When is a cover band not a cover band?

“Doing The Fall songs can often feel a bit like driving a juggernaut with no brakes, or falling down some stairs, pissed...” according to Ben Toft - one of the singers in The Fall tribute band,  The Look Back Bores.

So, no. It's not as easy as you think.

The Animals(and Friends) have just finished an encore tour of Australia with 83-year-old John Steel behind the kit and a well-seasoned group of younger English musicians, all steeped in r'n'b, boogie and so on. The band provides high quality entertainment, doing justice to a time and place that the participants can only remember but hazily.

They don't mimic, they perform the songs, and their singer-guitarist, Danny Handley, has a timbre which is, although different to Burdon's, is very well-suited to the songs. They've been touring Australia for a decade. 

So s'cuse the name-drop, but last time they played Adelaide I was talking with John Steel and he was confident: “it's the songs, the songs are the important thing”. He's doing what he's always loved, drumming, just like Karl Bartos did when he started up doing cover versions in Germany. Just like most musicians.

Yeah, you could argue that The Animals (and Friends) are a cover band. They're not, not by a long chalk. Buzzcocks are coming back in October/ November - I've been lucky enough to chat with bass player Chris Remington and drummer Danny Farrant at different gigs; they're top blokes, and absolutely brilliant at what they do. It sure won't be the same without Pete Shelley, though.

Even though he had the stage presence of a ham sandwich, Shelley's effortless guitar and extraordinarily vulnerable, yearning, beautiful voice ... Steve Diggle has taken over the vocal spot, so ... Will I go to see them? To be honest, money's an issue right now, and I frankly cannot go to everything (blazes, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are coming, as well as a pile of other bands). So I'm not sure. I admit I'm curious. 

Are they a cover band? Diggle doesn't think so, nor do I. Remington and Farrant have now been with Buzzcocks for three times the length of time that the “classic” line-up was around (the second line-up after Howard Devoto left) and have recorded three LPs with the band; the “classic” line-up only managed three studio LPs (if you exclude “Singles Going Steady”). 

Is the current squabble over Ed Kuepper and Ivor Hay grabbing a few other notables in to do Saints songs a similar tizzy in a tea-cup? I saw Chris Bailey's idea of the Saints on numerous occasions and gave up in the end. I would've killed to have seen Ed Kuepper's The Aints - the first two incarnations - and touch wood I'll see the band. Are they a cover band? I really don't give that much of a shit, to be honest. 

Will the music be good?

Comes down to expectations, to some degree, surely. When the Sonics played here a few years back, the main figures weren't there ... but by god, they'd tutored the others well; probably helped that the musicians are all veterans in similar circles. Top show, too.

Do you really want to go back, though? I really don't want acne again. And I mean, these days we're no longer slim and able to pour beer down our throats, guzzle curry pizzas or souvlaki pies with abandon and get up to go to work. Yes, alright, some of us do (hello, Mr Joyce!). 

Anyway, sometimes, yeah, it's important to see that special figure. Hands up those who saw the recentish Pretty Things tour? yeah. And again, who saw The Gang of Four's last tour of Australia? Andy Gill was the only original member there, of two, really, as it was Gill and King's band. That's not to knock bass player, David Allen nor drummer Hugo Burnham: all four did the hard yards in setting up the songs, which wouldn't have been easy. These days Jon King has opted to continue the band - with Hugo returning - and by all accounts they're terrific live. Alice Cooper is the only remaining member of the original Alice Cooper band. They're fantastic live - the kind of thing you should take your kids to see.

The Lincolns are a 1950s-style band, mostly originals, a few covers. Their originals are just as good if not better than many of the originals of the day, too. 

There are two (I think) versions of The Beat (the UK incarnation) who play live. And, you know, when you get right down to it, what most of us want to hear is the original songs we loved, played more or less with power and accuracy to the version that's stuck in your head for ages.

There are Rolling Stones, Cold Chisel, and Led Zeppelin cover bands. Good luck to 'em, but they suck substance from the music scene. Don't believe me? Remember the story of Jimmy Barnes, after a not-very-well-attended gig in an Australian town, driving round after and realising that most folks had gone to see the Chisel cover band?

Of course, it could also easily be argued that constant tours by oldies acts also suck substance from the scene. On the other hand, because there are no real central places to read about music and musicians, the scenes do tend to be incredibly splintered, more than ever. No, Spotify doesn't help in my opinion, not really. Buying one CD gives the artist more dosh than thousands of listens - and that's a pittance as it is. Bleugh. No wonder bands resort to flogging t-shirts, socks and underpants. They'll be selling matches and razor blades on street corners next.

So. Why am I writing about a band I've never seen live, have no recordings out, that you've never heard of, who do covers of an idiosyncratic, deliberately obscurantist yet often fiendishly more-ish, who had a front-man renowned for rudeness, kindness, bizarre lyrics and sacking more band-members than our pollies have read books?

Ah...

So. One of the two frontmen, Ben Toft, explains; "I don't sing, I just shout in the Look Back Bores". 

To avoid confusion, the Look Back Bores have two singers, Ben Toft and Jack Constantine; they also have two guitarists, in Chris Dutton and Josh Dutton. Barrie Reilly is on bass, Scott McKinlay on drums. 

I'm not going to provide footnotes to The Fall, so just you figure it out as you go. Don't understand a reference? look it up, the computer is right in front of you. Don't be scared. It's only good music...

How did you discover The Fall...?

Ben Toft: I first heard The Fall when I was around 14 or 15. I'd grown up on Prog and 1960s stuff - Gabriel-era Genesis, the Kinks - and HipHop (pre Gangsta thank-you!). I was just discovering Half Man Half Biscuit and the Manchester scene. I had a mate down the road and we used to sit in his older brothers room and listen to his records and tapes. I remember hearing stuff like the “Wedding Present, Shop Assistants” etc and then a tape called “Manchester so Much To Answer For” compiled by John Peel, Track 1 Side 1 was “Eat Y'self Fitter”. I was like...

What. The. Fuck.

I have never before or since been so affected by a song on first listen. Seven minutes of relentless driving rhythm section and that singer, spitting these bizarre word salads out. Bewildering. I'd never heard anything like it.

I didn't hear the Fall again for another 18 months or so. Borrowing a tape of “Wedding Present” sessions I listened to the other side which had a Beggars Banquet complication with “Spoilt Victorian Chil”' on. I'd remembered them from my first experience and this one was weird as fuck as well. I was well intrigued at this point but for some reason never followed it up by exploring more. Money was always tight when I was young and I didn't know anyone who was into them either. Some years later at University I took a trip to Hull for a record buying splurge, I trekked round all the local second^-hand stores, buying bits of this that and the other. My last purchase was a tape to listen to on the way home, a random punt on a band that I'd heard years ago – “458489B”.

This was when I fell in love. The train ride from Hull to Scarborough, “God Box”, “Pat Trip Dispenser”, “Slang King”, “Draygo's Guilt”, “Bam, Whack, Wham”. I looked down at the bags of records I'd bought that day and thought "You've wasted your money".

The next day I hit the record shops of Scarborough and came home with “Dragnet”, “Peel Sessions 2”, “Hex Enduction”, “I am Kurious Oranj”, “Bend Sinister”, “Code Selfish” - all on vinyl. The whole lot probably cost no more than £25. And that was it, every town I went to, in the record store, straight to "F", hunting down these gems, god, it was so exciting that journey of discovery. 

The singers, Barrie, how on earth do they cope with Mark E. Smith's bonkers timing, his elliptical sounds..?

Barrie Reilly (bass): Yes, their input would be interesting,  as they have the most difficult roles. And we haven't even discussed with them how they went about it. I'd be interested to find out their methods myself! 

I must say that all the members of the band are really nice lads. Easy to get on with. Good at what they do. It just seems to fall into place. (Pun definitely not intended)! 

The majority of the work is done individually at home for logistical reasons. I only really have to put the work in on the later post-Hanley material. I was late to the party after pretty much turning my back on the band and Mark after the awful Brownies gig in '98. I was working with Steve Hanley and Ark not long after the split/cull! 

He told me how tough things had been in The Fall. Horror stories. I couldn't listen to the Fall for years after that. I felt a staunch loyalty to these Jesuit lads. And because of Tom Head also. He was my bandmate, and Mark treated him like garbage. I put all this behind me once Mark passed. 

And began to appreciate some of the work post-1998. So learning non-Steve Hanley/ Marc Riley bass lines was a challenge. They're all pretty straight-forward. But I had to get them right. I threw some slight changes in here and there. Just to mix it up. A bit of ad-libbing live ...

But it's the Hanley-era tunes which are emblazoned into my brain! I'd been playing them on bass on and off at home since my teens. I pretty much learned bass trying to work out the bass parts to The Fall, The Damned and The Stranglers songs. A challenge, but great fun. 

So very much of my groundwork was done over a 30-35 year period! 

This band isn't a naff tribute band. It's a celebration of the wonderful and frightening back catalogue of England's greatest cult/underground band. Its Fall material being played with passion and pride. By Fall fans. For Fall fans. And we'll continue to do it sporadically, so long as it’s fun and as long as the lads want to continue. 

============

Got all that? This means that the Look Back Bores have insights into the structure of the Fall's songs which few of us could ever have. 

Granted, once a song has been 'finished' by a band, the hard work is done; which structural bunny-hop or rabbit-hole to descend into, which lane to choose, what the simplest bits are and how to work the complicated bits. 

Back to the interview: 

What interests me is that, unlike a Led Zep cover band who would, I suspect, not be particularly curious about the nuts'n'bolts, our Fall fan brethren would most certainly want to know about the make-up of the songs. There's a lot of musicians on The Mighty Fall Facebook page, and the one thing which fascinates us all - as fans - is how the bloody hell some of these songs work.

Chris Dutton (guitarist): I have played with a couple of Fall drummers and they were as different from each other as could be. I have also played with probably the two best Fall guitarists and again they could not be more different. Having played with them, it did make it easier to easier to tackle their songs. 

Scott and Barrie had the idea and put it on the Mighty Fall Facebook group asking for a guitarist. I spoke with our other guitarist, my son, Josh; asked him if he fancied doing it with me and he said, Yes.

We had played in Kill Pretty together. Josh played bass and I played guitar. Josh joined when he was 14. An incredible musician even at that age. We had ex-Fall drummer Mike Leigh. The legendary teddy-boy drummer from The Fall, “Dragnet” period. 

Craig Scanlon [another ex-Fall member] also wrote a couple of songs for us and he also assisted with guitar on two or three songs in the studio. 

Anyway, I asked Barrie if he wanted two guitarists and that was that. 

I've also played with ex-Fall drummer Simon Wolstencroft, but only a couple of times in a rehearsal room. It was a potential project that never got off the ground. All the people involved were already in bands and I think we were all just too busy. 

Mike Leigh is totally unique. I mean, his favourite drummer was Jaki Liebezeit from Can - and you could very much hear that in his playing. Technically, maybe he isn’t the greatest, but he played with his heart and always made it interesting. Very loose.

I only played with Simon twice. It was a very different experience. His timing is absolutely perfect. It’s like playing to a click track. It was an absolute joy.  He knew what was coming before we had even thought about it ourselves. Every inch the professional. 

Some songs literally take one listen to learn. Others, usually the ones that sound simple can be far trickier. The early to mid-1980s songs are usually the hardest. It’s not the playing that’s hard, it’s where the changes come. There appears to be no logic to them. You could imaging Mark E. Smith signalling to the band when to go into a chorus, so the placing changes every time. “Lucifer over Lancashire” is like that. 

_{The Look Back Bores live.}

“Smile” was another tricky one. There are only two parts to the song but the timing changes every couple of bars. Then when you think you've cracked it, all the timings change again when the vocals come in. 

Myself and Josh get together and run through the sets on acoustic guitars. We decide who is taking what part. We quite often add parts that were never there. Hopefully this adds rather than detracts to the performance. 

We start by listening to the studio version of a song, then a session version and as many live versions as we can. We then take the best bits from each and put it all together. Usually listening to session versions is easier to learn from as they had to play it live themselves. “I Am Damo Suzuki” would be a good point of reference here. To play the album version with the out of time drumming would be near impossible, so we worked off live versions instead. 

I tend not to follow lyrics too much, thought - I’m too busy counting ha-ha.

We spend a long time selecting the songs for the set. Since we've been doing this we've played over 100 different songs. We try and change the set as much as possible every time. Saying that, we do always include a couple of crowd-pleasers at the end of the gig. 

We try our best to cover all periods of The Fall in the selection. We wouldn’t want to be accused of being Look Back Bores would we...? 

Ben and Jack are incredible frontmen. We usually leave them to sort the running order as they split the singing duties between the two them.  

Scott has the drumming ability to be able to play like Paul Hanley and Karl Burns at the same time and can sound like any drummer The Fall have ever had. He really is the most amazing drummer. 

Barrie has play these songs for decades on his bass, so pulls it off with ease. 

Myself and Josh share guitar duty, but Josh also takes on replicating keyboard parts, but on the guitar. This work really well as he is the master of effects peddles. Benny and myself add a few keys by means of a melodica and a stylophone. Plus kazoos and harmonicas from Benny. 

We aren’t trying to sound exactly like the record. We try to sound like Us playing the records. Songs like “Winter”, “Damo” or “Reformation” for instance are more about the feel than structure. These are the songs that take minutes to learn, but it’s about moving the song up and down than the difficult structure. Every version you listen to by The Fall is different and it’s different every time we play it too. Which means it's great fun to play. 

As a rule we only play one or two gigs a year. We don’t want to over-do it. When it comes to rehearsals, we have never had more than two or three. We like to keep it raw and fly by the seats of our pants. We think this stops it sounding over-polished. And hopefully adds to what we are trying to sound like.

There has never been any thought of us recording, but I am fairly sure that a side project or two might appear at some point. 

Who had the grand idea to do this? Why?

Scott McKinlay: Kevin McMahon started The Mighty Fall Facebook page in 2014, I think. Like most fan pages, it was just general conversations about The Fall and none of us knew each other at all. I joined the page fairly early on, Barrie Reilly joined before I did, but at that time there weren't many members, maybe a couple of hundred - it's now over 7000!

A couple of years later,  someone suggested we do a gig with Fall-related bands, and invite members of the page. We did a couple of those, and none of the bands played Fall songs. 

We did one “Fall Gathering” at the Calton Club in 2016, and another at Gullivers in 2017, both with Poppycock (ex-Fall member Una Baines' band), Kill Pretty (Mike Leigh and Chris Dutton) and my band STOOR. 

The Look Back Bores didn't play either of those gigs because we didn't exist until 2018.

Then Mark E. Smith passed away in January 2018, and that's why The Look Back Bores were created ...

Barrie floated the idea to me first, I think, about playing a show of Fall songs as a celebration of MES and The Fall. Initially it was going to be a one-off.

I said I'd do it providing we did it properly, did the songs justice and we did it with like minded people. 

_{The late Mark E Smith. Barry Douglas photo.} 

How did it come together?

Scott McKinlay: We had me on drums and Barrie on bass, then we had to get two guitarists and someone who could sing these songs. The "singer" was always going to be the most difficult to recruit, or so we thought.

I'd met Chris and Josh Dutton from Kill Pretty, from Stoor playing a couple of gigs with them, so we asked if they'd be interested in playing guitar.

Then, and I can't remember exactly how this came about, but Modal Roberts got in touch and asked if he could sing. 

This all came about really quickly, and we discussed what songs to play and arranged a rehearsal for the start of June 2018. 

The rehearsal was amazing, it didn't sound like this was the first time we'd ever been in a room together.

Sadly though, Modal passed away, shortly after our first gig in July 2018. I only met him on three or four occasions, but he was a really lovely guy, and we all got on really well with him, and each other!

We did one other gig with Tim Jauncey in 2019, but he decided not to continue, so we were back to looking for a singer.

I think we posted on The Mighty Fall page that we were looking for a singer, and that's when Ben Toft and Jack Constantine joined. The joint singers worked really well, and that's now the permanent gruppe.

What was it like learning these songs?

Scott McKinlay: We're dotted round the country: I live near Dundee in Scotland, 250 miles north from Manchester, so initially we learn the songs at home.

Then, a couple of weeks before a gig, we get in a rehearsal room together, and work out how to play them.

Could you tell me what was difficult to learn or get yer head around as a musician?

Scott McKinlay: I can only talk as a drummer, but most of the songs are fairly straightforward, with the odd weird structure or timing thrown in. I'm sure it's trickier for Chris and Josh as guitarists

At the beginning I was trying to work out why I couldn't play certain things properly (for example, 'Smile') only to remember that it was two drummers playing in that line-up!

Also, each of The Fall drummers has a different style, so learning some of those patterns has been an interesting experience, I've tended to play the basic rhythm in my own way and embellish if needed.

The hard work had been done in terms of writing the songs - but what bits strike you as strange, not the way a normal song would go...?

Scott McKinlay: Because we all know the songs so well from listening to the records and going to the gigs, there hasn't been anything that's thrown us particularly. The Fall sound changed a lot over the years, so the structures and sounds can be played with a little ... I mean, did The Fall ever play a song the same way twice!?? - so there's very little we can't play - some songs we play better than others... Some songs take longer to perfect than others; “Kicker Conspiracy” took a bit of work, because of the stops and starts and so on, and you can't play “Damo Suzuki” the way it is on record, but we get there with most of them so far.

Ben Toft: Yeah, I have a go at the kazoo, harmonicas, all that stuff except the melodica - Chris Dutton plays that. I got one of those Stylophone Gen X-1, it’s a Stylo but with a little analogue synth built in so it’s much more versatile and make all sorts of crazy noises too. Good fun.

Coming in on time in the songs has only ever caused a couple of small issues. “Kicker Conspiracy” springs to mind, it took a few goes to get it bang-on, there's a few stops and starts that, even though I know that song inside out, still catch you out. 'I Am Damo Suzuki' was fun to learn as it’s all so madly out of time on the album that when it came to rehearse it, it felt really weird - firstly, finding the right timing but when it clicked in I thought it sounded really good. 

I have certain things I look out for in the music and I know the band often listen for vocal cues from me and Jack - The “3 foot hard-on” line from “50 Year Old Man” heralds the first change, for example, and we work all this out in rehearsal. The band are fantastic, all of them, they really are. They work so hard and are total pros. 

Communication is key - we don't have much time to rehearse so the fact we all get along and communicate properly means we use the time we have really well. They're the best musicians I've ever played with.

There's a lot of words to get out in each song, but for the most part I think I do okay. It's harder if it's a song I'm less familiar with. We did “Fol De Rol” a couple of gigs ago and that was tricky to learn - I know I certainly didn't learn it verbatim and I jammed it a bit. Doing Fall songs can often feel a bit like driving a juggernaut with no brakes, or falling down some stairs, pissed. 

I think I'm more comfortable with a rhythmical vocal style, I don't like singing at all - I love doing “Winter” (an all-time fave - a behemoth of a song) but man the “Entrances Uncovered” bit, I really struggle. I even manage to murder Gavin Friday's part in “Copped It” and it's only a couple of words! 

Years after discovering The Fall I started my own band. We always got compared to the Fall - I genuinely don't know how to "sing" any other way. We got a support slot with The Fall once. No dry ice. I didn't get to meet him, didn't try - you shouldn't meet your anti-heroes - some of my mates did and there’s a great shot of my mate Dean with Mark E. Smith who is sticking two fingers up at the camera. It was an emotional night for me, the night we found out about the gig we went out to celebrate - it ended with me getting a kicking off four blokes that left me with a fractured cheekbone. The doctors told me I couldn't do the gig but obviously I did it anyway. 

It was Ding who told me that Mark had passed. We had a gig in Manchester with Ding's band Bobby Peru and when we got there it was a really odd atmosphere. Ding took me to one side and told me - he knew how big a fan I was, I'm glad I heard it from him. I just walked out into the street, stood on the cobbles and cried.

My old band, Drink And Drive, had played one of the Mighty Fall Gatherings and when the Look Back Bores were looking for a new Mark E. Smith singer, Barrie gave me a shout. It's been a blast so far. I love seeing how much joy people are getting out of it. The fact people get on a plane [from USA - Ed] to come and see us blows my mind - hats off to these utter lunatics! It just goes to show what The Fall meant to people, makes you realise you're not alone.