The Classical

(1)

There is no culture is my brag, (2)
Your taste for bullshit reveals a lust for a form of office (3)
This is the home of the vain!
This is the home of the vain!
Where are the obligatory niggers? (4)
Hey there fuckface!
Hey there fuckface!
There are twelve people in the world
The rest are paste  (5)
This is the home of the vain!
This is the home of the vain!
I just left the Hotel Amnesia, I had to go there
Where it is I can't remember,
But now I can remember...now I can remember
Hafta! Hafta!                (6)
Message for ya! Message for ya!
Too much reliance on girl here  (7)
Behind every shell-actor
Fear and awe
Is raw power  (8)
Stormier, stormier
Too much romantic here
I destroy romantics, actors,  (9)
Kill it!
Kill it!
Kill it!
Kill it!
Kill it!    (10)
You won't find anything more ridiculous, than this new profile
razor unit, made with the highest British attention to the
wrong detail, become obsolete units surrounded by hail. (11)
The Classical!
The Classical! 
The Classical!  (12)
Hotel Aggro!
Message for ya! Message for ya!
The Classical! 
Parallax! (13)
One of the millennium of conspiracy,
Forever,
I know it means a lot of stomach gas, (14)
I know it means a lot of stomach gas
I've never felt better in my life
I've never felt better in my life
Parallax!
The Classical!
Stomach gas
I've never felt better in my life
I've never felt better in my life
Parallax!
Millennium of conspiracy
Play out Classical!
I've never felt better in my life
Better in my life  (15)

1. MES talks about the song in an interview:

"When we recorded that album we were sick of the music industry, the record was meant to be against that. It was our way of saying 'fuck off!' to those people. "The Classical" is the song that sums it all up, it's the anthem of the record. I figured: if you want to say it, you might as well do it in the first song. We were tired of the whole thing at the time, thought about packing it in. We were fed up with the whole thing. The ironic thing is that the record was intended as a piss off, but everyone loved it!" 

Many readers have noted that this song seems to be a bash at the BBC or some such thing. From the liner notes to Hex Enduction Hour: "Spite does not enter into this. But R. Castle in his uselessgoals h.q. shadowed by Parachute suite style youths, plus the canned response to C. James (recent tv) Cast a diff. hue to this tune." (Thanks to Zack)

Dan points out: Presumably "R. Castle" is Roy Castle, of the TV show "Record Breakers", and "C. James" is "Clive James", the writer and TV presenter.

Dan: Paul Hanley's book, Have a Bleedin Guess (p. 89), notes that these days the members of the group cannot agree on the particulars of the composition of this song. However, he records Steve Hanley saying:
 

Craig didn't write it all - he certainly didn't write the bass solo at the end. John Taylor wrote that for 'Planet Earth'.

"Planet Earth" was the debut single of Duran Duran (1981) and John Taylor, who is credited as a co-author of the song, was their bass player. 

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2. Dan points to a passage from Jose Ortega y Gassett's The Revolt of the Masses (1930):

"'Is it not a sign of immense progress that the masses should have "ideas," that is to say, should be cultured? By no means. The "ideas" of the average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are the principles on which culture rests. I am not concerned with the form they take. What I affirm is that there is no culture where there are no standards to which our fellow-man can have recourse. There is no culture where there are no principles of legality to which to appeal. There is no culture where there is no acceptance of certain final intellectual positions to which a dispute may be referred. There is no culture where economic relations are not subject to a regulating principle to protect interests involved. There is no culture where aesthetic controversy does not recognize the necessity of justifying the work of art.'

Now, that's not a 'brag,' but someone could pick up on that passage and decide, contrary to the intention, that actually they would affirm that there was no culture and a good thing too."

Dr. X O'Skeleton comments: "A few thoughts on the opening line. Its proud philistinism makes me think of the phrase 'When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver,' often attributed to the Nazi leadership, but actually from a play by Nazi playwright Hanns Johst. In the original, a character says 'When I hear the word culture, I release the safety on my Browning.' The phrase had been resurrected the previous year as the title of a Mission of Burma song ['That's When I Reach for My Revolver']."

In his talk on Hex Enduction Hour at an event called Alt-Classic Album Playback, editor John Doran of The Quietus  comments "I think it's clear that the protagonist is working on some kind of art or music program. The opening line for me feels like a sideswipe at talk show host Melvyn Bragg. He was the host of the South Bank Show at the time. I get the feeling this is the kind of show...that really got on Smith's nerves." The South Bank Show, which is still on the air, is, according to Wikipedia, an "arts magazine show" that "aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience."

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3. From Austusbaejarbio: "Your lust for equality bullshit reveals a desire for a form of office."

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4. This is probably the most controversial Fall lyric of all time. Whether or not MES’s use of this word is justified here, it does seem clear that he does not intend it to have straightforwardly racist connotations, and it is always important to remember that the narrator of a Fall song is rarely, if ever, a straightforward self-representation of Mark E Smith. On the other hand, it is not entirely clear how he does intend us to hear the line; while his intentions are not the only, and perhaps are not even the most, relevant consideration here, it is worth considering what they may have been.

This unfortunate lyric admittedly looks worse now than in 1982, since "nigger" has become a word that is pretty much forbidden in all contexts, to the point where I even hesitated to use it in this sentence (it strikes me as dishonest not to, given that it is already printed above). MES did comment on this in a 1983 interview, but unfortunately for those of us who want him to say something unequivocally anti-racist to balance this out, he just makes things worse:

"Well that song was written about a year ago, about what was happening then and what has resulted in the kind of music programmes you get on TV now...the sort of coziness of vanity, not vanity in a good way, not even vanity where you know what you're saying. "The Classical" was just like--you throw it around you know, the only thing is where is the classical. What I was really saying in that song was that things that have any real value about them will last through any time scale. But it sounds cheap to say it like that. There was stuff like 'obligatory niggers' and that, which has like come true, and every programme you see about young people has now got a black boy in it, I have to make a joke about that, I can't help it."

Naturally, he's asked about the Falklands next, in particular an interview with an Irish woman where he made several remarks about the war. He explains that he sounded very patriotic in this interview because he was goading the Irish interviewer, and adds that "no black man's going to come in my home and call me the oppressor, cause if I've got any call with the English working class...the English working class created this country so that those fuckers could come over here and complain about it, I have no guilt about them, it’s only the middle class and upper middle class who have any guilt about the blacks and Irish, do you know what I'm saying? and I don't like people pulling that on me...black people and Irish people come over here and think they're being oppressed, the English working class know that as a fact...Do you know what I mean, no black man's going to come over to me and say "You are the fuckin' oppressor," because I've never oppressed him, as far as I'm concerned he's oppressing me, because I have to watch his music on TV and I don't particularly like it, it's another way of looking at it..."

He follows up by complaining that the "Irish" interviewer should have noted "He was being very sarcastic" when quoting him. It may be the case that a similar note would apply here...not that these comments go down easy either way. But neither is it obvious that “sarcasm” is an apt term in this context. In his excellent talk on Hex Enduction Hour at an event called Alt-Classic Album Playback, editor John Doran of The Quietus points out that “It doesn’t read like sarcasm, it reads like saloon bar casual racism in cold light of day” (see comment 81 below for the video, the relevant remark is at 18:49). Doran seems to be suggesting that MES is trying to represent himself in a certain way—as working class and as, so to speak, authentic—but that this is done at the expense of black people; in other words, the lyric is not really a comment on racism at all, which would probably be the best we could hope for here, but an affectation that strikes a sour note. I encourage the reader to watch Doran’s talk and let him speak for himself, however. Doran is rather convincing, and in any case it is not my place to exculpate MES—even if I wanted to do so, he has not given me much to work with—so I must now let the matter stand with the texts we’ve been given, and let the readers of this site draw their own conclusions.

Apparently a British subsidiary of Motown expressed interest in the Fall a few years later and were sent a recording of, of all things, "The Classical." The story goes that the label ultimately demurred, proclaiming that they could see "no commercial potential in this band whatsoever." Here's Smith's version of the story:

"We were just fuckin' around," recalls Smith. "Then fuckin' Tamla
Motown steam in! You know... about time we had another white act,
ha ha! Dead funny. But they were pretty serious. I went to see them
and everything. They had a pretty good lad in London who was well
behind us. So they offered us a contract and this bloke in London
goes, Have you got any LPs? So I said, I'll get a copy of 'Hex
Enduction Hour' to you."

While the Fall brought the song back in 2002, the offending line stayed in the 1980s...

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5. "Paste" here could be in the sense of imitation jewelry.

From "Fortress" on 9/12/1981 in Iceland: "There are twelve people in the world, the rest are slates!"

Clay perceptively points out that this could be an allusion to the Lamed Vavniks ("thirty-sixers") or Tzadiqim Nistarim ("hidden righteous"). This is a legend from the Babylonian Talmud (Wikipedia):

As a mystical concept, the number 36 is even more intriguing. It is said that at all times there are 36 special people in the world, and that were it not for them, all of them, if even one of them was missing, the world would come to an end. The two Hebrew letters for 36 are the lamed, which is 30, and the vav, which is 6. Therefore, these 36 are referred to as the Lamed-Vav Tzadikim. This widely-held belief, this most unusual Jewish concept is based on a Talmudic statement to the effect that in every generation 36 righteous "greet the Shechinah," the Divine Presence (Tractate Sanhedrin 97b; Tractate Sukkah 45b).

 

Paul Hanley in his book Have a Bleedin' Guess (p. 70):

"[T]he 'paste' theory was one of Mark's go-to theories which often popped up in other songs. Paste, in this context, is the substance that costume jewelry is made from, and as 'paste' was sometimes replaced by 'slate' live, this ties with the sentiment in 'Slates, Slags, Etc.' that the world is full of imitators of the truly talented."

At the NME awards in 2018, Brix gave a speech in a kind of tribute to MES. She proclaimed "Mark told me he believed there were only seven original people in the world, and that everyone else was a slate of one of them. Mark was absolutely one of the seven" (See "Slates, Slags, Etc." note 1).

This line may be inspired by a Captain Beefheart quote, "There are forty people in the world, and five of them are hamburgers."

Hexen Blumenthal has suggested that this in turn may be a parody of the "prevailing hippie astrology BS" of the era, as exemplified in the song "Zodiac" by Richie Havens:

There is a secret that has been kept from man 2,000 years
There is a secret that has been kept from man 2,000 years
And that secret is that there are only
twelve people on the earth at any given time
That there are only twelve people on the earth at any given time

And these people have been symbolized
Down through the ages of mankind, by many symbols...

...And these people are:
Aries, who is… I am, ain’t I?
Taurus, who is… I have, don’t I?
Gemini, who is… I think, I think…
etc.

See More Information below for the rest of the lyrics...

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6. Colloquially "have to! have to!" I think. SteveQ associates this line with Nietzsche:  "I would like to see here the need for a short, snappy sound and Mark using and slightly bending an equally enigmatic phase from Also Sprach Zarathustra (which is referred to in 'Free Range,' although that refers to the Music by Strauss via 2001, A Space Odyssey). The line came to Nietzsche in a dream and so may not be relateable to any actual phrase or name: 'Alpa! cried I, who carries his ashes unto the mountain? Alpa! Alpa! who carries his ashes unto the mountain? " (From 'The Soothsayer'). I mention this line because it is remarkable fragment- for its vocal qualities - and could have lurked in Smith's notes waiting for the right moment..."

And Zack adds "SteveQ's note about the possible Nietzsche connection between 'The Classical' and 'Free Range' is interesting because the two songs have similar chord progressions, tempi and declamatory vocals. 'Free Range' is essentially a '90s update of 'The Classical.'"

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7. Is "girl" just a generic term to mean, basically, "girls"?

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8. It's worth noting here Raw Power, the third album by the Stooges, a band MES is known to have liked...

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9."Romantic," as juxtaposed with "classical," possibly suggests Romanticism, a movement in the arts, literature, and philosophy that originated in the late 18th century, and emphasized the role of emotion and intuition in human life, and was saw nature as a source of inspiration and a kind of truth that exceeds the purely rational. In this sense it can be seen as a reaction to the classicism of the age of Enlightenment, which saw its roots in an ancient Greece that was thought to have placed reason at the center of human life. Many examples could be cited to trouble this neat distinction, but that is very broadly the picture. "Classical" and "Romantic" are often used as names for periods in Western Music, or what is known more broadly as "Classical Music." But note that an author MES admired, Wyndham Lewis, drew a distinction, in his writings, between "classical" and "romantic" art. Dan submits:

"I've been reading MES-favourite Wyndham Lewis' biographical Blasting and Bombardiering. There are repeated put-downs of the culturally 'romantic,' and then this passage (p250 of my edition, which is the 1967 revised second edition, republished in paperback in1982 by John Calder/Riverrun Press):

 

Wyndham LewisWhat I think history will say about the 'Men of 1914' is that they represent an attempt to get away from romantic art into classical art, away from political propaganda back into the detachment of true literature: just as in painting Picasso has represented a desire to terminate the Nineteenth Century alliance of painting and natural science. And what has happened - slowly - as a result of the War, is that artistic expression has slipped back again into political propaganda and romance, which go together. When you get one you get the other. The attempt at objectivity has failed. The subjectivity of the majority is back again...

Or from Time and Western Man (connecting the "romantic" to "advertisement" in a way you could argue this song hints at, sort of):
 

Romance, as currently used, then, denotes what is unreal or unlikely, or at all events not present , in contrast to what is scientifically true and accessible to the senses here and now. Or it is, in its purest expression, what partakes of the marvellous, the extreme, the unusual. That is why Advertisement (in a grotesque and inflated form) is a pure expression of the romantic mind. Indeed, there is nothing so 'romantic' as Advertisemen

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10. From deruntergeher on the Fall Online Forum:

Adapted from a line in The Producers ? ( a film MES was a big fan of I think)

Max: Kill the actors!
Franz: Kill the actors? I can't kill the actors. I must destroy the actors.

On some live versions "kill it!" is preceded by "rub it out! rub it out! rub it out! rub it out!" (which is synonymous, in slang).

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11. On live versions, variant lyrics often would appear at this point. One more or less typical example (from Austurbaejarbio, recorded in 1982): "Dear customer, prior to delivery, this fine Ford Kawasaki Excel Escort was given a thorough inspection by Fred here in the white coat...please note, um, the, um, coin-spots on the dashboard...please note the fuel exhaustion limit reader...please note the elephant house odor of the dashboard, and most importantly the axles and the hubs which are immune to snow, extreme heat, rain, hailstones, sleet, and HAIL! The Classical!"   

Harleyr perceptively remarks, "I've always taken 'hail' here to be a picturesque way of describing the nuggets of white polystyrene packaging that would probably surround said obsolete consumer products." And of course this provides, as above, a hinge back to the title phrase via another meaning of "hail."

Dan: Paul Hanley identifies the "profile razor" as a Wilkinson Sword disposable razor, "adverts for which were all over the TV at the time."
(Have a Bleedin Guess, p.97). 

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12. Up to this point, the guitar plays a two-chord pattern over the bassline, which is four notes. From this point on, the changes played by the guitar match the bass riff.

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13. The orange lyric book and the Lyrics Parade have "pole-axe," but a plethora of fans have insisted on "parallax" (see comments below, and also the discussion on the Fall online forum). I was long skeptical of this transcription, but Dan has turned up some passages in James Joyce's Ulysses that seem to explain its presence here:

-bloom She is rather lean.
- virag (Not unpleasantly.) Absolutely! Well observed and those pannier pockets of the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to suggest bunchiness of hip. A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted. Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. Observe the attention to details of dustspecks. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today Parallax! (With a nervous twitch of his head.) Did you hear my brain go snap? Pollysyllabax!
- bloom (An elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek.) She seems sad.  

"virag" is Lipoti Virag Bloom, Leopold's grandfather.

The "attention to details of dustspecks" in close juxtaposition with the interjection of "parallax" seems to me to make a connection between this passage and the song rather likely. 

Some preceding passages:

Mr Bloom moved forward raising his troubled eyes. Think no more about that. After one. Time ball on the ballast office is down. Dunsink time. Fascinating little book that is of Sir Robert Ball’s. Parallax. I never exactly understood. There’s a priest. Could ask him. Par it’s Greek : parallel, parallax. Met him pikehoses she called it till I told her about the transmigration. O rocks! [....] Flattery where least expected. Nobleman proud to be descended from some king’s mistress. His foremother. Lay it on with a trowel. Cap in hand goes through the land. Not go in and blurt out what you know you’re not to : what’s parallax? Show this gentleman the door. [....] And on the highway of the clouds they come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the ghosts of beasts. Huuh! Hark! Huuh! Parallax stalks behind and goads them, the lancinating lightnings of whose brow are scorpions. [....] What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran?

The now-discredited pole-axe (pollaxe) is a long-handled axe used in Medieval combat. Parallax is the apparent displacement of an object resulting from a shift in perspective, and is used by astronomers to measure distances. The Parallax View  is a 1974 movie starring Warren Beatty as an inquisitive reporter who gets into hot water investigating a senator's assassination, and, more recently (i.e. post-Hex Enduction Hour), a book by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. 

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14.  The Fall covered the Mason WIlliams instrumental "Classical Gas" twice in 2002, or at least Ben Pritchard strummed some of it. Craig Scanlon was reported to have also sometimes played the song; musically, "Classical Gas" bears no resemblance to "The Classical."  

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15. Live versions often contain the interjection "Walks tall! Walks tall!" Thanks to Mark in the comments for clearing that up; the closest I could come was "Rock salt! Rock salt!"

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The Classical: Fall Tracks A-Z

Classical Gas: Fall Tracks A-Z

Zodiac by Richie Havens:

There is a secret that has been kept from man 2,000 years
There is a secret that has been kept from man 2,000 years
And that secret is that there are only
twelve people on the earth at any given time
That there are only twelve people on the earth at any given time

And these people have been symbolized
Down through the ages of mankind, by many symbols

They were called:
Twelve tribes of Israel
Twelve sons of Jacob
Twelve gates of Heaven
Twelve inches in a foot
Twelve months to the year
Twelve men on the jury
Twelve days of Christmas
Twelve disciples of Jesus Christ
Twelve manners of fruit on the tree by the side of the river
Good for the healing of all nations
Good for the healing of all nations

And these people are
And these people are:
Aries, who is… I am, ain’t I?
Taurus, who is… I have, don’t I?
Gemini, who is… I think, I think…
I think so much I wish I could stop thinking
Cancer, who is… I feel, I feel,
and there are no words to describe how I feel
Leo, who is… I will, o’er my will
Virgo, who is… I analyze, I analyze
Libra, who is… I balance, I balance, I balance
between those who know and those who do not know
Scorpio, who is… I desire, I desire, I desire…
Sagittarius, who is… I see, I see… I see so much in
what I’m doing I cannot finish what I’m doing
Capricorn, who is… I use, I use… I use all of
my experience in order to survive
Aquarius, who is… I know, I know…
why do I know when no one around me knows what I know
Pisces, who is… I believe, I believe…
or there is nothing for me to believe in

These are the twelve people who inherit the earth
You are one of them and there are only eleven others
And if you get to know the eleven others
You will be able to get along with everyone all over the world…
all over the world