Lyrics
Stop eating all that chocolate, eat salad instead
In fact, you're a halfwit from somewhere or other
Why don't you bog off back to Xanadu in Ireland
Glam Rick
Glam Rick
(Glam Rick)
Don't try to cheat me, I'm fragile
You hang around with camera crews in shell-suits
You lecture on sweets
You read Viz comic
Glam Rick
(Glam Rick)
Glam Rick
(Glam Rick)
You are bequeathed in suede
You are entrenched in suede
Glam Rick
You've got celluloid in your genes, dad 1
You are Glam Rick
(Glam racket)
You've cut my income by one-third
You are working on a video project
You hog the bathroom and never put your hand in your pocket
Glam Rick
You're Glam Rick
You're paging Malagna in Spain but can't read between the lines
Your price, cut down
You're one of the best songs I've ever heard by Stephen King
Glam Rick
Rhinestone
Your Clearasil produces Richthofen rashes
Sideboard like on mountains
Clearasil is in conjunction
Shadrach, the shock
Glam Rick
You post out sixty page computer printouts on the end of forests
All the above will come back to you and confirm you as a damn pest
Glam Rick
You're Glam Rick
(Glam Rick)
Commentary
< Post in progress >
‘Glam Racket’, hapless journalists have assumed, is a close relative of 1989’s ‘Idiot Joy Showland’, that sneering, father-knows-best song that surveyed the baggy tumult and saw only: “Idiot groups with no shape or form/Out of their heads on a quid of blow”.
Egged on by Fall associates, they’ve taken ‘Racket’ as a similarly sardonic, if less pointed, snipe at the new crop of early ’70s enthusiasts – not least on account of its Glitter-esque arrangement.
Hell, it even contains the word “Suede”. Twice. So scene-watchers have leant back on their chairs, bypassed the frequently baffling lyrics (“Stop eating all that chocolate/Eat salad instead…”) and drawn the battle lines for a verbal war between Mark and his lads, and Brett, Bernard, Lawrence out of Denim, Pete, Bob and Sarah and Jarvis Pulp.
And… they’re wrong. Sort of.
“Well,” Mark drawls, lighting up the first of a stream of cigarettes, “it’s not really about groups at all.”
Yeah, right. That’s why you’ve mentioned Suede in the lyrics.
“Ah! But that’s suede in the Mancunian sense. Suede shoes, suede trainers, suede jackets – suede being the ‘in’ thing. Same reason it refers to shell-suits.”
The words, Mark explains, are a fractured series of complaints about the United Kingdom in 1993: the government, the con-men who run the economy, the record company who threatened to cut his income by one third (more of that later), people who read Viz… all kinds of targets come in for a lashing at the hand of someone whose weirdly-worded State Of The Nation address (See ‘Free Range’, 1988’s ‘In These Times’, ‘US ‘80s/’90s’ from ‘Bend Sinister’) is an annual event.
“It’s about the spiv culture we’ve ended up with,” Mark fumes. “‘Cos it’s all ‘Take the f-in’ money and run’ at the moment, isn’t it? I mean, I’m no socialist, but they’re trying to apply an American system over here and they haven’t got the f-in guts to push it through.”
From the John Harris interview, “Mark E Moan”, from NME, 3 April 1993, p.32.
Footnotes
- At the original doomby version of Annotated Fall, user @Shawn Swagerty revealed (comment #40, 4 February 2018) that this line was probably adapted from Michael Douglas’ tribute to his father, Kirk Douglas, at the American Film Institute’s 19th Annual Life Achievement Award ceremony, recorded on 7 March 1991.
Michael Douglas says, in his opening remarks as host:
“I’m always fascinated by the idea that my father had this burning desire, this love for acting, this joy in making movies. It looked like so much fun. And maybe that’s the only reason my brothers and I aren’t lawyers or accountants. You put celluloid in our genes, dad, and on behalf of all of your sons, I thank you for that.”
Titled The American Film Institute Salutes Kirk Douglas, the ceremony was broadcast by CBS on 23 May 1991, off the back of which Michael Douglas’ comments were reported by some newspapers, for example the New York Times, 23 May 1991 (https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/23/movies/review-television-a-salute-to-kirk-douglas-for-his-life.html). The Fall were on tour in Germany at the time, so it’s not likely that the group saw the programme then. However, it wasn’t aired in the UK until the following year, when it was shown in Channel 4’s “Hollywood Greats” slot on Tuesday 4 August 1992. Some newspapers quoted the “celluloid in our genes” comment: for example, the Sunday Telegraph preview quotes the line and it was also mentioned by Craig Brown in his column in The Times on 9 August 1992. ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “Glam-Racket” [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. (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: “Glam Racket”
- Wikipedia: American Film Institute Life Achievement Award
- Wolstencroft, Simon (2014). You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide: a memoir. Trowbridge: Strata Books. (2nd edition published by Route Publishing, 2017).