Who Makes the Nazis?
Lyrics
Who makes the nazis?
Who makes the nazis?
I'll tell ya who makes the nazis
All the Os
Wino
Spermo
29 year old
Arse-licking hate [....] old (2)
Who makes the Nazis?
Bad Tele-V (3)
Who makes the Nazis?
Balding smug faggots
Intellectual half-wits
All the Os
Who makes the Nazis?
The Nazis are long horn
Long horn breed
Long horn--Long horn breed
Long horns--Long horn breed (4)
Who makes the Nazis?
Remember when I used to follow you home from school babe?
Before I got picked up for paedophilia (5)
Who makes the Nazis?
Motels like three split-level mirages (6)
Who makes the Nazis?
Buffalo lips on toast, smiling (7)
Who makes the Nazis?
I put a finger on the weird.
This was real Irish,
Know, Joe was then good as gold
And told of the rapists in the Spa Motel. (8)
The real mould.
Who makes the Nazis?
Benny's cobweb eyes! (9)
Who makes the Nazis?
Bad-bias TV
Arena badges
BBC, George Orwell, Burmese police (10)
Who Makes the Nazis?
Long horn--Long horn breed
Long horns--Long horn breed
Who makes the Nazis?
(Rest rooms)
Black burnt flesh
Hark hark
Crack unit species
Who makes the Nazis?
(All the O's cross country)
Who makes the Nazis?
[Man] super shag-artists
Who makes the Nazis?
Bad-bias Tele-V
You mind tellin me?
Here's a word from Bobby
When you're out of rocks, just give them real soap
Hates not your enemy, love's your enemy
Murder all bush monkeys (11)
Long horn, Long horn breed
Who makes the Nazis?
Who makes the Nazis?
Bad-bias TV
Real mould
Real Irish know, Joe.
Who makes the Nazis?
Intellectual half-wits
Long horn--Long horn breed
Long horn--Long horn breed
Long horn--Long horn breed
Notes
1. Lyrically, this is a wild one, and seems to demand the question: how much of this is agenda-driven? If the lyrics are mostly trying to make a point, lyrics like "Buffalo lips smiling on toast" become particularly hard to assimilate. But lurking in here somewhere there is probably the idea that phenomena like Naziism are more closely related to the banalities of middle-class culture than is sometimes thought. Or something like that. On the other hand, the point may be that everyone makes the Nazis.
As Paul Hanley (Have a Bleedin Guess, p. 100) points out:
With a title as strong as 'Who Makes The Nazis?' there's a temptation to view every line of the lyric as somehow directly related to answering the question. But assuming such preciseness of meaning is often a mistake with Mark's lyrics, and it's particularly dangerous here
And, from page 133:
... composed by Mark on the open strings of his plastic four-string guitar, which was tuned to something approaching standard bass guitar tuning.
Smithers points out that the title in German would be "Wer Macht die Nazis?" which suggests a pun on "Wehrmacht," which was the designation of the German armed forces during World War II ("defense forces").
"This is a reference to Greek mythology.
Anius was the son of Apollo and Rhoeo. He had three daughters himself, with the names Oeno, Spermo and, er, Elais. They were known as the Oenotropae, which means those who turn (in)to wine or, less literally, the winegrowers.
Spermo (Greek for 'seed') was given by Dionysius the power to turn grass into wheat.
Oeno (Greek for 'wine') was given the power to turn water into wine.
Elais (Greek for 'olivetree') had the power to turn berries into olives."
Wino sperm also appears in the contemporaneous "Session Musician."
3. This isn't the usual nickname for television, but that seems to be what is meant here.
John Howard points out that this sounds a bit like "Tel Aviv," which may have no significance at all but is worth noting.
4. Although not technically longhorns, the most likely allusion here is to Heck cattle. Heck cattle were a result of an experiment by Lutz and Heinz Heck in Germany intended to retroactively breed back the aurochs, the descendant of all domestic cattle. Although the breeding apparently began in the 1920s, Hitler embraced the project. An attempt like this to bring back a wilder and more powerful animal was clearly in line with the Nazis' distorted appropriation of Nietzschean ideas, and represented a symbolic break with what Hitler saw as a small-spirited and domesticated bourgeois European culture. The result was just a new breed of cattle, not an aurochs. Thus, we might possibly see Heck cattle as a symbolic confluence of violent ideas and the banal reality which fosters them, which may be one of the themes of this song, hard as it is to interpret. On the other hand, The Story of the Fall claims this song was "inspired by the experience of touring Americky," so maybe Texas Longhorns are meant.
Mike points out that in Wagner's opera The Ring of the Nibelungs Viking characters wear horned helmets, although this is historically inaccurate. Wagner was adopted by the Nazis as a kind of forefather, due his nationalistic and anti-semitic views.
Although I do not know that MES was familiar with it, an analogy made by the 20th Century white supremacist Revilo P Oliver is also possibly a source for this (submitted by ShumanTheHuman). Oliver compared Aryans to longhorn cattle who were being bred into tamer, weaker strains like the Black Angus (he saw the Jews as largely responsible for this).
5. Dan points out that this line may be meant to humorously echo Big Star's "Thirteen," which runs "Won't you let me walk you home from school/Won't you let me meet you at the pool."
After a little searching, Dan has turned up information which makes this connection seem likely. In Dan's words:
"I cited the 'picked up for paedophilia' line above as a jokey reference to the Big Star song 'Thirteen.' It may have been more than that.
I've been pushing this a bit further, bearing in mind the idea that perhaps some of the lyrics to this song refer to The Fall's trip to the United States in May-July 1981. 'Who Makes the Nazis' was debuted in September that year, and appeared on record for the first time the following March, on Hex. The Reformation! site says that lyrically it was more or less intact from its first outing. So it checks out chronologically.
Big Star, of course, featured eccentric guitar-pop genius Alex Chilton. In the late 1970s/early 1980s, Chilton was playing with Tav Falco in the Panther Burns (formed in 1979,) who we know MES met on the 1981 tour of the US, and who were label-mates of The Fall.
According to Simon Ford's book Hip Priest (p96):
'Whereas on the last trip Smith had hooked up with the LA underground, on this trip he enjoyed the company of the Memphis scene and more specifically the Panther Burns led by Tav Falco and ex-Big Star guitarist Alex Chilton.'
The Fall were in Memphis some time around 20 June 1981.
MES: Looks like a member of the Panther Burns. (Laughs)
JNM: Oh yeah, I've heard of them. Did you play with them?
MES: No, but we met them in Memphis.
So maybe MES met Alex Chilton, with the rest of the Panther Burns. I think he was still playing with them regularly then. But he certainly met people who knew Alex Chilton well. So the echoes of Big Star look deliberate.
I also read an article which says:
'Chilton records his most coherent solo effort, Like Flies On Sherbert, in 1979, with Dickinson again at the controls. One journalist describes it as "like the Sun sessions produced by Brian Eno." Chilton goes on to work with psychobilly rebels The Cramps, who enhance his bad-boy rep by regaling the music press with tales of him being chased over state lines by angry fathers whose teenage daughters he’d deflowered.
One unreleased track which offers an insight into Chilton’s state of mind at the time is "Riding Through The Reich." A ghastly account of Nazi malice sung to the tune of "Jingle Bells," he performs it live on Austin radio station KUT: "Riding through the Reich/In a big Mercedes Benz/Killing lots of Kikes/Making lots of friends/Rat a tat tat tat/Mow the bastards down/Oh, what fun it is to have the Nazis back in town."'
[Chilton claimed that those lyrics to "Riding through the Reich", referred to above, were found among the papers of Frederick Cowan, a Nazi who shot 10 people in a shooting spree in New Rochelle, New York, on 14 February 1977. Six people died.]
And then I read this from New Statesman, 3 September 2001 - i.e. well before Chilton's death]:
'Chilton, I now realise, is a man who has an unpleasant fixation with the sexuality of young girls. Chilton has always defended his song "Thirteen," which is about being obsessed with a girl of that age, by saying it was written from the perspective of a 13-year-old boy. So why, at a gig in 1993, did he choose to dedicate it to Michael Jackson? Was he also adopting a child's perspective the other week when he sang a song called "Patti Girl," whose subject is "only 12 years old," and another called "Hot Thing," about a girl who's "too young to go steady?" And what was he up to when he recently released a solo album called Loose Shoes and Tight Pussy?'
What, indeed...?
From A Man Called Destruction, biography of Alex Chilton:
'He'd just written a new song, "Hey! Little Child," inspired by the high school girls who flocked to Panther Burns gigs... "A lot of those people were dating underage girls," says Kent Benjamin. "And you see that in so many of Alex's songs, like 'Hey! Little Child'. The [Chilton] house on Harbert was not far from this Catholic girls' school, and Alex's big thing was to go sit on the curb there when all the young girls with their Catholic school uniforms walked by."'
p.237.
On the other hand, nairng points out that "the practice of accompanying a girl home from school is a common idea in rock n roll lyrics, I find. A notable example is Larry Williams's "Slow Down," which was covered by Liverpool band The Beatles: "I used to walk you home, baby, after school, carry your books home, too." I feel that the lyric here may be referencing that cliche and highlighting its obvious creepiness, given many r'n'r stars' predilection for younger sexual partners (e.g. Jerry Lee Lewis abducting & marrying his then 13-year-old cousin) without any necessary reference to Big Star / Alex Chilton. At any rate, I can't see any direct reference to the Big Star lyric; there must be many of similar lines in the works of Fats Domino, for example, and other r'n'r types."
Note also "Good Morning Little School Girl" and "Gloria" make use of this questionable trope...
6. Based on the following from Dan, we must conclude it is likely that either MES got this phrase ("split-level mirages," a pun on "split-level garages") from a poet, they both have it from an independent source, or it is a known phrase:
A similar phrase appears in the work of the poet Laurel Ann Bogen, specifically her "I coulda been a contender." It includes the following: "l got it back pug-scrappy/l almost tossed out the frenzy and the cockroaches/For a split-level mirage of dubious companionship." This is collected in a few places: Bogen's anthologies The Night Grows Teeth and Other Observations (1980) and The Burning: New and Selected Poems, 1970-1990 (1991), and also in The Maverick Poets: an Anthology, edited by Steve Kowit (1988). Obviously I don't know if MES read Bogen, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But like with "Odeon sky," the unusualness of the phrase makes me wonder if the concept of a split mirage or split-level mirage has some kind of real-world salience.
7. Apparently, buffalo lips are eaten. And Dan found reference to a shrimp dish called "Buffalo lips" (made with Buffalo-style sauce). There's also a food called "chicken lips" which, when served with Buffalo sauce (usually as a sandwich), is sometimes called "Buffalo lips," although I don't know how far back this practice goes.
George suggests: "I always thought that the buffalo lips on toast line was a reference to the massacre of the buffalo as a means of wiping out the native Americans. Hitler admired the way the white settlers in America wiped out most of the native population." This could certainly be a thought swimming around in here somewhere.
From Brian Edge's Paintwork (p.52):
As Fall product, it [Hex] was exactly what we had come to expect, a musical flux rife with vivid images like 'buffalo lips on toast, smiling' (a hamburger) from 'Who Makes The Nazis?'
We have not, however, been able to corroborate the claim that "Buffalo Lips" is ever used to refer to a hamburger.
8. Dan finds a possible referent for this lyric:
"A series of attacks at motels in Chicago commenced in February 1981, attributed to "the motel rapist", brought to an end by the indictment of Timothy Mabe, age 22, in June that year. The Fall played at Tut's, Chicago, in July 1981, and may have stayed at one of the motels involved, spoken to people who knew of the case, or read about it in the newspapers.
At least three attacks took place at the Spa Motel in Chicago."
The Spa, along with other locations on "Motel Row," was notorious for crime; at one point, the police seized two million dollars worth of cocaine there. The location was apparently also known for accomodating touring rock bands (like the Ramones and Anthrax), so it is plausible the Fall may have stayed there (although this is pure speculation). It was subsequently aquired by the city (eminent domain) and turned into a police station.
The identity of Joe, the apparent teller of the story, remains to be determined.
^
9. From the Fall online forum (thanks to My Balloon):
this was on Fallnet:
From: "Philip Johnson"
Subject: Benny's cobweb eyes
This is an allusion to the UK soap opera 'Crossroads', which isn't on any more. In the late 70s and early 80s, one of the show's best known characters was Benny Hawkins (Paul Henry), a sort of gentle-giant simpleton figure who always wore a woolly hat. He was meant to be pathetic, and was regularly used as a punching-bag for fortune - he was illiterate, his girlfriend got killed off, a Mrs Prewitt made him sleep in a garden shed, and for a while he was blinded. When his eyes were being examined, he said to the doctor 'I can't see nothing, doctor... only cobwebs!'
If MES saw this, it would have been shortly before the song debuted, as Dan reports that the relevant episodes aired in June and July 1981, while the Fall were touring America (the song was first performed on September 4, 1981).
nairng pipes up:
"In MR James's story 'The Tractate Middoth' (which sounds very much like a Fall title to me) a ghostly figure in the library thwarts the finding of the eponymous book, and is described by the librarian thusly: 'the eyes were very deep-sunk; and over them, from the eyebrows to the cheek-bone, there were cobwebs--thick.'"
Dan says that "cobweb eye" is a colloquial handle for blurred vision, or, from what I can find on the internet, seeing "floaters." I had never heard of it. So this is one of those times when MES seems (to me, at least) to be at his most surrealist and opaque, and he turns out to be perhaps saying something rather mundane.
Recently Mark E. Smith was asked if any of his lyrics now make him cringe, and he picked this line...an odd choice, it seems to me.
Dan: From the "Material World" feature in NME, 8 Sept 1990, p11:
STUPIDEST LYRIC YOU EVER WROTE?
" Benny's cobweb eyes" off 'Who Made the Nazis' [sic].
10. Orwell of course fought against the Nazi-supported Franco regime in Spain in the 1930s. Orwell was also a member of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. Despite his role there, he was a critic of British imperialism and drew upon his experiences with the Burmese police in his later writings in a way that can be summed up in his famous quote "when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys."
Dan: "1980 saw the publication of Bernard Crick's notable biography, George Orwell, A Life, which was published in the US in 1981."
11. It's not clear who Bobby is meant to be, but these lines are delivered by Steve Hanley.
"Bush monkey" is (honestly) a word for someone who works in the logging industry and whose function is to make piles of tanbark, for one (probably irrelevant) thing. But Schuster points out that a German epithet for black people is "Buschaffe," of which "bush monkey" is an exact literal translation (in German, both "monkey" and "ape" are Affe). In context, this seems to be a more likely meaning.
12. From the Orange lyrics book, some handwritten notes from MES's diary. These are dated as January 26, but the year is not specified:
A necklace fur coated poodle over
Black burnt flesh\
Hark hark
Crack unit species
Who makes the Nazis?
I'd put a finger on the
weird. This was real Irish
know. Joe was then good
as gold + told of the rapist
in the Spa Motel
The real mould.
Remember when I used to follow you
home from school babe?
Stick some paper under
the door at 8 pm.
Rest room.
Motels like 3 split mirages who makes the Nazis?
Benny's cobweb eyes
Met some eyes in a dirty goods
shop/mutual recognition of
hard man crack/bllur
blur retreat
Who makes the Nazis?
More Information
Comments (126)
- 1. | 27/04/2013
- 2. | 03/05/2013
Hark hark
Crack unit species
Who makes the Nazis?"
From the book "Blockbuster" by Stephen Barlay (1977):
"Bucken turned away. Like it or not, he had a job to do. He wondered if Nazi henchmen were created that way."
"Kowalski must have been dead for some time. The heavy smell of blood mingled with the bitter smoke of black-burned flesh."
Stephen Barlay obituary: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/17/stephen-barlay-obituary
- 3. | 19/07/2013
Pre-cog?: See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilina_Vlas (known as a spa motel if you google it).
- 4. | 21/05/2014
- 5. | 06/06/2014
- 6. | 15/06/2014
- 7. | 15/06/2014
- 8. | 15/06/2014
Who is Bobby? I thought of Bobby Seale for some reason although that would mean the first two lines were his and "murder all bush monkeys" someone else's, if the racist angle is right. Anyway, I have no reason to think it is he, but I have been trying to Google the stanza or individual lines or words thereof with "Bobby," so if anyone can think of any Bobbys it might be it could yield something with some strategic Googling.
- 9. | 29/06/2014
I've been pushing this a bit further, bearing in mind the idea that perhaps some of the lyrics to this song refer to The Fall's trip to the United States in May-July 1981. "Who Makes the Nazis" was debuted in September that year, and appeared on record for the first time the following March, on Hex. The Reformation! site says that lyrically it more or less intact from its first outing. So it checks out chronologically.
Big Star, of course, featured eccentric guitar-pop genius Alex Chilton. In the late 1970s/early 1980s, Chilton was playing with Tav Falco in the Panther Burns (formed 1979) who we know MES met on the 1981 tour of the US, and who were label-mates of The Fall.
According to Simon Ford's book "Hip Priest" (p96):
"Whereas on the last trip Smith had hooked up with the LA underground, on this trip he enjoyed the company of the Memphis scene and more specifically the Panther Burns led by Tav Falco and ex-Big Star guitarist Alex Chilton."
The Fall were in Memphis some time around 20 June 1981.
See: http://www.jneomarvin.com/interviews/the-fall-unpublished-1981
"MES: Looks like a member of the Panther Burns. (Laughs)
JNM: Oh yeah, I've heard of them. Did you play with them?
MES: No, but we met them in Memphis."
So maybe MES met Alex Chilton, with the rest of the Panther Burns. I think he was still playing with them regularly then. But he certainly met people who knew Alex Chilton well. So the echoes of Big Star look deliberate.
I also read this article:
http://www.uncut.co.uk/big-star/big-star-whats-going-ahn-feature
Which says:
"Chilton records his most coherent solo effort, Like Flies On Sherbert, in 1979, with Dickinson again at the controls. One journalist describes it as “like the Sun sessions produced by Brian Eno”. Chilton goes on to work with psychobilly rebels The Cramps, who enhance his bad-boy rep by regaling the music press with tales of him being chased over state lines by angry fathers whose teenage daughters he’d deflowered.
One unreleased track which offers an insight into Chilton’s state of mind at the time is “Riding Through The Reich”. A ghastly account of Nazi malice sung to the tune of “Jingle Bells”, he performs it live on Austin radio station KUT: “Riding through the Reich/In a big Mercedes Benz/Killing lots of Kikes/Making lots of friends/Rat a tat tat tat/Mow the bastards down/Oh, what fun it is to have the Nazis back in town.”"
And then I read this article:
http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=21220
[New Statesman, 3 September 2001 - i.e. well before Chilton's death]:
"Chilton, I now realise, is a man who has an unpleasant fixation with the sexuality of young girls. Chilton has always defended his song 'Thirteen', which is about being obsessed with a girl of that age, by saying it was written from the perspective of a 13-year-old boy. So why, at a gig in 1993, did he choose to dedicate it to Michael Jackson? Was he also adopting a child's perspective the other week when he sang a song called 'Patti Girl', whose subject is 'only 12 years old', and another called 'Hot Thing', about a girl who's 'too young to go steady'? And what was he up to when he recently released a solo album called Loose Shoes and Tight Pussy?"
What indeed...
Dan
- 10. | 29/06/2014
From "A Man Called Destruction", biography of Alex Chilton:
"He'd just written a new song, 'Hey! Little Child', inspired by the high school girls who flocked to Panther Burns gigs... 'A lot of those people were dating underage girls,' says Kent Benjamin. 'And you see that in so many of Alex's songs, like 'Hey! Little Child'. The [Chilton] house on Harbert was not far from this Catholic girls' school, and Alex's big thing was to go sit on the curb there when all the young girls with their Catholic school uniforms walked by."
p.237.
- 11. | 29/06/2014
- 12. | 29/06/2014
eg: http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Buffalo-Beef-Lips_148914362.html
- 13. | 30/06/2014
- 14. | 01/07/2014
- 15. | 01/07/2014
- 16. | 22/07/2014
- 17. | 08/10/2014
- 18. | 08/10/2014
I'd have thought that's more likely to be RAR badges - "Rock Against Racism," such as Smith is wearing in at least one very early onstage photograph.
- 19. | 03/11/2014
But having just listened to the line again, it still sounds like "R n R" rather than RAR.
- 20. | 05/06/2016
.. is of course a semi-medical term for a form of blurred vision.
Anyway, the episode of Crossroads where Benny was the victim of a hit and run was first aired on 15 June 1981.
- 21. | 29/06/2016
- 22. | 08/08/2016
This phrase "split level mirage" or "split mirage". It feels like it's an actual thing, but what it is, I don't know.
However, a similar phrase appears in the work of the poet Laurel Ann Bogen, specifically her "I coulda been a contender". It includes the following:
l got it back
pug-scrappy
l almost tossed out
the frenzy and the cockroaches
for a split-level mirage
of dubious companionship
This is collected in a few places, Bogen's anthologies "The Night Grows Teeth and other observations" (1980) and "The Burning: new and selected poems, 1970-1990" (1991), and also in "The Maverick Poets: an anthology", edited by Steve Kowit (1988).
Obviously I don't know if MES read Bogen, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But like with "Odeon sky", the unusualness of the phrase makes me wonder if the concept of a split mirage or split-level mirage has some kind of real-world salience.
- 23. | 08/08/2016
- 24. | 25/08/2016
- 25. | 25/08/2016
- 26. | 16/10/2016
Typo!
- 27. | 19/10/2016
- 28. | 21/10/2016
- 29. | 22/10/2016
Well, hang on, only if you pronounce "garage" as "garraj". But i don't pronounce it that way, I pronounce it "garridge". Hard vowels.
So the question is, how would MES pronounce it?
- 30. | 29/10/2016
(Freudian typo? when I looked at this, I had typed "I notcied this!")
- 31. | 15/11/2016
- 32. | 17/11/2016
'I passed by your classroom
Just had to take a look
And I watched, looked
What you had writ' in your book
'Cause I love ya
And I don't care, what they say
I don't care what, what they say'
Creepy stuff.
- 33. | 24/11/2016
- 34. | 25/11/2016
- 35. | 21/12/2016
This was real Irish know.
Joe was then good as gold
At a minimum the enjambment is badly chosen here. It is either "This is real Irish, no Joe" or "This is real Irish know, Joe." Neither make a lot of sense to me but "This is real Irish know" makes less so I wonder if "no Joe" can mean anything in this context? Irish coffee, not a mere cup of "Joe""? Who the hell knows. But I'm going with "no Joe" unless there's a case for the other, at least it seems to have the potential to make sense.
SkrikingFucker, is it the Lucan hotel mentioned above in my revised note of which you are thinking? One thing about this gig, I'm always being told about famous thises and well-known thats about which I can find little record, and if it's not that one it can't be all that famous...
- 36. | 23/12/2016
- 37. | 23/12/2016
- 38. | 28/01/2017
I wonder if this is a reference to Saul Galpern, of Kamera records, who of course put out Hex. Galpern went on to found Nude Records, who had a lot of success with Suede. The Suede B-side Implement Yeah!, which is about MES, includes the line "That boy Smith called Saul a Scotch homo", which I always suspected was Brett Anderson using an anecdote that Galpern had told him about the old days. I don't know if Galpern is gay, but if so, all this fits together, especially with MES's usual attitude to the people running his record companies. The "balding" may well have been true at the time - certainly is now, if you check this interview from a few years back (which includes a great story of how he almost signed The Fall to Nude, sabotaged by some typical MES behaviour).
I actually hope I'm wrong about this (so anyone with any contradictory ideas please chip in), because the tone makes this almost as problematic as "Where are the obligatory...".
I met Saul Galpern once in the mid 90s. Nude had the office above one that I was visiting, and he invited my wife and I up with someone from the downstairs office to watch the video for Suede's The Wild Ones which had just been finished. It's still (probably) my favourite Suede song, and Saul was lovely and friendly.
- 39. | 01/02/2017
As well as the Beckett reference mentioned above, I have seen it referenced in passing in a lot of Irish literature. Was reading Langrishe, Go Down by Aidan Higgins the other day where it was mentioned, reminded me to come back here!
- 40. | 11/02/2017
- 41. | 23/02/2017
It's not impossible, given the Suede parody lyric, but I also think you can fit lots of lines to real people by ripping them out of context (although admittedly it is not unknown for MES to shove lines into songs out of context!). But MES was well disposed towards Kamera and in interviews has always expressed regret about having to leave the label. And it also seems a bit incongruous given the rest of the lyrics.
From interview with Kay Carroll in Simon Ford's Hip Priest (p95):
'Mark and I went to Saul's home and hung out with him,' said Carroll. 'I think Versa introduced him to me. We were his first band on the Kamera label and although he appeared to be a bit of a "Jack the Lad" character I remember Mark liked him.'
Hip Priest records a less positive view of Galpern when he was running Nude. The Fall considered signing, but MES was mistrustful because of the failure of Kamera, and also because the only chair in Galpern's office was his own. But of course that's years down the line.
- 42. | 23/02/2017
You worked with The Fall AND Simply Red. Didn’t you find something odd about this combination?
Not really. Both from Manchester and maybe took very different paths but both socialists to start with but yes very different musically – Hucknall did have bona-fide punk credentials though which people may not be aware of and his know-all of music was phenomenal – he had a genuine passion and amazing knowledge for Jamaican dub and those great Reggae singers which I loved as I too was a fan of a lot of Reggae from the late 70’s period…undeniably he is just a great singer and that début still stands up for me – for the times !
Mark E Smith is The Fall and there is no one quite like them – then and now. I remember around ’94 both Brett & Justine Frischmann (Elastica) telling me that I had to sign him when I was in the middle of Nude’s success – I got him down for a meeting but he told me some story about Mani from the Roses stealing the demos while he was sitting on the train coming down from Manchester. He turned up for the meeting with Gillian from New Order so it was all quite surreal and he only wanted to conduct the meeting in the pub. I’d loved to have put that record out on Nude at the time.
- 43. | 25/02/2017
- 44. | 24/04/2017
Incidentally, the practice of accompanying a girl home from school is a common idea in rock n roll lyrics, I find. A notable example is Larry Williams's Slow Down, which was covered by Liverpool band The Beatles: "I used to walk you home, baby, after school, carry your books home, too." I feel that the lyric here may be referencing that cliche and highlighting its obvious creepiness, given many r'n'r stars' prediliction for younger sexual partners (eg Jerry Lee Lewis abducting & marrying his then 13-year old cousin) without any necessary reference to Big Star / Alex Chilton. At any rate, I can't see any direct reference to the Big Star lyric; there must be many of similar lines in the works of Fats Domino, for example, and other r'n'r types.
- 45. | 13/05/2017
- 46. | 13/05/2017
- 47. | 16/05/2017
I meant the location of the book - i.e. the finding of it - was prevented...location as in the act of locating sth, not the place where it is located...does that make sense??
It's a good story if you've not read it, btw!
- 48. | 18/05/2017
I am pretty sure I have read it, is that the one where the ghost is originally in the book? Or am I thinking of something else? There's one by him where the book itself is the source of the haunting.
- 49. | 03/07/2017
NME, 29 Feb 1992:
We buy another drink and Mark says; "The thing about this business is that there's too many bloody guitar bands." The last two words twist out of Mark's mouth like he was a licensed taxi driver moaning that there's too many mini-cabs on the road. I tell him that too many guitar bands try to sound old when the groups they idolise were trying to sound like the most modern thing in the world.
"Ha ha! They're talkin' about Big Star and stuff that I outgrew when I was 18. They think going like this (Mark grimaces in the gestures of an orgasmic guitar solo) is cool.
http://thefall.org/gigography/92feb29.html
So there you go: Big Star is something MES listened to when he was younger. He would know their songs, therefore.
- 50. | 15/07/2017
- 51. | 22/11/2017
https://nei.nih.gov/health/floaters/floaters
Then again, maybe the National Eye Institute of America is a hotbed of Fall fans.
- 52. | 26/11/2017
- 53. | 01/12/2017
- 54. | 01/12/2017
My meaning being, zero (nothing) makes the nazis?
(I'm not going to put money on this one, but I like the possibility)
- 55. | 02/12/2017
Are you the Mike of 53? Interesting thought, I know exactly the Wagnerian helmets you mean...
- 56. | 07/12/2017
- 57. | 07/12/2017
- 58. | 21/02/2018
Spa motel may also be referencing the crossroads motel. (TV) /penns Hall /Ramada Hotel. (the actual real hotel setting) which is next to a church of matter day saints.
All things to all people.
Smith knew the tarot well enough to know that whatever needs to pop up in a person's mind after some image or word trigger is what needs to pop up coz there are no coincidences.
So much truth beyond truth.
- 59. | 24/02/2018
- 60. | 12/05/2018
- 61. | 04/07/2018
- 62. | 01/01/2019
This was in the Brian Edge book about the band. IIRC when talking about Hex and the development of Smith's unique writing he says that this is the singer's poetic way of describing a hamburger.
- 63. | 03/01/2019
Here's the quote from Brian Edge's Paintwork (p.52):
As Fall product, it [Hex] was exactly what we had come to expect, a musical flux rife with vivid images like 'buffalo lips on toast, smiling' (a hamburger) from 'Who Makes The Nazis?'
And he might be right. But he might not be. The case against is: that there is a dish called "buffalo lips", which consists of, er, buffalo lips; that a hamburger is usually made of beef, rather than buffalo, so unless this was a burger made of buffalo meat (which it could be) the "vividness" of the imagery is undermined by the inaccuracy of the description; hamburgers are not "on toast", but in a bun. But alright, I know, it's poetry.
- 64. | 06/01/2019
- 65. | 06/01/2019
- 66. | 06/01/2019
- 67. | 20/01/2019
- 68. | 17/02/2019
I take the song as saying that Nazi's are created by banality and referring to them as a longhorn is calling them cattle, dumb, to be corralled, slaughtered etc. The bush monkey line is a slur, but plainly it is part of the Nazi attitude, (spoken by "Bobby" a cop perhaps?).
I don't know that I would call it anti-semitic, but his implication that Isreal helps makes the Nazis has always bummed me out.
- 69. | 19/02/2019
- 70. | 19/02/2019
- 71. | 08/03/2019
- 72. | 15/03/2019
It's basicall a literal translation.
The line '29 year old' might refer to AH who was 29 years old in 1918 when Germany lost world war I.
- 73. | 16/04/2019
- 74. | 27/04/2019
Schuster #72--thank you, that's very helpful! 'Twill be noted.
Dannyno #73--good point but John didn't offer an interpretation, he just pointed out that they sound a bit alike.
- 75. | 27/04/2019
John Howard #71: yes, they do sound alike, it's Tele-V which sounds like Tel Aviv.
- 76. | 30/04/2019
- 77. | 05/06/2019
I've read so much Fall-related stuff that I'm not sure if this is actually my idea or something that I've read elsewhere, but as I'm learning German I noticed that the title of the song reveals a pun when translated - 'Wer macht die Nazis?', leading to 'Wehrmacht' - the name of the Nazi army (also mentioned in 'Middle Mass').
- 78. | 07/06/2019
- 79. | 14/06/2019
Who makes the Nazis?
Intellectual half-wits.
is a slam against Joy Division's fans at the time.
- 80. | 15/06/2019
This song didn't debut until September 1981, by which time Ian Curtis had been dead for over a year and three months and Joy Division had long been succeeded by New Order.
- 81. | 17/06/2019
Joy Division still had fans in 1981, much in the same way there are still fans of the band now in 2019 nearly 30 years after Ian Curtis's death. Many original fans of the band did not like the change of musical direction taken by New Order and preferred the Old Order as preserved on vinyl.
The same year on 16 July 1981 MES mocked Factory records for living "off the back of a dead man" as recorded on the Part of America Therein track Cash and Carry.
The fact that this Hex track was first played at a gig in September 1981 places it firmly in the same period as another song in which MES is making Factory/Ian Curtis jibes some time after the singer's death.
I was 19 and a Fall fan in 1982 when Hex Enduction Hour came out. The references, particularly the drumming style, seemed obvious at the time.
- 82. | 17/06/2019
Make that "now in 2019 nearly 40 years after Ian Curtis's death."
- 83. | 21/06/2019
If you're right and I am misguided, it is recorded here now in any case, and some more evidence could turn my head around at some point.
- 84. | 22/06/2019
The same year on 16 July 1981 MES mocked Factory records for living "off the back of a dead man" as recorded on the Part of America Therein track Cash and Carry.
Indeed, but that's a "slam" against Factory for - in MES' eyes - contemporary crimes, not a "slam" against Ian Curtis or Joy Division fans along the lines and in the terms you asserted in comment #79.
- 85. | 25/07/2019
- 86. | 16/08/2019
- 87. | 28/11/2019
http://www.heretical.com/oliver/js09.html
This would mean it would be wrong to view "Long-horns" as dumb cattle. What they have been replaced by are the docile herd
This article was published posthumously in 2002 and I cannot find a reference to its original publication.
The Long-horn link seems pretty strong but I am struggling to come up with anything else that ties it in.
"Bad Tele-V" may refer to Mossad which is headquartered in Tel Aviv
"Balding smug faggots
Intellectual half-wits" could then be any, or maybe a particular individual or group from the era of composition, leftwing academic or talking head
MES may simply be saying in whose interest is the perpetuation of the notion that the white working class are ripe for extremism?
- 88. | 27/12/2019
- 89. | 27/12/2019
... composed by Mark on the open strings of his plastic four-string guitar, which was tuned to something approaching standard bass guitar tuning.
- 90. | 27/12/2019
With a title as strong as 'Who Makes The Nazis?' there's a temptation to view every line of the lyric as somehow directly related to answering the question. But assuming such preciseness of meaning is often a mistake with Mark's lyrics, and it's particularly dangerous here.
(pp.134-135)
- 91. | 03/01/2020
- 92. | 03/01/2020
- 93. | 04/01/2020
- 94. | 04/01/2020
While I agree with Phil that TV is part of the lyric, I disagree that we can read "Nazi" is synonymous with "Television" across all Fall songs just because of the metaphor in another song. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and a Nazi is just a Nazi.
- 95. | 04/01/2020
- 96. | 15/01/2020
- 97. | 02/05/2020
STUPIDEST LYRIC YOU EVER WROTE?
" Benny's cobweb eyes" off 'Who Made the Nazis' [sic].
- 98. | 13/05/2020
https://www.e-flux.com/journal/76/69408/who-makes-the-nazis/
- 99. | 07/11/2020
- 100. | 07/11/2020
https://www.indiamart.com/proddetail/frozen-buffalo-lips-13406162662.html
- 101. | 05/12/2020
- 102. | 16/12/2020
I thought the use of "Benny" was Benjamin as a Jewish name. "Cobweb eye's" could mean bloodshot but what I pictured instead was a skinhead with a cobweb tattoo on his face. At the time some skinheads had facial tattoo's like this . According to a Google search today the cobweb tattoo has links to white supremacy groups though this is new to me. So 'Benny' was a Jewish neo-Nazi skinhead! Hence why MES hated it?
'Long horn breed' seemed to remind me of American conservatism or rednecks as I'd always linked it with Texas long horns, though there is a an breed of cattle called long horn as well.
- 103. | 19/12/2020
"RAR badges" has come up before here (see comment #18, but also my reply in comment #19). I wouldn't rule it out. But it's still not what it sounds like to me.
- 104. | 13/02/2021
- 105. | 21/03/2021
When you're out of rocks, just give them real soul
Hates not your enemy, love's your enemy
Paul Hanley on Twitter (20 March 2021, 4:38PM) says it's "real soap", not "soul".
https://twitter.com/hanleyPa/status/1373312926875009028
- 106. | 27/03/2021
- 107. | 27/03/2021
- 108. | 27/03/2021
It feels like it's a common phrase distorted, to me, except I can't trace it. I mean, I could imagine a saying such as "when you're out of real soap, given them rocks", and this line reverses that - just as the next line (hate's not your enemy) also appears to be a reversal.
There's something here to be found, I reckon. But we haven't found it yet.
- 109. | 27/03/2021
If we think of this song as in some way inspired by experiences while touring America (June - July 1981 and/or previously), then I've uncovered a case which may be the real world reference for this line.
A series of attacks at motels in Chicago commenced in February 1981, attributed to "the motel rapist", brought to an end by the indictment of Timothy Mabe, age 22, in June that year. The Fall played at Tut's, Chicago, in July 1981, and may have stayed at one of the motels involved, spoken to people who knew of the case, or read about it in the newspapers.
At least three attacks took place at... the Spa Motel.
Here's some newspaper coverage of the case:
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/74510534/journal-gazette/
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/74510704/chicago-tribune/
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/74510784/chicago-tribune/
- 110. | 27/03/2021
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/74511179/chicago-tribune/
Mabe's criminal career was longstanding. It seems he didn't service the full sentence: I found articles describing his arrest for sexual assault in 2000.
- 111. | 27/03/2021
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/74512588/record-journal/
Buffalo lips (Buffalo style shrimp with Cajun marmalade)
Seems an unlikely reference in context!
- 112. | 27/03/2021
- 113. | 28/03/2021
Death of Albert Speer, 1 September 1981. He died in hospital in London; he was visiting Britain for a BBC interview.
Broadcast of the TV movie Skokie, about the 1977/78 free speech case of National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, and the role of the ACLU. Starred Danny Kaye. First shown in the US on 17 November 1981. It was shown on UK TV under the title, Once They Marched Through a Thousand Towns, but as far as I can tell not until 1983. So given the timing perhaps unlikely to have been seen by MES in time for the March 1982 release of Hex. But he might have read or been told about the programme.
But...
Who Makes the Nazis? was debuted on 4 September 1981, so too early for the film to have been an influence. While Speer's death occurred just a couple of days before the song's debut, the song was recorded for a Peel Session on 26 August 1981. So we have to rule both things out of contention.
- 114. | 28/03/2021
Most of the story about Benny's eye problems post-being run over played out on Crossroads during June and July 1981 while The Fall were touring America, so MES would likely only have seen later episodes on his return to the UK after the last gig in Chicago on 16 July.
By the way, to correct a statement I made earlier, it seems that the episode in which Benny is run over was actually broadcast on 11th June, not 15th.
See the episode guide here: http://www.crossroads2001.co.uk/CEG/episodeguide_ukgold_june1981.htm and http://www.crossroads2001.co.uk/CEG/episodeguide_ukgold_july1981.htm
The last episode blurb mentioning Benny's eyes there (which of course might not be the last in the storyline) is dated 16th July.
It does seem a bit tight to make it into the lyrics, doesn't it? Maybe it was repeated or was a topic of conversation once The Fall were home. I don't think it was shown on US TV.
- 115. | 31/03/2021
All the Os
Wino
Spermo
We've had this all wrong.
This is a reference to Greek mythology.
Anius was the son of Apollo and Rhoeo. He had three daughters himself, with the names Oeno, Spermo and, er, Elais. They were known as the Oenotropae (the winegrowers or some such).
Spermo (Greek for 'seed') was given by Dionysius the power to turn grass into wheat.
Oeno (Greek for 'wine') was given the power to turn water into wine.
Elais (Greek for 'olivetree') had the power to turn berries into olives
- 116. | 31/03/2021
- 117. | 31/03/2021
- 118. | 03/04/2021
Excellent contributions above, particularly re:Spa motel which seems to be of much more relevance than the Dublin speculation we had.
- 119. | 03/04/2021
- 120. | 03/04/2021
- 121. | 03/04/2021
- 122. | 03/04/2021
- 123. | 03/04/2021
- 124. | 03/04/2021
- 125. | 05/08/2022
I see no lyrical echoes, but I would be remiss not to mention it. Well, perhaps "remiss" is not quite the word.
- 126. | 09/04/2023
Still chewing on the lyrics and discourse here at large but can't help but mention what appears to me ripe and shockingly overlooked (if not poked at a bit by comment #54): the O's are also figurative 0's, the accrual of wealth which is figured as the appending of digits to some constant (e.g. add some zeros to one's paycheck, net worth, etc.) To consider the Nazis in light of their industrial conglomerates would be anything but an uncommon analysis fits nicely into the rest of the verse: "all the 0s," each being a tenfold increase, would in capitalist modernity be a fine means of attaining any of the Dionysian powers granted in the myth (of course through the medium of exploited labor), and the likely benefactor would be our strawmanned arse-licking 29 year old, who MES so loves to hate.
Gotta head to work but might come re-format this or add ideas later. Thanks for the site, been checking it for years :)
Before I got picked up for paedophelia "
Those lines make me think of the lyrics to Thirteen, by Big Star:
"Won't you let me walk you home from school
Won't you let me meet you at the pool "
But that's probably just me.