Lyrics
Got eighteen months for espionage
Too much brandy for breakfast
And people tend to let you down
It's a swine
Fantastic life
Dole penicillin to eastern ching plague-ridden
And one thing I have found
What you cast out will hit back
And a man will find he has to deny his fantastic life
Ours is not to look back
Ours is to continue the crack 1
Met a fifty-four year old dustbin man
In forty-eight he'd been in Jerusalem 2
Sold surplus oil to Arab fighters
For M-cocktails to burn Jewish terrorists 3
What a turn-up!
Fantastic life
Style's too easy to buy nowadays
And there's interference with the mail
And you just can't get out the words
Some people think if they had a job they'd be well
Now!
A fantastic lie!
The Siberian mushroom Santa was in fact Rasputin's brother
And he didst walk round Whitechapel
To further the religion of forgiven sin murder
Fantastic lie!
No lie, friend called David 4
He said he had a barney on Corporation Street
He said he told the policeman what he really thought
But knowing him I don't believe that crap
A fantastic lie
And I just thought I'd tell you
And I just thought I'd tell you
About fantastic life
And I just thought I'd tell you
Some fantastic lies
And I just thought I'd tell you
And I just thought I'd tell you
I walked right round Wakefield gaol 5
A fantastic life
And I just thought I'd tell you
And I just thought I'd tell you
Commentary
< Post in progress >
Footnotes
- Possibly “craic”, which is the Irish spelling of a word which had Scots/English origins, was incorporated into Irish, and then borrowed back into English. It has a cluster of meanings, and is defined by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as “Fun, amusement; entertaining conversation”, which I don’t think quite captures the idiomatic nuance it conveys to me. ↩︎
- Civil War broke out between Jewish and Arab fighters in Mandatory Palestine following publication of the United Nations partition plan in 1947. Under the plan, Jerusalem was supposed to be under international administration, which neither side supported. See Wikipedia: Battle for Jerusalem. Although uncertain, it seems likely that this is broadly what is being referred to.
At City Gardens, Trenton, New Jersey, on 12 June 1981, there was the following improvised line: “An old school pal in a bar urinal / He used to push pills in Electric Circus / His dad pushed pills to Guy Burgess.” The Electric Circus was a music venue in Manchester; The Fall played there in 1977. Guy Burgess (1911 – 1963) was a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring. A British intelligence officer cum diplomat he was a double agent from 1935, ultimately defecting to the Soviet Union in 1951. ↩︎ - “M-cocktails” are Molotov Cocktails. ↩︎
- Dave Tucker, the clarinet player on Slates. ↩︎
- HM Prison Wakefield is a category A (i.e. highest security) facility for male prisoners. There are only eight such prisons in England (there are none in Wales and Scotland categorises on a different basis). It has been nicknamed “Monster Mansion”. ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “Fantastic Life” [Archived]
- 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. (1985). The Fall Lyrik & Texte Von Mark E. Smith. In Deutsch & Englisch. With Drawings by Brix. Berlin: The Lough Press. [AKA The Orange Book. Available online in The Internet Archive]
- Smith, Mark E. (2008). vII. The Lough Press & AMarquisManipulationProductions. [AKA the Blue Lyrics Book]
- Smith Start, Brix (2016). The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise. London: Faber & Faber. [Text available online in archive.org]
- The Track Record: “Fantastic Life”
- Wolstencroft, Simon (2014). You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide: a memoir. Trowbridge: Strata Books. (2nd edition published by Route Publishing, 2017).
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