Commentary

Credited to Mark E. Smith, Craig Scanlon and Marc Riley, “Dice Man” was included on the album Dragnet (1979). The first documented live performance is at the Marquee, London, on 29 July 1979, just a few days before the recording sessions for Dragnet at Cargo Studios, Rochdale, from 2 – 4 August. It seems to have stayed in the setlist until a gig at the Nite Club, Edinburgh, on 14 November 1980, after which it disappears from the record until being unexpectedly revived for two gigs in 1982: Leadmill, Sheffield, 2 December 1982 and Warehouse, Liverpool, 3 December 1982.

The lyrics at the first performance were more or less as they would appear on record, except MES ends with the line, “I’m no fucking musician, baby”. Variations on that line can be heard at most other gigs too and ended up being used as a spoken word element on record.

“Dice Man” is inspired by the novel The Dice Man (1971), written by George Cockcroft (1932 – 2020) using his pen-name “Luke Rhinehart”. See Gold (2017) and Carrère (2019) for interviews with Cockcroft, and Flood (2020) for The Guardian‘s obituary.

“That song was one of the most truthful. I based it on the book because I loved the idea that this guy would throw dice in the morning to decide how he’d be that day. I believe you have the right to change. We don’t have a deliberate policy of keeping people guessing – that’s just the way I am. You only look at life through your own eyes. I thrive on being outside the pop mess but not many people see that. I’m dead proud that The Fall aren’t just another branch on the tree of show biz. Basically, rock music isn’t very interesting, so it’s only people like me who can make it interesting.”

Mark E. Smith, interviewed by Jonh Wilde for Jamming, #22, November 1984, p.26.

A cult classic, the novel purports to tell the true story of a psychiatrist named Luke Rhinehart who makes the radically life-changing, supposedly liberatory but often anti-social decision to let dice throws determine what he should do at any given moment. The book deliberately blurs the lines between fact and fiction, to the extent of making up biographical details about the author, who is also supposed to be the protagonist. “Rhinehart” is described as a psychiatrist, but in reality Cockcroft was an English teacher before the success of The Dice Man enabled him to take up writing full time. None of his subsequent books matched the success of The Dice Man.

Note the lyric from “Before the Moon Falls”, also on Dragnet: “We were six like dice, but we’re back to five.”

From Dragnet‘s “explanatory” insert, entry for “Dice Man”: “to all ex-Fall members and also from the book. Don’t read it, the song is much safer.”

Notable Cover Versions

• Cobra Verde. Originally released with the title “The Dice Man” on the CD Copycat Killers (Scat Records SCAT 74, 2005). [Discogs]
• Terry Edwards. Originally released with the title “The Dice Man” on the 12″ Fall-tribute EP, Terry Edwards Salutes the Magic of The Fall. (Stim Records STIM002, 1991.) [Discogs]. Re-released on the compilation CD Plays Salutes Executes (Stim Records STIM004, 1993 [Discogs]. Re-released on the compilation 2 x LP Stop Trying to Sell Me Back My Past (Sartorial Records FIT069LP, 2020) [Discogs]. Live version, performed by Terry Edwards and The Ska All-Stars, released as the CD Yesterday’s Zeitgeist: Terry Edwards in Concert (Sartorial Records LOS 038, 1999) [Discogs]. Re-released under the name Terry Edwards and The Scapegoats as 681 at the Southbank + Plays, Salutes & Executes (Sartorial Records FIT 007CD, 2002).

Footnotes

1. Rendered here as “Where you two going?”, as though audience or group members are leaving, but really it sounds like “where you t- t- t- t- going”.
   
   “Where are you going?” is potentially – but only potentially – from The Dice Man, chapter 82 of the first UK paperback edition of 1971 (I couldn’t find it in the first US edition), p.476:
   
   ↩︎
2. The phrase “ANOTHER BRANCH ON THE TREE OF SHOWBUSINESS?” appeared in the press release for The Fall’s single, Rowche Rumble. released 30 July 1979.
   
   ↩︎
3. “Only in their front rooms” feels like it ought to be a well-known phrase or saying, but I can’t find that anyone other than MES has said it. I think it means something like “when it’s comfortable for them.” ↩︎
4. Difficult to hear the spoken bit in the background here, as it is double-tracked (if that’s the correct phrase) with the main vocal. But it sounds like “no musician, I am Dice Man”. Live, the song often ended with a variation on the line, “I’m no musician”. ↩︎
5. According to Green’s Dictionary of Slang, the phrase “rolling the bones” has its origins in the fact that dice were originally made from bone. Although Green’s traces the history of the word “bone” for dice back to c.1386, “rolling bones” is recorded as late as 1838 (although phrases such as “shake the bones” (1567) and “trundling the bones” (1823) were earlier).
   
   “Gonna Roll the Bones” is a widely reprinted 1967 story by Fritz Leiber, of whom MES was a fan. See the entry for the early song “Roll the Bones“. There’s no recorded evidence of what “Roll the Bones” sounded like; it’s not impossible that it evolved into “Dice Man” ↩︎
6. This second spoken word element is borrowed from The Dice Man (credit to user Junk for Brains at the original Annotated Fall for finding this – comment #20, 12 December 2020). “The Blocks of God” are the dice, evidently. The lines, apart from a missing word (“quiver”), are taken from the end of chapter 39, p.155 of the first edition:
   
   
   
   “The dice in position before me, I knelt silently for two minutes and prayed. I then picked up the two dice and began shaking them gaily in the bowl of my hands.
   
   ‘Tremble in my hands, O Die,
   As I so shake in yours.’
   
   And holding the dice above my head I intoned aloud:
   
   ‘Great bleak Blocks of God, descend, quiver, create.
   Into your hands I commit my would.’
   
   The dice fell a one and a two: three: I was to leave my wife and children forever.” ↩︎

Sources / Links

• The Annotated Fall: “Dice Man” [Archived]
• Carrère, Emmanuel (2019). “Who is the Real Dice Man? The Elusive Writer Behind the Disturbing Cult Novel”. The Guardian, 7 November. (an abridged version of a longer essay titled “In Search of the Dice Man”, which can be found in Carrère’s 97,196 Words: Essays. London: Vintage, 2020). [Online]
• The Fall (1979). Dragnet. LP insert. Step Forward Records: SFLP 4. [Discogs]
• Flood, Alison (2020). “The Dice Man author George Cockcroft (aka Luke Rhinehart) dies aged 87”. The Guardian, 18 November. [Online]
• Gold, Tanya (2017). “Interview: Three Days with The Dice Man: ‘I never wrote for money or fame’”. The Guardian, 4 March. [Online]
• Green’s Dictionary of Slang: “bones, n.¹“
• 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]
• Rhinehart, Luke (1971). The Dice Man. New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc. 1st edition. (Note that there are differences in content between editions) [Available online in the Internet Archive]
• The Track Record: “Dice Man”
• Wikipedia: The Dice Man (novel)
• Wikipedia: Luke Rhinehart
• Wilde, Jonh (1984). “The Frightening World of The Fall”. Jamming, #22, November. pp.26-28. [Text available online via The Fall Online – Bibliography]