Lyrics
They are my cars
Indestructible, black 1
He talks
He talks
He talks
He talks
Well, sit down on my wheels
Well, sit on my wheels
[ ] He talks feet, on his feet
And he talks feet
[ ]
... with a black cape
A video on his back
And, night thoughts
Indestructible [ ] no rhyme, he just talks
[ ]
Commentary
As far as we know, this song was played only twice: at successive gigs during the 1984 tour of the Netherlands and Germany. On both occasions it was the first song played.
- 31 March 1984: Paradiso, Amsterdam.
- 1 April 1984: Effenaar, Eindhoven.
Audience recordings circulate of both performances (see The Track Record, Source/Links section below). The Paradiso performance turned up as track 10 on the “Live Rarities” disc (disc #5) of ‘The Red Box’, released in 2007 (The Fall Box Set, 1976-2007, Castle Music). That remains its only official release, and no studio version has turned up so far. The lyrics above are based on what I can hear of that rendition.
It’s been argued that the chord sequence is the same as “Draygo’s Guilt” (e.g. by thehippriestess on The Annotated Fall, comment dated 17/10/2021).
However, Daryl Easlea’s notes to The Fall Box Set say that the song “bears a passing resemblance to Judas Priest’s ‘Living After Midnight’” (from their 1980 album, British Steel). It’s true, it does.
My wildly speculative and yet not completely groundless theory about this song is that it may be partly inspired by the TV series Knight Rider. Stay with me on this.
There’s a 1983 episode of Knight Rider titled “White Bird” which includes the following dialogue:
Michael Knight : All right. We might as well deal with it now. KITT… say hello to Stephanie. Stephanie, meet my car, KITT.
[K.I.T.T. of course opts to be capricious and plays dumb]
Michael Knight : Say something, KITT. Come on, say something, she’s gonna think I’m crazy.
K.I.T.T. : Hello, Stephanie. Michael isn’t crazy. Not in the clinical sense, at least.
Michael Knight : Thank you very much. He talks.
Stephanie ‘Stevie’ Mason : How can a car… talk?
Michael Knight : Computers. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know. I don’t wanna know.
Source: IMDB: Knight Rider: White Bird. See also the 4th draft of the script available at the Knight Rider Archive [Archived]. “White Bird is episode #1:18 of the original series. Or episode 19 of season 1, which ran from September 1982 to May 1983. The discrepancy in numbering is because the first episode was a “feature length” TV movie pilot which was split into two episodes for TV syndication. “White Bird” was first broadcast in the US on 4 March 1983.
In the UK Knight Rider was being broadcast on the ITV network during the autumn of 1983. In particular I have found that it was shown (or listed as being shown anyway) on Granada TV (the ITV affiliate for the Greater Manchester/North West region which would cover Mark E. Smith’s home) on Saturday 5 November 1983, only a few months before the song was first played.
Footnotes
- I really have no idea what is going on here. But, as per the commentary, if we’re thinking about black indestructible cars, a good candidate is K.I.T.T. (known simply as KITT), the car from the 1982-1986 TV series Knight Rider, starring David Hasselhoff. There is the reference to “night thoughts” later. And maybe then it all links to “Living After Midnight.” I’m stretching, I know, but still. ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “He Talks” [Archived]
- Discogs: The Fall Box Set, 1976-2007. 5 x CD. Castle Music, CMXBX1558 (2007).
- Fandom: Knight Rider & Friends: “Episode 1:18: White Bird”.
- The Track Record: “He Talks”
- The Track Record: “Saturday, 31 March, 1984 – Paradiso, Amsterdam, The Netherlands”
- The Track Record: “Sunday, 1 April, 1984 – Effenaar, Eindhoven, The Netherlands”
- Wikipedia: “Knight Rider” (TV series)