GROUP SPEAK

Pete Greenway and kieron Melling reveal what it’s like being in the modern-day Fall

P

When we start an album, we’ll all come in with fully formed songs and we spend the first day getting them out of our systems – they never work. Then the next day we’ll start to do our proper work, which is very collaborative. Maybe Dave’ll have a bassline and I’ll have a guitar line and we’ll put the two together. That’s how we work best.

ete greenwAY: kieron MeLLing:

We’ll give Mark the demos of what we’ve been doing, he’ll take them away for a listen, and advise us what route to go down.

greenwAY:

“Couples Vs Jobless Mid-30s” was conceived in a hotel room. Mark came up with the idea to do this long, operatic thing with chanting, and we took him at his word and did it. A very odd song.

MeLLing:

I think we’re all on the same page – you’re there to work, and then when it’s downtime you can have a good laugh. As long as you get on with it, and you’re not messing about, I think that’s it. Everybody knows their place, Mark’s the boss and that’s that. It’s interesting, we don’t know 100 per cent what’s on the LP ’til we hear the master – which I’ve just heard! So we’re hearing it at the same time as everybody else, really.

greenwAY:

We’re going through a really nice stage at the moment, where we’re all good pals. It feels like a nice time at the moment. I think Mark genuinely likes us, which is good.

MeLLing:

It’s the myth of this being a revolving door of musicians – we’ve been doing it for 11 years now, we’ve got a good working relationship down. Plus, he’s a mate, I get on with Mark really well. I wanted to do “Totally Wired” when I got in the band, ’cos I like the song. I think we did it once in Glasgow – I’d been going on about it, and Mark said, ‘Fuck it, just do it,’ but he just won’t entertain doing any of the bigger stuff. Anything that were popular, he just won’t do it. It’s the giving somebody praise thing, I don’t think he likes it – he prefers to be unliked.