Two Steps Back

Lyrics

Everybody likes me
They think I'm crazy
Pull my string and I do my thing. (1)

 

Two Steps Back
 

I don't need the acid factories
I've got mushrooms in the fields (2)
Julian said "How was the gear?" (3)
They don't sell things to you over there
A cigarette goes out when you put it down. (4)

 

Two Steps Back
 

Had a look at the free festivals
They're like cinemas with no films
You could make a fire with the seats
You could boil up some cigar dimps (5)
Or get into the sound
Wait for the ice cream to come around.

 

Two Steps Back
Two Doors Down

 

I meet my old friends there
They queue up for cash there
They are part Irish
They have no conscience
They get threatened by the cracker factory. (6)

 

Two Steps Back
 

Cracker Factory:
A place where you get into the working routine again. (7)
Rehabs for no hopes
Prefab for jobless dopes.

Notes

 

1. Dan alerts us to "'Puppet Man,' co-written by Neil Sedaka and released by him in 1969. It was covered by The 5th Dimension in 1970, among others. Lyric: 'But if you wanna see me do my thing Baby pull my string,' etc."

^

 

2. This positive reference to hallucinogenic drugs is rare for the Fall. According to Simon Ford's Hip Priest, MES took quite a bit of acid with other band members in the early days. Maybe he had a mushroom phase after that.  

From Pott on the Fall Online Forum:

"I reckon it's a reference to the sudden upsurge in the popularity of magic mushrooms after the police shut down the major acid factories in the Operation Julie raids of 1976."

Martin Bramah, in an interview with Simon Reynolds (thanks to Dan):

You can’t play down the influence of drugs on Blue Orchids and The Fall. The first drugs we got into was strong LSD. Pot smoking seemed lame back then--hippie guys who sat around stoned and did nothing. We were anti drugs at first and thought we could reach the psychedelic thing without the drugs. But in a club someone gave us some microdots, when we were about 16. The next day we went to Heaton Park and dropped it and spent the whole day on LSD. Heaton Park is a stately home, the nearest thing to a common in Manchester. And then we discovered psylocibin mushroom were growing in Heaton Park for free. Someone told us that there were fields of these mushrooms. So from that point we were kind of pickled in magic mushrooms and LSD. We just made it our own. It was a free source of entertainment. We’d be munching these things and sitting in pubs and seeing the world in a strange way and getting ideas for songs about our local environment. The Fall was like Coronation Street on acid.

^

3. This is generally thought to refer to Julian Cope, who was a Fall roadie before forming The Teardrop Explodes in 1978. Cope discusses the song here:

Were you once Mark E Smith's drug dealer?
Philip Harrison, Leeds
Well on the first Fall album there's a track called "Two Steps Back" with the lyric "Julian says/how was the gear/they don't sell things to you over here". People assume this is about me, because Mark and I were quite good friends at the time. He's only six months older than me and we used to write to each other a lot - Mark's letters were always highly illustrated. The thing was, although Mark and I talked a lot about drugs in a purely theoretical sense, I was actually very straight-edge at the time. So I never sold him anything. I'm sorry if that's disappointing.

The comment is a bit cagy, but elsewhere Cope affirms that the lyric (at least as far as he knows) is about him:

Cope, J, Head-on, HarperCollins Publishers, 2000.

"I got a name-check on The Fall album in a song called 'Two-Steps Back'. The lyric was a reference to
magic mushrooms:

"Julian said, how was the gear?
They don't sell things to you over here."

I was pleased as hell, but I was very anti-drugs at that time and could never remember any such
conversation."

^

4. This lyric is so straightforward that it's actually quite confusing. Martin correctly points out that this is more likely to be true of a rollie than a factory made...

^

5. A "dimp" is a butt.  

^

6. "Cracker factory is slang for a mental hospital, and in context that seems the likely meaning...

Bobbins submits:

"Crumpsall is next door to Prestwich and the sight of the world-famous Co-op Biscuit Factory. Crumpsall Cream Crackers were exported all over the world and the factory was a huge local employer, from Victorian times till it closed in the 1980's. It was built to be an all-encompassing 'model' workplace - sports clubs, a library, social events etc - a whole pre-fabricated existence...Probably preferable to the other Cracker Factory though, Prestwich Mental Hospital, which was once the biggest asylum in Europe and a mythical place of fear to kids like me growing up in the area in the 70's.

Dan: "The Cracker Factory is also a 1977 novel by Joyce Rebeta-Burditt. It was well-received and was turned into a TV movie in 1979."

^

7. ...on the other hand, here it seems that it may be slang for a straight job in general.  

^

Comments (20)

Bob Billy
  • 1. Bob Billy | 28/06/2014
I wonder if a Simpons writer had this song in mind with the line, 'I'm a pretty big wheel down at the Cracker Factory '.
Martin
  • 2. Martin | 23/03/2016
With reference to note 3 above, roll-ups and spliffs tend to go out more quickly than commercially produced cigarettes when not being actively smoked.
Martin
  • 3. Martin | 23/03/2016
With reference to note 3 above, roll-ups and spliffs tend to go out more quickly than commercially produced cigarettes when not being actively smoked.
dannyno
  • 4. dannyno | 20/02/2017
"The Cracker Factory" is also a 1977 novel by Joyce Rebeta-Burditt. It was well-received and was turned into a TV movie in 1979.
dannyno
  • 5. dannyno | 25/02/2017
Typo in comment #2! "Tyhe comment seems cagy"
bzfgt
  • 6. bzfgt (link) | 03/03/2017
Thanks for taking the time to point that out.

Man, commenting is great now I don't have to enter a bunch of shit...I can't believe it took us so long to figure it out. Actually, if it was just me I'd probably never have figured it out.
dannyno
  • 7. dannyno | 07/03/2017
"Pull my string and I do my thing"

So. I draw the jury's attention to the song "Puppet Man", co-written by Neil Sedaka and released by him in 1969. It was covered by The 5th Dimension in 1970, among others.

Lyric:


But if you wanna see me do my thing
Baby pull my string


etc.
Martin
  • 8. Martin | 08/03/2017
Re comment no. 7: Yes, but there have been many puppet-based songs over the years, ranging from Sandie Shaw's rendition of "Puppet on a String"

"Just who's pulling the strings
I'm all tied up to you"

to Elvis Presley's song of the same title.

I think it's a fairly generic lyrical concept.
dannyno
  • 9. dannyno | 08/03/2017
Which is true. But it was the "pull string"/"do my thing" double whammy that I found significant.
bzfgt
  • 10. bzfgt (link) | 19/03/2017
Yes, quite.
junkman
  • 11. junkman | 18/10/2019
Re note 2 - is this a positive reference to hallucinogenic drugs? I'm not convinced, given that the refrain of the song is "two steps back", which seems to put heavy emphasis on the latter half of a common phrase that begins "one step forward...". Could that refrain also have started life as a veiled dig at their record label?

Re note 3 - given Julian Cope's subsequent behaviour, the motive for this particular "straight-edge" to discuss drugs is clear; he was really bloody fascinated, to the extent that he eventually abandoned straight-edge and did loads and loads of drugs.

Re note 4 - is there a metaphor here? Something to do with matters unattended going off the boil?

Re notes 6 & 7 - the Cracker Factory could be both things rolled together. That the song regards settling for a life of "working routine" as insanity.
el gato
  • 12. el gato | 06/12/2019
Cope, J, Head-on, HarperCollins Publishers, 2000.

"I got a name-check on The Fall album in a song called 'Two-Steps Back'. The lyric was a reference to
magic mushrooms:

"Julian said, how was the gear?
They don't sell things to you over here."

I was pleased as hell, but I was very anti-drugs at that time and could never remember any such
conversation."
dannyno
  • 13. dannyno | 18/12/2019
Comment #12 - see note 3.
bzfgt
  • 14. bzfgt (link) | 21/12/2019
#12: Cool, that's a good submission as he doesn't acknowledge it's actually about him in the one we had; here, he indicates that he thinks it is...
dannyno
  • 15. dannyno | 25/12/2019
Comment #11 and note #3

Worth noting Bramah's comment in an interview with Simon Reynolds:

https://web.archive.org/web/20191225171415/http://reynoldsretro.blogspot.com/2018/01/rip-mark-e-smith-me-and-others-on-fall.html

You and Una then formed the Blue Orchids - did you see the group as the vanguard of a new psychedelia, music for "heads"?

You can’t play down the influence of drugs on Blue Orchids and The Fall. The first drugs we got into was strong LSD. Pot smoking seemed lame back then--hippie guys who sat around stoned and did nothing. We were anti drugs at first and thought we could reach the psychedelic thing without the drugs. But in a club someone gave us some microdots, when we were about 16. The next day we went to Heaton Park and dropped it and spent the whole day on LSD. Heaton Park is a stately home, the nearest thing to a common in Manchester. And then we discovered psylocibin mushroom were growing in Heaton Park for free. Someone told us that there were fields of these mushrooms. So from that point we were kind of pickled in magic mushrooms and LSD. We just made it our own. It was a free source of entertainment. We’d be munching these things and sitting in pubs and seeing the world in a strange way and getting ideas for songs about our local environment. The Fall was like Coronation Street on acid.
bzfgt
  • 16. bzfgt (link) | 21/03/2021
"They don't sell things to you over there
A cigarette goes out when you put it down"

Something specifically about the cigarettes "over there"? Any way to make this stand up?
dannyno
  • 17. dannyno | 30/03/2022
dannyno
  • 18. dannyno | 01/10/2022
In March 2022, a book about Operation Julie by David Black was published ("independently published", so be warned).

LSD Underground: Operation Julie, the Microdot Gang and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love
David Black
ISBN: 979-8435533651

See also this adaptation of a chapter from the book, published by the parapolitical Lobster magazine:

https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/article/issue/84/lsd-ira-david-solomon-james-joseph-mccann-and-operation-julie/
David Black
  • 19. David Black (link) | 24/10/2022
Preface of LSD Underground: Operation Julie, the Microdot Gang and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love
David Black available here:
https://thebarbarismofpureculture.co.uk/wp/preface-to-lsd-underground/
VelvetGuts
  • 20. VelvetGuts | 15/04/2023
Cigarette goes out part, considering the mention of mushrooms, hallucinogenics etc., means that after smoking a cigarette the effects end, unlike after taking these other substances you're likely to get hallucinations and whathavya

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