Oh! Brother

Lyrics

Ich hasse, die masse, die kleine, gemeine, die lahme, die zahme, mein hertzblut, raubt 

Oh, little brother, we are in a mess 
Don't look at me that way 
Don't put me to the test 
When I first saw you 
People said, "He scrutinised a little monster" 
And disappeared through red door  
Now everyone is disinformation 
Disinformation 
Disinformation 
He says, "won't you give me one more chance? Won't you give me one more chance? I'm not a communist, won't you give me one more chance?" 

Disinformation 
Disinformation 
Disinformation 

Ich hasse, die masse, die kleine, gemeine, die lahme, die zahme, mein hertzblut, raubt 

Oh, little brother, we are in a mess 
Don't look at me that way 
Your d-jacket's a mess  
There's always someone beside you 
And there's always someone in your arms 
Oh, little brother, if only I had known 
Then I might not be alone 
Be alone 
Be alone 
Be alone 
Be alone 

1. This footnote addresses the two preceeding lines together: “People said, “He scrutinised a little monster” / And disappeared through red door”.
   
   Similar lyrics can also be found in “Impression of J. Temperance“: “Scrutinized little monster/Disappeared through the door.” Although “… J. Temperance” appeared on record before “Oh! Brother” did, the lines were first used in the 1977 version of “Oh! Brother”.
   
   
   @@CAPTION@@The Red Door, Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. Source: https://www.notredamedeparis.fr/en/understand/architecture/the-red-door/@@/CAPTION@@
   In 2025, four years after posting on the doomby.com Annotated Fall that there seemed to be some echoes, I finally pinned down the source of these lines in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831).
   
   The Hunchback of Notre Dame movie (1939), starring Charles Laughton, was broadcast on Granada TV on 27 August 1976. A new feature-length TV version, written by Robert Muller and starring Warren Clarke as Quasimodo, debuted on BBC 2 on 30 December 1976. There was also a Contact Theatre production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame at the University Theatre, Devas Street, Manchester from 15 December 1976 – 14 January 1977. It was written by Kenneth Alan Taylor. There were connections between Contact Theatre and members of The Fall: in November-December 1977, Martin Bramah, Karl Burns and Tony Friel played members of a punk band in a Contact Theatre musical titled Punk: The True Story of Frank Confession. It toured local youth clubs for three weeks and there were a few performances at the University Theatre (19 November, 26 November and 3 December 1977, dates confirmed from listings in the Manchester Evening News). The show was written by Tim Webb and directed by Contact Theatre’s Warren Hooper.
   
   @@CAPTION@@New Manchester Review #46, Dec 2-15 1977, p.13@@/CAPTION@@
   
   The story is briefly told by Simon Ford (2003, pp.37-38):
   
   Despite December being a busy period for the group, Burns, Friel and Bramah still found time to moonlight as musical advisors and stage extras in a ‘punk musical’ entitled The Story of Frank Confessions.  The play toured various Manchester youth clubs and was directed by Warren Hooper of the Contact Theatre. It presented a cautionary tale of a young punk rocker called Frank Confessions whose dubious talents makes him a target for manipulation by the music business.  The Fall guys played his backing band, The Runs. ‘We originally were a cabaret band in a strip club,’ Bramah said, ‘and this punk manageress comes in a says we’re great and she has this protégé, Frank Confessions, who was like a Johnny Rotten character, and we’re the backing band she needs for her star. We’re then dressed like London punks, we rocket to fame and then he pisses on the amps and electrocutes himself and dies.  Then it switches to the future and we’re in this job centre and he comes back from the dead in this hideous mask and there’s another song and that’s the end.  So it was like Ziggy Stardust meets the Sex Pistols.  The kids loved it. The music must have been very much like The Fall, basically because it was the same band, although I can’t remember us reusing any of it.  I remember Mark and Una came to see it and Mark was furious. It was the first sign we weren’t all going to get on.  Mark really thought it was treacherous to do this pastiche of punk rock.’
   
   When I posted about this on Twitter (10 October 2021, see Link to Twitter/X), Martin Bramah responded that “We actually had to write the music for this production as well as act in it.” [Link to Twitter/X]. ↩︎
2. A donkey jacket, a coat usually made of black wool, at one time ubiquitous among outdoor labourers in Britain. “D-jacket” was sometimes sung as “donkey jacket” live. Listen to recordings of this song from, for example, Buster Brown’s, Edinburgh, 19th March 1984; Forum Les Halles, Paris, 16 December 1984, Royal Court, Liverpool, 12 November 1983; and Elephant Fayre, Cornwall, 29 July 1984.
   
   According to Paul Hanley (2020, p.143, note 124): 
   
   “Oh Brother’s ‘Your D-Jacket’s a mess’ was a (well-deserved) snipe at the donkey jacket I wore throughout the early eighties.”
   
   However, when he wrote this Paul was unaware that the song originally made its debut in 1977. ↩︎

Footnotes

Sources / Links

• The Annotated Fall: “Oh! Brother” [Archived]
• dannyno (2020). “The Nazi Poem Behind a Fall Lyric: Uncovering Oh! Brother’s Selchovian Refrain”. The Wonderful and Frightening World of… Data. Blog post dated 27 February. [Available online here]
• Ford, Simon (2003). Hip Priest: the story of Mark E Smith and The Fall. London: Quartet Books.
• Hanley, Paul (2020). Have a Bleedin Guess: the story of Hex Enduction Hour. Pontefract: Route Publishing.
• 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: “Oh! Brother”
• Wolstencroft, Simon (2014). You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide: a memoir. Trowbridge: Strata Books. (2nd edition published by Route Publishing, 2017).