Commentary

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2 by 4

INTO our midst came fiend… into our midst, came Friend. Stomachs gnawed as Trak of fame debuted on KGB pantomime t.v. show one Friday, ‘boh’.

From the sleeve notes to The Wonderful and Frightening World of… (1984).

Note, re: reference to a Friday TV show, that The Fall appeared on Channel 4’s music programme The Tube on Friday 25 November 1983, introduced by Jools Holland and John Peel. The Fall performed “Smile” and “2 x 4”.

“2 x 4” was first performed (on the evidence of gig recordings) at Rock City, Nottingham, on 27th September 1983. It was last heard at the John Anson Ford Theater, Los Angeles, on 27th May 1988. It therefore lasted for almost all of Brix’s first stint with the group. It would appear on record (LP and cassette) for the first time as the second track on The Wonderful and Frightening World of… (released 12th October 1984), preceded by a Peel Session recorded on 12th December 1983 and first broadcast on 3rd January 1984. It was also, memorably, performed on the Channel 4 pop/rock show The Tube on 25 November 1983, with Karl Burns and Paul Hanley on drums and Brix joining the group on guitar (after sitting out the performance of “Smile”).

The song was originally titled “New Fiend”: the song is listed as “N. Fiend” on the setlists from the gigs at Buster Browns, Edinburgh (4th October 1983) and the Concord Bar, Brighton (27th October 1983). It is not known when the title was changed.

Lyrically it seems that the “new fiend” is to be identified with The Devil, but this is not certain. Perhaps, given that The Devil is apparently no longer itinerant but occupies a middle class home with a “glazed porch”, the “new fiend” is a demonic competitor? Nor is it clear who the “he” is who is against the rich and/or the poor. Is that also the “new fiend”/Devil? Or are they different characters? So when we get to the line “He said hit him on the head with a two-by-four”, it’s not entirely obvious whether the instruction is to hit The Devil on the head, or whether The Devil is giving the instruction. And if the “son-in-law” has been clubbed over the head with the length of wood, does that mean the “son-in-law” is demonic, or an innocent victim of Satanic suggestion, or what?

Notable Versions

Peel Session version.

Versions titled “New Fiend (2 By 4)” and “New Fiend (Rough Mix)” appeared on the “Singles and Rough Mixes” disc of the omnibus edition of The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall. A spectral version (perhaps a demo) of the song titled “Fiend With A Violin (vox)” first appeared on the Fiend With a Violin compilation in 1996 (subsequently turning up on the Archive Series compilation in 1997 and Northern Attitude in 1998). For more on the “fiend with a violin” concept, see below.

Sounds Like… ?

In an article in The Biggest Library Yet fanzine (2000), Rob Waite drew attention to a lyrical borrowing from the Woodie Brothers’ song “Chased Old Satan Through the Door” (1931). The article did not specify what the borrowing actually was, but it turns out that it’s significant.

Now I run old Satan through the door
And I hit him in the head with a two-by-four

Although Brix has stated (see above) that the “two-by-four” line is hers, it is surely wildly implausible that she was not drawing – perhaps unconsciously – on the Woodie Brothers.

Fiend with a Violin

As noted above, “2 x 4” appeared under the title “Fiend with a Violin” on the 1996 compilation of the same name.

Footnotes

1. A curious word in context. According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary it can mean “Tremulous, vibratory, or rhythmic movement… Also, involuntary trembling of the limbs; tremor.” or “Tremulous agitation; confused hurry or alarm; mental perturbation.” or, in astronomy, “A libration of the sphere of the fixed stars…” What being “against” nervous trembling might practically involve is not immediately obvious. ↩︎
2. A couple of minutes into “Entrancing Dr. Cassandra”, an episode of the camp 1960s TV incarnation of Batman (season 4, episode 25, first broadcast 7th March 1968), Bruce Wayne (played by Adam West) remarks to Dick Grayson (played by Burt Ward): “There’s a new fiend in town, Dick.” ↩︎
3. I am not mechanically minded, and I an not clear what an “exhaust clip” is. Some sort of a clamp for a motorbike or car, presumably. There is an exhaust systems manufacturer called Devil Exhausts (founded in France in 1966 as “Deville”, after the family who owned the company). See the note on the line about “Old Nick”. ↩︎
4. “Old Nick” is a nickname for the Devil. According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore: “… humorous nickname for the Devil… first recorded in the 17th century. Its origins are uncertain, but it may be related to certain German and Scandinavian words beginning in nik-, used for various dangerous supernatural creatures.”
   
   “Digs” are lodgings; short-term accommodation, sometimes but not necessarily consisting of one rented room in a house.
   
   There isn’t really a notably common cultural motif involving Satan moving “from digs to digs”. But note that the Old Testament does present Satan as a wanderer, see Job 1:7 (KJV), “And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” See Bible Gateway. The lyric suggests that Satan has now settled into an archetypically well-to-do middle-class period house.
   
   There is a potential inspiration for this, in Dennis Potter’s Brimstone and Treacle. Originally scheduled for broadcast by the BBC on 6th April 1976, as the first of a trilogy of Potter plays to be shown in the Play For Today slot, it was pulled prior to transmission at the initiative of the BBC’s Director of Programmes, Alasdair Milne, and the Director of BBC-1, Bryan Cowgill. Milne described the play in a letter to Potter as “beautifully written and made, but… nauseating”, apparently because it is suggested (the scene is implied but not depicted on screen) that a young woman who has been disabled in a car accident is “cured” by being raped by Satan (a Devilish figure, at any rate), who has insinuated himself into her parents’ home.
   
   Brimstone and Treacle was eventually shown on 25 August 1987, as part of a Potter retrospective, but in the meantime it was produced as a stage play (premiered at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, in October 1977) and for the cinema (1982). The BBC version was directed by Barry Davis and starred Denholm Elliott as Tom Bates, Patricia Lawrence as Amy Bates, Michelle Newell as their daughter Patricia/Pattie, and Michael Kitchen as the demonic Martin Taylor. The film version was directed by Richard Loncraine and again starred Denholm Elliott as Tom Bates, plus Joan Plowright as his wife (called Norma here), Suzanna Hamilton as Patricia/Pattie, and, er, Sting as Martin. It was released on VHS in 1983. Obviously if Brimstone and Treacle is a source, then it would have to be the 1982 Loncraine directed version.
   
   “Pigs to pigs” has been suggested as an alternative to “digs to digs”, because of the New Testament story in Mark 5:12 (“And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.” [KJV]), but it doesn’t really sound like that (notwithstanding that once “pigs” has been suggested, it’s hard to hear anything else!). ↩︎
5. “Two-by-four” is a U.S. colloquialism for a standard cut of wood measuring two inches by four inches in cross section. In British English (and apparently also in Australia and New Zealand) we would say “four-by-two” instead.
   
   An interesting if dubious alternative interpretation was suggested by user @bend at annotatedfall.doomby.com (comment #48, 21st August 2022), that the “2 x 4” could be a crucifix (presumably a four foot length of wood, crossed by a two foot length of wood, or something). I don’t buy it, but I like the thought. ↩︎
6. Georgian architecture refers to architecture dating from the years 1714 to 1830, or resembling architectural styles characteristic of those years, so-called because four British kings, all called George (Georges I to IV, all of the House of Hanover), reigned one after the other during that period. ↩︎
7. This line must have been borrowed from the headline “Father, 70, used table leg to club his son-in-law”, from the Manchester Evening News, 20 August 1983, p.29. See Commentary. ↩︎
8. I enjoy this fiend/friend wordplay, reversed a couple of lines later. ↩︎
9. Reversing the fun wordplay of a couple of lines earlier. ↩︎
10. Quarters can mean living accommodation (i.e. digs, see above) and glasses can mean spectacles. One might need to be shown the former, but probably not the latter. But “quarters and glasses” could also be a reference to a drinking game (known as “Quarters“), the aim of which is to bounce 25-cent/quarter-dollar coins off a table into a shot glass.
    
    Curiously, though not relevantly, during Brett Kavanaugh’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings a reference in his high school yearbook entry to “Devil’s Triangle” was queried and turned out – according to Kavanaugh – to refer to a variation on Quarters in which the target shot glasses were arranged in a triangle. ↩︎
11. annotatedfall.doomby.com user @harleyr pointed out (comment #47, 16th August 2002) that the front-cover tagline of EC Comics was “Jolting Tales of Tension in the EC Tradition”. ↩︎

Sources / Links

• The Annotated Fall: “2 x 4” [Archived]
• BFI Screenonline: Brimstone and Treacle (1987)
• Ford, Simon (2003). Hip Priest: the story of Mark E Smith and The Fall. London: Quartet Books.
• Mackay, Tommy (2018). 40 Odd Years of The Fall. Place of publication unknown: Greg Moodie.
• Pringle, Steve (2022). You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record. [paperback edition]. Pontefract: Route Publishing Ltd. [Online store]
• Smith Start, Brix (2016). The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise. London: Faber & Faber. [Text available online in archive.org]
• The Track Record: “2 x 4”
• Waite, Rob (2000). “Notebooks Out”. The Biggest Library Yet, issue 18, January. p.7.
• Wikipedia: Brimstone and Treacle (1982)
• Wolstencroft, Simon (2014). You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide: a memoir. Trowbridge: Strata Books. (2nd edition published by Route Publishing, 2017).