Frenz

Lyrics

Da da da da da da da da
My friends (1)
Gonna tell you about my friends: 

My friends ain't enough for one hand, 
My friends ain't enough for one hand, 
My friends don't amount to one hand, 
One hand

My friends don't add up to one hand, 
My friends don't amount to one hand, 
One hand

Tell ya 'bout my friends.
(Why do you count them?)

My friends don't count up to one hand, 
My friends cannot count on one hand 
My friends don't amount to one hand

Tell ya 'bout my friends. 

My friends don't add up to one hand, 
My friends don't count up to one hand. 
Tell ya 'bout my friends. 

My friends don't amount to one hand, 
My friends ain't enough for one hand, 
One hand
Tell ya 'bout my friends. 

(Do you count them?
How many are there?)

Da da da da da da da da

Notes

1. This is that rare Fall song that doesn't seem to call for much explanation. The song, which is the opening number on The Frenz Experiment, kicks off the album in a low-key and almost offhand way, and sets the tone perfectly for the oddball and relaxed set of songs that follows. With this song we are put on notice that the album to come will not be a grand statement but rather, as the title makes explicit, an experiment, or more accurately a series of experiments. Riffs and ideas will be followed where they lead, allowed to breathe and grow, but not pushed too hard or worked up into anything like a unified artistic statement (unless, of course, the variety itself is the statement, a rock tradition at least since The White Album). The lyrics of this song are a perfect example of the approach; a simple idea is stated, and the words are toyed with and switched around a bit, and then the song ends. There is no chorus or bridge, no 'B' part, just a relaxed groove and a simple set of words that keeps going until it stops. At the time the song was recorded the Fall had been enjoying their greatest chart success to date (and the band would experience even more success: Bend Sinister went to number 36 in the U.K., while Frenz reached number 19, and both "VIctoria" and "There's a Ghost in My House" from this period would crack the top 40). The Fall were in their Beggar's Banquet period, working for a larger and more successful label than any they had previously been associated with. Thus, it is perhaps no coincidence that at this moment MES is reflecting on who his genuine friends are (see also David Scott's remarks on Reformation).   

Dan found the following:

From "Drunken driver causes chaos - In a JCB!" James Brown interview with MES, NME 31 October 1987, p45:
 


MES: "I went through a thing about six months ago when I thought 'F--ing hell, I've been nice to a lot of people and they're not my friends anymore.' and I started to crave company again. There's a song on the LP, which we do live called 'My Friends You Can Count On One Hand', and you can. It's funny who you regard as your friends."


From "How Many Friends" by the Who (Who By Numbers):

How many friends have I really got?
You can count 'em on one hand
How many friends have I really got?
How many friends have I really got?
That love me, that want me, that'll take me as I am?

Kevin Ayers relates an even more dire situation in "Shouting in a Bucket Blues": Lovers come and lovers go but friends are hard to find/Yes I can count all mine on one finger

And Bob comments:

Seems like it was at least partly inspired (lyrically) by Whodini's "Friends" (1984). A fairly popular, now heavily sampled, song of three years earlier:

Friends
How many of us have them?
Friends
Ones we can depend on
Friends
How many of us have them?
Friends
Before we go any further, lets be
Friends

 

Dan submits:

Steve Hanley from the sleevenotes to the Beggars Banquet 2xCD/LP 2020 edition of The Frenz Experiment:
 


It's quite slight, isn't it? Craig wrote that. I remember that bass line getting more and more simplified every time we did it, until it was just the two notes, which was pretty common actually.



Brix:
 


Mark and I were at home in our house in Prestwich and he asked me, 'How many friends do you have?' I replied, 'I don't have very many.' 'You know what, we know friends you can count on hand.' I said, 'Let me try.' And I tried and it exactly added up to five. That's what that was about, realising that we really didn't have any friends.... Most of my friends were old friends that I knew before The Fall...[ ] Same with Mark, he had these old friends...[ ] Then there was a whole bunch of new people that were like sycophants that just hung and clung.

^

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Comments (14)

dannyno
  • 1. dannyno | 19/11/2013
That last line before the final "One hand", it's not "My friends don't count up to one hand", it's "My friends ain't enough for one hand."
dannyno
  • 2. dannyno | 23/06/2014
Typo in fourth verse up from the bottom:

"My friends don't count up to hand"

A missing "one"?
dannyno
  • 3. dannyno | 17/11/2015
From "Drunken driver causes chaos - In a JCB!" James Brown interview with MES, NME 31 October 1987, p45:


MES: "I went through a thing about six months ago when I thought 'F--ing hell, I've been nice to a lot of people and they're not my friends anymore.' and I started to crave company again. There's a song on the LP, which we do live called 'My Friends You Can Count On One Hand', and you can. It's funny who you regard as your friends."
dannyno
  • 4. dannyno | 07/05/2016
Brix's perspective, from The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise:


I really like this plaintive song, a curious and gentle opener to an album, and it was revealing of both of us. We were mired in solitude, but whereas I really had no friends (except when we toured with Marcia), Mark's isolation came from a different place - he was surrounded by hangers-on.


MES gets the sole writing credit on this song, but Brix says it was a collaboration.
Ex worker man
  • 5. Ex worker man | 31/03/2018
The opening track of my 1st Fall LP, at the tender age of 16. I had no idea at the time how untypical it is, it must have surprised long-time fans. That slow country gait creates a rhythmic platform for a defiant vocal, the keyboards whistling like the wind through a deserted town as the lone gunfighter strides along proudly and untainted. The very twangy guitar that blights live versions is thankfully buried in the mix on the LP.
The (deliberate?) mistake "My friends cannot count on one hand" which is contrary to the rest of the song is a perfect introduction to the lyrical and vocal quiddities of MES.
Ex worker man
  • 6. Ex worker man | 31/03/2018
the spectral MES backing vocal sounds like, in order;

how many of them are there?*
how do you count them?
how do you, how do you count them?
how many of them? [or "how many are there?"]
many, do you?
how do you count them?
how many of ["friends" or "these"] are there?
do you count them?
do you count them?
how many of them? [or "how many are there?"]

the first of the above sounds like it could be "how many of me are there?"
jensotto
  • 7. jensotto | 12/04/2019
BBC Genome: searching for +MES -ME gives about 200 French-oriented results. "Mes sabots" is the early hit (broadsheet ballad type) - are any Fall-songs about shoes?
Friends: "Mes amis" was episode 24 of BBC's educational series Bonjour Francoise.
bzfgt
  • 8. bzfgt (link) | 04/05/2019
#5, yeah I don't see it as a mistake but, as you suggest, a very typical twisting of the lines by MES.

#7: jensotto, surely you're not suggesting that because there's a word "mes" in French, every time it's used that has something to do with the Fall? I mean, I kind of get what you're doing, and it's groovy, but it's divination, and if anyone is going to take it the rest of the way, it has to be you--I don't have the Sight.

Next, we need to see about "Fall" in English...and maybe "scan" followed by a word that starts with "lon-"

I will grant that "Mes amis" is a clever leap, but I can't note it--I'd be shunned at the Annotator's Guild, opening up these avenues 1. makes lots of extra work, and 2. is the reason we had to meet in secret for so long, and develop a complex system of passphrases and handshakes....
bzfgt
  • 9. bzfgt (link) | 04/05/2019
#6--what version are you working from, Ex worker man, the album version? I don't remember that part and I don't want to sit and listen for it if you're doing a live version...
bzfgt
  • 10. bzfgt (link) | 04/05/2019
I mean I'll listen to whichever it is
dannyno
  • 11. dannyno | 04/05/2019
Comment #7: there are several Fall songs that mention shoes - http://dannyno.org.uk/fall/s.htm. It means nothing. I enjoyed hilarious nonsense about French, but it is nonsense.
Bob
  • 12. Bob | 27/01/2020
Seems like it was at least partly inspired (lyrically) by Whodini - Friends (1984). A fairly popular, now heavily sampled, song of three years earlier.

Friends
How many of us have them?
Friends
Ones we can depend on
Friends
How many of us have them?
Friends
Before we go any further, lets be
Friends

Etc.
dannyno
  • 13. dannyno | 23/10/2020
Steve Hanley from the sleevenotes to the Beggars Banquet 2xCD/LP 2020 edition of The Frenz Experiment:


It's quite slight, isn't it? Craig wrote that. I remember that bass line getting more and more simplified every time we did it, until it was just the two notes, which was pretty common actually.


Brix:


Mark and I were at home in our house in Prestwich and he asked me, 'How many friends do you have?' I replied, 'I don't have very many.' 'You know what, we know friends you can count on hand.' I said, 'Let me try.' And I tried and it exactly added up to five. That's what that was about, realising that we really didn't have any friends.... Most of my friends were old friends that I knew before The Fall...[ ] Same with Mark, he had these old friends...[ ] Then there was a whole bunch of new people that were like sycophants that just hung and clung.
Hodge
  • 14. Hodge | 28/01/2024
This may have already been pointed out, and may indeed be inconsequential, but I noticed today that the Salford duo Brian and Michael - one-hit wonders with 1978's 'Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs' - released two albums during their brief encounter with fame, the second of which was called 'We Can Count Our Friends on One Hand' (1979)

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