A long and detailed account of exactly what it was like to live ‘inside’ the indie-rock institution that John Peel famously enshrined as ‘the mighty Fall’. ‘Inside’ is a telling preposition for Hanley’s and Piekarski’s subtitle, for The Fall during Hanley’s 19-year stretch was often more like a cult than like a pop group, even a wilfully uncommercial one. Mainly this was because of the personality of Mark Edward Smith, one of the more obtuse characters to emerge from the nexus of northern punk. Hanley seems to have endured years of unpleasantness at Smith’s hands because the only viable alternative was working in his own dad’s pie shop. ‘The only reason we’re not fighting back is because we love being in the band,’ Hanley writes in the present tense that makes the book so gripping. Not because of Smith: ‘In spite of him.’ Later, with grim persistence, he asks: ‘Why should I pack it all in just because of him?’ ‘You Englishmen with your stiff upper lip…’, Brix Salenger remarks after joining The Fall and before marrying Smith. The Big Midweek is the upper lip loosening, especially when Hanley writes sweetly of the stresses of juggling the band with young children – evidence that even laconic bass players have feelings.
