Before the Moon Falls

Shhhh

We are private detectives onward back from a musical pilgrimage
We work under the name of 'The Fall.'
Who would suspect this?
It is too obvious.
Our office is secluded.
Those there to suspect
Would not see the wood for the trees
We were six like dice but we're back to five (1)
Up here in the North there are no wage packet jobs for us (2)
Thank Christ
While young married couples discuss the poverties
Of their self-built traps
And the junior clergy demand more cash
We spit in their plate and wait for the ice to melt (3)

I must create a new regime
Or live by another man's (4)
Before the moon falls (5)
I must create a new scheme
And get out of others' hands
Before the moon falls

I could use some pure criminals
And get my hands on some royalties (6)
Before the moon falls

A problem of this new scheme
Is answering obscene phone calls
Before the moon falls

Gotta stop drifting around
Kill this ugly duckling  (7)
We've got the power
And must not misuse it
Cos life is short and full of thought
I use the power
I use the power

And I will forever end this reign of terror (8)
Before the moon falls
Before the tide subsides
Before the moon falls for the fifth time (9)
Before The Fall swoons

1. This refers to the departure of keyboardist Yvonne Pawlett. The Fall who recorded this song were MES, Marc Riley, Craig Scanlon, Steve Hanley, and Mike Leigh.

From "Backwater" by Brian Eno (1977):

There were six of us but now we are five
We're all talking
To keep the conversation alive

(Thanks to reader Craigness.)

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2. The phrase "wage packet," literally a pay envelope, is sometimes used in Britain to mean wages in general. Thus, the lyric indicates the difficulty, in the North, of finding what is sometimes called a "straight job."

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3. Thanks to Bradley who points out that this may be a reference to Hanns Hörbiger's "Welteislehre," a theory that holds, among other things, that the Moon is largely made of ice. Wikipedia: "According to his ideas, ice was the basic substance of all cosmic processes, and ice moons, ice planets, and the "global ether" (also made of ice) had determined the entire development of the universe." See note 9 below. 

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4. This paraphrases William Blake's lines in Jerusalem, spoken by Los: "I must Create a System or be enslav'd by another Man's. I will not Reason & Compare; my business is to Create." MES later adapted the famous "Jerusalem" section of Milton a Poem as "Dog is Life/Jerusalem," and the poet is the subject of the song, "W.B."  

28 years later, in the last song on the Fall's last album, "Nine Out of Ten," MES sings "You don't break rules you don't follow them."

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5. In the Peanuts strip from 6/24/1979, Sally is sleeping in the back yard with a friend named Eudora. The latter is anxious that something is going to fall on her head when she's sleeping, and at one point she asks "What if the moon falls out of the sky, and hits me right on the head?" The word balloon from this panel is reproduced on the sleeve of Dragnet.

Note the lyric was in place before the cartoon was published, and thus the latter illustrates the former but did not inspire it to begin with. 

Dan speculates that the origin of the line is in a book MES is likely to have read:

"From The Morning of the Magicians (1960, Destiny Books, 2009 edition, p.207):

'It is certain, then, that the moon will end by falling on to the earth.'"

This is from my notes for "Hotel Bloedel," and conveys a bit of the character of the book in question:

In the pseudo-historical book about the occult The Morning of the Magicians, which contains, among other things, an account of occult tendencies in the NSDAP that is of dubious veracity, it is reported that a Tibetan monk nicknamed "The Man With The Green Gloves" lived in Berlin and headed a group called "The Society of Green Men," which was in consultation with Hitler about a secret underground city ("Agarthi") from which Buddhist adepts ruled the planet. Interestingly, the authors themselves seem to have openly acknowledged that their book is fanciful, but this hasn't stopped some of its claims from being perpetuated

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6. Mark weighs in:

I seem to recall that the "pure criminals" line was a dig at Step Forward Records for their lack of royalty payments. MES makes another dig at them (specifically Miles Copeland) in "What You Need ."

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7. I assume most readers will be familiar with the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen of this name. Spoiler alert: the duckling was a swan.

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8. nairng: "I have just watched the Hammer version of Dracula (Christopher Lee in title role); Harker writes in his diary, 'With God's help, I will forever end this man's reign of terror.'"

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9. The Morning of the Magicians (p.210) (see note 4 above):

"And so, according to Horbiger, the Moon, the one that we can see, is only the last, and fourth, of the satellites captured by the Earth."

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Before the Moon Falls: Fall Tracks A-Z

William Blake (thanks to Sam and Dan):