A gift for The Fall fans has to survive a hard fact: sixty-odd people passed through this band, and most fans cannot name half of them. My map plots all 31 studio albums from Live at the Witch Trials in 1979 to New Facts Emerge in 2017, with every musician credited on each one drawn as their own line. Fifty-six names. One of them runs the whole way.
The short version. My Fall map plots 31 studio albums across 38 years and 56 credited musicians. Mark E Smith appears on all 31 and nobody else comes close. Extricate (1990) is the busiest album with 11 people; five albums carry only 5. Karl Burns leaves and returns twice, Martin Bramah disappears for eleven years, and Brix Smith has a seven-year hole in the middle of her line. Available as a Giclée art print in A2 and A1, unframed or framed, from £42.00.
This Gift for The Fall Fans Has One Line That Never Breaks and Fifty-Five That Do
Mark E Smith is credited on every one of the thirty-one albums. His line runs the full width of the print with no gap, no late start and no ending, from 1979 to the album released four months before he died.
"Brilliant series.." Simon Rogers, Musician & Producer - The Fall
Every other line on the map breaks. Some last two albums, plenty last one. The longest of them belongs to Steve Hanley, whose bass runs from Dragnet in 1979 through to the late nineties, and even that one stops well short of the end.
That is the print. One spine and fifty-five things falling off it. If you are buying for somebody who has argued about Fall line-ups in a pub, this is the object that settles it.
The Fall Discography Map
Thirty-one albums, thirty-eight years and fifty-six musicians, drawn as one transit network.
Explore This Art PrintKarl Burns Leaves Twice and Comes Back Twice
Karl Burns drums on the first album in 1979, vanishes for the next two, comes back for a run of five from Hex Enduction Hour to This Nation's Saving Grace, and then disappears again.
He is gone for seven albums and eight years. Then he returns in 1994 for Middle Class Revolt and stays for four more, ending at Levitate in 1997.
Ten stations, three separate spells, two full departures and two returns. No other line in my whole catalogue does that, and on the print it looks like a dotted line rather than a line, which is exactly right.
Martin Bramah Plays the First Album, Then Nothing for Eleven Years
Martin Bramah founded the band with Smith. He is on Live at the Witch Trials in 1979, and then his line stops dead.
It picks up again in 1990 on Extricate, stays for Shift-Work in 1991, stops again, and reappears once more on Levitate in 1997. Three separate visits spread across eighteen years, with an eleven-year gap in the middle.
A discography list would show his name four times in four places. The map shows you the eleven years, which is the part that actually means something.
Brix Smith Arrives in 1983, Goes in 1988 and Returns in 1995
Brix Smith joins for Perverted by Language in 1983 and plays on six consecutive albums through to I Am Kurious Oranj in 1988. Then nothing.
Her line restarts in 1995 on Cerebral Caustic and runs to Levitate in 1997. Nine stations with a seven-year hole in the middle, and the hole sits exactly where the marriage ended.
I have drawn a lot of gaps on a lot of maps. That is the one that reads most clearly as a life rather than a line-up change, and I have not annotated it, because the shape says it without any help from me.
Drawing Fifty-Five Short Lines Without Making a Mess
Every map sets its own design problem, and this one was the hardest in the range. A normal discography has a handful of long lines and a few branches. The Fall has one long line and fifty-five stubs, and a lot of those stubs are a single station.
The temptation was to thin it out, drop the one-album names and keep the map readable. I did not, and I would defend that. The turnover is not noise around the story; it is the story, so a version that showed only the long-servers would be a map of a band that never existed.
So all fifty-six are on there, and the density does the work. Where the print goes quiet, the band was stable. Where it goes thick, something was happening. You can find 1990 and 1997 without reading a single word, and that is a thing a tracklist simply cannot do.
Extricate Brings in Eleven People, Including the Man Who Produced the Ramones
Extricate in 1990 is the busiest station on the map with eleven names on it, and Shift-Work the following year is close behind with ten. Five other albums carry only five.
Craig Leon is on both of those two, and he is a name worth stopping at. He produced the first Ramones album and Blondie's debut, and here he is on a Fall record fourteen years later, with Cassell Webb alongside him.
The rest of that Extricate crowd is a violinist, a woodwind player and Martin Bramah returning after a decade away. It is the point where the print is at its densest, and the band was at its least settled.
John Peel Has a Station on This Map
He does, on Middle Class Revolt in 1994. The DJ who did more than anyone alive to keep this band on the radio is credited on one of their records, and he gets a line for it like everybody else.
These are the short lines that make the print worth reading closely.
| Name | Album | Why they stand out |
|---|---|---|
| John Peel | Middle Class Revolt (1994) | The band's greatest champion, credited on the record itself |
| Craig Leon | Extricate (1990), Shift-Work (1991) | Produced the first Ramones album and Blondie's debut |
| Gavin Friday | The Wonderful and Frightening World Of (1984) | Virgin Prunes, and one station only |
| Kay Carroll | Dragnet (1979) to Hex Enduction Hour (1982) | The band's manager, credited on three albums |
| Yvonne Pawlett | Live at the Witch Trials (1979), Dragnet (1979) | Two albums and out, the first of many to go that way |
| Kazuko Hohki | The Unutterable (2000) | Frank Chickens |
| Steve Evets | The Unutterable (2000) | Better known now as an actor than as a Fall member |
| Tim Presley | Three albums, 2007 to 2015 | White Fence, and one of the few Americans on the map |
The Last Line-Up Lasted Longer Than Any of the Others
This is the detail that surprises people who stopped following in the nineties. After thirty years of churn, the band Smith ended up with was the steadiest he ever had.
Dave Spurr and Pete Greenaway are on the last seven albums. Keiron Melling is on the last six. Eleana Poulou runs eight albums from The Real New Fall LP in 2003 to Sub-Lingual Tablet in 2015.
So the right-hand end of the print is the calmest part of it, which is not what anybody expects from a band with this reputation. If you are buying for somebody whose Fall knowledge stops at This Nation's Saving Grace, that is the bit worth pointing them at.
Thirty-One Stations Is a Lot to Fit on A2
The A2 at 420 x 594mm (18 x 24 in) holds all thirty-one and reads the overall shape well: Smith's unbroken spine, the density around 1990, and the calm at the end. It starts at £42.00. This is the one size where I would say think about it, because this catalogue is busier than most.
The A1 at 594 x 841mm (24 x 36 in) is the one I would actually recommend for this particular map. Fifty-six lines need room, and at A1 you can follow Karl Burns in and out three times and pick out the single-album names without hunting.
Both come unframed if they would rather choose a frame themselves, or framed and ready to hang. Every print is a Giclée on 230gsm premium fine art paper, textured matte, archival and acid-free, with the full detail on the print and frame specification page.
Answers About the Line-Ups
Does it really include every member?
Every musician credited on a studio album, yes. Fifty-six of them across thirty-one records. It does not include people who only ever played live, because there is no credit to work from.
Which albums are on it?
All 31 studio albums, from Live at the Witch Trials in 1979 to New Facts Emerge in 2017. No live albums and no compilations, which for this band would have doubled the print.
Is Brix on it?
On nine albums, in two separate spells: six from 1983 to 1988, then three more from 1995 to 1997.
Who lasted longest apart from Mark E Smith?
Steve Hanley on bass, whose line starts at Dragnet in 1979 and runs into the late nineties. Craig Scanlon on guitar is close behind him.
Does it show who played what?
Not on this one. The Fall credits are inconsistent about instruments across four decades, so each line tells you which albums that person appears on. Track-level roles appear only on my Rolling Stones Goats Head Soup album map.
Three Maps and One City
Craig Leon gives this print a real link to two others. He produced the first Ramones album and Blondie's debut before turning up on two Fall records, so the Ramones map and the Blondie map both share a name with this one.
The other pairing is geography rather than credits, and I would rather say so than pretend otherwise. The Fall and Joy Division and New Order came out of the same city at the same moment and went in opposite directions, and the two prints hung together make that obvious.
The rest of the city is in the Manchester bands collection, and the wider scene in the punk and post-punk collection. If you came here for the gift rather than the research, the Fall discography map is the print itself, in A2 or A1, unframed or framed, from £42.00.
