FORMAT: Hard Cover
Barcode: 9 780571 358335
Year: 2021
Edited by Tessa Norton and Bob Stanley

Saint Etienne Quotes
When we imagined our ideal Fall book, we decided that in order to do the The Fall justice, straight-up biography wouldn't cut it, and you would also have to write about the Bury New Road, repetition, social clubs, MR James, the Isthmian League, the Anti-University, Taylorism, The Great God Pan, the Vorticists, Woolworths, and rockabilly.

The world of The Fall is not just one of inky fingers thumbing through music weeklies, or of Peel Sessions, but a dazzling city founded on northern architecture, speculative fiction and work ethics, among so many other things. As well as essays, here are notes, stickers, posters, artwork, ephemera, all material sourced from fans, an unfiltered cache of Fall artefacts. This is the world of The Fall. This is The Fall-shaped hole they punched in the wall. We wanted to illustrate how The Fall are a jumping-off point into so many different directions, many of them nothing to do with music.

Tessa Norton - April 2021

It may not seem obvious - nothing about the Fall is obvious - but me and Pete were hugely influenced by them. In 1982 we even paid a pilgrimage to their HQ on Bury New Road, and can confirm that it is very, very long. Their artwork, urban iconography, use of text and handwriting, their no encore rule (until they decided there wasn't a no encore rule), and the notion that you can drop hints and notes on your artwork and in your lyrics and send people down pathways they'd never have thought about. They're now called 'Easter Eggs', which seems timely, but at the time it felt like letting people into your world: for MES it was HP Lovecraft, Hoffman La Roche, Gene Vincent and Joseph Holt pubs. For us it was Stradhoughton, Berthold Lubetkin, Francoise Hardy and cafes with formica tables.

Bob Stanley - April 2021