The Fall are an English institution led by the enigmatic Mark E Smith, and are still going strong over thirty-five years since they formed. Smith famously runs the band like his own personal army, hiring and firing band members faster than most groups get through a set of guitar strings. There have been a number of books written about them over recent years, including the The Fallen by David Simpson, which sought to track down all the past band members, and Mr Smith’s own off-beat memoir, Renegade. But this is the first book that can truly lay claim to be an account of life inside the band during their most prolific and creatively fulfilling period. It is written by long standing bass player Steve Hanley, who served with the band between 1979 and 1998.

Hanley writes engagingly about his teenage years running around Manchester with best mate Marc Riley as they shopped for records on a Saturday morning and went to their first gigs together. The city in the late 1970s was awash with talented bands about to break out to wider recognition, and it isn’t long before Hanley comes into contact with a youthful line up of The Fall. Whether you are a fan of the band or not, this is a fantastic rock’n’roll memoir. As Mark E Smith’s drinking worsens, his paranoia and decision-making become ever more erratic. At the height of their popularity in the mid 1980s, inter-band squabbling hits Spinal Tap levels of perversity. Hanley gleefully recounts how the band all began to grow beards on a fraught tour of Australia just to anger their leader, who eventually snaps ordering them to go and shave with the words: ‘What do you think this is, Woodstock!?’

Smith emerges as a bully, all too willing to use psychological pressure and psychical violence to get his band to do exactly what he wants. Events come to a head in 1998 with an onstage bust up during a gig in New York, marking time on Hanley’s twenty year stint with the band. In an age where indie music has long since been co-opted by the mainstream, this book is a wonderful reminder of what it once meant to be in a genuinely dangerous and groundbreaking group. Recommended reading for anyone contemplating forming a band. JM