Lyrics
"Er, what's this song about?" 1
"Er, nothing" 2
None
No recipes
It was like a see-saw
No
It was like an up-and-down
Bye bye
Mother, sister, mother, sister
Why did you put your head in?
Reach or preach
It's all a diminished return 3
Now
Floorboard creaks
[ ] 4
Mother, sister, mother, sister
Why did you put your head in? 5
Astray
Our friends
And the fathers are underground 6
Your mouth is sold out
Mother, sister, mother, sister
Why did you put your head in the pylon? 7
Sad! Sad! Sad!
Commentary
Credited to Mark E. Smith and Una Baines, “Mother-Sister!” was first released on Live at the Witch Trials (1979), although for some reason it was omitted from the original American edition of the album put out by I.R.S. and replaced by the version of “Various Times” found on the b-side of the It’s the New Thing single (1978).
The earliest known performance of “Mother-Sister!” (although not under that title, see below) was at Eric’s, Liverpool, 24 February 1978. It survived in the set only until the end of the year, its last known appearance being at Teazers, Dundee, 8 December 1978. The lyrics didn’t change much.
“Mother-Sister!” was featured on The Fall’s debut John Peel session, recorded on 30 May 1978 and broadcast on 15 June 1978. Note that Live at the Witch Trials was recorded after the Peel Session, on 15-16 December 1978.
There was no introductory dialogue in the Peel Session version, and there were a few lyrical variations: “Reach or preach / It’s all a diminished return” was “Reach… reach / Compensatory award”; and MES screams at the end, rather than screaming (what sounds like) “Sad!” I wonder if “compensatory award” refers to some sort of compensation or financial allowance, as in Bramah’s account below which mentions that his childhood home was cheaper because of its proximity to the motorway and pylon.
On the original annotatedfall.doomby.com, bzfgt was fond (he thought it plausible, but not very likely, mind you) of the idea that “Mother-Sister!” might have been based on a story about being discovered engaged in some sex act. Reference to “up-and-down” and creaking floorboards (either the discoverer sneaking about, or a sound caused by sexual activity), and someone “putting their head” into a bedroom, seem to constitute the raw materials for such an interpretation. But it all seems a bit thin, even if Bramah’s account of the song’s origins doesn’t entirely rule it out. I don’t buy it.
The Pylon evolves
“Mother-Sister!” seems to have been known as “The Pylon” when it was first introduced to The Fall’s live repertoire.
“The Pylon” also appears on the setlists for the next two consecutive gigs The Fall are known to have played: Rafters, Manchester, 3 March 1978, and Eric’s, Liverpool, 7 April 1978.
But a few days after Eric’s, at The Fall’s 10 April gig at The Tower Club, Oldham, the title has evolved into “The Pylon (Mother-Sister)”.
That’s also how it appeared on the setlist for the next three gigs: Band on the Wall, Manchester, 30 April; the Greyhound, Croydon, 7 May; and the Challenge Festival, Goldsmiths College, 13 May.
But by the next gig, at the Squat, Manchester, on 26 May 1978, the song title had evolved once again and arrived at what would prove to be its final form: “Mother-Sister”.
What’s this song about? Nothing?
SOME OF YOUR LYRIX SEEM A BIT HARD (MOTHER-SISTER) THAT I REALLY LIKE BUT THE FUNNY INTRO. SEEMS TOO NEGATIVE & EASY, WHEREAS THE LP’S TITLE TRACK IS POSITIVE.
You’d be amazed how many people react to that ‘Little & Large’ bit on ‘Mother-Sister’. That song was an attempt to use words as music more or less. I hate the idea of ‘LYRICS’ on paper. If that was my job, I’d be a poet or J.C. Clarke. One day I hope I’ll drop words all together as they’re inadequate & just make emotive – word patterns Maybe!
Mark E. Smith, interviewed in V-Sign #2 (no page numbering, [p.7]).
Also, “Mother-Sister!” was introduced at the gig at the Harp Lounge, Belfast, on 22 September 1978 with the words, “This song is about nothing. The words just fit the music. So anything I say, take no notice of it. But it sounds good, know what I mean?”
It could be argued that MES more or less achieved his aim of dropping words in favour of emotive word patterns for much of the last few years of The Fall. Certainly his vocals are harder to transcribe and annotate! But is it true of “Mother-Sister!”? Bramah, below, says that the song is based on impressions of his mother’s house, and clearly elements of that inspiration are discernible in the lyric. However, he admits that parts of it still don’t make sense to him.
MES refers to “Little & Large”. Little and Large were a (bafflingly) hugely popular light entertainment-style comedy double act featuring straight-man Syd Little and Eddie Large (both used stage names). Formed in 1962, they won an episode of the ITV talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1971. By 1977 they had their own ITV series, moving to the BBC in 1978. The show lasted until 1991, when the British public were finally released from its curse.
Martin unmasks the meaning of “Mother-Sister!” (PledgeMusic)
In 2016, Blue Orchids set up a PledgeMusic project in order to raise funds for a tour and recording studio time. One of the items on offer was a typed account of the background to “Mother-Sister!”, typed and signed by Martin Bramah on acid-free paper. There was only one copy, and it was advertised at $140.
On 18 March 2017, Fall Online Forum user @wontonton opened a new thread, titled “New Blue Orchids 10” / story of “Mother-Sister!”. The opening thread includes “The Story of Mother-Sister!” from PledgeMusic, of which @wonwonwon says “a Blue Orchids fan has allowed the story of “Mother-Sister!” to be made public, as told by Martin Bramah”.
Here it is:
THE STORY OF MOTHER-SISTER!
“Mother-Sister!” That’s a funny one. That’s one I just arranged, I suppose, because Una’s credit was writing the music, because she did write the basic chords on the piano. Playing off that, I had to come up with an interesting bass line and a quirky guitar part. I was trying to make it Beefhearty, more angular. Obviously Mark wrote the words. Mark told me to say, “what’s this song about?” at the start of it – that’s me saying that. That was the little patter he just told me to say in the studio, you ask me what this song’s about, and I’ll say, nothing.
I didn’t get for a while that Mother-Sister! is actually about my mother, about a story I told him. He’s describing where we lived, but I didn’t realise it at the time, it was only later that I did. That’s why he asked me to ask what the song was about, because it was about me and my mother. That’s what Mark is like, subtly deceitful! He only came round to our house once, I think. I’d told him about not having a father, and he’d tell me to shut up, because he thought I was bragging. But that’s just my story, I didn’t know my father.
I grew up with my mum . . . well when I was younger, I lived with my gran, and I’d see my mum at weekends. They’d tell me that this was quite common then, in Manchester in those days, in the sixties. But for kids who didn’t know who the father was, they’d say your gran was your mum, and your mum was your sister, and your great-gran was your gran, et cetera . . . they’d move the generation up a notch to explain the lack of a father. So when I was young, I thought my gran was my mum, because that’s who I lived with, and I thought my mum was my sister.
So when I tried to explain this to Mark, he was quite miffed that I’d had a more urchin-like childhood than him, because he saw himself as working class, but he had a dad, and his dad was a self-employed plumber. So he had his own business. Whereas, I didn’t know who my dad was, I’d been brought up between houses in east Manchester. The penny didn’t drop for a while, nonetheless, that Mother-Sister! was obviously about me talking about my relationship with my mother, that she’s more like a big sister than a mum. I went to live with my mum finally when I was seven, and that’s when I moved to Prestwich, in north Manchester.
I was telling Mark about that, and outside the house, when he visited . . . we lived by the motorway, and there was a big electricity pylon outside of the house. You could hear buzzing all the time, but we got the house really cheap because it was by an electricity pylon and a motorway! And of course, the song ends with “why did you put your head in the pylon?” and he starts screaming! That part doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s impressions of my family home.
I had quite a pretty mum, so he may have fancied her. A lot of my friends did, because she was a pretty blond and young for a mum – a lot of lads with older mums thought mine was quite sexy, as teenaged boys do! I was told that my mum was my sister, though my mum denies it now! I’d been given it subtly, at a young age. I used to stay with my mum at weekends. My mum lived with my great-gran, and she’d had the same thing happen . . . she thought her gran was her mum when she was young. There were no men around for three generations!
Posted to The Fall Online Forum by @wontonton, 18 March 2017. Link: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thefall/new-blue-orchids-10-story-of-mother-sister-t42122.html
After some detective work with old telephone directories (which I reported on annotatedfall.doomby.com on 8 April 2024), I tracked down where the house was at the relevant time: Warwick Avenue, Whitefield, Prestwich.
As can be seen on Google Maps, the location was right next to the Manchester Outer Ring Road (formed by gradually connecting sections of existing motorways over a period of about four decades and finally redesignated as the M60 motorway in 1998). As far as I can tell this section was opened c.1970-1971 as part of the M62 (see SABRE Wiki). And it is indeed also slap bang in between two pylons (the two little diamond symbols connected by a black line on the OpenStreetMap).
(Note: the map marker does not show the exact location of the house)
See also: Google Maps.
Of the two pylons, the one at the junction of Warwick Close and Barnard Avenue seems to be a little closer to the exact location of the Bramah house than the one further along Warwick Avenue.
Poppycock: “Lizardman”
At a gig at Prestwich Hospital Social Club on 25 November 1978, MES introduced this song by saying, “The next one’s dedicated to Una. I know you’re out there, baby. It’s Mother-Sister!”
In October 2016, Una Baines’ band Poppycock appeared on Salford-based German Shepherd Records’ charity album Malawi with the song “Lizard Man”. It begins with two female voices repeating the introductory dialogue from “Mother-Sister!”: “Uh, what’s this song about?” / “Uh, nothing.”
“Lizard Man” sounds like it might owe a little to The Fall’s “Frightened“. According to Poppycock’s website biography, the song “was written after a dream Una had about The Fall and is a tribute to Mark E Smith” (see: https://poppycockmanchester.wordpress.com/biography/).
The song was included (apparently re-recorded, without the opening dialogue, and titled “Lizardman”) on Poppycock’s 2024 album, Magic Mothers.
Sounds Like…?
A similarity has been noted (I believe Fall Online Forum user @Pott was the first to bring it up, in a post on the Forum on 29 March 2020) between the keyboard intro to this song, and a track attributed to U Brown on the Yabby You compilation, Dread Prophecy (The Strange And Wonderful Story Of Yabby You) (2015). The track is entitled “Natty Roots Man”.
However, according the box set booklet, the track was previously unreleased. So how could it have been an influence? Maybe there was another version of it. But if so, we don’t know what it was.
The tracks on the “rarities” disc of this collection include eight previously unreleased tracks, 5 dubplates of which only one copy in the world exists, and the remaining tracks which have previously only been available on 7″ or 12″ singles on one of Yabby’s labels…
and
Some of the unreleased songs came from tape boxes that were incompletely labeled… The track labeled as being by U Brown we think may be called “Natty Roots Man”…
On 28 March 2020 at 1:08 pm, following up a Tweet from @TheFallinFives, I Tweeted Martin Bramah and Una Baines:
But the track was unreleased until its discovery for a 2015 Yabby You compilation, so perhaps there is another version. Any memory of this @MartinBramah @UnaBaines
dannyno: https://twitter.com/dannyno_01/status/1243887698970136577
Bramah replied at 5:16 pm:
Just a random coincidence obviously – there are only so many notes yerknow!
Martin Bramah: https://twitter.com/MartinBramah/status/1243950186277285888
“There are only so many notes” is the kind of thing musicians always say, of course, but it’s not untrue. So, unless anyone can come up with a version of the track that The Fall, or Baines in particular, could plausibly have heard, that’s where the matter rests.
Footnotes
- This line spoken by Martin Bramah. ↩︎
- This line spoken by Mark E. Smith. ↩︎
- “Reach or preach / It’s all a diminished return” is a distinct echo of “No Xmas for John Quays”: “The powders reach you / And the powders teach you / When you find they can’t reach you” (itself possibly adapted from The Equals “Black Skinned Blue Eyed Boy” – see the entry for “No Xmas…”). ↩︎
- At annotatedfall.doomby.com, user @egg pointed out (comment #22, 15 March 2020) that vocals can be heard here. I agree that there are. @egg thought it was “soda, soda”, but noted that “soda soda” didn’t make obvious sense (but nor does much of the rest of the song, so…). I don’t think it’s “soda soda”, but I don’t know what it should be instead. ↩︎
- annotatedfall.doomby.com had this as “push your head in”, as do some other sources, but I think it’s “put your head in” throughout. ↩︎
- Miners, or dead? ↩︎
- I’ve written this as though it’s one line, but it may not be. “The pylon!” might not be what the head has been put in. ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “Mother-Sister” [Archived]
- Bramah, Martin (2016). The Story of “Mother-Sister!”. [Text available online via the Fall Online Forum: “New Blue Orchids 10″ / story of “Mother-Sister!”“]
- “The Fall”. V-Sign, #2 [undated. c.1980]. [unnumbered. pp.5-7]. Text available online via The Fall Online – Bibliography
- PledgeMusic.com: Blue Orchids project page, 2016 [archived]
- Poppycock: Bio [online] [archived]
- Poppycock. Magic Mothers (2024). Tiny Global Productions: PICI-0057 CD/LP. [Discogs] [Bandcamp]
- The Track Record: “Mother-Sister”
- Various Artists. Malawi (2016). German Shepherd Records, released via Bandcamp. Bandcamp: German Shepherd Records [archived]
- Wikipedia: Little and Large
- Wikipedia: M60 (motorway)
- Yabby You, Dread Prophecy (The Strange And Wonderful Story Of Yabby You) (2015). 3 x CD box set. Shanchie: 45072. [Discogs]