Hit the North

Lyrics

Hit the North   (1)
My Cat says eeeee-ack  (2)
Hit the North
95% of hayseeds are corn-pones, guaranteed  (3)
Computers infest the hotels
Cops can't catch criminals
But what the heck, they're not too bad, they talk to God
Religious      (4)

Hit the North
Manacled to the city, manacled to the city   (5)
All estate agents alive yell down nights in hysterical breath (6)
Those Northern lights... so pretty
Those big big big wide streets
Those useless MPs  (7)
Savages...
Hit the North (Manacled to the system)

 

From the back third eye psyche, the reflected mirror of delirium,
Eastender and Victoria's lager, the induced call, mysterious,  (8)

comes
forth - Hit the North

(Savages)
Hit the North

Notes

1. The Fall decide to show they can be insanely catchy when they feel like it, and ride this one all the way to number 57 on the British charts. What more did the record-buying public want? It's truly hard to say. The song did remain on the charts for five weeks, though. Manchester comedian and Fall fan Frank Sidebottom (Chris Sievey) did a humorous version of the song which can be viewed here.  

Dan submits:

From Steve Hanley's "The Big Midweek", p254: "initially inspired by Mark's dislike of Norwich... On the way back from playing there, Mark said, 'I don't like it round here! It's too flat. I can't wait till we hit the North.' And a couple of days later he had the words to a new political anthem."

And: 

From an interview in Debris, early 1988, transcribed and posted to alt.music.the-fall:



 


'Hit The North' started out as a tune written by Brix Smith and Simon Rogers ("the most South London guy you could ever meet," says Mark). It just sounded strong as an instrumental, a kind of 'Peter Gunn', but Mark took to writing couplets and shouting the 'Hit The North' slogan.

I tried to compare the use of a slogan with Morrissey's "Shoplifters of the world unite!" Smith thought differently: "No, I thought that was very Sex Pistols; it was deliberately and heavy-handedly controversial, whereas 'Hit The North' has a dual meaning; punish it, or go there. When we did the video in Blackpool we were in a Yates' Wine Lodge and all these rugby teams were going 'Hit the North? What's that mean then?' And this girl behind the bar was great; she said 'In America they say "Let's hit L.A.," and they just 
mean "Let's go there.".' Eventually all the old dears joined in and everyone was having a big rap about what it meant.

"My basic attitude is that I'd rather live here than in the South and it always has been. I don't really care where anybody lives, though, and I think this North/South divide is nonsense. I don't envy anyone who lives in Reading, Swindon, or Northampton; they're horrible new towns and the people are spiritually dead down there."

Dan provides this note about the genesis of the music:

From a Sound on Sound feature on The Fall in the studio, especially around Simon Rogers' time, and focusing on Hit the North among other tracks:
 

While The Frenz Experiment is a very live–sounding album, "Hit The North" was a far more programmed affair. But in keeping with the spontaneous approach of the Fall, the song had its roots in a test track that Simon Rogers created when he first bought his Sequential Circuits Studio 440 sequencer/sampler.

“Mark had a sort of love/hate relationship with machines,” Rogers says. “He liked the idea of them, but he didn’t always like the process that you went through. It was slow and he just didn’t want to be dictated to by them. So he would try and subvert the situation. I’d just got this 440 and literally the first thing I put into it was a bass and a snare just on two pads, a little tiny Indian bell which I’ve still got, and a sax note and a bass note from a Gentle Giant record.

“Mark came round to my bedroom studio and I said, ‘Oh, here’s the new sampler, have a look at it’, and just pressed play and out comes the basis of ‘Hit The North’. He said, ‘What’s that music?’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s the first thing I put in.’ He said, ‘I’ll have that, just do me a tape.’”

As Chris points out in the comments, the main riff keyboard resembles "Political Nightmare" by the Minutemen.

^

2. Nairng submits:

"The cat in the first line appears to me to be saying "eeh, 'eck" to me; something a Mancunian may say to express wonder. I thought perhaps a note might be in order for those who have never seen Coronation Street, the long-running UK soap opera set in a fictional Manchester suburb. Its use of Manc dialect has exposed the UK to such phrases as "will 'e 'eck as like" (i.e. he certainly will not), and "eeh 'eck" could be heard regularly when I used to watch it. I feel like it's something MES wouldn't say himself, but Granada (which produced the show) would pepper the script with such stuff to try to create authenticity. MES may be alluding to hackneyed Northernisms with the line, but fans outside the UK might not register this."

 

^

 

 

3. The North/South divide in England is here portrayed in American terms, although the polarity of cultural stereotypes is reversed; the North of England is more rural, less wealthy, and considered to be more culturally backward in popular portrayals; the national television and radio media in England generally features presenters with a Southern accent, which is treated as neutral or universal, whereas Northern accents are considered to be regional. This reverse isomorphism with the US does not extend to the political sphere, however; politically Southern England is, on the whole, more conservative than the North.  

^

4. The Story of the Fall identifies one Cyril James Anderton as the referent of this line. Anderton was the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester from 1976 to 1991, during which time he maintained a high profile in the media. Anderton was dubbed "God's copper," and was outspoken about his Catholic faith and what he considered to be its relevance to his role as a police officer:

I am accused of bringing into play my own Christian principles but those principles strengthen my hand as a policeman. The law is rooted in righteousness and Christian principle. I have no difficulty about enforcing it. Nor do I have a conscience about it.


Anderton claimed to often consult with God about his police work, so MES's lyric is quite accurate. This Northern constable was often paired in the public eye with a Southern counterpart, one John Alderson, who was the Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall from 1973 until 1982. Alderson was often accused of being soft on crime, and he promoted community relations and preventative measures rather than the hard line approach favored by Anderton. 

The Happy Mondays apparently wrote "God's Cop" about Anderton.

^

5. This line echoes some lines from Blake, who is talking about a city in the South. The reference here is almost certainly conscious, as MES is known to have been more than a casual reader of Blake. From "London":

I wander thro' each charter'd street, 

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. 

And mark in every face I meet 

Marks of weakness, marks of woe. 

In every cry of every Man, 

In every Infants cry of fear, 

In every voice: in every ban, 

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear 

^

6. In the U.K. an estate agent is a property manager or someone who is in charge of selling or renting domiciles.  

^

7. An MP is a Member of Parliament, more or less equivalent to a Congressperson in the US.

^

8. There are Mexican, Canadian and Australian beers called "Victoria" or "Victoria's," but I have unable to identify a British libation of that name. Several readers have suggested that this is a reference to a popular televition program. From Stu Nicholson:

"The line 'Eastender and Victoria's lager' probably refers to the soap opera Eastenders, which is huge in the UK" (and thanks to Huckleberry for initially making the connnection). There is some debate below as to whether this is a put-down of soft Southerners and their lager, etc. Dan points out the interview from Sound on Sound in note 1 above, however, where MES is quoted as saying that the "North/South divide is nonsense." 

^

SaveSave

Comments (44)

Ted
  • 1. Ted | 16/07/2013
The use of the word manacles makes me think of William Blake and "London":
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear
Huckleberry
  • 2. Huckleberry | 26/07/2013
I assume "Eastender and Victoria's lager" refers to the Queen Victoria pub in the BBC soap opera Eastenders. MES seems to be sitting in a London pub when he hears the call of the North?
Huckleberry
  • 3. Huckleberry | 26/07/2013
"My Cat says eeeee-ack" - Is this Bill the Cat?

"useless MPs" - maybe MES is getting at the general failure of northern MPs to promote northern interests. (Although the performance of MES's MP at that time, David Sumberg (Bury South) appears - rightly or wrongly - to have attracted criticism, in his later career as a Member of the European Parliament.)
Mark
  • 4. Mark | 02/07/2014
"Manacled to the city" - the city being London, presumably?
dannyno
  • 5. dannyno | 13/08/2014
From Stevce Hanley's "The Big Midweek", p254:

"initially inspired by Mark's dislike of Norwich... On the way back from playing there, Mark said, 'I don't like it round here! It's too flat. I can't wait till we hit the North.' And a couple of days later he had the words to a new political anthem."
Sumsiadad
  • 6. Sumsiadad | 30/01/2016
North of England is more rural


This isn't really true, the South of England is equally as rural, and a lot more rural if you include the South West - though most people tend to think of the South West as a separate entity. I'd say the cliche of 'the North' is more urban, more grey smoky towns, Godforsaken pit villages etc., all the old it's-grim-up-north cliches.
dannyno
  • 7. dannyno | 21/09/2017
From an interview in Debris, "early 1988, transcribed and posted to alt.music.the-fall:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.music.the-fall/n7Vh8hMpntE/GboAYMBYBQYJ


'Hit The North' started out as a tune written by Brix Smith and Simon Rogers ("the most South London guy you could ever meet," says Mark). It just sounded strong as an instrumental, a kind of 'Peter Gunn', but Mark took to writing couplets and shouting the 'Hit The North' slogan.

I tried to compare the use of a slogan with Morrissey's "Shoplifters of the world unite!" Smith thought differently: "No, I thought that was very Sex Pistols; it was deliberately and heavy-handedly controversial, whereas 'Hit The North' has a dual meaning; punish it, or go there. When we did the video in Blackpool we were in a Yates' Wine Lodge and all these rugby teams were going 'Hit the North? What's that mean then?' And this girl behind the bar was great; she said 'In America they say "Let's hit L.A.," and they just
mean "Let's go there.".' Eventually all the old dears joined in and everyone was having a big rap about what it meant.

"My basic attitude is that I'd rather live here than in the South and it always has been. I don't really care where anybody lives, though, and I think this North/South divide is nonsense. I don't envy anyone who lives in Reading, Swindon, or Northampton; they're horrible new towns and the people are spiritually dead down there."
bzfgt
  • 8. bzfgt (link) | 11/11/2017
Interesting, I didn't know "hit the [place name]" would have been opaque to a Britisher. It's another thing that I would never have noticed was in need of an explanation.

That's interesting mostly for "'Hit The North' has a dual meaning; punish it, or go there" but I think I'll put it all in the notes.
bzfgt
  • 9. bzfgt (link) | 11/11/2017
Surprised you didn't notice "Stevce Hanley," you've been on a roll finding my typos lately...
bzfgt
  • 10. bzfgt (link) | 11/11/2017
Wayback machine won't take that link, instead they cryptically remark "Page cannot be displayed due to robots.txt."
Pinkpapaver
  • 11. Pinkpapaver | 07/02/2018
When I first saw this video and heard the song, I seriously thought he was shouting HITLER! I was only 11 or 12. I was soon corrected, why would he be shouting Hitler in what looks like a British legion or ex service man's working man's club? But I thought that was the point when I first saw it and heard it.
Manchester is very flat too, unless North Manchester is more bumpy than the South.
Michael
  • 12. Michael | 08/02/2018
Pop Will Eat Itself with the song "Can You Dig It?" says, "Terminator. Hit the North." People say this refers to the song by The Fall. "Hit the North".... Yes? No? I always thought they were saying. "Hit the DOOR". Thanks.
bzfgt
  • 13. bzfgt (link) | 17/02/2018
Pinkpapaver--that is the best misheard lyric I've encountered in quite some time! Outstanding.
bzfgt
  • 14. bzfgt (link) | 17/02/2018
@pinkpapaver

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yizpWta-5Uw
TommyD
  • 15. TommyD | 19/02/2018
"God's Cop", a song by Happy Mondays from their 1990 album Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches refers to Anderton 'the lord chief constable'.
bzfgt
  • 16. bzfgt (link) | 24/02/2018
Cool; that's a few years post facto though, no?
Twister (Bettin Hammer)
  • 17. Twister (Bettin Hammer) | 04/03/2018
does this "they talk to God", which refers to Anderton, means the same Anderton of which the Happy Mondays wrote "God's Cop"?
dannyno
  • 18. dannyno | 05/03/2018
Yes, it's the same person. He was nicknamed "God's cop" or "God's copper". He was notorious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Anderton
bzfgt
  • 19. bzfgt (link) | 17/03/2018
OK the internet seems to agree so I noted it.
dannyno
  • 20. dannyno | 29/05/2018
From a Sound on Sound feature on The Fall in the studio, especially around Simon Rogers' time, and focussing on Hit the North among other tracks:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180102073806/https://www.soundonsound.com/people/fall-hit-north

While The Frenz Experiment is a very live–sounding album, ‘Hit The North’ was a far more programmed affair. But in keeping with the spontaneous approach of the Fall, the song had its roots in a test track that Simon Rogers created when he first bought his Sequential Circuits Studio 440 sequencer/sampler.

“Mark had a sort of love/hate relationship with machines,” Rogers says. “He liked the idea of them, but he didn’t always like the process that you went through. It was slow and he just didn’t want to be dictated to by them. So he would try and subvert the situation. I’d just got this 440 and literally the first thing I put into it was a bass and a snare just on two pads, a little tiny Indian bell which I’ve still got, and a sax note and a bass note from a Gentle Giant record.

“Mark came round to my bedroom studio and I said, ‘Oh, here’s the new sampler, have a look at it’, and just pressed play and out comes the basis of ‘Hit The North’. He said, ‘What’s that music?’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s the first thing I put in.’ He said, ‘I’ll have that, just do me a tape.’”


There's a bit more recording detail in the article.
bzfgt
  • 21. bzfgt (link) | 15/07/2018
You could almost read my "genesis if the music" as a pun, you see Genesis is sort of the same genre as Gentle Giant...anyway that's a cool "factoid" that they are the origin of those sounds...
Stu Nicholson
  • 22. Stu Nicholson | 11/08/2018
The line:

“Eastender and Victoria's lager”

probabley refers to the soap opera Eastenders, which is huge in the UK. It’s based in London and the characters are very Cockney - anathema to a Northerner.

The local pub in Eastenders is the Queen Victoria, where much of the action takes place. The general view is that Southerners drink Lager whilst Northerners drink beer.

So - Eastender and Victoria's lager? - all too Southern, better Hit the North.
dannyno
  • 23. dannyno | 12/08/2018
Comment #22 - comment #2 makes the same connection.

It's not a link that can be avoided, but I don't buy it. Or at any rate I don't buy it as a simple swipe at London. The reason I don't buy it is that the song is precisely not one that lionises the north while putting down the south.

It's also worth noting that there are plenty of interviews in which MES is described as drinking lager, photos in which he is depicted with lager etc. So whatever the caricature might be, it's not one that applied to MES.

Furthemore, the line is:


From the back third eye psyche, the reflected mirror of delirium,
Eastender and Victoria's lager, the induced call, mysterious,


Which is not, on the face of it, a detectable condemnation of 'southern lager' at all - even if that is the intended reference.
dannyno
  • 24. dannyno | 12/08/2018
Oh, and also the quote from MES in comment #7:


I don't really care where anybody lives, though, and I think this North/South divide is nonsense.
bzfgt
  • 25. bzfgt (link) | 16/08/2018
I don't know how I missed the Blake allusion all this time (note 4).
Rich
  • 26. Rich | 01/10/2019
I thought it was "Commuters infest the hotels".
Mukesh kumar
  • 27. Mukesh kumar (link) | 01/01/2020
Nutan Kumari
  • 28. Nutan Kumari (link) | 01/01/2020
GoodThanks
Chris
  • 29. Chris | 21/05/2020
The main keyboard riff is "reminiscent" of 'Political Nightmare' by Minutemen from 1985.
nairng
  • 30. nairng (link) | 21/07/2020
The cat in the first line appears to me to be saying "eeh, 'eck" to me; something a Mancunian may say to express wonder. I thought perhaps a note might be in order for those who have never seen Coronation Street (may God have mercy on their souls).
bzfgt
  • 31. bzfgt (link) | 26/07/2020
I've never seen it, what's the reference? Americans never saw that
Nairng
  • 32. Nairng (link) | 27/07/2020
Coronation Streer is a long-running UK soap opera set in a fictional Manchester suburb. Sorry, I assumed for no reason at all that you might have heard of it. Its use of Manc dialect has exposed the UK to such phrases as "will 'e 'eck as like" (i.e. he certainly will not) and "eeh 'eck" could be heard regularly when I used to watch it (there were only 3 channels when I was growing up!) So I guess your response might suggest a note is indeed in order
Nairng
  • 33. Nairng (link) | 27/07/2020
I don't mean to suggest it is a direct reference, btw. But it's the sort of somewhat cheesy Northernism which abounded in Coronation St. I feel like it's something MES wouldn't say himself, but Granada (which produced the show) would pepper the script with such stuff to try to create authenticity. MES may be alluding to hackneyed Northernisms with the line, but fans outside the UK might not register this. Hope this makes sense. Not really that important, but still.
dannyno
  • 34. dannyno | 04/08/2020
See https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/mancunian-dictionary-new-edition-10754253

Coronation Street did its bit to popularise some mild dialect nationally (the fictional Weatherfield is supposed to be part of Salford). But the accents on the show are not really that strong.

But, really, "eck" or "heck" as a likely euphemism for "hell", while apparently (according to Partridge's Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang) of Lancastrian origin had become a "general colloquialism" by the early 20th century (the Oxford Dictionary of English doesn't pin down any particular origin. My feeling is that it's not been specifically Lancastrian or Greater Mancunian in my lifetime. "By 'eck" was also commonly heard in the long-running Yorkshire-based comedy Last of the Summer Wine.

However, MES might not have been an expert on the history of dialect and may have used it as a symbol of northernness anyway. It's more "northern" with the dropped "h", maybe.

Katie Wales' book Northern English: a social and cultural history notes the stereotypical usage of "eck" and other such words, and does link "eck" to Lancashire. (Some interesting discussion of Coronation Street in the book too).

May be worth noting the meaning of "heck" and its probable regional dialectical origins.

But just also to note in response to comment #33, that there is a clearly audible "heck" later in the first verse ("what the heck"). Whereas it is not at all similarly clear to me that the cat is saying either "heck" or "eck".
dannyno
  • 35. dannyno | 23/10/2020
Rogers repeats the Gentle Giant story in the sleevenotes to the Beggars Banquet 2xCD/LP 2020 edition of The Frenz Experiment:


... The sax and the bass are Gentle Giant samples.
George
  • 36. George | 12/11/2020
This song has a great (anti)video. MES posing like a swaggering three year old who's suddenly found himself in a pop video. And that totally off lip-synching. And doesn't Brix look great?
For the Record
  • 37. For the Record | 21/01/2021
Additional lines/variations from the multifarious versions on the HTN CD in the 5CD Frenz/Kurious package

No 2
Wow!
My cat says "Ack"
Wow!
Would you credit it?
Town, Bradford, exist
Can’t get a break on those estates
What the heck
All the hoots, all the lights so pretty
Striker, mitherer
Get outta here
The government say, the government says
Now this, now this is the truth
Wrong influence from French corpse

no 3 (AKA Part 2 on 458489Bs)

Wow!
Would you credit it
Bradford town name
We’re just savages
You can’t get a break on the estates
What the heck, it’s great
Essstates
Happiness, north, west, north, middle, south, east etcet. and so forth
Just savages
Whoop! Willya!
To all boys and kids
Government say
Estate agents alive proclaim
Manacled to the city, manacled to the city
Northern lights are pretty
Striker, mither
They’re just savages, savages
Now as, now as the troupe go forth, go forth

No 4

Wowww
My cat says ack
Would you credit it?
Town and county names exist, like Bradford
Computers infest the hotels
Cops, Beemer wired to catch criminals
They’re not too bad
I think what the hell
They talk to God
(Those were just savages
Those were just savages)
In Him we trust
The wrong influence from French corpse
Light summer type pale lemon clothes
Young Connie* type aerobic chicks
Zip, hip, hit, hit
The government say, the government says go forth go forth

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_(TV_series)

no 6 has the opening line "95 per cent non-hayseed or compone guaranteed" - this I believe is the correct line from the A side version above .

There's nothing worse than a bored man.
bzfgt
  • 38. bzfgt (link) | 06/03/2021
That's great, FTR! Crap, I got to go through those
Mik
  • 39. Mik | 24/06/2021
Lager is of course also a defensive camp much used in the Victorian era to keep the “savage” horde at bay. Maybe this is a comment about London’s attitude to the Northerners ( or anyone not with the accent). It’s also of German origin which would appeal to MES. Great site by the way chaps.
drive by comment man
  • 40. drive by comment man | 02/02/2023
minor point but re footnote 3: the North isn't more rural, it's more industrial
dannyno
  • 41. dannyno | 10/02/2023
Comment #40. Rural vs industrial is all about wild generalisations and cliches. There's the heavily industrial Midlands, which not everyone considers "North", plus the tin mines of Cornwall, coal mining in Kent etc etc
dannyno
  • 42. dannyno | 10/02/2023
For instance, William Blake's "dark satanic mills" are often identified by critics as the Albion Flour Mills in Southwark, London.

Also, re: footnote 3's characterisation of southern England as "more conservative", this tends to be true in terms of electing Conservative MPs, however there are plenty of cities in northern England which are way more conservative in every sense than, say, much of London.
W.G. Hunter
  • 43. W.G. Hunter | 20/01/2024
I've always wanted to know who the South Asian guy is in the video. Anyone know?
dannyno
  • 44. dannyno | 25/01/2024
South Asian?

Do you mean Kid Congo Powers?

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