Perverted by Language

Commentary

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“Perverted by Language” is to all intents and purposes the title track of the album Perverted by Language (1983), except that it wasn’t included on the record. No studio recording has emerged; the only officially released version of the song is a live rendition from the Electric Ballroom, London, 8 December 1983, featuring Karl Burns and Paul Hanley on drums, Steve Hanley on bass, Craig Scanlon and Brix Smith on guitars and Mark E. Smith on vocals. The text above is an attempt to transcribe that performance, and is highly uncertain.

There are only four, maybe five, known performances of “Perverted by Language”, but recordings from the audience exist of all of them. It is usually an instrumental intro leading into “Garden“. There are some gigs during the relevant time period where no evidence of what was played exists, so it may have been performed more often, But by the same token, it wasn’t played at other gigs during the period for which setlists or bootlegs do exist, so perhaps it wasn’t played more often!

The phrase “perverted by language” may be borrowed from the works of Ezra Pound:

And the betrayers of language
…… n and the press gang
And those who had lied for hire;
the perverters, the perverters of language,
the perverts, who have set money-lust
Before the pleasures of the senses;

Ezra Pound, The Cantos, XIV.

Footnotes

1. The mandrake plant does not have runners. ↩︎

Sources / Links

• The Annotated Fall: “Perverted by Language” [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 Start, Brix (2016). The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise. London: Faber & Faber. [Text available online in archive.org]
• The Track Record: “Perverted by Language”
• Wikipedia: The Cantos
• Wikipedia: Mandrake