Eat Y'Self Fitter

NOTES

1. "Eat Yourself Fitter" is a slogan used to sell Kellogg's All-Bran breakfast cereal. This particular ad campaign seems to have begun sometime prior to 1982: "The TV campaign for All-Bran, in area test at the time, went national from July 1982" (Twenty Advertising Case Histories, second series, edited by Charles Channon, Cassell, 1989; thanks to Dan). 

See More Information below for a couple of versions of the ad.

From Dan:

From Obsession fanzine, interview with MES at Reading University, 15 October 1983:

'EAT YOURSELF FITTER'??? ARE YOU ATTACKING HEALTH FOOD FREAKS (laughter in the background)

-MARK E. SMITH:- Its like a journal, really. A very 'me' journal, all sorts of things I had a go at on that.

YOU DIDN'T GET THE NAME OFF THE BACK OF AN 'ALL BRAN' PACKET?

BRIX:- No.

MARK E. SMITH:- I didn't write it like that, no, I'd never seen that until I'd written the song, I must have seen the television advert or som'at to get the name, I thought it was a unique name, strange that, isn't it? Somebody showed me, I hope they sue us. (laughter)

^ 

2. Cretonne, a kind of cotton fabric used for upholstery, has also been suggested. Ex-worker man suggests that it's "Can't stick the cretin on the number three lathe," i.e. the singer dislikes or can't stand one of his co-workers. It's not a word one sees in songs often (although surely more so than "cretonne," but consider "Cretin Hop" by the Ramones.

^

3. Perhaps this refers to the size of the lathe: "Numbers 3 and 7 are Bent and straight cut-off tools."

^

4. Presumably a "heavy metal" club. Reader Georgec submits: "Per 'HM Club,' as is often the case, MES clarifies obscure slang for a foreign audience. At Larry's Hidaway, Toronto, 4/21/83, he sings 'Went down the town/to a Heavy Metal club.' It doesn't scan quite as nicely with the added syllables, but there you have it."

It has also been suggested to me that the letters HM commonly stand for "His/Her Majesty's" in many abbreviations.  

Dan points out that the video for "Eat Y'Self Fitter" features the group and associates walking down Whitworth Street West, in Manchester, towards the Haçienda nightclub, which seems to represent the "HM club" in the video.

On "I Feel Voxish" from the album Austurbaejarbio (05/06/1983), at 2:16 MES says "those dirty little weirdos/wouldn't let me in their HM club." This seems to me to suggest that these lines may be based on an actual event. Thanks to Jeff Lewis for pointing this out.

^

5. For the sake of Americans, it may be necessary to add that this is "smart" in the sense of well-dressed. In a 1998 interview with Vox, MES remembers getting bounced for being too darn smart:

Vox: So did you used to strut your Travolta stuff on the dancefloors of Manchester?

MES: I never really went to any of the disco places in Manchester, I could never afford to. Places like Pips, they'd have four or five floors, a soul floor, a Roxy floor, a Bowie floor, and so on - and you had to have the right haircut. It's getting like that again in Manchester. They won't let you in if your hair's too long, or too short, or even if you're dressed too smart. I've had that recently! 

^

6. Gustopher: "Up the stairs mister will refer to the fact that many, if not most, Manchester clubs of the era were in warehouse basements Iincluding the Hacienda, although that was massive) and so you weny doen to get in and when being barred would be told 'up the stairs.'"

^

7. Psychoanalysis is the reference here, presumably some kind of group therapy, as evidenced by the references below to a "cuddly group" and "musical chairs."

^

8. Dan:

From Paul Hanley's book, Leave the Capital, p.176, note 167:
 

The 'met a hero of mine' verse tells the tale of when Mark met John Cale after the latter's gig at the Haçienda on 10th March 1983. Legend has it that Cale's set was so quiet, Peter Hook and Marc Riley had to walk through the crowd telling them to stop talking.

An extract from Peter Hook's book, How Not to Run a Club (2009). This could be Paul Hanley's source, but since he says "legend has it" he may of course have been aware of the story from personal contacts.
 

I like The Fall. Always have, and they played at the club loads of times. I remember when OMD played, they sounded great because they had a huge PA and blasted the bad acoustics out of the place. Their lights were stunning, too. John Cale comes to mind. One of my heroes. His evening at the Haçienda was a fantastic performance, but just 40 people turned up. And most of them talked all the way through the show. Cale played piano and acoustic guitar, and the music was very quiet. All of the chatter drove me insane. Marc Riley from The Fall was as incensed as I was and we walked through the crowd, poking them telling them to shut up.

^

9. In the video for "Eat Y'Self Fitter," a lyric sheet is briefly held up which indicates this line is "elusive fig. 1." A contemporary Melody Maker advertisement includes this passage of the lyrics, and the line is recorded as "Elusive Big L." The lyrics are often messed with when they get written down (see the two lyrics books), and it sounds to me, on both Perverted by Language and The Complete Peel Sessions, like "big one," so I have left it that way above. But this alternate rendering should be kept in mind.

^

10. These obscure lines possibly refer to computer keys. They may have just been floating around, too--in the Blue Lyrics Book, MES includes a piece called "Amsterdam," which reads, in part:

CUT!! 
The Amsterdam Office
Bertlan Van Diggaboom;
"Print!"
"We know what we want!"
Printed
"G.O.H.O.F. unplot"
"On G.O.H.O."
"Lets service and recall"
"And Plus Power"
"Newline Answer"
"We want.............."|
Cut!!

Zack has discovered that MES read this on his 1983 Greenwich Sound Radio Creatures What You Never Knew About appearance (along with one "Centimeter Square," see note 12).

^

11. Kevin Ayers is a British musician who founded the psychedelic group Soft Machine in the 60s.

^

12. Probably a reference to "casual Friday," where business people are allowed to dress down on Fridays. The practice goes back to the 1950s in the US, when employees of Hewlitt Packard were expected to work in the warehouse on Fridays. Casual Friday may have been influenced by "Aloha Friday" in Hawaii, promoted by a group called the Hawaiian Fashion Guild, which encouraged people to wear "aloha shirts" (often called "Hawaiian shirts") to work on Fridays.

^

13. Barratt Homes is a major property developer in Britain, sometimes criticized for shoddy workmanship. In any case, a contrast between the archaic "heritance" and the new money implications of Barratt is doubtless intended.

^

14. "Mit dem" means "with the..." in German, with the definite article "dem" in the masculine dative case. At times Smith is likely saying "victim," and there may also be a pun on "amid them." In the video to the song from Perverted by Language Bis, at 5:29 (about 5:29 and a half, really) the screen displays the words "don't wanna be a victim (MIT DEM)" (thanks to Dan).

Clay refers us to the Varukers' "I Don't Want to Be a Victim," which came out in 1982 ("Eat Y'Self Fitter" debuted on March 21, 1983).

^ 

15. The Second Sudanese Civil War, which lasted for a horrifying 22 years, was just to begin shortly after this song was recorded, although the Peel session (which already has the "Sudan" line) was in March, and Martin, who was in Sudan at the time, says the line is probably just random and doesn't reflect the situation there in the Spring.

Wardour is a street in Soho, London, which was for a time a major center for British filmmaking. The Marquee club, a venue for many famous rock acts, was located on Wardour Street. And, the Jam had a song called "A-Bomb in Wardour Street." Gustopher says "Wardour is the HQ of the British record industry and can be used as shorthand (much like Fleet St refers to the newspaper press)."

North West England was called "Granadaland" in reference to Granada television, centered in Manchester. Also, around this time (1983) the United States invaded the Carribean island nation of Grenada, ostensibly to liberate American medical students who were being held captive after a coup. The coup took place on October 14th, 1983; the US invasion ensued on the 25th. On the Peel version in March, Granadaland is not mentioned, so it is possible that MES intended the lyric to have a (possibly ironic) resonance with the recent events in Grenada (Perverted By Language was released on the 12th of December, although I'm not certain when the song was actually recorded).  

^

16. This is may be  a reference to LSD, which is often sold on squares of blotting paper roughly a centimeter on each side (in fact, E3 has just informed me that in the video what looks like a hit of blotter is flashed at this point). The psychedelic element adumbrated by the appearance of Kevin Ayres in an earlier verse here joins the banal account of the harried narrator, suggesting a possible secondary meaning to the title phrase "eat y'self fitter"... the song ends here, however, so whether things get better, or just weirder, is left undetermined.

Zack sniffed this out: MES recited a short poem called "Centimeter Square" on his 1983 Greenwich Sound Radio Creatures What You Never Knew About appearance. And Dan provides a transcript:

"The rouge smeared on the agèd profile of the local THF cologne branch chairman was sore and inched well away from prints. The centimetre oblong lipstick compounded fear. For him I did not care a jot. The centimetre square purges fear!" 

^

SaveSave

SaveSave

Eat Y'Self Fitter: Fall Tracks A-Z

egg has transcribed the poem recited by Lana Pillay after "Eat Y'Self Fitter" on the promotional video for Perverted by Language:

"There may be errors in this, it's just what I hear:

'The Confidence of Henry Glaspance
Good evening. I’m a Sudan Arab agent in the pay of Bazhdad. Kim Wilde doesn’t get out to see many gigs. For the son eats low-fat spread. Crazy normal about the Stray Cats, after feast of tinned tomatoes and cod. The ginger radio bully sausage spitefully refuses to play us. Mark E. Smith.' 

I think it's pretty clear from this that the connection between MES's use of 'Sudan' and contemporary world events is limited; he just liked the sound of the word and/or thought the place sounded exotic. To me this song has a pretty clear story. Our hero starts off as a dutiful worker, gets no respect from others, and as a result retreats to the TV, computer, and hallucinogens — with consequent scary visions at the end. A slice of realism if you ask me!"

[bzfgt: Note that "Bazhdad" seems to make a lot of appearances, whatever the hell it is...]