Commentary

“The main point about ‘That Man’ is to me, like, you’d listen to a punk song and you’d think it’s so good, and it’ll preach to you. Which co-incides with what ‘That Man’ is about, the song is about phoney preachers, and what is the difference if you listen to (e.g. punk songs that preach) and this song? The next step for that song is that in ten years time you’ll have new wave Jesus bands. You will. The U.K. Subs do it now on TV…”

Mark E. Smith, quoted in McCullough (1980, p.19).

I had a look for UK Subs TV appearances around the time of this interview, and found that they had most recently appeared on the BBC chart show Top of the Pops on 22 May 1980, performing their single “Teenage” (Charlie Harper was in his mid-30s at this point). [YouTube]. So maybe that’s what MES was referring to, I don’t know.

“Remember this one! I wrote the music for ‘That Man’ on the floor of the dressing room singing “Jesus loves you… that man he cares for you… he really do..” which MES changed to “That man loves you…” File under ‘Strange But True…’…”

Posted by Marc Riley to X/Twitter at 1:48am on 7 May 2024, responding to a post about The Fall’s gig at the Prince of Wales Conference Centre on 15 September 1979. [Link to X post]

Note that the Conference Centre was in what was until recently the Central YMCA building at 112 Great Russell Street, London.

Also note that the YMCA was founded in 1844 as the Young Men’s Christian Association, which may be the proximate reason for its Christian-themed origins.

As Tommy Mackay (2018, p.32) says, “That Man” sounds like a cover version – but it’s not. Daryl Easlea’s notes for the 2017 Let Them Eat Vinyl re-release of Totale’s Turns describes the song as “the best re-recording of Teenager In Love that exists”, but although I can sort of see what he means, I’m not really hearing it. bzfgt, at annotatedfall.doomby.com, thought it at least partly a parody of The Beatles’ “That Boy”, which again I’m not picking up myself. Like the music, the lyrics also sound like they might have been partly borrowed from another source – but again it doesn’t seem so (at any rate, I haven’t found anything, though of course there are echoes of and references to other sources).

The Track Record lists nine documented live outings. The first was at Rock Garden, Middlesbrough, 4 November 1979 and the last at Riley Smith Hall, University of Leeds, 17 March 1981. Recordings exist of all but two of these performances.

There have been three official releases of the track, two live (one of which is on video) and one studio outtake (which appeared on Totales Turns and is from the sessions for the “Fiery Jack” single, recorded at Foel Studios, Wales, in September 1979). The transcription above is based on the Totale’s Turns version.

There are no song credits listed on the original release, and only Mark E. Smith was credited on the 1992 Dojo re-release. The Smith-Riley-Scanlon credits can be found on the 1980 Italian releases on Go International (cat #: GILP 10) and Base Records (cat #: ROUGH 10 Y5), and on the 2004 Castle/Sanctuary expanded edition on CD (cat #: CMRCD882).

“That Man”, on Riley’s account, started life as a backstage parody of a Christian song or hymn, which MES turned into a parody of punk “preaching”. In doing so, he partly secularised the song by removing references to Jesus, but retained words like “holy” and “heathen”, which are really the only elements of the text that prevent it sounding on casual first listen like a love song. And if MES hadn’t provided an explanation of the intent of the song, I’m not sure the satire would come across at all, so emptied of specifics is the lyric.

Footnotes

1. Accrington is a town in Lancashire, located between Blackburn and Burnley and about 20 miles (32 kilometres) north of Manchester. [Google Maps] [Bing Maps] ↩︎
2. Hovis (see Wikipedia) is a famous British baker and bread-maker, founded in Stoke-on-Trent and based in Macclesfield from 1886. The company is also mentioned in “H.O.W.“, and “Just Step S’Ways“.
   
   Note that Accrington is north of Manchester, whereas Macclesfield is south of Manchester, so I think a very broadly north-west frame of reference is intended.
   
   Hovis’ brand is associated with a peculiarly non-specific English nostalgia and “Hovis-land” is a satirical phrase used of stereotypical and romanticised English village or mill-town imagery often found in advertising (as exemplified by Hovis adverts). An idealised and sentimental “Disney-land”-type theme-park of a mythical Englishness.
   
   The most famous Hovis advert – one of the most famous and popular British TV commercials ever – was the 1973/4 “Boy on the Bike” or “Bike Round” advert, directed by a pre-movie-career Ridley Scott.
   
   The curious thing about this advert – I’m not the first to point this out – is that it is often misremembered as depicting a northern scene, and having a northern- accented voice over by Joe Gladwin.
   
   Gladwin did do voiceovers for other Hovis adverts, but not this one. “Boy on the Bike” was was filmed at Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, Dorset, and features London-born Howard Lang doing the theatrical ersatz-rustic-West-Country “Mummerset” accent over a soundtrack of the Native American/African American-inspired New World Symphony, by the Czech-American composer Antonín Dvořák. Ridley Scott was born in Country Durham and the New World Symphony was performed by the (Northumbrian) Ashington Colliery Brass Band (both located in the North East, not the North West). The boy, played by Carl Barlow (who became a London firefighter), seems to have been at stage school in London.
   
   So it’s really quite remarkable how all that can add up to a very strong memory in many people that the advert depicted a long-vanished Lancashire or Yorkshire or “North West” rural village idyll. Maybe it’s just the brass band.
   
   Watch: Hovis (Boy on the Bike), via BFI Player
   
   Remarkably, Mark E. Smith actually has a plausible claim to the earliest documented use of the “Hovis land” phrase. I still think it’s unlikely that MES coined the phrase, but to my surprise I haven’t yet unearthed anything which predates the usage in “That Man”. Either way, contemporary listeners would certainly have understood what the line meant.
   
   Here’s a few examples, starting with the earliest I’ve discovered so far, “That Man” aside:
   
   * “We’re off to Hovis-land, that misty green landscape where little boys wear cloth caps and adults are all kindly to kids…” in Murray, James (1980). “Land of Hope and Cloth Caps” (TV column). Daily Express, 26 January 1980, p.28.
   
   * “A stroll in Hovis land”. Headline to David Roper’s “Tonight’s Choice” TV column in the Daily Express, 19 June 1986, p.22.
   
   * “The camera pans to some battered enamelled advertisements for long-forgotten products, and the hero, in an oversize flat cap, trudges up a street immediately identifiable as Hovisland.” in Paterson, Peter (1990). “Charlie’s a Right Little Darlin’”. Daily Mail, 26 November, p.26.
   
   * “Many Londoners in particular picture the area north of the Watford gap as a cross between Last of the Summer Wine territory and Hovis land, populated by flat cap wearing whippet owners.” The Northern Echo, 23 November 1992, p.10.
   
   * “Trouble in Hovis Land”. headline to article by Jane McCarthy, The Times, weekend supplement, 7 September 1996, p.1. [Internet Archive]
   
   * “… a rather more down-to-earth fictional northern town than Ridley Scott’s Hovis-land…” In Myerson, Jeremy (2002). Rewind: forty years of design & advertising. London: Phaidon Press. p.128. [Internet Archive] ↩︎
3. “Screaming” is an unexpected word to appear at this point! ↩︎
4. bzfgt footnoted this line at annotatedfall.doomby.com by pointing to William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell [see Wikipedia], a source for many of MES’ lyrics, which concludes with the words “For every thing that lives is Holy.” Which would make “That Man” a critique both of punk self-righteousness and Blake. Which I’m not sure I find plausible. But, such an interpretation is undeniably there to be found. ↩︎

Sources / Links

• The Annotated Fall: “That Man” [Archived]
• Easlea, Daryl (2017). “The Fall – Totale’s Turns or It’s Now or Never Or The Fall February to September 1980.” Sleeve notes, Totale’s Turns. Let Then Eat Vinyl LP (LETV490LP) [Discogs]
• Hovis: The Boy on the Bike is Back!
• Mackay, Tommy (2018). 40 Odd Years of The Fall. Place of publication unknown: Greg Moodie.
• McCullough, Dave (1980). “Totale Turnaround”. Sounds, 21 June, pp.18-19. [p.18, via The Fall Online – Bibliography] [p.19, via The Fall Online – Bibliography]
• Pringle, Steve (2022). You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record. [paperback edition]. Pontefract: Route Publishing Ltd. [Online store]
• Rogers, Charlotte (2018). “How Hovis’s 1973 ad ‘The Bike Ride’ kickstarted its route to household name”. Marketing Week. [Online] [Archive]
• The Track Record: “That Man”
• Wikipedia: Accrington
• Wikipedia: Hovis
• Wikipedia: The Bike Ride
• Wikipedia: Totale’s Turns