Commentary

“…from what Spencer told me he got Mark out for a drink and asked him to sing on some tracks he had written but werent really right for his and Stella’s stuff. So no I imagine it was quite recent-ish.”

User @sdOK (Jim Watts), The Fall Online Forum, thread: “Fall Reviews: (We Wish You) A Protein Christmas”, post #24, 16 December 2003 [Link]

Credited to Mark E. Smith and Spencer Birtwistle. There’s no information on the record about who is playing on the track, but according to Spencer Birtwistle himself, interviewed by the F.A.L.L.O.U.T. P.O.D.C.A.S.T. podcast, posted 26 April 2025, it was M.E.S. on vocals, Birtwistle on drums and synth (a Roland Juno 106, apparently), and someone called Sparky from Chorlton on guitar. Birtwistle recorded the drums in his aunt’s barn.

Birtwistle was The Fall’s drummer from November 2000 – November 2001 (quitting following conflict during an American tour), and again from July 2004 – May 2006 (leaving with Steve Trafford and Ben Pritchard during another difficult American tour). He had previously been a founder member of the band Laugh (formed in Manchester in 1980), which evolved into Intastella in 1990. It seems that Laugh had split up, and Intastella was formed when some of the old Laugh bandmates reconvened with vocalist Stella Grundy (Birtwistle’s girlfriend at the time). Note that Birtwistle considers the two bands to be distinct.

For a long time the accepted story was that Birtwistle met MES for a drink and persuaded him to sing on some tracks he had that he wasn’t going to be using for his own project (see Jim Watts’ comment posted on The Fall Online Forum, quoted above, which is correct on the essentials). Steve Pringle (2022, p.399) assumes the track must have been recorded before Birtwistle departed The Fall for the first time, but Birtwistle confirms in his F.A.L.L.O.U.T. P.O.D.C.A.S.T. podcast interview that the track was recorded in between his two stints in the Group. Although out of The Fall he had remained on good terms and kept in touch with M.E.S.

On the F.A.L.L.O.U.T. P.O.D.C.A.S.T. Birtwistle notes that the song’s title was originally “Track 31”, but M.E.S. mixed it up (deliberately or not) with another song called “Girl in Shop”: vocals for three songs were recorded on the same occasion in Spencer’s home studio. Regardless, putting “Birtwistle” in parentheses is an obvious indicator that he wrote it (compare “Stephen Song”, “Craigness”, “The Quartet of Doc Shanley”, “Jung Nev’s Antitdoes”, “Jim’s ‘The Fall’” and “Greenway”). In other words, it isn’t about “Birtwistle’s Girl” (which would perhaps be “Birtwistle’s Girl (In Shop)”) – and anyway the title is Birtwistle’s title, not Mark E. Smith’s.

There’s a story out there of you meeting Mark in the pub and going back to the studio, but it’s all a bit shrouded in mystery. I’m not one to ‘bust the myths’, but I’d be really interested to know how that song came about…

There’s like three tracks that I did at home. Now “The Girl in Shop” is the wrong title for that song. The track you’re talking about was actually called “Track 31”. There’s another track called “Girl in Shop”, so Mark wrongly titled it. Then there’s another track as well, I’ve got three tracks at home: one is “Girl in Shop”, that one’s “Track 31”, and the other one is called “Air Condition”, and that you haven’t heard. So what I did was, I wasn’t in The Fall but I did some drums, and the drums for that track I did in a barn what my auntie had on this farm, and I set up the drums in this barn and just bashed them drums down. And then there was a guy called Sparky from Chorlton, who played guitar on it, and I recorded that on my Studio. And I wasn’t in The Fall, but I was still friends with Mark, so I rang him up. Anyway, he come round to my house and he recorded the vocals on the three tracks at my house, after we’d been in the pub, as usual, like fucking loads of beers, and then we recorded  So that was like, me and him; it wasn’t The Fall, it was me and him and a guy called Sparky on guitar.

Spencer Birtwistle, interview on the F.A.L.L.O.U.T. P.O.D.C.A.S.T. episode #139: “Birtwistle (Man on Pod)!” 26 April 2025. Available via PodBean.

Lyrically, the song is a puzzle. On first listen, the lyrics sound as though they were improvised on the spot in the studio. But as documented in the footnotes, there are several echoes of songs c.1982/1983: “Backdrop” and “Kicker Conspiracy“, “Papal Visit“, which suggest a more thoughtful and planned approach. Other elements are dateable to 2002/2003 (i.e. the death of Bert Millichip in December 2002; the 20th anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s visit to Heaton Park in May 1982). But making sense of it all has so far defeated the finest minds in Fall Science, and of course it is quite likely that we’re not supposed to make sense of it.

“(Birtwistle’s) Girl in Shop” is obviously a minor song in The Fall’s canon, but it seems to be regarded fondly. Tommy Mackay, for example, describes it as “a load of drunken rambling over a perky electronic beat which insinuates itself into your brain until you can’t stop it bouncing around your head. Utter nonsense, but enjoyable nonsense…” (Mackay, 2018, p.201). Steve Pringle’s assessment is that it “sounds like a novelty 60s dance-craze single that Smith came back from the pub and shouted over randomly, but it has a certain haphazard charm.” (Pringle, 2022, p.399).

Footnotes

1. This echoes a line sometimes heard in live performances of “Backdrop“: “The stars drip from the sky / In a race upside down.” Stars ‘dripping from the sky’ approaches clichedom; variations are readily found in prose and poetry. To pick an example that MES might have read, “Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed under a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then.” is from Albert Camus’ essay “Return to Tipasa” (1952), which can be found in the collection The Myth of Sisyphus, and other essays (English trans. by Justin O’Brien, 1955). ↩︎
2. The track’s original title was “Track 31”. Interestingly, however, there’s also a reference to “track thirty-one” in the Austurbæjarbíó live version of “Backdrop“, recorded in Reykjavik, Iceland on 6 May 1983 (The Austurbæjarbíó recording had been officially released on 5 February 2001) [see Discogs]. ↩︎
3. There is an Inspection Hill in Queensland, Australia [Google Maps]. No other Inspection Hill has been discovered to date, but it is unknown whether this is what is intended. The Fall toured Australia in July-August 1982. ↩︎
4. The original annotatedfall.doomby.com had this as “Idea from 1983 sheer travel boredom.” It was only changed in 2018. The Annotated Fall was of course drawing on the fan-sourced lyrics at thefall.org, which hasn’t been updated. ↩︎
5. “Shadow stop” is a photographic term. ↩︎
6. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Maxims and Arrows”, #8: “From the military school of life. – What does not kill me makes me stronger.” from Twilight of the Idols or, How to philosophize with a hammer (1889) [Hollingdale translation, 1968]. ↩︎
7. I pointed out at annotatedfall.doomby.com (comment #27, 26 January 2019, which became note #5), that this line echoes the hymn, “Our Lord, Our Heavenly King”, words by Isaac Watts, music by Samuel Wesley:
   
   Out of the mouths of babes
   And sucklings Thou canst draw
   Surprising honors to Thy name
   And strike the world with awe.
   
   At the time, I speculated that MES, or the song’s narrator, might have been reading through a book of Christian hymns (hence the use of words like “forgiveness” and “compassion” in the immediate textual vicinity) and alighted upon the apparent irony. I’m less sure now that it’s all that strong an interpretation, but I still like it. ↩︎
8. “Refuse” is pronounced here as in “rubbish” (or “trash” or “garbage” if you’re American). ↩︎
9. Bert Millichip (1914 – 2002) was a former footballer who had a long post-playing career in football administration. He became Chairman of the Football Association in 1981, retiring in 1996. He is also namechecked in “Kicker Conspiracy” (the single was recorded mid-1983, and released 19 September 1983. The song was first performed live in January 1983). ↩︎
10. On 31 May 1982, Pope John Paul II visited Heaton Park, Prestwich. This event is the subject of the song “Papal Visit” (1982). 2002 was the 20th anniversary. ↩︎
11. According to MES in a 1980 self-interview for Tapezine, the song “City Hobgoblins” was originally titled “Case for the Jews.” ↩︎
12. If M.E.S. means the place, The Fall played Blackpool on three occasions: 10 November 1979, 3 December 1991, and (significantly, if we’re taking the apparent early 1980s references seriously, in some sense) 4 November 1981 (at the Gaiety Bar). ↩︎
13. The phrase “Broadway vampires” (“Broadway” as in the theatre district of Manhattan) occurs in the song “Rose of Washington Square”, written by Ballard MacDonald with a score by James F. Hanley. It was popularised from c.1920 by Fanny Brice in the popular revue Ziegfield Follies, which was performed on Broadway from 1907 to 1931. In 1939 the film Rose of Washington Square was released. Starring Alice Faye, Al Jolson and Tyrone Power, it was based on the life of Fanny Brice. The title song was performed by Faye. Rose of Washington Square was broadcast on Granada TV on Sunday 24 October 1982, which is consistent with the hypothesis that the lyrics have their origins in the 1982-83 period.
    
    The original lyrics of “Rose of Washington Square” are:
    
    I’m Rosie the queen of the models
    I used to live up in the Bronx
    But I wander’d from there down to Washington Square
    And Bohemian Honkey Tonks
    One day I met Harrison Fisher
    Said he: “You’re like roses the stems
    I want you to pose for a picture on the cover of Jim Jam Jems”
    And that’s how I first got my start
    Now my life is devoted to art
    They call me:
    Rose of Washington Square
    I’m withering there
    In basement air I’m fading
    Pose, with or without my clothes
    They say my Roman nose
    It seems to please artistic people
    Beaus I’ve plenty of those
    With secondhand clothes
    And nice long hair
    I’ve got those Broadway vampires lashed to the mast
    I’ve got no future
    But Oh! what a past
    I’m Rose, of Washington Square
    Rose of Washington Square
    I’m withering there
    In basement air I’m fading
    Pose, with or without my clothes
    They say my Roman nose
    It seems to please artistic people
    Beaus I’ve plenty of those
    With secondhand clothes
    And nice long hair
    I’ve got those Broadway vampires lashed to the mast
    I’ve got no future
    But Oh! what a past
    I’m Rose, of Washington Square
    I’m terrible good as a model
    The artists are stuck on my charms
    Once a feller said he would paint Venus from me
    Only Venus ain’t got no arms
    Rube Goldberg my figure admires
    He dresses me up in a veil
    And uses my shape for the pictures
    That he draws in the Evening Mail
    He promised some time when he’s free
    That he’ll model a statue of me
    They call me:
    Rose of Washington Square
    I’m withering there
    In basement air I’m fading
    Pose, with or without my clothes
    They say my Roman nose
    It seems to please artistic people
    Beaus I’ve plenty of those
    With secondhand clothes
    And nice long hair
    I’ve got those Broadway vampires lashed to the mast
    I’ve got no future
    But Oh! what a past
    
    For the film, the lyrics were slightly amended – the most significant change substituting the line about posing “with or without my clothes” with something more chaste.
    
    At annotatedfall.doomby.com, user @macula (comment #33, 28 December 2020) pointed out that in January 2003, the Broadway musical Dance of the Vampires closed after just 56 performances (See Wikipedia). The New York Times described it as “”one of the costliest failures in Broadway history”. Perhaps just a coincidence, but I think a notable one. ↩︎

Sources / Links

• The Annotated Fall: “(Birtwistle’s) Girl In Shop” [Archived]
• eGrove: Sheldon Harris Collection: Rose of Washington Square / music by James F. Hanley; words by Ballard Mcdonald
• F.A.L.L.O.U.T. P.O.D.C.A.S.T. episode #139: Birtwistle (Man on Pod)! [Podcast]. Posted 26 April 2025. Available via PodBean.
• 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]
• The Track Record: “(Birtwistle’s) Girl In Shop”
• Wikipedia: Bert Millichip
• Wikipedia: Dance of the Vampires (musical)