Lyrics
It's springtime but I still miss the streets at dawn 1
And in the morning walking your bridges home
As I sit and stare at all of England's sores
I tell you something
I wish I was in Edinburgh
I don't mind being by myself
Don't wanna be anywhere else
Just wanna be in Edinburgh
I wish I was an Edinburgh man
You can leave me on the shelf
I'm an Edinburgh man myself
I will always give you help
It's summertime but I still miss your spires so clear
Sitting and staring on a beach somewhere
I'll tell you something
I wish I was in Edinburgh
Don't give a toss about private wealth
And history just repeats itself
Keep me away from the Festival
And just give me a one quarter-gill
They say you project yourself
But I'm an Edinburgh man myself
It's wintertime and I still see the cobble stones
Clacking over your streets at dawn
I was really poor since I left Edinburgh
I'm OK just by myself
Cos our miserable kinks won't protect us from ourselves 2
How I wish I was in Edinburgh
How I wish I was in Edinburgh
I was always in good health
I'm an Edinburgh man myself
I will always give you help
I'm an Edinburgh man myself
Commentary
< Post in progress >
We’re at another pub now, quieter and more conducive to the sort of slurred interrogation that comes with steady drinking. The tipple is bottles of of Diamond White cider, two at a time, chased by large scotches, and the topic is ‘Edinburgh Man’, one of the loveliest songs The Fall have ever recorded. It’s about Smith’s year-long exile in Edinburgh, unloved and unknown, and it’s full of the gruff sentiments of someone unused to showing his feelings in public.
“I really wanted to say it,” he nods. “And I mean it, what I say. I was living up there in Edinburgh for a year and I was on me tod. I’d no fuckin’ money, no fuckin’ nowt, and no fucker wanted to know me. I spent 18 months on the words to that song, trying to get it right.”
It’s a very emotional song.
“For sure. For sure.”
He had gone there to escape the fallout from his marriage and the encroaching horrors of the Manchester scene. He rented a room, got some writing done and spent a year watching and drinking.
David Cavanagh, interview with Mark E. Smith for Select, June 1991, p.22.
Footnotes
- The lyrics will cycle through spring, summer and winter, but there is no mention of autumn (AKA, of course, The Fall). ↩︎
- It’s hard to hear the word “kinks” and not try to link it to The Kinks, whose song “Victoria” The Fall covered. The Kinks are perceived to be very ‘English’. But I don’t think interpreting it as a reference to the band is useful; I think it really is just the word “kinks”, meaning quirks or eccentricities (not necessarily sexual!). ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “Edinburgh Man” [Archived]
- Cavanagh, David (1991). “Sarky Street Poet in Love-Tug Riddle.” Select, June. pp.20-22. [Scan available online via The Fall Online: Bibliography].
- 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, Mark E. (2008). vII. The Lough Press & AMarquisManipulationProductions. [AKA the Blue Lyrics Book]
- The Track Record: “Edinburgh Man”
- Wikipedia: Edinburgh
- Wolstencroft, Simon (2014). You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide: a memoir. Trowbridge: Strata Books. (2nd edition published by Route Publishing, 2017).