Wings

 (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

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.

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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"

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7. Ardwick is a district in Manchester.

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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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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:



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