Wings

Lyrics

 (1)

Day by day the moon gains on me
Day by day the moon gains on me

Purchased a pair of flabby wings (2)
I took to doing some hovering
There is a list of incorrect things (3)

Hovered mid-air outside a study
An academic kneaded his chin
sat in the dust of some cheap magazines
His academic rust could not burn them up

Recruited some gremlins
To get me clear of the airline routes
I paid them off with stuffing from my wings
They had some fun with those cheapo airline snobs (4)

The stuffing loss made me hit a time lock
I ended up in the eighteen sixties
I've been there for one hundred and twenty five years (5)

A small alteration of the past can turn time into space (6)

Ended up under Ardwick Bridge (7)
With some veterans from the U.S. Civil War
They were under Irish patronage
We shot dead a stupid sergeant, but I got hit in the crossfire (8)
The lucky hit made me hit a time lock (9)

But, when I got back, the place I made the purchase no longer exists; I'd erased it under the bridge.

Day by day the moon gains on me
By such things, the moon gains on me

So now I sleep in ditches
And hide away from nosy kids
The wings rot and feather under me
The wings rot and curl right under me

A small alteration of the past can turn time into space

Small touches can alter more than a mere decade

Wings, wings

Notes

1. Dan contributes the following, seemingly a quote from MES:

From The Biggest Library Yet fanzine, #3: Morton Dunlop interview with MES, dated 28 November /1983. "WINGS A gentleman, who, in the future, goes into a store which is experimentally selling wings. These have not been tested right .'. he hits clouds + time-warps. By the time he gets home he's changed things too much." 
 

A comment from tempertantrum on the Fall Online Forum:

"'Wings' is about the inadequacy of different forms of power - is it not? Academic power, economic power - the 'airline snobs' being ridiculed by gremlins - military power - and ultimately failed rebellion - quick note."

Early versions featured an entirely different riff; Scanlon's introductory riff on the studio version is widely praised as a classic among Fall fans.

^

2. On the live version included on the bonus disc of Perverted by Language, recorded in London on March 25th 1982, Smith sings the more pedestrian lyric "Purchased a pair of webbed wings." I assumed that "flabby wings" was something only MES ever said, but Dan did some research on the subject:

"'Flabby wings' do have precedents in literature; I think the element of surprise is that it's a bit archaic. These days I think most people would understand 'flabby' to mean 'fatty and floppy' [cf flab, 'fighting the flab' = dieting], which is not quite the sense intended here.

Alexander Pope, 'The Critical Specimen: 1 A Simile':

So on Maeotis' Marsh, (where Reeds and Rushes
Hide the deceitful Ground, whose waving Heads
Oft' bend to Auster's blasts, or Boreas' Rage,
The Haunt of the voracious Stork or Bittern,
Where, or the Crane, Foe to Pygmoean Race,
Or Ravenous Corm'rants shake their flabby Wings...

Charles Kingsley, writing about the alder fly: 

Songs have been written in praise of thee; statues would ere now have been erected to thee, had that hunchback and flabby wings of thine been "susceptible of artistic treatment".

From Buchanan's A Technological Dictionary (1846), entry for Caterpillar:

After a time the skin of the chrysalis splits, and the butterfly issues forth, with humid and soft flabby wings..."

Because, as the Oxford English Dictionary notes, 'flabby' comes from an obsolete meaning of the word 'flappy':

Flabby:

Etymology:  An onomatopoeic modification of the earlier flappy adj.; the voiced ending in flab- as compared with flap- gives to the syllable a feebler effect suited to the meaning. Compare Dutch flabberen (of a breeze) to flutter; Swedish dialect fläbb the hanging underlip of an animal....

1. Hanging loose by its own weight, yielding to the touch and easily moved or shaken, flaccid, limp, soft; said chiefly of or with respect to flesh.

2. Of language, character, etc.: Weak, wanting ‘back-bone’; nerveless, feeble."

The manuscript of the song reproduced in the blue lyrics book has "flabbly wings," and there is also a typed version which duly repeats this spelling.

The phrase "flabby wings" is on the cover of Hex Enduction Hour, and the sleevenotes read:

"Never knew had so many friends till Venue. In awe. The fans were awed And cowered. Still needing the HEXAN school. Still bowing to: Mythical Thingy, and the fresh stool, at 'Venue' No decision equals 'consultation'. One True Sentence. On Morning Of It: Saw Flabby Wings and Ran cross frosty crusting of Plate glass, from the SKRIKKING KIDS, NOT FIT FOR: HEX END. -- the Big P.)"

The phrase "one true sentence" is from Hemingway's memoir A Movable Feast:

"I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.’ So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut the scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written."

And skriking/"skrikking" kids also appear in "Joker Hysterical Face." Like the latter, MES was clearly enamored with the phrase "flabby wings" before it appeared in a song, but beyond that it's not clear what happened on the morning of the "venue gig." Every gig, of course, is a venue gig in one sense, but the Fall played The Venue in London on December 7th, 1981 (thanks to Dan for the above).

See the comment section for, believe it or not, more on this subject--and much, much more on other subjects besides; the comments are a must-read on this song, because there is a wealth of stuff that I cannot begin to imagine how to incorporate in my notes, including one very intriguing diagram that is apparently in MES's hand, which I have also included under "More Information."

A comment from tempertantrum on the Fall Online Forum:

"'Wings' is about the inadequacy of different forms of power - is it not? Academic power, economic power - the 'airline snobs' being ridiculed by gremlins - military power - and ultimately failed rebellion - quick note."

Early versions featured an entirely different riff; Scanlon's introductory riff on the studio version is widely praised as a classic among Fall fans.

 

^

3. In early live versions, MES said "I made a list of incorrect things." It's not clear exactly what "there" refers to in the final version, but as delivered the line has more snap, so it must be considered an improvement in that regard.

^

4. Gremlins are mythical creatures that cause equipment failure, particularly in airplanes. The term seems to have originated among British pilots in the 1920s; etymologically, it may derive from the Old English gremian, which means "to vex," but the origin of the word is not known for certain.

^ 

5. Another curious statement; the implication is that the song's protagonist was in the 1860s for 125 years, since there is no other antecedent of "there." MES has often expressed his love for fantastic literature, and the lyrics here are chock full of weird and counter-intuitive plot elements. In any case, the song was released in 1983, so if he arrived in 1867 (see note 5 below) and time had run its course normally for a period of 125 years, this would place the protagonist a few years in (what was then) the future--specifically 1992--a year in which, as it happens, the Fall released a song called "Time Enough at Last." On the other hand, as Dan points out, he may have initially arrived in 1860, which would make it 1985, and if he rounded up from 123 it would be right in 1983, in time to release PBL. But, as I mentioned above, there is no place mentioned in the verse, so "I've been there..." could suggest some sort of time loop or "groundhog day"-type scenario. Dan imagines another interesting possibility:

"Or, thinking about what happens when he gets shot, might it mean that he has "been there" in the sense of being buried there? I wonder if, when he's shot and hits the time lock again, in one time stream he is propelled forwards to the 1980s, and in another his body is buried."

fallfan 50002 points out that when Wings was revived roughly 25 years later, in 2007, MES had "been there for 150 years."

Hexen Blumenthal reports that "time lock" is a concept that appears in Doctor Who and in this context it is a means to prevent temporal anomalies (in his words).

^

6. Gappy points to this line from Wagner's Parsifal which is quoted in Philip K Dick's Valis:

Du siehst, mein Sohn,
zum Raum wird hier die Zeit

"You see, my son, here time becomes space"

^

 

7. Ardwick is a district in Manchester.

^

8.  A lot of Irish immigrants served in the U.S. Civil War, most of them on the side of the North; the first two casualties of the Civil War were reportedly Irishmen. The lyrics here, however, are certainly a reference to the "Manchester Martyrs," three members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a Fenian organization, who were hung for killing a police Sergeant while (successfully) freeing two Fenian prisoners. Both of the freed prisoners were veterans of the Civil War, as were two of the five men eventually convicted of the murder. The attack took place in 1867 under the railroad bridge in Ardwick, which subsequently became known as "The Fenian Arch." The police Sergeant, who was reportedly the first Manchester policeman ever killed in the line of duty, had refused to open the door of the police van when he was accosted by 30 or so Fenians demanding the prisoners' release. He was not intentionally murdered, but was shot through the eye as he peered out the keyhole at the very moment a member of the crowd shot out the lock on the door of the police van. None of the five defendants who were convicted of murder (two were subsequently reprieved) were actually accused of firing the fatal shot. 

^

9. The precise mechanics of a "time lock" are difficult to ascertain from the lyrics above, but it is clear that when the protagonist hits one he is transported to a different time. Ordinarily, the phrase "time lock" refers to a lock with a timer that prevents its being opened until a certain period of time has elapsed. The 1950s George Jones song called "Time Lock" basically uses the phrase in this sense; rather than a safe, however, "the door" to the singer's "heart" is locked in this way. A relatively young Sean Connery, yet to make his name as James Bond, plays a small role in a 1957 British movie called Time Lock. The plot, which has nothing to do with time travel, is the story of a six year old boy trapped in a bank vault.  A more likely source for the phrase than either of these is an episode of the 1960s television series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea entitled "Time Lock." The details of the plot of the episode, which aired in November 1967 (an even century after the Ardwick Bridge incident), are not really relevant here; the important point is that "lock" is clearly used in a way that is analogous to the nautical sense of the word. A "lock" is a chamber in which the level of water can be raised or lowered in order to allow a boat to pass through a place where there is a waterfall or some other impassable and precipitous change in the elevation of a waterway. It is probable that MES is using "time lock" in a similar manner, whether or not he was aware of the aforementioned television episode.    

^

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More Information

Wings: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1983

This fascinating paper by K-punk talks a little about "WIngs"

 

 

Egg finds a diagram:

  • egg | 24/09/2017

The video on the Perverted By Language Bis video contains a quick shot of a diagram or graph which, while almost unintelligible, gives some idea of what the "time lock" might be (and is presumably intended to explain or add to the song). The diagram should appear below:

https://i.imgur.com/5SC9LRj.jpg

The x-axis seems to be labelled "space" and some of the points on the axis are marked 5'50", 7'00, and 10'00". (Perhaps these are degrees of longitude or latitude.)

The y-axis has the label "time" and there are three labelled points on the axis: *•*, ZERO, and something I can't make out at all.

See comments #29-33

Comments (81)

John
  • 1. John | 01/08/2013
I am very convinced that the gremlins bit with "having fun with those cheapo airline snobs" is a reference to Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, the Twilight Zone episode with the gremlin taking apart the wing (the one with William Shatner).
Martin
  • 2. Martin | 01/03/2014
For what it's worth, I can pinpoint almost to the day the change from "webbed" to "flabby" (see above) in the lyrics. In the first of three gigs at Band on the Wall, Manchester (3-5 May 1982) MES sings "webbed". Two days later he sings "flabby". Unfortunately, only four songs have been preserved of the in-between gig on 4 May, Wings not being one of them, so we don't know if "flabby" had replaced "webbed" by then or if the latter was having its swansong. If Dannyno can find the word "flabby" in some newspaper printed around these dates he should go to heaven immediately!
dannyno
  • 3. dannyno | 03/03/2014
There's a "flabby" in the Guardian of 2 May 1982. But not between the dates suggested. And it's not a "flabby" of the kind required.

Dan
Mark
  • 4. Mark | 21/05/2014
"Kneaded his chin" or "needed his gin"?
dannyno
  • 5. dannyno | 23/07/2014
"Here is a list of incorrect things"

It's "There is a list..."
dannyno
  • 6. dannyno | 23/07/2014
Mark:

I'm hearing "kneaded his chin".
H. Ashly Oneskin II
  • 7. H. Ashly Oneskin II | 24/10/2014
it says 'Flabby Wings' on the front cover of Hex Enduction Hour, released 8/3/82. theres a big arrow pointing to it.
dannyno
  • 8. dannyno | 13/02/2015
H. Ashly Oneskin II: good observation skillz! Combine that with the knowledge that the lyrics to the song change... and,er, well I don't know what it all means. Clearly the phrase was in MES's head, but was it always intended to be part of this lyric?
romana
  • 9. romana | 02/06/2015
kneaded his chin - in some live versions MES actually sings "k-neaded his chin" as if to clarify.
Antoine
  • 10. Antoine | 22/09/2015
I've raised another point on the page for Spectre vs. Rector regarding Malcom Lowry's novel Under the Volcano, a book Mark's spoken highly of on a few occasions I can remember (quick reference - there are a few others out there - http://www.pipeline.com/~biv/FallNet/articles/wire_interview.html). I feel that this one is a bit more of a stretch, but it's still quite interesting - A few lines refer to vague "wings" in relation to the passage of time: "Somewhere in the distance a clock was striking; the Consul still stood there motionless. "Oh Yvonne, can I have forgotten you already, on this of all days?" Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one stokes. By his watch it was a quarter to eleven. But the clock hadn't finished : it struck twice more, two wry, tragic notes : bing-bong : whirring. The emptiness in the air after filled with whispers : alas, alas. Wings, it really meant."
Antoine
  • 11. Antoine | 23/09/2015
Ah - and regarding the infamous "flabby wings," two passages a few lines apart in the more or less climactic scene of The Call of Cthulu are also quite interesting. The beastie emerges from its long-sunken city, "...visibly darkening the sun as it slunk away into the shrunken and gibbous sky on flapping membraneous wings," shortly followed by "Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned." I can certainly see these general physical descriptions of "Dread Cthulu" striking young Mark as a means more oblique and perhaps, "in-the-know," culturally, of referring to the slack, fleshy quality of wings webbed (and I have not looked into whether or not that is the right way to refer to bat wings and the like) rather than feathered.
Antoine
  • 12. Antoine | 04/10/2015
I've just come across one more incongruous use of the word "flabby" in another major Smith influence, Wyndham Lewis's BLAST - interestingly enough in the context of the song, this time it's the sky which is flabby: "CURSE the flabby sky that can manufacture no snow, but can only drop the sea on us in a drizzle like a poem by Mr. Robert Bridges." I've kept Lewis's stylizing for fun.
Cobwebeyes
  • 13. Cobwebeyes | 29/12/2016
I've always thought that 'cheapo airline snobs' referred to the whole Freddie Laker/Laker Airways 'no frills' air travel thing (I'm sure Smith had good reasons for refering to enthusiastic customers of an economy airline as 'snobs'). Interestingly Laker Airways went bankrupt the year before Wings was released.
dannyno
  • 14. dannyno | 07/01/2017
re: Note 3.

I think we might be a bit clearer about what we're looking at re: timescales.

1992 is 125 years from 1867, which is the Ardwick Bridge incident. But the song doesn't say, first, "I ended up in 1867". It says "1860s". Which could be any time from, er, 1860. The subsequent verse says "I ended up under Ardwick Bridge", it is true, but the two "ended up"s are not necessarily referring to the same time travel incident. He could have gone back to 1860 and then through a series of unfortunate events ended up under Ardwick Bridge. 125 years from "the 1860s" could therefore literally mean 1985, rather than 1992, but I wonder if the narrator is not just rounding up.

However, time clearly hasn't run normally. The narrator has not lived through time for 125 years. We are told, after all, that he was shot, which somehow sent him back to his original time stream.

If we can rule out, therefore, the idea that the narrator lived through a century and a quarter, we're still left with the problem of what it means to say "I've been there for 125 years".

Does it mean that somehow he was trapped in a 125 year groundhog day before managing to get himself shot and released from the trap?

Or, thinking about what happens when he gets shot, might it mean that he has "been there" in the sense of being buried there? I wonder if, when he's shot and hits the time lock again, in one time stream he is propelled forwards to the 1980s, and in another his body is buried. Otherwise he would be shot and just vanish, which you imagine would generate some adverse comment.

Or, more likely, is the line a throwaway that actually has no meaningful narrative function?
dannyno
  • 15. dannyno | 07/01/2017

An academic kneaded his chin
sat in the dust of some cheap magazines
His academic rust could not burn them up


This verse has always intrigued me, but I don't feel anyone has really looked at it closely enough. I suspect the "academic" is somebody we should know, maybe a figure from literature or an image from cinema, or a famous scientist or something. But it may be entirely MES's own invention. But it's just an odd image, a man with wings spying on an "academic". Why? What that academic? Who is it? It's somebody contemporary to the narrator. And we're told there's a "list of incorrect things". What's that? Is this something the narrator was going to sort out? Is the professor associated with that somehow?

We have this image of an academic sitting amidst lots of dusty "cheap magazines" (not academic journals, note, these seem to be popular publications - comics?), thinking. And is he trying to destroy them? Why? Is "academic rust" a reference to thermite with iron oxide, used as a pyrotechnic? Is it failing to set fire to the magazines? Or are the magazines a reference not to publications but to ammunition? Or does "academic rust" mean that the academic is old and tired, and is failing to "burn up" the magazines in the sense of read/consume them?
dannyno
  • 16. dannyno | 07/01/2017
Thinking about academics of the early 1980s who may have had a thing against magazines, one name leaps out - Frederic Wertham. He spent much of his career attacking the influence of comic books, and died in November 1981, just a few months before the debut of this song.

Is it being hinted, then, that the hovering be-winged narrator has taken revenge on the academic for his position, perhaps as a proxy for the pro-comics MES?

On the other hand, having taken a look at the newspapers of the time, there wasn't much UK coverage of Wertham's death.
dannyno
  • 17. dannyno | 07/01/2017
"Cheapo airline snobs"

Cobwebeyes in comment #13 links this line to Laker. The song debuted in March 1982, and Laker Airways went bankrupt in February, and you'd have to think that anyone hearing the line at the time would probably have thought of Laker. Is the implication that the gremlins brought down Laker?

But is the line about people who are snobbish against cheap air travel, or snobbish advocates of it? Surely the former would make more sense. In which case the gremlins target is a different one.

"Airline" was also an ITV television series which began in January 1982. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_(1982_TV_series)
bzfgt
  • 18. bzfgt | 04/02/2017
Antoine, sorry for the belated response, but first of all thanks for your excellent comments which are very valuable here. Secondly, the Lovecraft quote seems to use "flabby" in the same way as the song, on the other hand the Wyndham Lewis usage seems clearly to be the more usual sense of loose and fatty. The "flabby sky" line is really striking, though. Anyway, the juxtaposition of Lovecraft quotes is very suggestive!
bzfgt
  • 19. bzfgt | 04/02/2017
Great (long ago) by Martin, what a dramatic change when we get "flabby" and the riff to boot! It was already a good song but man the final iteration is a classic. I haven't listened to it in a coon's age and now I'm really blown away.

I agree it sounds more like "there is a list" and it makes more sense in a way since the lyrics are a narrative and not just a list. On the other hand I'm not sure exactly what that "there" means. In any case the bonus live version from "PBL" has "I made a list of incorrect things" which may be truer to the narrative, but the change gives the lyric as delivered a little more snap so in that sense it's the right move. Anyway I finally corrected it, I'm not sure where I've been on this page but I don't remember any of these comments, and I can see I've never commented here before my above comment a few minutes ago. Well, better late than never. I'm still going through the comments to see what I can do, but thanks to all of you for such excellent comments that really enhance this page.

If you guys are out there, I'm not entirely convinced by either "airline snobs comment," although MES surely is a fan of "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," I think we can assume.

Although there's not really much here to help us decide on the accuracy of the other reading, Cobwebeyes makes an interesting suggestion which makes me read the line not as before, "cheapo" airline snobs, but as "cheapo airline" snobs...this is suggestive but again, I'm not sure how it could be decided on without some sort of extra-textual evidence, like testimony from MES or a band member that he was referring to a cheapo airline.

And why Laker airlines specifically? There have been other no frills airlines, is there something particularly "Wings"-y about that one?
bzfgt
  • 20. bzfgt | 04/02/2017
Too bad Lovecraft is not an academic in any sense, and the narrator had not yet time traveled, I thought of him and his somewhat highbrow work (I mean that's a stretch but he was more of a literary author than any of his stablemates at Weird Tales, a "cheap magazine." But it could be a Lovecraft scholar, rare even now but probably already in existence in 1982...we'll never get much further without some sort of comment from MES or someone in the know, of course.

"Or, more likely, is the line a throwaway that actually has no meaningful narrative function?"

I don't like this. Even if MES was just riffing and wasn't sure what he meant, now that we have the text we have to treat it as an interpretable whole, I think. To some extent we would be warranted in making interpretive decisions even if MES wrote it in a trance and has no idea what it refers to. But again, there is not much to go on in lieu of some sort of statement from the author, so the more robust or daring interpretations are for this part of the page rather than the notes.
bzfgt
  • 21. bzfgt | 04/02/2017
Sorry for the flood of comments, I'm working my way through the above. Dan, we are assuming that the "academic rust" line is why you are assuming the academic is against magazines or comics. On the other hand, if it is a comic-studying academic the line would equally apply, as academics, like critics, are often accused of stultifying that which they survey. Surely there weren't as many pop culture studies in 1980s academia, but I think it must have existed already, no? I have a vague idea this sort of thing got started some time in the late 60s, but I can't really think of anything concrete offhand.
bzfgt
  • 22. bzfgt | 04/02/2017
In the version I'm listening to--Rotterdam 2/12/83--he says "PC sergeant." What is "PC"? "Police Constable" or something? Wouldn't that be a different rank from "sergeant" though?
dannyno
  • 23. dannyno | 04/02/2017
Bzfgt: re academic rust. Well, I'm just asking the question. But I do think "could not burn them up" would seem to suggest an arson attempt rather than "stultification". But I take your point. However, do we then agree that the academic is up to no good, in the eyes of "batman"/birdman? It's odd, isn't it, that we never find out quite what action is taken, if the academic is on "the list", unless not-burning is it...
dannyno
  • 24. dannyno | 04/02/2017
"pc sergeant", is contradictory, yes. I'd take it to mean "police sergeant".
lynelpoerie
  • 25. lynelpoerie | 20/03/2017
intrigued by the final verse where the narrator "sleeps in ditches hiding away from nosy kids"
Dr X O'Skeleton
  • 26. Dr X O'Skeleton | 17/05/2017
My take on the "list of incorrect things" is the health and safety checklist he's been given when buying his wings. Of course, he hasn't read it, he's just flying about enjoying himself
dannyno
  • 27. dannyno | 01/06/2017
I think it's more likely that familiar science fiction trope of using time travel to put history right. cf Stanislaw Lem's "The Star Diaries", and the story entitled "The Twentieth Voyage" therein. And numerous other examples.
dannyno
  • 28. dannyno | 05/07/2017
In comment #16 I speculated wildly that you could read the lyric as referring obliquely to Frederic Wertham. It wasn't a link that seemed particularly plausible.

So it is of interest to note that in "Gulcher", the book by Richard Meltzer that MES cited in his "Portrait of the Artist as a Consumer", NME 15 August 1981 [comfortably before the debut of this song], is the following passage (in the chapter titled "Those Pre-Code Tits").

There's at least two guys to blame for all these years and one's that Wertham character (the guy about how comics fuck up young minds), he was a real surly doodyface.


Image

So I think that marginally increases the plausibility that MES could have referred to Wertham, since he's in a book that MES seems to have read, but my wild interpretation remains a wild one.
egg
  • 29. egg | 24/09/2017
The video on the Perverted By Language Bis video contains a quick shot of a diagram or graph which, while almost unintelligible, gives some idea of what the "time lock" might be (and is presumably intended to explain or add to the song). The diagram should appear below:

https://i.imgur.com/5SC9LRj.jpg

The x-axis seems to be labelled "space" and some of the points on the axis are marked 5'50", 7'00, and 10'00". (Perhaps these are degrees of longitude or latitude.)

The y-axis has the label "time" and there are three labelled points on the axis: *•*, ZERO, and something I can't make out at all.

There are some bars on the graph, not really matching up with the labelled points on the axes, and next to the last bar there's some text which looks like it starts with "Ref:" (ie, it contains a reference to some other work. The text looks a bit like "Ref: Village voice see chap 3-4.". Could this refer to an article in the Village Voice (which doesn't have chapters, of course)? Perhaps I am just misreading it.).

Around the top of the bars is a series of years (with the label YEAR on the right): 1350 60 1900 1915 2030 1965 1995.

Above all of that is a kind of zigzag line, part of which is delimited with vertical dashes. On one end is 1869 and on the other 1982, and between that the text "KNOWLEDGE-SUMMIT". Above the delimited part is written "gap", and below the big zigzag there is a smaller replica (or it could be the letters "zir").

Then there's the title of the diagram, which looks something like:
SHEERY RELATIVITY © EDESSENS
CORP PLC LATE 30S PHYSICS TEST

Well, maybe someone with better eyes or a higher-resolution video can make out the text better, but the diagram does make it pretty clear that the "time lock" sent someone back from 1982 to 1869. Since some of the years listed are in the future (but not 1994, which would actually be 125 years after 1869), we might conclude that the narrator is speaking to us not from 1982 but from the future. Alternatively, the time lock has caused him to become "unstuck in time" (cf Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five), drifting around time periods without being able to settle in one. Since space and time are linked on the graph, the owner of the wings (with the suitable amount of stuffing) would presumably travel in time by flying from place to place. (The TV series "Sapphire and Steel", which covers themes like these, was broadcast exactly as the song was being developed.)

I still don't really understand why, in the song, it's so disastrous that the narrator can't return to the place where he bought his wings. It seems to make him completely destitute. Were other aspects of his life accidentally erased too, or did he want a refund?

(The video is also worth watching for Brix's extremely incongruous clothing and her attempts to distract MES from his perfunctory miming with goofy eye movements.)
dannyno
  • 30. dannyno | 25/09/2017
Quoted in the book Paintwork, an interview with Edwin Pouncey:


"Have you seen the Open University programmes?" he enthused, to [i[]Sounds[/i]' Edwin Pouncey. "They have a graph on the screen for about five minutes. I think that's fantastic. I thought it would be great to have something like that and just the music playing. Not flashing or anything, just a graph."
dannyno
  • 31. dannyno | 25/09/2017
Comment #29: "EDESSENS" - maybe "Einsteins"?

Whose handwriting is on the graph? Is it MES's, do we think?
dannyno
  • 32. dannyno | 25/09/2017
Comment #29 - what you have as "Village" looks like "Wings" to my eyes..

Difficult with the image lacking sharpness!

Dan
egg
  • 33. egg | 25/09/2017
Re comment #31: yes, of course it must be EINSTEINS! Staring at that blurry image is hard on the eyes. Also, yes, I'm almost completely sure it's MES's writing; apart from the fact that no-one else would be likely to have made the diagram, it looks like the writing you see on lots of the Fall sleeves from round that time. (Dragnet, Totale's Turns, and plenty of others.)
bzfgt
  • 34. bzfgt (link) | 11/11/2017
Yes MES's writing I'm pretty sure Definitely "Wings" not "Village." This stuff is great but I have no idea how to incorporate it in the notes, I will just mention that people need to "look under" on this one...
Hexen Blumenthal
  • 35. Hexen Blumenthal | 21/02/2018
A "Time Lock" occurs frequently in Doctor Who. http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Time_lock it is a meas to prevent temporal anomalies.
fall fan 50002
  • 36. fall fan 50002 | 28/02/2018
Re: “been here for for 125 years”, it seems relevant that when Wings resurfaced 25 years later he’d apparently been there for 150 years: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H86Eru5weAw
bzfgt
  • 37. bzfgt (link) | 10/03/2018
Ha, that has to be noted!
dannyno
  • 38. dannyno | 12/03/2018
egg, comment #29. I've been looking at the graph again.

I think "SHEERY RELATIVITY" is probably "THEORY RELATIVITY".
dannyno
  • 39. dannyno | 16/06/2018
From The Biggest Library Yet fanzine, #3: Morton Dunlop interview with MES, dated 28 November /1983.

WINGS

A gentleman, who, in the future, goes into a store which is experimentally selling wings. These have not been tested right ['therefore' symbol] he hits clouds + time-warps. By the time he gets home he's changed things too much.


Seems to be a quote from MES.
dom camella
  • 40. dom camella | 12/09/2018
there's a Star Trek (original series) episode called "The Naked Time" wherein the Enterprise, in an attempt to escape the gravity of a disintegrating planet, attempts a risky maneuver in which the engines are made to "implode" and they shoot away at a speed which is higher than ordinary warp drive would allow. they enter a "Time Warp," the clocks start to run backwards, and they end up 3 days in the past...

if MES uses the phrases "time lock" and "time warp" somewhat interchangably (as in the Biggest Library Yet fanzine interview, above) (see also the end of this video, from the Perverted by Language video collection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m2lfk4Bm34 ((skip to 4:30)) where Brix says "time warp" twice) maybe, probably, he saw that episode
:
dannyno
  • 41. dannyno | 17/09/2018
"Time warp" is not exactly a phrase unique to Star Trek, though, is it?
bzfgt
  • 42. bzfgt (link) | 13/10/2018
Yeah, I remember that episode. It could be the inspiration here, and then again maybe not...there needs to be some further link I think...
dannyno
  • 43. dannyno | 01/12/2018
"Flabby wings".

I can't believe we haven't got this recorded.

The sleevenotes to Hex Enduction Hour (released, lest we forget, on 8 March 1982 - ie before the first live performance of this song, and before the transformation from "webbed" to "flabby" recorded by Martin in comment #2 above) include this:


Never knew had so many friends till Venue. In awe. The fans were awed And cowered. Still needing the HEXAN school. Still bowing to: Mythical Thingy, and the fresh stool, at 'Venue' No decision equals 'consultation'. One True Sentence. On Morning Of It: Saw Flabby Wings and Ran cross frosty crusting of Plate glass, from the SKRIKKING KIDS, NOT FIT FOR: HEX END. -- the Big P.)


"One True Sentence" is from Hemingway, of course, but more to the point, this seems to suggest that MES "saw Flabby Wings" on the morning of the "Venue" gig, which was Monday, 7 December 1981. Whether that means the "flabby wings" were an object, or a phrase in a book, magazine or newspaper, remains a mystery.
dannyno
  • 44. dannyno | 01/12/2018
Oh, see comments 7 and 8 re: the "flabby wings" phrase on the front cover of Hex too! Doh!
jensotto
  • 45. jensotto | 13/04/2019
BBC Genome: searching for +MES -ME gives about 200 French-oriented results. Most common are "mes yeux" (my eyes) and "Si mes vers avaient des ailes" (If my songs had wings) - music by Reynaldo Hahn to a poem by Victor Hugo

See also Mess of My and Frenz (mes amis).
Orlando
  • 46. Orlando | 18/04/2019
Haven't read all this but I would suggest the story was either taken from or inspired by another Twilight Zone Episode.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Time_Like_the_Past
Orlando
  • 47. Orlando | 18/04/2019
On second thoughts, the story has a very different message and it is the 1880s not the 1860s.
dannyno
  • 48. dannyno | 05/05/2019
Comments #46 and #47.

It's also one of the TZ episodes which appears never to have been aired on UK TV as far as I can tell:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-kNkSuBelfvvtA_eiBLx8UoGA7JZiJHvedGn2-8euSk/edit#gid=0

Although MES could have watched some TZ episodes prior to visiting the US and meeting Brix, I don't think it's likely he saw this one before writing this song.

See also this thread on the FOF: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thefall/the-twilight-zone-and-the-fall-t23314-s68.html
dannyno
  • 49. dannyno | 11/01/2020
The (modern) Ardwick Bridge:

https://goo.gl/maps/iC6JWY5Bjcu76hBi8

<iframe src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!4v1578748017200!6m8!1m7!1sBKkcJ76z1jr99iGd5aLeag!2m2!1d53.46757517878074!2d-2.208379903355937!3f90.99812013342756!4f3.5190968332474597!5f0.7820865974627469" width="600" height="450" frameborder="0" style="border:0;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>

Stable image: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/53%C2%B028'02.8%22N+2%C2%B012'27.7%22W

Over on the right hand side you can just about see a memorial marker.

Here it is:

http://dannyno.org.uk/fall/fenian.jpghttp://dannyno.org.uk/fall/ardwickbridge.jpg

Google map link:

The Smashing of the Van:

http://dannyno.org.uk/fall/smashingvan.jpg
Brian
  • 50. Brian (link) | 16/01/2020
Regarding comment 15 about the moldering magazines, they are in fact, magical wings:

"The wings rot and feather under me
The wings rot and curl right under me"

After hitting the time lock, the speaker, once a nosy kid, has become the selfsame academic he once spied upon.
bzfgt
  • 51. bzfgt (link) | 19/01/2020
Wait yeah I think you're onto something, the academic is him
dannyno
  • 52. dannyno | 03/02/2020
Interesting idea, and the first new angle on that verse in a while.

Is the time travel aspect not accidental? It seems the narrator bought the wings just to fly about with. It's only the damage that causes him to be flung backwards in time.

And becoming an academic feels like a form of material success, doesn't it? Whereas he's sleeping in ditches at the end of the song.

On the other hand, there is the early mention of a "list of incorrect things" (with its echoes of Stanislaw Lem, see comment #27).

Anyway, I do like the idea.
dannyno
  • 53. dannyno | 22/03/2020
Comment #28 and the Meltzer/Wertham thing.

Turns out that Meltzer and MES were friends:

The Fall
By Richard Meltzer
Seattle Weekly
Monday, October 9, 2006
https://web.archive.org/web/20200322194850/https://www.seattleweekly.com/music/the-fall/


From 1979 to somewhere in the mid-’80s, me and Mark Smith of the Fall, the second greatest band of the late 20th century, were (let’s call us) friends. We hung out when he was in town. We corresponded. He was a very funny guy.
bzfgt
  • 54. bzfgt (link) | 27/03/2020
52: Yeah but when he got back his university was gone, so he had to hit the ditches.

53: were they? What's with "(let's call us)"?
dannyno
  • 55. dannyno | 03/09/2020

Hovered mid-air outside a study
An academic kneaded his chin
sat in the dust of some cheap magazines
His academic rust could not burn them up


I was just reading Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. In the chorus from the prologue:


So soon he profits in divinity,
The fruitful plot of scholarism graced,
That shortly he was graced with doctor's name,
Excelling all whose sweet delight disputes
In heavenly matters of theology;
Till swoln with cunning of a self-conceit
His waxen wings did mount above his reach,
And, melting, heavens conspired his overthrow;
For, falling to a devilish exercise,
And glutted more with learning's golden gifts,
He surfeits upon cursèd negromancy;
Nothing so sweet as magic is to him,
Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss:
And this the man that in his study sits.


And in Faustus' final speech:


My God, my God, look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!
Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!
I'll burn my books!−Ah, Mephistophilis!


Then he's led off by the devils.

So there's something of an echo there, inserting a bit of a kind of Faustus character in the narrative. But not an intended one?

Dan
dannyno
  • 56. dannyno | 03/09/2020
Marlowe, of course, is alluding to Icarus' "waxen wings".

Dan
dannyno
  • 57. dannyno | 04/09/2020
Another example of seeing things that aren't there. But as MES once said, who says they aren't there?

Anyway, the lyric does have a Faustian theme, somewhat.
dannyno
  • 58. dannyno | 10/09/2020
There's a Philip K. Dick short story titled Stability, written in 1947. Here's the first sentence of wikipedia's synopsis:


Robert Benton, through the use of his gigantic, detachable white wings, leaps off a roof and flies into the darkness of the night sky.


I've noticed a suggestion that this could have been an inspiration for Wings.

But that would be impossible.

The reason it is impossible is that, as the wikipedia page states, that although written in 1947 the story remained unpublished until it was included in volume I of The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick (1987).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_(short_story)
dannyno
  • 59. dannyno | 15/01/2021
Comment #53 and comment #54, on MES' friendship with Richard Meltzer.

I quoted Meltzer.

Here's another piece of the jigsaw, from "The Prestwich Horror and Other Strange Stories", interview by Edwin Pouncey, Sounds magazine, 31 January 1981:


A number of influences and connections are run through during the course of the conversation, subjects as diverse as Mark's pen pal relationship with journalist cum Blue Oyster Cult lyricist Richard Meltzer...
Mark
  • 60. Mark | 30/01/2021
Re. "Time lock"

I should be noted that a "time lock" is also a writing technique used to either add or form impetus to a piece.

"The train is rolling in with the bad guys at noon"... "the bomb goes off in eight hours"... "there's only an hour's worth of air in this submarine" (Lew Hunter's Screenwriting 434)

Almost certainly not what MES was going for but it's likely he would have been aware of the theory.
gappy
  • 61. gappy | 14/02/2021
Apologies if I've missed this in the discussion above, but I was just reading Philip K Dick's Valis, and towards the end of chapter 3's complex ontological discussion based around the lead character Horselover Fat's (thinly disguised PKD, I guess) exegesis, there's a little section about a line from Gurnemanz in Wagner's Parsifal, "You see, my son, here time turns into space". (Translator of the original German unknown, perhaps PKD himself).

It's a bit mystifying out of context - hell, it's a bit mystifying in context - but I'll reproduce a few paras here. Valis was published in 1981, and the trilogy was completed in 1982, so it seems feasible MES may have read it,, as we know he read PKD; I have no idea whether it got a UK distribution, of course, that's the sort of thing I'll rely on Dan to address ;)
***
(The whole landscape becomes indistinct. A forest ebbs out and a wall of rough rock ebbs in, through which can be seen a gateway. The two men pass through the gateway. What happened to the forest? The two men did not really move; they did not go anywhere, and yet they are not now where they originally were. Here time turns into space. Wagner began Parsifal in 1845. he died in 1873, long before Hermann Minkowski postulated four-dimensional space-time (1908). The source-basis for Parsifal consisted of Celtic legends, and Wagner's research into Buddhism for his never-written opera about the Buddha to be called The Victors (Die Sieger). Where did Richard Wagner get the notion that time could turn into space?)

And if time can turn into space, can space turn into time?

In Mircea Eliade's book Myth and Reality one chapter is titled "Time Can Be Overcome." It is a basic purpose of mythic ritual and sacrament to overcome time. Horselover Fat found himself thinking in a language used two thousand years ago, the language in which St. Paul wrote. Here times turns into space
dannyno
  • 62. dannyno | 15/02/2021
I could buy a reversal of Valis. There was certainly a 1981 UK edition (Corgi).
dannyno
  • 63. dannyno | 20/06/2021
Over on the Fantastic Life page, Ivan (comment #37) says he hears "here is a list of incorrect things" rather than "there is..." and notes that there are early live versions with "I made a list"..

This is relevant because of Ivan's comment #34 over on that page:


On the In A Hole version, one of the 'fantastic lies' is a reference to the US Civil War veterans involved in the Irish Republican incident under Ardwick Bridge (the Manchester Martyrs). In the track Wings, one item on the 'list of incorrect things' is a reference to the same incident.


My response was that the song doesn't actually say what is on the list of incorrect things (whoever wrote it), and that since the narrator only ends of travelling through time due to an accident, it's no obvious that the list is anything to do with the narrator at all - it's not, apparently, as though the wings have been bought in order to travel time correcting the incorrect things, he just seems to have bought them to fly around with. The list line is not followed up on at all.

If course, you can interpret it how you like, and Ivan's reading would tie the story up quite neatly and I enjoy the suggestion. It's just not what the lyric says.

However, if the lyric is "I made a list..." or "Here is a list...", then Ivan's reading looks more plausible.

But I've just listened again to the studio version, and I still hear "There is..."
dannyno
  • 64. dannyno | 20/06/2021
In terms of live versions.

The following are undoubtedly "I made a list":

Hammersmith Palais, 25 March 1982
Brunel Rooms, Swindon, 26 March 1982

Which suggests to me that the narrator's intentions may originally have been explained more fully. But the actual time travel always seems to have been accidental, so whatever the list was, it's not clear it was the reason for buying the wings. But as often feels the case, it seems the text we have may have been boiled down from something longer, and Ivan may be right about the nature of the story in that. But the lyric as we have it doesn't assist us.

Manchester Poly on the 27th sounds like "there is..."

As does Edinburgh Nite Club, 2 April 1982.

And so on.
dannyno
  • 65. dannyno | 20/06/2021
At Eindhoven 9 April 1982, MES sings "here is the list of incorrect things".

But at Derby Blue Note 28 April, we're back to "there is a list..."
bzfgt
  • 66. bzfgt (link) | 02/07/2021
Yeah. I need to go through Ivan's comments about this carefully at some point. I'm not sure I agree that this much hinges on "here is..." vs. "there is...", though "I made a list" is suggestive in that it seems more flow-y narratively. I need to check out the live FL with Ardwick Bridge....to be continued
dannyno
  • 67. dannyno | 08/08/2021

There is a list of incorrect things

Hovered mid-air outside a study
An academic kneaded his chin
sat in the dust of some cheap magazines
His academic rust could not burn them up


The details are not completely in accord, and it's not a story about time travel (which often feature lists of things which are to be changed or put right, as previously noted) but in Philip K. Dick's Time Out of Joint, the discovery of a stash of telephone directories and magazines (one featuring photographs of Marilyn Monroe, who doesn't exist in the protagonists' world) is a key plot point.

One of the characters also makes a list of facts, drawn from the directories and magazines, which he uses to identify anomalies.

Deliberate nod, or a coincidence? The lines about lists of incorrect things and someone going through magazines don't have any particular narrative function in the lyric.
Michael Nath
  • 68. Michael Nath (link) | 07/08/2022
I hear 'flabby wings' as close to the 'flaggy wings' of Time In Spenser's Faerie Queene (Garden of Adonis).
dannyno
  • 69. dannyno | 14/08/2022
Michael Nath, comment #68.

"Flaggy" means the same thing as "flabby", so, yeah.
dannyno
  • 70. dannyno | 14/08/2022
And, by the way, I'm hoping you're the Michael Nath.
Tony Renner
  • 71. Tony Renner | 17/01/2023


"Bugs is found reclining on a piece of ordnance next to a bomber plane, idly reading Victory Through Hare Power and laughing uproariously at the book’s claim that gremlins wreck American planes through "diabolical sabotage." He immediately encounters one of the creatures, who is experimentally striking the unfused nose of a bomb Bugs is sitting on with a mallet to the tune of “I've Been Working on the Railroad."
Xyralothep's cat
  • 72. Xyralothep's cat | 15/04/2023
It's not "by such things, the moon gains on me" at 3.20 it's "by sixty feet, the moon gains on me" a bit muffled on the double track.
Live versions bear this out, especially brix on this one https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=5VrKnA2WBTk&feature=share
The uurop v111 lp version has 50 ft., presumably the moon was getting closer
Xyralothep's cat
  • 73. Xyralothep's cat | 15/04/2023
Re comments 50/51
In the first version w the different tune, the academic is a writer, so there's some credence to this point
Xyralothep's cat
  • 74. Xyralothep's cat | 16/04/2023
Also the second small alteration bit 3.45 is "cast time into space" not turn
Xyralothep's cat
  • 75. Xyralothep's cat | 16/04/2023
Re 74 I mean on the single version
Xyralothep's Cat
  • 76. Xyralothep's Cat | 17/04/2023
Of interest to track the early drafts of the lyric, some details lost or changed. The writer picking his chin (surely a self-portrait), the red panes, weekend magazines, Lufthansa plane...
This is the Hammersmith version on the PBL double disc;

Purchased a pair of webbed wings
I took to doing some hovering
I made a list of incorrect things
Stayed mid-air outside a study
And through the red panes
A writer picked his chin
I sent in some weekend magazines/????????/?????????/??????????
Recruited some gremlins
I paid them off from the winged fluff

When I ????? I hit a time lock
When I dropped hit time lock
Hit time lock
Went back to the 1920s
I’ve been waiting there for 60 years
Paid the gremlins with stuffing
Paid the gremlins with stuffing
A small alteration of the past
Turns big as time fits space
Small touches transform a decade
So I sleep in ditches
And hide away from nosy kids
I’ve got these fucking wings underneath me
I’ve got these fucking wings underneath me
Flabby wings
Flabby wings
Flabby wings
Flabby wings

Implication that the wings aren't flabby til they've been misused
Xyralothep's Cat
  • 77. Xyralothep's Cat | 17/04/2023
Band on the wall 3rd May
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpnnX6vXwng

Purchased a pair of webbed wings
I took to doing some hovering
Here’s the list of incorrect things
I hovered mid-air outside a study
An academic kneaded his chin
I pushed in the red panes
I shoved some weekend magazines in
His dust and fluff could not burn them up
Recruited some gremlins
Paid them off with stuffing from my wings
We brought down a Lufthansa plane
The stuffing lost made me really fucked up
I ended up in ? park
I’ve been under Belle Vue bridge
I’ve been there for 60 years
A small alteration of the past can turn time into space
Shop does no longer exist
I went back there, it is not there
Wings
Wings
Wings
A small alteration of time can turn space back round
God save us from space bores
So I sleep under ditches
And hide away from nosy kids
And the wings rot and curl under me
The wings rot and feather under me
Wings
Wings
Xyralothep's Cat
  • 78. Xyralothep's Cat | 17/04/2023
Band on the Wall 5th May 82
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2A9BH9CWPM

Purchased a pair of flabby wings
I took to doing some hovering
Here is a list of incorrect things

I hovered mid-air outside a study
An academic kneaded his chin
I threw some weekend magazines in
I bust in the red panes
His fluster and fluff
Could not join them up

Recruited some gremlins
Paid them off with stuffing from my wings
We brought down a Lufthansa plane
But I’m stuck under Belle Vue bridge
I’ve been there since 1920
I’ve been there for 60 years

A small alteration of the past can turn time into space
[Bv. Flabby wings, Flabby wings]

So I sleep under bridges
And hide away from nosy kids
When I went back to the shop with the wings
That shop did not exist
So I sleep under ditches
And hide away from nosy kids
The wings rot and curl under me
The wings curl, rot under me
A small alteration of time
Can turn space into days
And a small touch can alter a decade
Wings
Wings
Xyralothep's Cat
  • 79. Xyralothep's Cat | 17/04/2023
small alteration;
based on the above I think "sat in the dust of some cheap magazines" should be "sent in" on the finished lyric
Bernard
  • 80. Bernard | 12/11/2023
But, when I got back, the place I made the purchase no longer exists; I'd erased it under the bridge.


I've read stories with the concept of a magical shop where the protagonist buys a cursed item, and they go back to try to return it only to find the shop isn't there any more. not sure if that's what he was going for here (the bit about the bridge doesn't fit), but does anyone know where that originated?
dannyno
  • 81. dannyno | 05/03/2024
Bernard, comment #80.

According to TV Tropes (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday), the disappearing shop device goes back at least as far as HG Wells (they cite The Crystal Egg (1897) and The Magic Shop (1903)).

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