The Fall

The Fall were one of the most influential bands of the post-punk era, and one of the longest-lasting, even though their career was basically a non-stop shuffle of personnel changes. But from the beginning of their journey in 1976, singer Mark E. Smith was always at the center of The Fall with his Beat poetry-style lyrics and thick Manchester accent. The Fall began gigging in 1977, but even though they arrived along with the first wave of punk, their sound was already very much about the next step forward. The band's first EP, Bingo-Master's Break-Out, was released in 1978, and it introduced an assaultive, angular style informed by '60s garage rock, krautrock, and avant-rock avatars like Captain Beefheart, with Smith spewing his idiosyncratic worldview for all he was worth. The Fall earned attention from the start, appearing on Tony Wilson's TV show What's On and John Peel's influential radio show. The band's first full album, Live at the Witch Trials, was released in 1979. But it was their third LP, 1980's Grotesque (After the Gramme), that found the band hitting the U.K. indie charts for the first time, going all the way to the top spot. That same year, The Fall's brief flirtation with commercial success began with the (non-LP) indie hit singles "How I Wrote 'Elastic Man'" and "Totally Wired," which would become signature songs. The early '80s saw the release of some of the band's most celebrated albums, including Hex Induction Hour and Perverted By Language. The introduction of Mark Smith's wife, guitarist Brix Smith, into the band helped to usher in a more streamlined sound starting with 1984's The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall, though the pop quotient of those albums has been grossly exaggerated by historians. In the '90s some of the band's albums began to employ electronic textures, though The Fall always maintained the scrappy, visceral feel they were famous for. By this time, the band was acknowledged not only as post-punk progenitors but also a crucial influence on a subsequent generation of alternative bands, like lo-fi legends Pavement and Guided By Voices. The band continued unabated into the 2010s, with a relatively stable lineup eventually coalescing around Smith, who had become the grand old man of post punk. Mark E. Smith, who had been rumored for some time to be in poor health, died at the age of 60 on January 24, 2018; true to his dictum that he was the band's sole creative driver ("If it's me and your granny on bongos, it's still The Fall" was one memorable quote), the band ended with the news of his death.