Lyrics
A five hundred dollar bottle of wine
A five hundred dollar bottle of wine
A five hundred dollar bottle of wine
That's all we get for being with him all the time
I give them a five hundred bottle of wine
That's all they get most of the time
A five hundred dollar bottle of wine
A five hundred dollar bottle of wine
Two days in the desert
What did they get for all of the tears and the grind?
We've been through desert
And through our shirts
And all the lightning and life
We said so much to (just a) crazy and white 1
A half-filled (no) bottle of wine
A five hundred dollar bottle of wine
That's all I get man most of the time
We been through the desert
Went through their last shirts
And all the lightning and crying
A half-filled bottle of wine
They're all fat gits and they get on our tits
They're all fat gits and they get on our tits
That's all you get most of the time
For all the life in crime 2
The five hundred bottle of wine
Drive (been) through the desert (drive for) in thirty-six hours 3
But when we get the ending we took
The five hundred dollar bottle of wine
A five hundred dollar bottle of wine
And I feel real guilty
The babies are squealing 4
Starving and pleading all the time
A five hundred dollar bottle of wine
A five hundred dollar bottle of wine
You think it's gonna get on my tits
They all bitch, they just whinge
And drink my last bottle of wine
I feel real guilty
I been through my last shirt
And I get guilty all the time
Yeah
C'mon
Five hundred dollars
Get down the fucking liquor store boy 5
Commentary
Note: lyrics in italics are sung by the group in growly American accents.
“The $500 Bottle of Wine” was never played live.
< Post in progress >
Eventually we reach our room and Mark comes straight round, looking very fresh, well-rested and uncharacteristically chipper. I try to tell him what we’ve been going through just to get here. Of course we get a bollocking for it. ‘I get you lot the best fucking tour bus on the planet and what do you go and do? Wreck it!’
He’s got a bottle of wine and no corkscrew. But this is not just any old bottle of wine. The three Goths I successfully insulted back in LA enjoyed the experience so much they left it for us at the hotel along with a note saying it cost them $500 and was worth every cent.
Craig and I appreciate the gesture. But we haven’t got a corkscrew either and have to push the cork in with a drum stick. As we sit there sipping our luxury treat, we tell Mark all about our arduous journey. Much to our surprise, instead of going back to his room with the rest of the wine, he shares it out equally. It might be because he’s not that keen on red but we appreciate the gesture. Like Jesus, this is our reward for toiling through the desert. Okay, so it was forty hours and not forty days and forty nights, but once the rider ran out we started to get some idea of what He must have gone through. Was that our retribution for colluding with Chicago’s own devil? Mark finds the whole story quite inspiring.
Steve Hanley, The Big Midweek (2014), p.334. The insulting-the-Goths story appears earlier in the book.
Brix Smith Start’s book includes a story which she claims is the origin of the song. I think Hanley’s fits the lyric better.
Craig had taken it upon himself to educate me on fine wines and had bought me a 1982 bottle of Pétrus Pomerol to get my collection started. It was a present for finishing the Adult Net album. He told me to hold on to it and one day it would be worth a lot of money. On one of my trips to Manchester, before Mark and I broke up, I left the bottle of Pétrus in the kitchen. I put a note by the bottle saying ‘Do not drink!’ When I went back to collect some of my belongings, after we’d split, I looked everywhere for the bottle. I called Mark and asked him where he put it.
‘Oh, that?’ he said. ‘I drank it.’ ‘
‘You drank it?’ I screamed. ‘That was my present from Craig and Cassell!’
When I calmed down, I asked him if it tasted good. He said it tasted shit – it had been late at night, he was really drunk and there was nothing left in the house, so he drank it. He told me it tasted like grape juice. That was the inspiration for the Fall song ‘The $500 Bottle of Wine’. The price of that bottle today is £6,900.
Brix Smith Start, The Rise, The Fall, and the Rise (2016), p.266.
Footnotes
- The transcription is doubtful at this point. ↩︎
- I’m uncertain about the accuracy of the transcription of this line. ↩︎
- Another section of lyric that is unclear and therefore may have been transcribed incorrectly. ↩︎
- This line echoes the lyrics of “Popcorn Double Feature“: “People are dying and babies are crying / Don’t nobody care at all?” ↩︎
- This line is spoken by Mark E. Smith. ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “The 500 Dollar Bottle of Wine” [Archived]
- Ford, Simon (2003). Hip Priest: the story of Mark E Smith and The Fall. London: Quartet Books.
- Hanley, Steve and Piekarski, Olivia (2014). The Big Midweek: Life Inside The Fall. Pontefract: Route.
- 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: “The $500 Bottle of Wine”
- Wolstencroft, Simon (2014). You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide: a memoir. Trowbridge: Strata Books. (2nd edition published by Route Publishing, 2017).