Colin Irwin takes the tundra trail in Iceland and points north in pursuit
of The Fall. Pics by Tom Sheehan.
It came like a rapist at the dead of night. No threat, no warning,
no preamble. .. Heimaey slept on, its people blissfully cocooned in their
homes against the fearful January snow. Even the drunks didn t make it out
that night.
There was a low rumble that grew, with frightening determination, into an
intimidating growl, and then a full-blooded roar, The earth began to quake
violently, the ground swelled like a huge balloon, and then ripped open.
Huge flurries of fire, smoke and cinders belched into the sky, and the mile-long
split in the ground began to vomit cascades of white hot lava which instantly
began to seep towards the houses of the town.
Heimaey was aroused with staggering speed. Police cars and fire trucks raced
around the streets, sirens wailing; people dashed from house to house to
awaken their neighbours; and within minutes of the eruption, entire families
had abandoned all their belongings to be shunted on to boats in the harbour
taking them to the mainland.
Later, planes and helicopters converged on the town to speed the rescue
operation, and the entire population of Heimaey was evacuated to Reykjavik
in hours, save for rescue workers and screaming animals. The volcano merely
exploded more and more lava and continued to do so for months in its remorseless
destruction of the island ...
The members of a (sort of) rock band from Manchester called The Fall listened
to the story in silent awe. It made their tales of riots in Mosside seem
pretty inconsequential. Ah, but the Icelanders are a resilient race, said
our host. Bred on karma and legends, they fervently believe that disaster
signals a brave new beginning. Eight years on the people are back in Heimaey,
the harbour is bigger and better, the town has been rebuilt, and the houses
will be heated for the next 50 years from the still-warm lava. The Fall look
wide-eyed, buy their postcards, and retreat to their booze. It makes you
feel humble in Iceland ...
The whole idea was comically absurd, of course. I mean, Iceland...
jeezus, even bloody XTC - World Travels Unlimited - haven’t pulled that
one yet. And the Fall, savagely dismantling orthodox concepts of rock music
with their jagged thrashes and vitriolic lyrics, don’t exactly strike
the chord as pioneering ambassadors for Britain.
But in Iceland - where the singles chart is currently topped by Rick Springfield
and the albums by Leo Sayer - there exists a coterie of Fall freaks with
enough clout, commitment, and ingenuity to bring them over for a three-gig
tour - only the fourth British band to visit the Arctic in three years. The
others? The Clash, Stranglers, Any Trouble.
“Any Trouble. Any Trouble?!!” spits guitarist Marc Riley
in abject horror. “God please forvive us. Please forgive Manchester.”
The folk writer, meanwhile, appalling ignorant of lceland’s proximity
to the North Pole (too many copies of Parade under the desk during geography)
tumbles off the plane at Keflavik Airport in tee-shirt and smiles, and
immediately has an attack of pneumonia. The wind slices the body in two,
numbs the duty-free in the veins, and instantly devastates s year’s
worth of hangovers.
Out of the airport, past the massive American naval base that’s angrily
resented by most Icelanders, hit the road to Reykjavik, and it looks like
the moon - all craters, lava, and mountains. “Actually,”
says Einar, student, singer with an outstanding post-punk band called Purrkur
Pilnikk, and chairman of the.welcoming committee, “the Apollo space
team came here to practise for landing on the moon.” Einar, who speaks
with an accent wholly more comprehensible than that of my Mancunian companions
continues to give us a compelling insight into the quirks of Icelandic life.
There’s no alcoholic beer (“They don’t want the Icelandic
drunk - so they sell you spirits instead so you get drunker”); no trees;
no unemployment; no telly on Thursdays (or in July!); cigarettes are £1.30
a pack; and concerts have a 100 decibel limit that’s enforced by officious
chaps with toilet paper in their ears waving decibel meters over their heads.
“Eh?” says Kay Carroll, the Fall’s magnificently abrasive
manager, “No booze, no trees, no telly, no cigarettes, and blokes walking
round with toilet rolls sticking out of their ears - what kind of a place
is this?”
“Listen, we’re the Fall,” shouts Marc Riley, with a twinge
of desperation. “Not the Fall’s roadies, the Fall. We’re famous
in England, honest. I get me head kicked in for being famous at home.”
We are standing late at night in pitch darkness in the middle of some rough
old road outside of Reykjavik, grappling not only with the bitter cold but
a large, inordinately heavy makeshift stage that had suddenly, mysteriously
appeared in our headlights. It is, it transpires the stage for the following
night’s show at theHotel Borg in another part of town, and well, they
need a bit of help putting it up. Next thing we know the Fall are sweating
like navvies erecting their own stage. And they’d only popped out for
a sherbert.
“You better not write about this,” says Riley, “it’s
not good for our image. We’re meant to be bleak and industrial.”
“Is the stage high enough?” asks Einar, when we’ve eventually
got it up. “Yeah, we’re an ugly bunch - nobody wants to see us.”
“I saw New Order in Oslo,” continues Einar, “and they played
in a pit.”
“Best place for’em,” says Craig Scanlon sourly. He quickly
regrets it and is anxious for me to know he feels New Order are one of the
few groups that are okay. “We used to know Joy Division you know. We
wore really shocked when Ian Curtis died. Really shocked.”
A portly midget stumbles over. “Ingelish?” he enquires, grinning.
“Don’t mention the cod war,” says drummer Paul Henley.
“Mar-carrot Tasher?” beams the midget. We look at him. We look
at each other. “I think he meant Margaret Thatcher,” Riley concludes
finally. “Oh, we don’t talk about her,” says Paul.
“Mar-carrot Tasher,” repeats the midget hopefully. “No - me
social democrat,” says Paul.
The midget breaks into a grin more exaggerated than an Allen Jones anecdote.
“Me social democrat also.” He pumps Paul’s hand vigorously.
“Only joking,”says Paul. The midget continues to pump his hand.
“You’ve done it now,” says Marc, “the social democrats
here are probably the fascist party.” Paul is still attempting to extricate
his hand. “Who...who...who won the cod war, then?” he eventually
bellows triumphantly. “Er...I think they did actually,”
says Marc.
Mark E. Smith, lead singer with the Fall, spent the night drinking schnaps
until it come out of his ears, repaired to a disco called Hollywood that
looked like a Thirties nightclub in Berlin, bopped alone on the dance floor,
loudly abused the disc-jockey for repeatedly playing “Stars On
45” and their ilk, and collapsed, fully-clothed, into a coma at
the Hotel Esjna. It was a good first night.
They start leaving halfway through the second number. Not in embarrassing
numbers, but enough to make breathing considerably easier at the Turkish
bath clubroom at the Borg. That day’s Dagbladid newspaper had come out
with a front-page picture of the Fall announcing BRITISH RAW ROCKERS ARRIVE
IN ICELAND, and the general lack of live music in Reykjavik - British or
otherwise - had inspired a virtual sell-out. But it sounds as if Mark
Smith is singing through a megaphone, the band are tense and tame, and the
audience becomes increasingly possessed by a demon madness frequently blamed
on them being descended from a bunch of Irish monks, but is probably more
to do with the vodka they consume in copious quantities (costing an arm and
a leg per shot).
One of the demonsgoes straight to the front of the stage, puts his face an
inch from Mark Smith’s and attempts (unsuccessfully) to stare
him out. Another bounds up, grabs the mike, and shouts “Icelanders are
happy - why are you unhappy?” Mark just glares at him and goes
into “Hip Priest”. Another guy gets his head caved in during a
fight on the steps of the hotel.
“It looks like a funeral parlour here,” says one of the hosts in
the dressing room afterwards, observing the deathly silence.”Yeah,
well,” says Kay, “we just played 50 minutes - what d’you want,
another show or something?”
Someone says something about the Fall inspiring a lot of curiosity. “Yeah,
that’s our main strength,” says Mark. “People coming to have
a look. Thank God there’s a lot of nosy people around.”
I ask Mark if it depresses him when people walk out on Fall gigs with such
regularity. “It depends for what reason, and I can usually suss out
the reason. Sometimes it’s because we’re dead lame - I’ll
admit that.” “Punk was very prophetic in a way, because it gave
people instant stimulation. Four years later people are really into that
- they just won't bother now. They won’t listen to anything through.
Which is why you get all these fucking Stars On 45 things - you
couldn’t have got away with it a few years ago. People now just want
quick gratification. Punk made people ready for it - the jokey disrespect.
And now it’s like the outside market’s caught up.
Mark, Kay, and a couple of the hosts are having an argument about the American
base. The Yanks deny it, of course, but the word is they hold nuclear weapons
at Keflavik, and while the servicemen are only allowed into the town at strictly
regulated times, their presence is regarded much as a mouth ulcer. It’s
said that even the new lady president Vigdis Finnbogadotiir, revered in Iceland,
has campaigned against the American base. With typical perversity, Mark E.
Smith defends them. He likes Americans, says that none of them are ready
for a war, so they’ve got to indulge in this game of elaborate bluff
so the Russkies don’t get any ideas. “I think,” he says, building
up to the ultimate pay-off, “if the Russians invaded Britain, then I’d
kill Russians.”
Mark decided to go for a coffee in the cafe across the road. He tripped,
and tumbled across a pile of tables. Nobody laughed. Nobody got upset. Nobody
blinked. They thought he was a drunk. It happens all the time in
Iceland...
One of the support bands at the Fall’s second Hotel Borg gig is a punk
band called C4U fronted by two ladies dressed in black suspenders and not
a great deal else. One of the ladies whips off the remnants of her top as
the screams into the mike.
“She’s not shy is she?”observes Paul Hanley, viewing her
intently” One couldn’t disagree.
A hulking trawlerman wades into the audience during the Fall’s set and
is leapt upon by half a dozen skinheads. He just marches on, dragging them
with him. Another guy barges to the front of the stage and hurls a chair
at Mark Smith - “I’d vibed him out, he only did it because he liked
you,” says Kay afterwards.
The Fall played magnificently that night. Made us all feel good. The hosts
were well chuffed. Threw a party for us. Mark Smith buried himself in the
record collection, and honed in on Lou Reed and Peter Hammill.
“I don’t,” he said, in answer to the inevitable query,
“listen to much new wave.”
The “lads”, Smith’s collective term for the rest of the Fall - are writing a postcard to their local in Manchester. “What shall I put?” says Marc Riley. “Let’s see,” ponders Grant, their sound man and token Londoner, “no beer. freezing cold, the water stinks, no telly on Thursdays, Icelanders fall over at least twice day, and the national pastime is crashing motor cars. Wish you were here.”
One day we drive up into the mountains - it’s impossible to drive far
without going into the mountains (the alternatives include day trips
to Greenland and a visit to a whaling station). Our hosts play us tapes of
a man with a cracked voice and a Dylanish air and describe him as “the
father of Icelandic rock’n’roll”. And they tell us the story
of Megas, who ridiculed the sacred Sagas of the land, wrote scathing, surreal
lyrics, got heavily into booze and drugs, was barred from radio and shunned
by society. In 1979 he released a double album called “Plans For
Suicide” announced his retirement, and hasn’t performed in public
since he’s now a dock worker.
Mark Smith is entranced by the story, and rivetted by the music., The following
day Megas, a pale, gaunt figure, turns up at The Fall’s concert at the
Austurboejarbio and shakes him by the hand. Mark will return to England clutching
a parcel of Megas records under his arm.
Right, no dicking about, let’s get set up - we’ve wasted enough
money already,” Mark Smith yells at at his “lads” as we shamble
into the recording studio.
“What’s he going to do, then?” asks Tony, the English
engineeer” Don’t ask me - he never tells anyone what he’s
doing.” says Kay, watching assorted Falls tinkling abstractly on various
instruments.
The Fall eventually rattle out two tracks - the mildly funky “Look
Know” and the weird haunting “Hip Priest” - both on first
takes. Everyone holds their breath on playback and looks expectantly at Mark,
who’d been pacing the floor outside. Mark just mutters “it’s
okay”, and we all start grinning.
Mark then announces they will try a new song. Craig patters out a tune on
the piano, Marc Riley starts to play banjo, making it sound like a sitar,
and you suddenly recognise the abstract tinkering they’d done earlier.
“Is he going to sing?” asks the engineer. Kay didn’t know.
Grant goes to find out. “He’s going to play a cassette first, and
then he’s going to sing,” says Grant. The engineer scarcely blinks.
“I see,” he says. “A cassette. I do like these easy
sessions.”
Mark plays his cassette - of the wind howling against his hotel room window
- and launches into the verbals... “To be humbled in Iceland ... sing
of legend sing of destruction...witness the last of the Godmen...hear about
Megas Jonsson...to be humbled in Iceland...sit in the gold room...fall down
flat in the Cafe Iol...without a glance from the clientele...the coffee black
as well...and be humbled in Iceland...”
No, we didn’t know what he was going to do either,” says Riley
in a state of euphoria later. “He just said he needed a tune, something
Dylanish, and we knocked around on the piano in the studio and came up with
that. But we hadn’t heard the words until he suddenly did them. We did
‘Fit And Working’ on ‘Slates’ in exactly the same way.Yeah,
I suppose it is amazing really...”
A huge trawlerman knocks Paul Hanley’s chair from under him, sending
the drummer flying. Paul’s on his feet in a second, fists raised...then
checks the trawlerman’s size, alcoholic state and the fact that he probably
eats drummers for breakfast, and international diplomacy rules. Meanwhile
a Fall record is played over the PA and clears the disco floor in seconds.
The interviewer from the Socialist Party asks Mark E. Smith how much he’s
being paid for playing in Iceland. Mark laughs out loud, puts his face
conspiratorially close to the interviewer’s, and tells him it’s
none of his goddamn business.
The guy asks him instead about Manchester and Factory Records. “Factory
are the other side of town - the university side,” says Mark
cryptically. The interviewer looks quizzical.
“When we started the Manchester scene was the Nosebleeds, the Drones,
and Slaughter and the Dogs, they come and go. But it’s like Joy Division,
who were a very good group, but they could have come from Paris or America,
or anywhere.”
“Do you like New Order?”
“No.”
“What do you think about the Clash and Siouxsie and the Banshees?”
“Not very much.”
“Do you like the Rolling Stones?”
“Yeah ... the early stuff.”
The Fall’s last gig in Iceland is a matinee performance for an audience
of teenyboppers in a medium-sized cinema, supported by the splendid Purrkur
Pillnikk. Thev listen to the Fall in bewildered bemusement - some walk out,
the rest gaze in silence and stamp for more at the end, as if determined
to convince themselves they’re into it. The honours are even.
The Fall decide Iceland is fab.
That night we sit in my hotel room discussing the vagaries of the record
industry, for which Mark has always seemed to hold a healthy contempt. He
says the best two bands he’s ever seen are the Worst and the Prefects,
both of whom never got signed up, yet announces that, contrary to popular
belief he has nothing against being signed to a major label even though
“most A&R men make journalists look like super-brains”. He
even admits he rather fancies the power of a hit single, and that “Totally
Wired” was actually conceived as a potential hit, though Rough Trade
didn’t see it the same way.
“I’m not against record companies at all. Independents are no
different. They’re just like big record companies with less facilities,
and they wear different clothes.”
He has even less sympathy with the Crass alternative, despite admitting a
fondness for their music, if not their lyrics.
“Crass attack people who play on emotions and that’s exactly what
they do. Kid’s emotions. It’s a badge innit? I like
to see a kid in a Motorhead tee-shirt, but I worry about a kid in a Crass
tee-shirt. That sort of mass equality thing freaks me out, after a while
you end up not being a person.
“Crass reminds me of when I was very heavily into left wing politics
when I was about 17. I got really psychotic about it, about sexism and all
that. Anybody who doesn’t agree with you is like a fucking lackey. You
realize in the end it’s your own inadequacies that gear you towards
that in the first place.”
I ask him if he has any time for the supposedly political bands like Gang
Of Four.
“No actually I find Bushell’s mob a lot more stimulating politically,
I really do. That’s a more honest political statement than anything
else going down. I think it’s a genuine statement. And it’s
a lot more convincing than the Gang Of Four will ever be. It says a lot about
England that music.”
“The talent is somewhere else, but it’s not in the Gang Of Four.
The Gang Of Four are never going to do anything positive. Those skinheads
aren’t taken in by shit like the Gang Of Four and that’s a positive
plus to them.”
But it’s dangerous ...
“Of course it’s dangerous, but so is the English working class.
The 4-Skins are more relevant to what’s going on in the country, no
matter what they play like, than the Gang Of Four’s songs about Chinks
in 1951 and all this, man. It’s more true, man, and it’s probably
as good musically...”
The Fall spend their last night in Iceland drinking wine at an up-market
disco that requires various borrowed trousers, shoes and shirts to gain entry.
Mark E. Smith once again takes to the disco floor, bopping alone to some Icelandic
version of Abba.
He wants to take a glass of wine outside to our long-suffering coach driver,
who’d spent the week parked outside various houses in the middle
of the night waiting to take drunken Englishmen back to their hotel. The doorman
- a stern bow-tie - begins to get angry. Mark E. Smith begins to get very angry.
“Listen,” he explodes, “there’s a boy out there who’s
been very kind to us this week and I’d like to take him a drink.”
The heavies start to muscle in. They start barking. We feel like errant schoolkids.
We all depart ignominiously. The coach driver says he didn’t want a drink
anyway.
It makes you feel humble in Iceland ...
Moonscape: Einar 0rn