Lyrics

Hostile 
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(Dangerous)

Nobody ever gave him a good turn
What do you expect?
He was always let down
They never wanted to let his action down
But also they wanted it sublime
Sheffieldism and equality equally 
He was always in the middle for him
On the fields, Brooklands 
They said tone it down
We all understood him
But he is hostile

We are the elite gangsters of the damned, criminals of the damned 
You must come with us, and hunt down the hostile

For years they have believed we were inspired by the Holy Spirit and the work of God
They still recognise that many prominent NC members are wonderful people 
They're warm, intelligent, but terribly misguided
Slowly, painfully, he become disillusioned 

They call us "shadowy" 
Anti- hostile
They demand to know, with a touching, naïve faith of the individual
Hostile
Hostile
Hostile

Many times, brothers, have they tried to discredit our gangsterism
And now we're old, the elite of the damned 

Anti- hostile

Commentary

Credited to Mark E. Smith and Brix Smith, “Hostile” first appeared on the album The Light User Syndrome (1996). Since the lyrics are partly drawn from an article published in The Guardian on 2 March 1996, they must have been finalised during the recording process (the album was recorded in early 1996).

The Oxymoron version consists of MES saying “hostile” repeatedly, while Brix goes “da da da doo”. Oxymoron, first released in 1997, is one of the controversial series of compilations released by Receiver Records without much by way of information about the provenance of the included tracks. But it seems safe to assume that this predates the version that ended up on the album.

“Hostile” was never performed live. Brix left The Fall for the second time in October 1996, just a few months after the release of The Light User Syndrome, which would presumably have put paid to any idea of incorporating the song into the live setlist, had there been any plans to do so (for which there is no evidence).

Commentary on the song published prior to my discovery of the source of some the lyrics on 29 April 2013 sometimes emphasises the “gangsterism” aspect of the lyrics. For example, The Track Record characterises the song as a “jumbled/surrealistic tale of gangsters”, and Ford (2003) says that “Smith gives up singing altogether on ‘Hostile’, and talks his way through a tale about gangsters” (p.243). This isn’t necessarily wrong, but it misses much.

There seem to be at least two, possibly three, possibly more, thematic threads to be found in the lyrics. One is based on a Guardian article by Madeleine Bunting on a Catholic movement called the Neocatechumenate. Another may (or may not, it could be connected to the Neocatechumenate) be something to do with Sheffield. There’s also mention of Brooklands and someone being told to “tone it down”. If these are, like the Neocatechumenate, based on newspaper articles or similar sources, they haven’t been traced yet. They could be based on overheard conversations, or of course just made up in the brain of Mark E. Smith. It’s interesting to see how all these elements, wherever they come from, combine to create something with strange power, even if the listener is none the wiser as to what it all amounts to.

The Neocatechumenate (NC)

A crucial point should be made straight away: although “Hostile” incorporates text from an article about the Neocatechumenate, that doesn’t mean that the song is intended to be about the Neocatechumenate.

The NC was founded in Madrid in 1964 by Francisco José Gómez Argüello (known as “Kiko”) and Carmen Hernández. It is, formally, a staged process of initiation, within a community, into the Catholic faith. It claims to follow the model of early Christian practice of pre-baptismal instruction via catechism. The NC calls this the Neocatechumenal Way. Critics have accused it of having the characteristics of an authoritarian cult.

Sheffieldism

It is unclear what “Sheffieldism” refers to, exactly, but there are some clues.

Because part of the lyric has been drawn from an article about a Catholic movement, it has been tempting to think that other elements of the text contain religious references too. Madeleine Bunting does refer to Sheffield in her article (see the footnotes), in the context of drawing a parallel with the the Nine O’Clock Service (NOS) (see Wikipedia). NOS was an ‘alternative’ sort-of-rave-style church ‘service’ aimed at young people founded in 1986 by Chris Brain at St. Thomas’ Church, Crookes, Sheffield. NOS eventually outgrew St. Thomas’ Church and moved to larger premises at Ponds Forge leisure centre in Sheffield city centre; attendances reached several hundred. It was closed down in August 1995 following allegations of sexual and emotional abuse of young service attendees by Brain (see Beaumont and Wroe, 1995; Howard, 1996). A TV documentary titled “Breach of Faith” (an “Everyman Special”) was aired on BBC 1, Sunday 26 November 1995.

Not only would the NOS case have been a recent memory when The Light User Syndrome was recorded, but there is an intriguing if tenuous semi-connection between Chris Brain and The Fall. Brain’s band Tense (formerly Present Tense) supported The Fall and Cabaret Voltaire at a benefit concert for Sheffield’s Leadmill venue at Sheffield University Students’ Union, 28 February 1981:

It is not impossible that M.E.S. remembered the name, or had the past connection, such as it is, pointed out to him. But it doesn’t strike me as particularly plausible.

Brooklands

“On the fields, Brooklands”, if we’re hearing that right, suggests playing fields or a sporting venue. In which case potential avenues for exploration would include the former Brooklands motor racing circuit (see Wikipedia), in Surrey, but closer to home for M.E.S. would have been Brooklands playing fields, Bury Old Road (see prestwich.org.uk), not far from the Woodthorpe Hotel, a pub which frequently pops up in the history of The Fall (for example, it is where the video for “There’s a Ghost in My House” was partly filmed). The fields are, or were, owned or associated with the Manchester Maccabi Community and Sports Club, but have been subject to development (see this article in the Bury Times, 2024).

The part of the lyric seems to concern someone (or maybe it’s more than one person) who was never given a good turn, who was always “in the middle” (cricket?), and who was asked to “tone it down”. There is probably some local incident behind all this, but what it is is not known to the annotation community.

Hostile Reception?

“Hostile” is probably one of the better appreciated tracks on The Light User Syndrome. Tommy Mackay (2018, pp.159-160) mentions its “thrilling rolling bass and drums” and thinks it a “brilliant all round slammer of a tune”. For Steve Pringle the track is “weighty and ominous” (2022, p.307). Dave Thompson (2003, p.147) describes it as “akin to a Beanotown Red Indian rock band”; I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

The track was voted #16 in John Peel’s Festive Fifty in December 1996 (see BBC Radio 1 – Keeping it Peel – Festive 50s – 1996).

Footnotes

1. Sheffield is a town in South Yorkshire, England (see Wikipedia). “Sheffieldism” might refer to a word or phrase in a Sheffield dialect, or to political or cultural trends exemplified by Sheffield.
   
   Madeleine Bunting’s article on the Neocatechumenate says: “What makes the NC such a fascinating case is that it lies at the point where orthodox religion and cults merge. This was the dangerous area revealed by Sheffield’s Nine O’Clock Service, which showed how vulnerable a religiously illiterate generation is to spiritual abuse and how personally devastating the manipulation of faith can be.” (p.24). See the Commentary, above, for more on this. ↩︎
2. Possibly Brooklands playing fields, Bury Old Road (see Commentary, above). ↩︎
3. annotatedfall.doomby.com had “damp” here rather than “damned”. ↩︎
4. “NC” is an abbreviation for “Neocatechumenate”. There was a time when I thought Cathal Coughlan’s song “N.C.”, from his album Black River Falls (2000), was about the Neocatechumenate. But there seems to be no actual reason to think that it is, and I can’t remember why I once thought it was. ↩︎
5. This verse is taken almost word-for-word from Bunting’s article: “For years they believed the NC was inspired by the Holy Spirit and was the work of God. They still recognise that many prominent NC members are wonderful people – warm, intelligent, devout – if terribly misguided. But slowly, painfully they became disillusioned.” (p.24). ↩︎
6. “The NC is a shadowy movement. Its headquarters in Rome are unmarked and, it seems, the phone is rarely answered.” (Bunting, 1996, p.24). ↩︎
7. From Bunting’s article, quoting anti-Neocatechumenate campaigner Ron Hayes: “They promulgate a view that the individual is a source of evil and sin and that salvation lies in the group. It is the elitism of the damned.” (p.28).
   
   “Elite of the damned” is, obviously, the title of Madeleine Bunting’s article. My instinct is that the phrase might have a classical or Biblical origin that we’re missing; it is a certainly a phrase with literary antecedents. A couple of examples:
   
   * “An Elite of the Damned” is the title of R.D. Laing’s review of Jean Genet’s Miracle of the Rose in New Society, Vol. 7, 13 January 1966, p.25. A passage from the review: “It is made very clear that it takes years of training, plus discipline before one can have any pretensions towards joining the Genetian elite of the damned.”
   
   * From The Death Strain by Nick Carter (1970): “He was setting up a kind of elite of the damned, with what sounded like political and moral overtones.” (p.67 of Tandem edition, 1972, see archive.org). ↩︎

Sources / Links

• The Annotated Fall: “Hostile” [Archived]
• BBC TV, Everyman Special (1995). “Breach of Faith”, 26 November. (Available via YouTube)
• Beaumont, Peter and Wroe, Martin (1995). “A Cult, from Genesis to Revelations”. The Observer, 27 August, p.11. [full text available at newspapers.com]
• Bunting, Madeleine (1996). “An Elite of the Damned.” The Guardian – Weekend, 2 March, pp.24-26, 28. [newspapers.com: p.24, p.25, p.26, p.28]
• Ford, Simon (2003). Hip Priest: the story of Mark E Smith and The Fall. London: Quartet Books.
• Howard, Roland (1996). The Rise and Fall of the Nine O’Clock Service: A cult within the Church? London: Mowbray.
• Mackay, Tommy (2018). 40 Odd Years of The Fall. Place of publication unknown: Greg Moodie.
• Neocatechumenal Way: official site
• Pringle, Steve (2022). You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record. [paperback edition]. Pontefract: Route Publishing Ltd. [Online store]
• Thompson, Dave (2003). A User’s Guide to the Fall. London: Helter-Skelter Publishing.
• The Track Record: “Hostile”
• Wikipedia: Neocatechumenal Way