Lyrics
Get a hotel today
Go get a hotel today
Go get a hotel today
Before the idea slips away
Get a hotel
Go get a hotel today
That was the first question raised
There was a question raised
Get a hotel
Wanna get in
Wanna get in
But this is not the place to bring it up
Go get a hotel today
Go get a hotel today
Before the bike siren calls
Time's running like butter dissolving
Time's running, time dissolving
Time's running, melting
Time's running, passing 1
It's running, passing
Get a hotel today
Get a hotel today
She says, get a hotel
Ne'er-do-well 2
Get a hotel
Get a hotel
Before the bike siren calls
And the horn siren yells
It says, get a hotel
Get a hotel
You better go get a hotel today
Go get a hotel today
Time's running
Time's running, passing
Time's running
Time's running
It's running it's passing, like butter melting
Time's running, passing, it's running passing
Like flesh cut melting
It's running, it's passing, times running, it's passing, dissolving
I was eating gravel when two cars put in
I was eating gravel when two cars put in
Headlights dousing
Broken warehouse
I just got out
Dirt inhaled
The cinders told me
You shoulda got a hotel
Go get a hotel today
Go get a hotel today
Before the bike siren calls
And the bloodcurdlers yell
Go get a hotel today
All thugs use the Burton ploy 3
The Lord acts around my appeal 4
He says get a hotel
Shoulda!
Go get a hotel today
Get a hotel
A little voice yells, should of got a hotel
Get a hotel
Go a hotel today
Get a hotel
Get a hotel
Commentary
< Post in progress >
‘Get a Hotel’ is just annoying.
Brix Smith Start, 2016, p.238
“Get A Hotel” is inspired by Mark and his wife Brix overstaying their welcome, crashing at producer Simon Rogers’ home.
Staunton, 2021, p.64. Staunton’s source is not stated.
“Get a Hotel” debuted live at the International 2, Manchester, on 20 April 1987.
A version was recorded for Janice Long’s BBC Radio 1 show on 13 May 1987, first broadcast 19 May. This remains officially unreleased, although a bootleg recording circulates.
The song first appeared on record on The Frenz Experiment, recorded in mid to late 1987 and released 29 February 1988. It is credited to Mark E. Smith and Craig Scanlon. It seems to have been relatively well received, but didn’t receive much attention in contemporary album reviews. Tommy Mackay refers to its “gentle little groove” and the “dreamy reflective nature of the narrative” (2018, p.92). Steve Pringle describes it as “slow and measured” with “crisp and precise drums”, but feels it lacks emotion: “nobody sounds like they have much invested in the track and it feels like a rough sketch rather than a fully-formed song.” (2022, p.194).
Whether or not the lyrics were really inspired by the Smiths overstaying their welcome at Simon Rogers’ house, it’s fairly clear that they are not, or not simply, about a welcome overstayed.
Presumably “getting a hotel” doesn’t literally mean obtaining – purchasing or investing in – an entire hotel or hotel chain, or perhaps a B&B (although, despite recognising the “nightmarish” quality of the song, that is Tommy Mackay’s interpretation: see Mackay, 2018, p.92). It surely means, get a hotel room. The central puzzle of the lyric, therefore, is: for what purpose? For a sexual or romantic assignation? To lie low? There is something of a noir-ish crime/detective story atmosphere to the song, with the narrator at one point apparently lying face down on the floor having narrowly escaped from a burning warehouse (“burning” arguably because of the reference to “cinders”).
Notice that the narrator receives the message about getting a hotel from several different sources, some of them metaphorical. Firstly, a woman (“She says, get a hotel”); secondly, a siren (“And the horn siren yells / It says, get a hotel”); thirdly, ‘cinders’ (“The cinders told me / You shoulda got a hotel”); fourthly, ‘bloodcurdlers’ (“And the bloodcurdlers yell / Go get a hotel today”); fifthly, ‘The Lord’ (“The Lord acts around my appeal / He says get a hotel”); finally, ‘a little voice’ (the narrator’s conscience?) (“A little voice yells, should of got a hotel”).
Footnotes
- It is commonly and plausibly suggested that this part of the lyric is adapted from Big Youth‘s “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing”: “Time is running and passing and running and running and passing / So you all better get right this time / Cause there might be no next time y’all”.
MES quoted Big Youth’s “Jim Squashey” in “No Xmas for John Quays” and paraphrased “Keep Your Dread” in “City Hobgoblins“. Both those songs as well as “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” are found on Big Youth’s 1976 album Natty Cultural Dread (Trojan Records: TRLS 123. See Discogs.), which cropped up as one of MES’ favourite LPs in Q magazine’s “Mark E. Smith’s Record Collection” feature in 1990:
“There’s a track on this, Jim Squashey, about John Coltrane – what the hell is he going on about on that? Stuff about birth control pills, and ‘John Coltrane was white and so John Coltrane blow black people mind every time’, and all that. It’s fucking great! The music is excellent on this one. I think he’s quite an artist. He used the same backing tracks for different songs — some of the later albums, after this, he’s still using the same backing tapes, and they’ve worn out! It’s all distorted and stuff! And he couldn’t sing. There’s a great version of Touch Me In The Morning on this! But the guitars are like Can – really interesting.
He was in that interim period, it was almost like in between ska reggae and mad religious reggae. That’s why it’s good: the British record companies haven’t bought them out and put them in 32-track recording studios yet. Later, they’d just get stoned and talk about religion – it’s just boring, isn’t it?”
Source: Gill, 1990, p.28. ↩︎ - “Ne’er” is an old – middle English – contraction of “never”, now seldom found in everyday conversation. “Ne’er-do-well is a contraction of the phrase “never-do-well”, meaning someone who is good-for-nothing, i.e. lazy or worthless. It doesn’t necessarily mean a criminal or moral reprobate. According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary the phrase is of Scottish and origin was first recorded in the mid-18th century. ↩︎
- Is “the Burton ploy” named after the Staffordshire town of Burton upon Trent, or a person? Or even the British men’s clothing retailer?
At the doomby edition of The Annotated Fall bzfgt’s best guess was that it refers to the nineteenth century adventurer Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890), but I’ve never bought into that idea.
Kurt Russell plays a character called Jack Burton in the 1986 film Big Trouble in Little China, directed by John Carpenter. ↩︎ - God? A peer of the realm? ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “Get a Hotel” [Archived]
- Ford, Simon (2003). Hip Priest: the story of Mark E Smith and The Fall. London: Quartet Books.
- Gill, Andy (1990). “Mark E. Smith’s Record Collection”. Q, #49, October. pp.26-28. [Text available online via The Fall Online: Bibliography].
- 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 Start, Brix (2016). The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise. London: Faber & Faber. [Text available online in archive.org]
- Staunton, Terry (2021). “The Frenz Experiment”, in The Fall: The Ultimate Music Guide. London: Bandlab Technologies. pp.64-65. (“From the makers of Uncut“).
- The Track Record: “Get A Hotel”