Commentary

Let’s talk about “Assume”, what’s the… tell us about that song, how you wrote it.

That was a random one, definitely… it’s about humans, and air flight, and um, rabbits, and um, things like that.

Source: Interview with Mark E. Smith, Mixing It, BBC Radio 3. Recorded 13th October 2005, first broadcast 10th February 2006 [programme details] [Uploaded to YouTube by User @BuyKurious, 1st June 2010].

“Assume” was the fifth track on The Fall’s 2005 album, Fall Heads Roll. Both on the record and in the BMI database it is credited solely to “Smith”. The song was in the group’s setlists in the 2005 – 2006 period: its first documented appearance was at the Civic Centre, Middleton, on 7th March 2005, and the last known performance was at Glasgow’s Indian Summer Festival on 2nd September 2006.

It’s a relatively heavy classic in The Fall canon. The Track Record describes it as “endearing”, noting that the song is full of “scary dynamics and bludgeoning riff changes”. Steve Pringle (2022, p.411) mentions “Assume”‘s “hefty riffs”, and Tommy Mackay (2018, p.208) thinks it is “reminiscent of that old multitracked Sex Pistols sound.”

Versions

The only “official” alternate version of “Assume” is the radio session recorded for BBC Radio 3’s Mixing It programme (recorded 13th October 2005, broadcast 10th February 2006 – the same show MES was interviewed for, see above). However, it has not been released on record. The lyrics are more or less the same as the album version, although in a slightly different order. The line “You are rabbiton” (that’s what it sounds like) occurs several times.

Notable Cover Versions

• We Hate You Please Die. Originally released on the French tribute LP, The Fall: A French Tribute (Teenage Hate Records THR 1013, 2019). [Discogs] [Bandcamp]

Sounds Like…?

On 19th February 2009, User @harleyr on The Fall Online Forum posted that “Assume” sounds like the theme tune to Gerry Anderson’s early ’60s series Supercar, a claim @harleyr repeated on the doomby edition of The Annotated Fall. [See FOF Post, 2009 / Annotated Fall comment #5, 21st August 2015].

See what you think:

Footnotes

1. These opening lines of distorted dialogue between two female voices appear to have been recorded from TV or radio, but the source is currently unknown. ↩︎
2. It remains uncertain whether this is supposed to sound like “hoon” or “hoom”. The latter has the possible advantage of rhyming with “assume”, and for that and other reasons I have rendered the word as “hoom”. There is no certainty, either, about whether it’s supposed to be the same thing throughout (MES would often play with similar-sounding words and homonyms), but that’s how I have transcribed it.
   
   A number of proposals were put forward on the doomby edition of The Annotated Fall:
   
   * “Hoon”: Australian slang meaning “fool” or “idiot” (Oxford Shorter English Dictionary). In the 1979 film Mad Max, Mel Gibson delivers the line, “I think we got some hoon trouble”. 
   
   * “Hoon” as in Geoff Hoon, Defence Secretary under Tony Blair. See note below on the line, “The Watch was blackish in the morn”.
   
   * “Hulme“, as in the area of Manchester.
   
   * “Hume” as in David Hume, the Scottish philosopher (1711 – 1776).
   
   I don’t buy any of them.
   
   But also note there is what sounds like a “Doctor Richard Hume”, who is “retiring to the south of France” in “I’ve Been Duped” off the album Imperial Wax Solvent.
   
   First of all, note Mark E. Smith’s Mixing It interview, in which he comments that “Assume” is partly about humans. Secondly, Eleni’s Instagram account for her soft toy rabbit, Gunther O’Leipzig, sometimes refers to “hooms”, which is Gunther’s word for humans (see: https://www.instagram.com/guenther_o_leipzig/). ↩︎
3. This bit is MES speaking, apparently in reaction to the opening dialogue. ↩︎
4. At the Bierkeller, Manchester, on 2nd October 2003, two years before “Assume”‘s debut, MES inserted the line “If you assume, you are a hoom; if you half assume, you a hoom” into his rendition of the lyrics of “Telephone Thing” (which already includes the line, “How dare you assume I want to parlez-vous with you”). Credit to User @Martin at the doomby edition of The Annotated Fall for pointing this out (comment #12, dated 3rd March 2017), but note his spelling was “hume” rather than “hoom”. ↩︎
5. “Rabbiton” or “rabbit-ah”? I’ve gone with the former, but it’s a close run thing. ↩︎
6. Cliff Barnes was a character on the popular American soap opera Dallas (1978 – 1991). Played by Ken Kercheval (1935 – 2019), Barnes was J.R. Ewing’s longstanding rival and Pamela Ewing’s brother.
   
   I have tried but failed to connect Cliff Barnes/Ken Kercheval to a recital of the Beatles’ 1968 single “Hey Jude“. It is of course possible that MES changed the name on a whim or was mistaken about the actor, the character, or the song. bzfgt at the original The Annotated Fall noted that Dallas was not aired in June in the US, that being the show’s “off season”. However, it was on air in Britain, where it was also popular. It is also possible, though I haven’t checked, that the show might not have been synchronised with the real-world passage of the seasons, and so could have portrayed events taking place in June when it was not June in reality.
   
   In any case, we currently have absolutely no plausible idea at all about what MES is referring to here.   ↩︎
7. “Victuous” isn’t a word. “Victual”, though, means “food” (see Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) – although it is supposed to be pronounced “vittle” (see the entry for “I Feel Voxish“, and the note on the mispronounced line, “For victuals could not raise nor buy”.) ↩︎
8. “Kapitän” is German for “Captain”. ↩︎
9. Possibly, but not certainly, a reference to the Black Watch, the Scottish infantry regiment. There is a neat – perhaps too neat – Geoff Hoon/Black Watch connection, because Hoon was Defence Secretary when controversial proposals were published to merge the Black Watch into a larger regiment. The decision was reported to be the subject of a military chiefs’ meeting on 6 December 2004. MES would probably have taken note of the news, having referred to the Black Watch on more than one occasion over the years. Fall Heads Roll was recorded in the first half of 2005. ↩︎
10. Perhaps “half assume” is akin to a cryptic crossword clue, meaning “hume”/”hoom”, if they were actual words. ↩︎
11. I don’t know if this is the name of a production company (“7 Productions” or “Seven Productions” or “Severn Productions”) or is supposed to indicate a number of productions. ↩︎

Sources / Links

• The Annotated Fall: “Assume” [Archived]
• Mackay, Tommy (2018). 40 Odd Years of The Fall. Place of publication unknown: Greg Moodie.
• Mixing It, BBC Radio 3, 10 February 2006. [Programme details] [Available online via YouTube]
• Pringle, Steve (2022). You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record. [paperback edition]. Pontefract: Route Publishing Ltd. [Online store]
• The Track Record: “Assume”
• Wikipedia: Cliff Barnes
• Wikipedia: Dallas (TV series)
• Wikipedia: Ken Kercheval
• Wikipedia: Supercar (TV series)