Ever been held hostage in a dressing room with your parents? Ever been thrown off the bus in the middle of a Swedish forest or abandoned at a foreign airport? Ever been asked to play at one of the UK’s biggest music festivals with musicians you’ve just met who are covered in blood, or taken part in a ‘recording session’ in a speeding Transit? If so, you’ve probably been in The Fall.

Dave Simpson made it his mission to track down everyone who has ever played in Britain’s most berserk, brilliant group, The Fall. He uncovers a changing Britain, tales of madness and genius, and wreaks havoc on his personal life.

Dave Simpson writes on music and the arts for the Guardian newspaper from an isolated base in the North of England. He has been a fan of the Fall since 1979, and once admitted to hating the Beatles.

Bookgeeks’ own Simon Parker asked him for his thoughts on Mark E Smith’s musical circus:

Our obligatory opening question: are you a bookgeek?

I’m well on the way to becoming one.

How come so many of the Fallen sound so well adjusted having worked in MES’ lunatic maelstrom?

I think the analogy is with troops in the Vietnam or Afghan wars. Once you bring them home, they stop killing people. Usually.

How come none of them have any done anything else musically worthwhile?

I don’t think that’s true. Simon Rogers (hugely respected classical musician who was in the late 80s Fall) has done tons of stuff, from BBC orchestrations to producing the recent Lightning Seeds album. Steve Trafford is playing with Paul Heaton. Brix had her band The Adult Net. Martin Bramah did the fantastic Blue Orchids and has now formed a band called Factory Star with the Hanley brothers. Adrian Flanagan has various projects. Etc etc. All very much worthwhile. Maybe some had had enough of the business. Maybe others were never that interested – they were footsoldiers recruited from the pub who returned to the pub.

Where do you stand on the Paul Morley – “what if he’s just a drunk” argument?

It’s an interesting point of view and I think every Fall fan will have asked themselves that question at some point. But then you open a Pandora’s Box like Grotesque or Perverted by Language and you think ‘What kind of intelligence is going on here?’

Do you reckon MES ever switches off and when he gets into his suburban semi is normal, or is he always on?

According to people like Dave Tucker (who also plays on, in the jazz/avant garde field, incidentally) and Eric The Ferret (who manages John Cooper Clark), Mark never switches off. “24/7…. he is that guy…. what you see is what you get” says The Ferret. They spent enough time around him to know. Brix says the same, and she was of course married to Mark.

Why them, why no-one else, such devotion? For fans for the Fallen – some of them were treated appallingly but still love him. Why?

Funnily enough a few of us were talking about this last night and an analogy was made to battered wives who return to the violent husband. They keep on going back. Why? Because it’s a nice house, because there is a level of security there, because he doesn’t treat them like that all the time, because there are moments of warmth and in those moments they think ‘That’s the real him. Only I see this. I can get him to be like that all the time.’ Not to compare MES to an abusive husband!! But you get the drift. In the Fall’s case, the appeal is being part of a national institution… it’s like being in the army, you expect to be shot at but at the end you pull a woollie over your injuries and remember the camaraderie and the campaigns. And look at your medals. There’s a certain military leader/disciplinarian father aspect to Mark. You want to do well for him like you would Brian Clough or Napoleon (who MES has dressed up as, in a video, incidentally). Almost every Fallen I spoke to said that if Mark called they’d do it again in a shot. Even Kay Carroll, who is in her 60s and living in Oregon. Also, it’s never as simple as being treated ‘appallingly.’ On many occasions, they were and are treated extremely well.

Do you think its artistic bravery or a form of cowardice to plough the same furrow over and over and to so deliberately turn your back so often just as real success is round the corner?

Brix suggests he would do that. I’m not 100% sure. You’d have to ask Mark. There’s definitely an element of shunning commerciality. With that voice he could have made a fortune doing ads and speakovers. But while a lot of money has gone through the Fall it has never been a driving force. He’s interested in longevity and reputation. And it’s not the same furrow at all. You can listen to a Fall track from 1978, 1988, 1998 and 2008 and they will be wildly different, yet with a thread going through them all. That’s partly what is fascinating to fans.

As the music business dies, so does the music press. Is this a bad thing in general and does it preclude the appearance of such a cultish band as The Fall?

I’m not convinced either the music business or the music press are dying. As long as people listen to music, somebody somewhere will be selling it to them, and someone else will be providing an informed opinion on whether they should buy it.

All the good music books seem to be out of left field or at least take a left field view of a regular subject rather than taking it head on like they used to. Why and what have you got coming next?

I think you just have to find other ways of looking at things. With The Fallen, the last thing I wanted to write was a rock biography. I wanted to bring together various elements of British history, human stories, chaos, cultism, mind control and the chaotic effects it all had on the lives of all involved, including me. Ironically the strongest criticism I’ve had has been from people who would rather I ask Steve Hanley about the bass notes on the fifth track of the fourth album. My next project also involves The Fallen, but in a different media. I’m not in a mad rush to write another book. My day job keeps me busy enough. I have ideas but I’m waiting until I have the time and inclination to do something worthwhile, not bang it out. A lot went into The Fallen and it took a lot out of me. It’s quite a challenge to follow it up.

Who would’ve thought there would be a cottage industry in British pop’s cults, never quite made its and also-rans? Who should be next in line for the treatment?

Because sometimes the people just below the top of the tree are more or as interesting as the people at the top. British pop culture is a fascinating subject. It did cross my mind to do a Fallen-type book on another seminal British band who have had lots of members, some who are dead and others ended up in institutions. But I worried it would become a rock biography. I’d really like to read a book on The Durutti Column, but I can’t see it giving JK Rowling sleepless nights!

Note that this interview also appeared on our sister site, Bookhugger.co.uk.

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