Bournemouth Runner
Lyrics
Consumed with premonition
Of trouble on horizon
By my remarks I was certain
I was destined persecution
But then I took a chase after the Bournemouth Runner!
Bournemouth Runner!
C-c-could dare
Bournemouth Runner!
First night
Bournemouth Runner!
He was a Bournemouth Runner!
Bournemouth Runner!
Didn't get far
Bournemouth Runner!
First night
Bournemouth Runner!
But the second night
He got away with our guiding light (2)
Was chilled to the bone
At 8am
On a Bournemouth morn
There was a drunk dead
Outside, route 51
Two nights before
Bristol ball
A runner took back door, exit hall
Bournemouth Runner!
Raced a couple of hundred yards
Bournemouth Runner!
Barman cocked his ears
Bournemouth Runner!
Spitted and shifted
Bournemouth Runner!
Backdrop dissipated
Bournemouth Runner!
He was the Bournemouth Runner!
How could we know it was the Bournemouth Runner?
Bournemouth Runner!
Raced a couple of hundred yards
Bournemouth Runner!
Barman clipped his ears
Bournemouth Runner!
Spitted and shifted
Bournemouth Runner!
Backdrop dissipated
Bournemouth Runner!
He was the Bournemouth Runner!
Took away our guiding light
Took away our guiding light
Took away our guiding light
He took away our guiding light
Our backdrop was friendly, bendy
Often it would rumble into hotel
And partake with us
In diluted drink and dogmeat
Of RAC recommended hostelry (3)
Bournemouth Runner!
Shifted and twisted (4)
Bournemouth Runner!
On beach sand sifted
Bournemouth Runner!
In the best home
Bournemouth Runner!
Locks clicked
Bournemouth Runner!
Should've known better
Than to underrate
Bournemouth sucker
Took away our guiding light
Bournemouth Runner!
Calendar
Bournemouth Runner!
I've forgotten the date
Bournemouth Runner!
No plot
Bournemouth Runner!
You're welcome
Bournemouth Runner!
It was coated in poison
Bournemouth Runner!
Notes
1. The story as related on the Fall online forum runs as follows:
"'After the encore, Terry Stoate who like myself has been a Fall fan since the seventies, jumped on to the stage and pulled off the backdrop, which was at the back of the stage (The Fall surrounded by the swirly circle like on the Wonderful and Frightening album cover). He jumped off the stage, said to me come on and ran out of the side door.
A couple of bouncers chased after him and after about 200 yards, they caught him and I arrived just in time to see the last punch thrown and the backdrop being taken back. Terry was still smiling though! He was smiling even more when the track "The Bournemouth Runner" was released and for a while, ran a removals firm under the same name. The backdrop though was never seen again.
I met Mark E Smith in the George Hotel having a pint before the Poole gig and asked him about it and he said they never saw it again!'
--Mick Cunningham/Bournemouthrunner, FOF.
From "Drunken driver causes chaos - In a JCB!" James Brown interview with MES, NME 31 October 1987 (Dan):
"Did I ever tell you we found out who it was? We got a letter off him which said (adopts creepy voice) 'I am the Bournemouth Runner' and it turns out he's like the biggest football hooligan in Bournemouth, and he's a Fall fan coincidentally.
"And he bought 'Bend Sinister' and put it on and this track comes on and he couldn't believe it. And he went round telling everybody, and he painted it on his back apparently, and he's one of these people who get put in jail every week for fighting.
"He tried every night of the Southern tour to nick the backdrop and on the last f-ing night, in five minutes whilst no one was looking, he got it. Good on him actually. Ha ha ha."
2. Dan points out this is a Television song (from Marquee Moon); it's also the name of the longest running American soap opera. Dan traces it to the Bible, somewhat:
Psalms 119 : 105 [KJV]
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
3. RAC (Royal Automobile Club) Limited is a roadside assistance company, pretty much the equivalent of AAA in the United States.
4. Some of the lyrics here echo lines from "Backdrop," which had its last appearance almost three years prior to the debut of "Bournemouth Runner." Since the former was never recorded in the studio, MES may have just decided to salvage a few lyrics, although they are both, in one sense or another, about backdrops. "The steak was friendly and bendy/ and lumbered into the hotel" becomes "The backdrop was friendly and heavy/ often it would rumble into hotel..." And "The Backdrop shifted and drifted..." finds an echo in "Bournemouth runner/ Shifted and twisted..."
5. Ben Pritchard, in a post-Fall interview, attributes the breakup of that particular lineup of the Fall in 2006 to MES's attachment to the band's backdrops (although much of this has been contested by Smith himself in Renegade):
[W]hat started it all, the tour didn’t get off to the greatest start because we’d just had some new backdrops made, y’know the backdrops that we have behind us, Fall Heads Roll and all this. We had three made, Mark paid for them and they’re about three or four thousand pounds worth of backdrops done by this artist. And Mark flew on a different plane over from Chicago than us. We flew British Airways, he flew the ones that go to Atlanta, I can’t remember who they are. And he gave us Eleni’s keyboard and the backdrops. The backdrops never made it to Austin. They made it to Chicago… and he was like, “You fuckin make sure, you take care of them fuckin’ backdrops, they’re fuckin’ money, them! I won’t be fuckin’ happy if they’re not there!”
So the worst thing that could have happened, I mean if I hadn’t have turned up or if Spencer hadn’t have turned up that would have been fine, as long as the backdrops were there… those backdrops were absolutely everything to him and they didn’t turn up. And when he eventually arrived in Austin, Texas it was like, “Well somebody’s gonna have to tell him. Who’s gonna tell him?” So I told him and he was like, “Right. Ok. Alright.” And I thought at the time, I thought, he’s took that a bit too well. That’s not gonna be the end of this…
Then it started coming out, it was all our fault the backdrops had got lost and it was just kind of… every day peoples heads were just getting lower and lower. It was just like, sat in the dressing room before a gig like that (puts head in hands). Fookin hell…
More Information
Comments (25)
- 1. | 27/04/2013
- 2. | 12/04/2016
- 3. | 19/05/2016
- 4. | 08/06/2016
"Did I ever tell you we found out who it was? We got a letter off him which said (adopts creepy voice) 'I am the Bournemouth Runner' and it turns out he's like the biggest football hooligan in Bournemouth, and he's a Fall fan coincidentally.
"And he bought 'Bend Sinister' and put it on and this track comes on and he couldn't believe it. And he went round telling everybody, and he painted it on his back apparently, and he's one of these people who get put in jail every week for fighting.
"He tried every night of the Southern tour to nick the backdrop and on the last f-ing night, in five minutes whilst no one was looking, he got it. Good on him actually. Ha ha ha."
Dan
- 5. | 29/06/2016
EDIT: Ha, I googled that and found somewhere I (you) used it in a different song ("Frenz"). What a weird name for an interview!
- 6. | 02/07/2016
- 7. | 21/03/2017
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
- 8. | 23/03/2017
- 9. | 23/04/2017
In comment #1, I confirm the chronology. I was just thinking: was it the Fresher's Ball? It's right kind of time of year, and would explain the word "ball".
- 10. | 28/03/2019
Concerned with premonition
By my remorse
02:14 "there was a drop dead"
02:35 "barman cocked his ears" (clipped in the next verse)
03:56 "friendly, bendy" (like the steak in some versions of Backdrop)
04:21 "locks clicked"
5:05 "have acquired new one"
- 11. | 04/05/2019
I still hear "remarks"
I could almost hear "there was a drunk dead"
"Drum deck" has to be wrong, although it makes sense
Definitely not "drop"
I want to say "route 51"
"runner took the back door, exit hall," not "backdrop"
With the way the keyboards sound now, this the best song on the album
- 12. | 04/05/2019
- 13. | 13/05/2019
"Have acqiured new one"
- 14. | 09/03/2020
I've found the origins of the weird headline:
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thefall/snippets-in-magazines-etc-re-the-fall-t15374-s3360.html
- 15. | 19/04/2020
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00KO0H5IG/
- 16. | 24/04/2020
- 17. | 25/10/2020
- 18. | 26/10/2020
It's on my list to track down documentation.
- 19. | 27/10/2020
As Jacques Derrida said, "vive la differance".
- 20. | 28/10/2020
- 21. | 16/04/2021
I observe that all the comments I have have made this year has been completely ignored. I didn't realise this site was a closed shop. In fact it has come to resemble an extended bout of mutual masturbation between yourself and bzfgt, which is not a scenario I care to intrude upon. How far up your own backside does your head have to be to think you know more about an event than someone who was actually there. My observational powers are not that poor and neither is my memory that impaired. Common sense and the merest attention to detail would have enlightened you to the unlikelihood that a Freshers' week would have finished on 25 October. The concert was not a Freshers' Ball - it was a normal gig on the This Nation's Saving Grace Tour. I note from the Fall Online Gigography that there was a Freshers' Ball at the Hacienda on 8 October 1985 featuring The Legendary Stardust Cowboy offering free entry to students, a day before The Fall played there. You are aware that Freshers' week is normally the first week of October? Get over yourself.
It should be made clear on this site that unless your name is dannyno your efforts will be spurned. Why do you think you two are the gatekeepers to everything about the band and MES' lyrics. What qualifications do you have? I note that bzfgt only got into the group five minutes ago. I don't know how long you have been aware of The Fall, but perhaps the pair of you resent people who were actually listening to their work from the beginning - ie anyone who was even slightly interested in punk/post punk in the late '70s and early '80s. From a glance at the Annotated Fall Megathread on the Fall online forum I see that your domineering presence is not always appreciated. An example of your pompousness: "Live on" is an irrelevance, a naive mishearing from yesteryear. Some will hold on to it, I suppose, until they finally die off and the modern youth with our up-to-date methods have the field to ourselves. We're onto more interesting debates now. " God help us. As you seem to spend your entire life researching the minutiae of anything and everything to do with the band I hope you get paid for your efforts. For the life of me I can't understand the importance of ascertaining whether it was raining or not on the night The Fall played the East Rawtenstall Treacle Miners Social Club, or how many Fall fans can dance on the head of a safety pin. A shame really since many of your comments display a not inconsiderable degree of wit and erudition.
I am self aware enough to realise the prolixity of some of my own comments. You needn't worry. I won't be disturbing your love-in again. Vivat! Vivant! Live on!
- 22. | 17/04/2021
- 23. | 17/04/2021
- 24. | 17/04/2021
Dan
- 25. | 10/11/2021
https://twitter.com/LlSTENlNG_PARTY/status/1458516535681691650?s=20
Bristol ball"
So the Bournemouth gig was, according to the gigography, on 23 OCtober 1985, at Bournemouth Town Hall. The Fall indeed played Bristol University two nights later, on 25 October.