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I sat on my dorm-room bed and played for hours. The bass guitar became an extension of my body. My fingers blistered, on both hands, but the joy of playing overrode any pain. Effortlessly, a song fell into place. It was so natural and easy, I didn’t have time to question where it had come from. First came the melody and the basic structure, then the words followed, fully formed. The entire song took me less than an hour to write. The song was called ‘Edie’, and it was an ode to dead style icon Edie Sedgwick. Edie had been a socialite and ‘It Girl’ in the sixties. She was famously a muse of artist Andy Warhol. I used to model myself on Edie and emulate her. I asked Lisa to listen to my new song. She sat on the bed opposite to me and listened intently. Afterwards she said three words: ‘Brixton, that’s amazing!’

Brix Smith Start, 2016, p.128.

“Edie” is an instrumental rough mix that was officially released on disc 2 of the 3 x CD Omnibus Edition of The Fall’s 1985 album This Nation’s Saving Grace, released by Beggars Banquet in 2011. It was never played live by The Fall, and no completed version was ever released.

However, when Brix Smith’s band The Adult Net released their second single in 1985, it turned out to be “Edie”, with lyrics by Brix (in her autobiography, quoted above, she recalls that “Edie” was the first song she ever wrote). The personnel credited on the sleeve included Ottersley Kipling (Der Golem Of Romford) (Simon Rogers), ‘Mask’ Aiechmann (Karl Burns), and Count Gunther Hoalingen (MarkI E. Smith).

As Brix explains in the chapter of her book devoted to the recording of This Nation’s Saving Grace:

We piggy-backed the album sessions to record the debut Adult Net single, ‘Incense and Peppermints’. We also recorded ‘Edie’, the first song I wrote at Bennington.

Brix Smith Start, 2016, p.211.

In other words, The Fall’s studio time was being used to work on material for The Adult Net. So although “Edie” has been co-opted into The Fall canon by virtue of its inclusion on the TNSG Omnibus Edition, there is a question over whether doing so is technically or ethically correct, notwithstanding that The Adult Net at first mainly consisted of musicians from The Fall.

Terry Christian: Before I play this I’ll go back and talk to you again about it, because your second single you released with the Adult Net – Edie – about Edie Sedgwick who was the original bimbo in a way. And, I think the Cult, their next single is going to be about Edie, as well.

Brix: Is it? They’re such copycats. And Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians have a song called little Miss S which is about her as well. It’s quite a hip thing to write about do now, thank God I did it five years ahead of everyone else.

TC: Why were you so impressed with Edie Sedgwick? I was quite lucky to talk to Nat Finkelstein who was a photographer for Andy Warhol and all that kind of… not art deco, but whatever they had in New York in the sixties…

B: Pop art consciousness.

TC: I could certainly do with a bit more consciousness, look at it that way. And he seems to reckon that she was a complete and utter airhead and he’d never met anyone so shallow and insipid in his life. He said it was quite sad.

B: Well, that is sad, but I think visually speaking she looked fantastic and she had a wonderful sense of style and she lived her life on the edge. When I wrote the song I was 17 and that seemed so exciting, you know, but she did take a lot of drugs and she was constantly tripping and doing all sort of wild things burnt herself out very quickly. She also had anorexia, she was the first of the really thin Twiggy type people, and she was just an American tragedy and it was quite a sad story. In the end she burnt herself out and had a heart attack in her sleep at the age of 26.

TC: And that made you want to write a song?

B: Yeah, and I also went to school with her cousin, Rob Sedgwick, who was my suite-mate at college.

TC: What’s that?

B: A suite is like a hallway with three bedrooms and a communal bathroom and me and my friend and room-mate had one and Rob Sedgwick had another and another guy who was also an actor had another. So we shared the suite with them. And we used to torment Rob ’cause we’d play our guitars really late at night singing songs about Edie and screaming at the top of our lungs and one night Rob kicked down the door to our room and he was standing in nothing but jockey shorts and he was screaming. He wanted to wring our little blonde necks. But we didn’t mind because he was like an Adonis god.

TC: Was he hung like a donkey?

B: Well, I didn’t really look at that area. I’m talking like blond hair and tan and biceps.

TC: I meant did he have big ears?

B: Oh well I didn’t look at that either.

Terry Christian interview with Brix Smith, Key 103 radio, 18 May 1989 (Key 103 is an independent local radio station based in Manchester. It was originally called Piccadilly Radio and later became Hits Radio Manchester). Source: The Biggest Library Yet, issue 15.1 [Text Online]