall Online Forum: Backdrop; the discussion is worth reading, among other reasons, for some fascinating but probably apocryphal reflections on a David Icke connection.
Comments (61)
Now I'm not sure, I'll listen again. Maybe it is "state." I always heard "steak." He does say "six foot COOKED," though.
Lyceum, London, 12 Decembrr 1982: "Said it's started thinking about that snake on your back. The snake was friendly and bendy..."
These are from two of the middle performances of the song. "Snake" would tie in with the animal theme (horse, dog) and also echo the use of "reptilian".
From a Tyneside morgue "
This is a curious image, what's going on?
Is this supposed to be a dead horse brought back to life or living death? Is it another way of saying "flogging a dead horse"? Or did the horse belong to a mortician?
In other versions the horse is "crucifixed". No idea.
From a Tyneside Lord"
Here's a thought. It kind of fits but also kind of doesn't.
The verse in question is a bit tricky, as it's not clear who is supposed to be speaking.
But what if the racing horse in question is White Sorrell? There's a famous picture of this horse, which is the horse from which William III fell and received the injury from which he died.
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/wra-1356327493272/article-1355829878058/
White Sorrell was the premier racehorse of Jacobite sympathiser Sir John Fenwick of Wallington Hall, Northumberland. Northumberland and Tyneside are neighbours, so it doesn't entirely fit. But, the point here is that Fenwick was executed for his part in a plot to assassinate King William, and that White Sorrell (among other Fenwick property) was confiscated by the crown... and the horse stumbled on a mole hill, the King fell off, and later died from complications from his injuries.
So there's a race horse. The race horse is "liberated". From "a lord". The Lord was from Northumberland, but that seems close enough. So is the "I" in this verse King William himself? Could be, although the natural flow of the verse is a bit disjointed if so, because "and" in the previous line seems to indicate that one of the Manchester Jacobites is the one with the stolen horse (there were stolen horses in the regiment, it seems, as well as other hints in bits of books I've seen that the Young Pretender himself rode a stolen horse at times).
Anyway, worth noting.
http://z1.invisionfree.com/thefall/index.php?showtopic=4945&view=findpost&p=22574277
Dan
So this line seems to date back to Grotesque's liner notes in 1980. So the question is, is it meant metaphorically, or does it refer to an actual bombing which disrupted, or potentially could have disrupted, The Fall's travel/tour plans?
A bit of cursory googling reveals an older (likely related) song: "Who Threw The Overalls In Mrs. Murphy's Chowder?" (1898).
I'll let you connect the dots.
(I am not actually sure if polytechnic teachers would have been involved in the YOP — as someone who was an infant and not in the UK at the time, my main knowledge of the program is the minor subplot in "The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole" where the main character's father is involved in an extremely similar-sounding scheme involving supervising various delinquents cleaning a canal. Mr Mole was a former electrical heater salesman and not a pseudo-academic. But it must just be one of MES's many jabs at the "polyocracy" and the academic do-gooding middle class.)
See also the "Slates and Dates" 1981 US tour press kit:
http://thefall.org/gigography/slatesdates.pdf
... which has some text attributed to MSS' alter ego Joe Totale, which begins:
From City Limits magazine #104, 30 Sept - 6 October 1983, p17, a quote from MES:
Dan
The term is said to have originated with Winston Churchill, who was often quoted as referring to a "black dog" when he was feeling unmotivated, churlish, or otherwise unproductive.
Churchill also mentioned in Tempo House around the same time.
"The Duke of Cumberland" was a pub in Leicester, which closed in 1982 according to the closedpubs website:
https://www.closedpubs.co.uk/leicestershire/leicester_dukeofcumberland.html
Different info here:
https://pubhistoryproject.co.uk/2020/07/01/holly-bush-duke-of-cumberland-39-cumberland-street-1-northgate/
The leader of the Manchester Regiment was Frances Towneley. Interesting story here about the fate of his severed head:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/25/grisly-inheritance-sedition-head-spike
I always heard it is as "POM COUSIN" rather than palm buzzer.
As for the six foot steak:
https://www.yiddishwit.com/gallery/meat.html
https://www.podbean.com/eu/pb-d86ct-f8d554
Following on from that, a bit more on black dogs.
As already noted the "black dog" is indeed a metaphor for depression, used by Churchill and others. But it's also associated with Satanic goings on, and there are lots of phantom black dogs in British folklore.
eg the Mickleton Hooter: https://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/content/article/the-mickleton-hooter
But black dogs are also said to haunt or guard the graves of those killed violently or by suicide. And there's specific mention in some sources of Jacobite graves being associated with Black Dogs.
eg:
"The Black Dog", by W.P. Witcutt (1942), in Folklore, vol. 53 (3), pp.167-168.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0015587X.1942.9717647
There's a pub in Leicester called The Black Dog, which seems to be named after "the Black Dog of Arden", the nickname of Guy de Beauchamp, 10th Earl of Warwick. Too early for the Jacobites, but another rebel against a king.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dog_(ghost)
1902 Edward VII Coronation Medallion, Presented by Hotel Metropole London:
The Hotel Metropole of the coin is not the current Hilton Metropole in London. It was what is now known as the Corinthia Hotel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corinthia_Hotel_London). It was the Metropole from 1883 through to the second world war when it was taken over by the Government. It remained in Government hands until it was sold off in 2007 and renamed the Corinthia.
King Edward VII was a regular apparently.
Anyhow, a little detail stands out, which is that it was originally built by the - get this - Gordon Hotels Company.
The Gordon Hotel Company also owned the Brighton Metropole already mentioned on this page.
It seems likely that MES has a particular person or incident in mind here, but it may be not be a publicly accessible story.
However, thought it worth noting that from the 18th century one of the sources of oil for candle making was the sperm whale - the substance known as spermaceti: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermaceti
So possibly spermaceti candles could be used in Hanukkah menorah. Which might reduce to "sperm" in impressionistic rock song lyrics. Could that be the Jewish connection here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Harry_Fox
The murder took place in Room 66 of the hotel. You can google pictures of both hotel and room.
There's no apparent 1902 link (Fox was born in 1899), and the other Metropole connections already mentioned seem stronger. But the reason I raise it is that while digging around I found a couple of dramatisations of the case, from 1976 and 1981. They are also mentioned in the Wikipedia article above.
The first dramatisation was in a series called "Killers". Entitled "Murder at the Metropole", it was shown in some of the regions of the ITV network on 11 August 1976. I haven't found that it was shown in the Granada region, however, which is where MES would be most likely to have seen it.
But in 1981 a new dramatisation entitled "A Boy's Best Friend" was shown, in a series called "Lady Killers". This was a Granada production. being shown on that part of the ITV network (but not everywhere) on 21 August 1981. The Fall were not touring at the time, and MES could conceivably have seen it or read about it.
This August broadcast was of course just 8 months prior to the debut of the song.
However, any connection to this Metropole remains obscure.
So we have the Margate Metropole, a hotel which was the site of a murder and the subject of a TV drama broadcast less than a year before the debut of the song.
We also have the Hotel Metropole, London, and a 1902 coronation coin and various Gordons link.
Then there's the Hotel Metropole, Brighton, mentioned in The Waste Land.
And also the Hotel Metropole on Catalina Island, California, site of a 1902 murder
However, let's also add the Hotel Metropole, Blackpool, just because The Fall played Blackpool at least once later in 1981 (may have been another Blackpool gig that autumn) and MES might well have noticed the hotel (which was only a 5 minute walk from the Gaiety Bar venue they played on 4 November 1981 - perhaps the group even stayed at the Hotel, which was then the Butlins Metropole), and perhaps even made the mental connection back to one of the others above.
None of which helps us understand the lyric, but opens out some options.
And that song also contains these lines:
Now, these lines are hard to parse, but in a song that does contain echoes of this 1981 text, perhaps the Blackpool reference is also significant? Or perhaps not.
Anyway, here's another Metropole.
The Metropole Hotel ("Le Metropole") in Alexandria, Egypt, was built in 1902.
The "Cleopatra's needle" which now stands in Central Park, New York, formerly stood on the site (there are two other "Cleopatra's needles", one in London at Victoria Embankment and the other - aka the Luxor Obelisk - in Paris in the Place de la Concorde.).
It was used in the 1958 film Ice Cold in Alex, starring John Mills.
I had a look to see if the film had been shown around the time this song debuted - its most recent showing looks to have been on BBC 1 on 10 May 1982, which is after the song's debut.
Manchester had a Metropole Theatre, opened in 1898 and demolished in 1962: http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/55577. Doesn't seem to be anything significant about the number/date 1902 though.
But I tripped up over this:
The Metropole Cinema, London: http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/3770
Now, the Metropole Cinema was opened in 1929, but the last film shown was Burnt Offerings, starring Bette Davis on 11 June 1977. Eventually, Virgin Records took over and it ran as a concert venue from 1978-1984.
They called it The Venue.
That's right, the Metropole became The Venue, mentioned in the sleeve notes to Hex - The Fall played there just twice: 7 December 1981 (just a few months before the live debut of Backdrop), and 22 March 1983.
Now then, if that is a coincidence, it's a remarkable one!
In the 1960 Fritz Leiber Time War-related short story, The Oldest Soldier, a sinister/monstrous "black dog" hunts down a change war soldier. Kind of fits thematically with this song, maybe.
The story has been widely anthologised:
http://www.philsp.com/homeville/ISFAC/s188.htm#A2901.147
In August 1979, Fritz Leiber attended Seacon, the 37th World Science Fiction Convention.
The event took place in Brighton.
At the Metropole Hotel.
<jaw drops>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/37th_World_Science_Fiction_Convention
"The void" is a thing in the change war stories of Fritz Leiber....
In Fritz Leiber's speech to the 1979 convention at the Metropole Hotel, Brighton https://digitalcollections.lib.uh.edu/concern/texts/n583xv45d?locale=en), he refers to having attended the Seventh World Science Fiction Convention.
Which took place in Cincinnati, Ohio, in September 1949.
At the Hotel Metropole.
<explodes>