Lyrics
I lost my temper with a friend 1
Mocked him and treated him with rudeness
And though I tried to make amends
Feel I miss him and walk a dark corridor
Woke up one morning
Doctor Bucks' letter
Of my own making, I walk a dark corridor of my heart
Hoping one day a door will be ajar
At least so we can recompense
Our betrayal of our hard-won friendship
In vulgar and arrogant abeyance
To what was untrue underneath our parlance
I open the envelope, Doctor Bucks' letter
Re: Welfare Benefit reports
J McCarthy, approximately ten - fifteen days 2
I got down, I was depressed
It was Doctor Bucks' letter
Turn the radio on
Doctor Bucks' letter
Cheer myself up
Put the radio on, and get the magazine out
And read about the essence of Tong 3
Checklist: I never leave home without
One: Sunglasses
I wear them all year around, and seem to need them more often, it's a habit
Music: cassettes, CDs
Three: PalmPilot
It's my lifeline
I think it's my P.A.'s computer, she runs my diary and I download it
Four: Mobile phone
Five: Amex card
They made such a fuss about giving it to me but I spend more time getting it turned down!
I was in the realm of the essence of Tong
Commentary
Astoria 2
On Wednesday 24 May 2000, Mark E. Smith stood on the stage of the Astoria 2, London, and read from a magazine:
"Adam Goes to Canada
The Essence of Tong
Checklist
I never leave home without
Sunglasses: I wear them all year round, and seem to need them more often
It is a habit
They're good to hide behind
The ones I've got at the moment are those Philippe Stark bendy ones
Two: music, cassettes, CDs
There's always something I'm listening to for work or pleasure
Or to use on my show
Right now I've got about twenty of them with me
Doctor Bucks' letter
Three: PalmPilot: it's my lifeline
I link it to my P.A.'s computer
She runs my diary and I download it
Four: Mobile Phone
Five: Black Amex Card
They made such a fuss about giving it to me
But I spend more time getting it turned down
Because people think it's fake
Reading list
My top five books or magazines
One: The Beach by Alex Catland, Penguin
I was a bit late on him to be honest but I'm reading The Beach now because I'm working on the soundtrack for the film
I'm also reading The Tesseract.
Two: Addicted by Tony Adams
Three: The Picture of Dorian Grey
The Essence of Tong
Essence of Tong
Magazines
Five
All of them
I'm a magazine junkie
Whether it's GQ, The Face, computer mags
Nothing too nerdy
I'm a sucker for a great cover
If it's got a nice picture of Kate Moss on it, I'll buy it
Playlist
Any Cafe Del Mar album
To do list
Drive across America in a convertible
East to West
The classic drive that takes in the plains of Nevada
This is the Essence of Tong
The Essence of Tong
Adam goes to Canada
Adam goes to Canada
Adam goes to Canada
The Essence of Tong
[??]
Shows I'd set the video for
One: news and sport
Two: Friday Night's All Wright, brackets LWT
I think Ian did a great job and I loved working on it
The Essence of Tong
Three: Ali G
The 11 O'Clock Show was a real breakthrough
[??]
Adam goes to Canada
Adam goes to Canada
[??]
This is the Essence of Tong
Adam goes to Canada"
Note: “Alex Catland” is a misreading of “Alex Garland”, of course.
Dr. Bucks’ Evolves
“Adam Goes to Canada” – Ben Pritchard on the writing and titling of Dr. Bucks’ Letter
On The Unutterable, “Dr. Bucks’ Letter” is credited to the entire group: Mark E. Smith, Adam Helal, Julia Nagle, Tom Head, and Neville Wilding.
Ben Pritchard gets a credit for playing guitar on the album, but no recognition for any songwriting contribution he may have made to individual tracks. Interviewed by Anthony Meirion a month after he, Steve Trafford and Spencer Birtwistle had left The Fall (and therefore to be evaluated in that light), Pritchard offered some thoughts on the making of “Dr. Bucks’ Letter”. We also learn that “Adam Goes to Canada” was the original working title of the song, as per the refrain at its debut performance at Astoria 2:
AM: Cos you first did stuff for The Unutterable didn’t you?
BP: That’s right yeah. That was when Nev Wilding was in London and we only had about two days left to finish the album and Mark called this guy called Steve Evets and then called me and I’d only been playing the guitar for about two years. It was the day after I’d bought my Stratocaster that was. So that was like the first time I put it on and played it properly and plugged it in was in front of him in the studio, listening to the backing track of Dr Buck’s Letter. He says, “Go on, cock. Just fookin play something, I’m going to the pub.” And that was it…
AM: And he liked it?
BP: He liked it, yeah.
AM: Good riff that.
BP: Yeah, it’s a good tune. It was called Adam Goes To Canada originally cos it was Adam’s song, Adam Halal or whatever his name is, it was his song. He put it together on ProTools and I came in and did that riff over it.
Ben Pritchard, interviewed by Anthony Meirion, 12 June 2006. Source: thefall.org.
Note: Prichard & Co.’s last gig with The Fall was at the Brickhouse Theater, Phoenix, Arizona, on 7 May 2006.
Footnotes
- The opening line echoes William Blake’s poem, “A Poison Tree”, which begins:
“I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.”
MES has acknowledged the influence of William Blake, so it is plausible that he knew the poem and that the echo is deliberate. It’s probably less likely that MES was aware that Blur had used the same poem as the opening stanza of their song “Magpie” (1994). ↩︎ - It is unknown who “J McCarthy” is. Suggestions at annotatedfall.doomby.com included the British journalist John McCarthy, held hostage in Lebanon for over five years [Wikipedia]; the American actress Jenny McCarthy [Wikipedia]; the American anti-communist Senator Joe McCarthy [Wikipedia]. I suppose anything is possible, but none of these seem a plausible fit to me. It seems more likely that it’s just a name in the “welfare benefits”-related letter. ↩︎
- The reference is to the veteran DJ Pete Tong. Tong is BBC Radio 1’s longest-serving DJ, presenting on the station since 11 January 1991. His show was first called Essential Selection, renamed Pete Tong from 29 September 2006. “The Essence of Tong” is not used in the magazine, so the pun appears to be MES’s.
Tong is sufficiently well-known that the phrase “it’s all gone Pete Tong” has been rhyming slang for “it’s all gone wrong” since the 1980s. In 2004 a “mockumentary” film about a DJ who goes deaf was released, with the title “It’s All Gone Pete Tong”. It was written and directed by Michael Dowse. Pete Tong has a cameo in the film. ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “Dr. Bucks’ Letter” [Archived]
- dannyno (2019). “Detective Instinct: the Quest for the Source of the Essence of Tong”. The Wonderful and Frightening World of… Data blog, 27 August [Online]
- Ford, Simon (2003). Hip Priest: the story of Mark E Smith and The Fall. London: Quartet Books.
- Meirion, Anthony (2006). “Interview with with Ben Pritchard, 12 June 2006.” thefall.org [Online] [Archived]
- Smith, Mark E. with Austin Collings (2009). Renegade: the lives and tales of Mark E. Smith. London: Penguin. (Originally published by Viking, 2008). [Available online in the Internet Archive]
- The Track Record: “Dr. Bucks’ Letter”
- Wikipedia: Essential Selection (BBC Radio 1)
- Wikipedia: It’s All Gone Pete Tong (film)
- Wikipedia: Pete Tong