Edinburgh Man

Lyrics

It's springtime but I still miss the streets at dawn
And in the morning walking your bridges home
As I sit and stare at all of England's sores
I tell you something
I wish I was in Edinburgh

I don't mind being by myself
Don't wanna be anywhere else
Just wanna be in Edinburgh
How I wish I was in Edinburgh

You can leave me on the shelf
I'm an Edinburgh man myself
I will always give you help

It's summertime but I still miss your spires so clear
Sitting and staring on a beach somewhere
I'll tell you something
I wish I was in Edinburgh

Don't give a toss about private wealth
And history just repeats itself (2)
Keep me away from the Festival
And just give a one-quarter-gill (3)

They say project yourself
But I'm an Edinburgh man myself

It's wintertime and I still see the cobble stones
Clacking over your streets at dawn
I was really poor since I left Edinburgh

I'm OK just by myself
Cause our miserable kinks won't protect us from ourselves (4)
How I wish I was in Edinburgh
How I wish I was in Edinburgh

I was always in good health
I'm an Edinburgh man myself
I will always give you help
I'm an Edinburgh man myself

Notes

1. MES plays it straight here--he briefly lived in Edinburgh, Scotland circa 1990, and he seems to have dug it. He later atoned for this burst of sincerity by claiming that he prefers Glasgow. A conventional rock ballad, but a masterful one; this is a beautiful song, and a unique one for the Fall. Smith later attributed his move to a distaste for the scene, and the drugs, in the late 1980s ("Madchester"), which is probably an exaggeration but may contain a kernel of truth:

“That’s why I moved to Scotland. It’s true. I’d rather drink whisky, thank you very much. I don’t relate to other groups. I never have. I don’t relate to a lot of musicians to be quite frank. I don’t relate to anything from Manchester and I never saw us as anything like that.”

He had also just gone through a split with his wife at the time, Brix, and this may have led him to seek a change of scenery.

2.This is of course a common notion. Marx famously wrote, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon:

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

Equally ubiquitous is Santayana's "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" which is often misquoted with "history" replacing "the past." Dan points out that Santayana also says "I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty" which, in conjunction with the other quote, is certainly suggestive for our purposes.

3. From the Lyrics Parade: "Most UK pubs, and all English pubs, used to sell spirits in fifths of a gill, an old-fashioned imperial measurement (4 gills to the pint). In Scotland a select few pubs sell 1/4 gill measures. (Thanks to Simon Fluendy for this info)"

4. The Lyrics Parade has "miserable king"; there has not been a king of the United Kingdom since George VI died in 1952, and the current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II. To me this sounds like it could be "kings" or "kinks," but the blue lyrics book has "kinks" so that seems like the best option. This is presumably at least partly in reference to the Kinks, although it is uncapitalized. As for "miserable Kinks," MES is an avowed Kinks fan (the Fall, of course, had a hit with "Victoria"), so I take it that "miserable" is descriptive of the Kinks' own state of mind, rather than that which they induce in their listeners. In any case, many fans heart "king" and that could certainly be the right word but, in the absence of other evidence, we have to go with MES's own testimony.

Joseph Mullaney remarks: "the title of this song is reminiscent of that of several Kinks songs, e.g. "Plastic Man," "Session Man," "A Well Respected Man," "Apeman," "Powerman" ... Also, the outro recalls the Kinks' habit of finishing a song with an entirely new part, for instance in "Sunny Afternoon" or "Waterloo Sunset."

More Information

Edinburgh Man: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1991

Comments (27)

1. dannyno | 25/05/2013

"Cause our miserable king won't protect us from ourselves"

It's "kinks". It's also "spires so clear" and "England's sores", not skies or souls.

That's what the blue lyrics book says, and that's also what I hear on all the versions I've got: Shiftwork, Live at Phoenix Festival, etc,

2. dannyno | 31/05/2013

"Quarter gill"

This was also the size of the rum ration issued to troops in the first world war.

3. bzfgt | 12/06/2013

consult "pre-MDMA years"

4. BennyM | 05/09/2013

"And just give me a ONE quarter gill," as written in the Fall's blue, second lyrics book.

5. dannyno | 20/09/2014

Ultimately what matters is what you can hear, not what is printed in the book.

6. Martin | 21/03/2016

"Sores" is an interesting word, isn't it? It conjures up to me images of the Black Death, plagues in general. In fact, it reminds me of some of the lyrics in "Van Plague". All of which is not to put forward anything particularly new, but simply to record information. And also to say that the word "sore(s) hasn't to date appeared in any other Fall song. However, the phrase"England's sores", as you might expect, isn't a Mark E Smith creation, as a brief google search will show.

7. bzfgt | 24/03/2016

Yes, and I found one use of the phrase not two lines from a mention of "Edinburgh" in the Atlantic Monthly of Feb. 1865...it seems to be buried in a long, sarcastic article about some Connecticut poets, and the connection is tenuous, and it is unlikely MES ever saw it. I thought I had something for a moment there...

8. dannyno | 25/06/2016

"I Wish I Was in Edinburgh..."

The Corries, "Barrett's Privateers":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VKQ4qlZqm8

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett%27s_Privateers

Coincidence?

9. dannyno | 30/09/2016

"Don't give a toss about private wealth
And history just repeats itself"

Echoes of George Santayana?

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

and

"I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty."

But I'm not aware of any Santayana links to Edinburgh. So probably a red herring.

10. bzfgt | 15/10/2016

No but the first quote is ubiquitous so maybe not so red or so fishy.

11. bzfgt | 15/10/2016

Dan, do you happen to know if those two quotes appear near each other in Santayana, or otherwise are they often quoted together?

12. dannyno | 15/10/2016

They come from different books. Possibly they might be together in a book of quotations.

13. dannyno | 15/11/2017

From "Sarky Street Poet in Love-Tug Riddle", interview with David Cavanagh, in Select, June 1991, pp. 20-22:

... the topic is 'Edinburgh Man', one of the loveliest songs The Fall have ever recorded. It's about Smith's year-long exile in Edinburgh, unloved and unknown, and it's full of the gruff sentiments of someone unused to showing his feelings in public.

"I really wanted to say it," he nods. "And I mean it, what I say. I was living up there in Edinburgh for a year and I was on me tod. I'd no fuckin' money, no fuckin' nowt, and no fucker wanted to know me. I spent 18 months on the words to that song, trying to get it right."

It's a very emotional song.

"For sure. For sure."

He had gone there to escape the fallout from his marriage and the encroaching horrors of the Manchester scene. He rented a room, got some writing done and spent a year watching and drinking.

http://thefall.org/news/pics/select_fall_june91.pdf

14. Joseph Mullaney | 20/11/2017

'Miserable kinks'- the title of this song is reminiscent of that of several Kinks songs, e.g. Plastic Man, Session Man, A Well Respected Man, Apeman, Powerman... Also, the outro recalls the Kinks' habit of finishing a song with an entirely new part, for instance in Sunny Afternoon or Waterloo Sunset.

15. Martin | 11/04/2020

The demo version has some differences to the finally released version which in themselves aren’t highly significant but still worth noting.

The first “I tell you something” is replaced by “I curse my luck”[/b].

The [b]“beach” becomes a “hot beach”.

These lines: “Don't give a toss about private wealth
And history just repeats itself.”

are replaced by:

“Don’t give a care about private wealth
History just doesn’t gel.”

MES doesn’t “see” the cobblestones” but rather “hear(s)” them. [Better, in my opinion.]

The line “I was really poor since I left Edinburgh” was originally “I was really poor but I was in Edinburgh” (a subtle but pertinent change) [See commentary no.13: "I was living up there in Edinburgh for a year and I was on me tod. I'd no fuckin' money, no fuckin' nowt,"]

Perhaps the most significant addition to the album version are the lines:

“Keep me away from the Festival
And just give a one-quarter-gill.”

These don’t appear in the demo. I often thought that MES, by slagging off one of the city’s most famous attractions (and then adding a none-too politically correct drinking reference) was indulging in one of his infamous self-destructive moods as far as doing the best for the group’s prospects was concerned. Unless an edited version had been used, there was no way the song would have been co-opted by the Edinburgh Tourist Board!

16. Martin | 17/04/2020

"You can leave me on the shelf":

Leave MES himself on the shelf, presumably, but why (unless it's to force a rhyme with "myself" in the next line)? And then these are followed by "I will always give you help", which also seems to me to be outside the general lyrical drift of the song (Edinburgh and solitude and wistful nostalgia etc.). Unless, of course, MES is somehow conflating himself with a personification of the city. Or, that he was looking for another rhyme (in this case, assonance rather than full rhyme).

I'm probably over-thinking things!

17. bzfgt (link) | 17/04/2020

No, I always wondered whether that was a cheap almost-rhyme or what.

Is the demo in circulation?

18. Martin | 17/04/2020

I could email it to you.

19. ggffd | 14/11/2020

I read that 'Edinburgh Man' took a long time.

"Yeah. That was more on the musical end, actually. I just wanted a
song that changed three or four times within it. Like a landscape..."

20. dannyno | 15/11/2020

Comment #19, source is the Miejer interview, archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20201115085004if_/https://sites.google.com/site/reformationposttpm/Home/bibliography/1991---early---miejer-interview

21. dannyno | 21/12/2020

We should have this here.

Mark E Smith on Edinburgh, from Granada Tonight on ITV, 21 November 1994.

22. bzfgt (link) | 28/03/2021

I think it might be "England's sorrows"

23. bzfgt (link) | 03/04/2021

OK I listened to a live version, "sores" is probably right.

24. Joseph Mullaney | 09/07/2021

If it is 'miserable Kinks', I wonder if there is an intended reference to the Kinks as being an archetypally 'English' band, while MES is proclaiming that he would rather be in Scotland.

25. dannyno | 12/08/2022

Lot 378, from the collection of Mark E Smith, Omega Auctions, up for sale on 13 September 2022. Sold by Smith's family.

https://bid.omegaauctions.co.uk/auction/lot/lot-378---the-fall---mark-e-smiths-handwritten-lyrics-for-edinburgh-man/?lot=27498

A sheet of paper containing what appears to be the lyrics of Edinburgh Man as a work in progress:

https://goauctionomega.blob.core.windows.net/stock/24369-1.jpg?v=63795742063123

26. harleyr | 29/01/2023

Phil J posted what looks like a handwritten draft of the song's lyrics on Twitter... https://twitter.com/TWO_Librans/status/1619665661294440459?s=20&t=RZC1mynQyhmGSZJ3zjlN9w In this version at least, it's 'miserable kinks'.