"The Fall — always different, always the same," said John Peel. The Fall was his favourite band. Formed in early 1977, they've released about 50 singles, 25 studio albums, and around 50 compilation and live albums (although it seems like more). In August 2004 they recorded their 24th and sadly final John Peel Session.

The band has gone through numerous personnel changes over the years (there have been over 50 different lineups so far), and at present consists of New Musical Express Godlike Genius Award for Services to Music winner Mark E. Smith, Pete Greenway on guitar, Dave (the Eagle) Spurr on bass, Elena Poulou on keys, and Keiron Melling on drums.

If you're just finding out about this band, you've found the perfect place to conduct some serious research; there's a huge amount of material on the Fall at your fingertips. You might want to begin with the All Music Guide Fall biography and Conway's band member list. Then you'll want to check out the discography, the Lyrics Parade (those will keep you busy for a while), the circa 200 editions of the Fall News and, if you're completely insane, perhaps even my gigography. And of course the bibliography, where I've posted or linked to many articles published about the band going back 25 years or so, and Conway's very handy Fall timeline. There are even some old photos of the band lurking around somewhere.

Site History

The site links together a variety of resources:

The Lyrics Parade, one of the first Fall resources on the internet (ca. 1993) and formerly owned and operated by Jeff Curtis and Jonathan Kandell, was taken over by Conway Paton in April 2002.

In 1996 I put together a preliminary Fall gigography, which has expanded substantially over the years thanks to an army of fellow trainspotters.

In 1998, at the urging of Fallnet stalwart Steve Dean, I added the Fall bibliography to my site. And at about the same time, Rich Kidd began the wonderful Fall News service — a place for those who perhaps wisely choose not to subscribe to Fallnet to keep up on the latest gossip. It was also in 1998 that Rich, Jeff and I received permission from Mark E. Smith to call our collected pages the Official Fall Website.

In October 2001 Rich decided to pass the Fall News on to me. I update this page quite frequently, so that's where to look for the latest news about the band. When the current edition gets a bit dog-eared or I have enough material for a new one, I archive the previous fallnews.html file and add it to the list on the right side of the latest page. The full back catalogue is on the Fall news archive page.

In June 2005, Conway and I invited Clayton Hayward (Clayts) to be our UK-based editor and band contact (I'm in the USA, Conway is in New Zealand). This partnership lasted until Valentine's Day 2006, when Mark demanded that the site's forum be taken offline immediately. Mark wanted the entire site to come down, but I refused to comply with that request. Mark withdrew the "official" status of the site and asked Clayts to create a new Official Fall website. Conway and I carried on as the Unofficial Fall website, and in October 2007 decided to rename this site simply "The Fall online," since the official site had apparently ceased operations.

Finally, many thanks indeed to Arid Al Angen for providing the server space on visi.com.

Comments, questions, brickbats, etc. to fallnews@gmail.com

Stefan