Commentary

“The Book of Lies”, first released on the album Shift-Work (released 15 April 1991), is credited to Mark E. Smith and Craig Scanlon. Scottish Fall violinist/keyboardist Kenny Brady and Mark E. Smith trade lead vocals on record and in live performances. Brady’s vocals on the studio version are italicised in the above transcription; there’s some vocal overlap at the end of the track, which I am pretending doesn’t exist because it’s too hard to transcribe.

A couple of contemporary reviewers of Shift-Work picked out “The Book of Lies” for comment. Jon Wilde in Melody Maker mentions its “hard metallic rumble”, characterising it (somewhat oddly) as “as caustic as anything since 1982’s ‘Who Makes The Nazis’.” (Wilde, 1991). “… hypocrisy is lashed by panel-beater sneer ‘The Book of Lies’”, comments Stephen Dalton in New Musical Express (Dalton, 1991). Later writers have been less impressed: Tommy Mackay thinks it “doesn’t sound like The Fall at all… dull pop-by-numbers.” But despite its “conservative tune and pedestrian lyrics”, he still, “weirdly”, likes it, “god knows why, I can’t think of a decent thing to say about it. Maybe it’s the very disinterestedness of it all.” (Mackay, 2018, p.123); Steve Pringle sums it up as “off-key vocals over a somewhat forgettable 60s pop backing.” (Pringle, 2022, p.235).

The song had a short run in The Fall’s live set during 1991. The Fall Online Gigography and The Track Record agree in listing five confirmed performances (recordings exist of all of them, but none have been officially released). The first was at the Frankfurt Festhalle, Germany, on 23 May 1991, and the last was at the Cities in the Park event at Heaton Park, Manchester, on 3 August 1991. However, there were no gigs in 1991 prior to the start of the European tour in Hamburg on 14 May, and Cities in the Park was the first gig after the conclusion of the European tour. The European tour is poorly documented: of the fifteen gigs that are known to have taken place, set-lists exist for only four. On those four occasions where we know what was played, “Book of Lies” was performed. It’s therefore reasonable to conclude that it had more than five outings. Kenny Brady had left the group by the Cities at the Park gig, replaced on stage by Dave Bush; although “Book of Lies” was played on that occasion, perhaps Brady’s departure explains why the song was never played again.

“The Book of Lies” is commonly held to be a direct reference to The Book of Lies (1913), a book by the English occultist Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947), using the pen-name Frater Perdurabo. As a source for the title phrase it’s not implausible: Mark E. Smith would likely have been aware of Crowley’s book given his esoteric interests (Mick Middles says he ‘caught’ Smith with a biography of Crowley. See Middles and Smith, 2003, p.267). But I don’t think we can understand the song as being literally about someone reading Crowley’s The Book of Lies, or even as gesturing towards Crowley at all. There is zero Crowleyan content in the lyrics.

If we are still looking for literary sources for the title phrase, however, then there are two or three plausible and more prosaic candidates, which I think I’m the first to draw attention to. There is The Book of Lies (New York: Morse, 1896), by the American humourist John Langdon Heaton, and The Book of Lies (New York: William Morrow, 1990), by M. Hirsh Goldberg. John Langdon Heaton is not well known, and Goldberg’s history of deception, which came out in the United States in April 1990, wasn’t published in Britain (The Fall did play a couple of US gigs in May 1990). My money would be on The Penguin Book of Lies, an anthology edited by Philip Kerr, which was published in the UK in hardback in October 1990 (Shift-Work was recorded in late 1990 – early 1991). It was widely reviewed that autumn; there was a very short notice in the Manchester Evening News on 1 November (see Aspin, 1990). But once again, in terms of content there’s nothing specific to connect the song to the book.

The Penguin Book of Lies, edited by Philip Kerr (1990).

The lyrics seem relatively unambiguous but could be interpreted as relating to either a romantic or a business relationship. Regardless of provenance, I think the phrase “book of lies” is intended to be straightforwardly metaphorical, if you see what I mean.

A version of the lyrics is included in the Blue Book (Smith, 2008, no page numbering [p.66]). It isn’t known whether Dave Luff (the editor of the Blue Book) transcribed the lyrics himself, or if they are based on a handwritten or typed sheet owned by M.E.S., but I have followed this version in capitalising “Book of Lies” in the text, despite it being unclear whether capitalising the phrase as though it were an actual book title is accurate or misleading.

Musically the song seems to my ear to echo elements of “White Lightning” (“White-Lie-tning”, anyone?), which was included on the CD and cassette formats of Shift-Work.

Video

A video for the track is included on Shift-Work and Holidays (VHS: Phonogram/Cog Sinister: 083.590-3, 1991; DVD reissue: Cherry Red/Pearson Productions Ltd: PPCR003, 2008). It’s not really very good.

The credits to Shift-Work and Holidays tell us that the ‘African drummer” is played by Francis Hylton (I think this is him: https://www.francishyltonbass.co.uk).