The Story Behind The Song: How The Fall embraced their festive side on ‘Jingle Bell Rock’
For a man who always tried his very best to foster an image as one of the most endearingly miserable men in the world of post-punk, Mark E Smith was never one to shy away from his festive side.
Over the course of The Fall’s illustrious and sometimes overwhelming discography, the band embraced Christmas on numerous occasions, though some panned out better than others.
Whether it the songwriter’s searing declaration that there’s ‘No Xmas for John Quays’ (junkies, for those struggling with the phonetics), or the gymbro favourite ‘(We Wish You) A Protein Christmas’, The Fall certainly made their mark on the rather confined landscape of Christmas music, offering much-needed solace from the endless onslaught of Slade, Shakin’ Stevens, and Mariah Carey.
Admittedly, the majority of those efforts seemed to tackle the festive period with Smith’s typical sneering attitude, doing away with the phoniness of tinsel and consumerism. At his core, though, the Prestwich songwriter did appear – at certain points, at least – to harbour a genuine appreciation for certain classic Christmas songs. Namely, Bobby Helms’ rockabilly sleigh ride, ‘Jingle Bell Rock’, appeared to be a favourite.
So, as a means of espousing his appreciation for Helms’ 1957 track, Smith convinced The Fall to record a cover version of it during their Peel session back in December 1994. As then-bassist Steve Hanley recalled in his memoir, The Big Midweek: Life Inside The Fall, “Mark wants to cover ‘Jingle Bell Rock’. It’s my job to go into town and hunt down a copy of the original vinyl for us to work from, but I can only find a Chet Atkins version.”
In the great tradition of The Fall, this is where things begin to go downhill. Chet Atkins, while undeniably important in the development of Nashville country music, did not adhere to the same arrangement as Bobby Helms’ original. Or, as Hanley remembers it, “When it’s played in the studio, we realise I’ve gone and bought an instrumental.”
Rather than choosing a different, potentially more readily-accessible Christmas song to cover, or simply abandoning the idea completely and replacing it with one of the many tracks featured on their recently completed Cerebral Caustic album, The Fall chose simply to guess what the lyrics might have been. “There’s no lyrics at all except for the chorus, which is why Mark ends up singing that three times in a row,” the bassist shared.
“Somehow he manages to lace it with different nuances of meaning every time,” he continued, summarising the unique power of Smith’s performance, even on a seemingly throwaway Christmas cover.
“Until the last ten seconds, where he can take no more and is forced into improvising lyrics about Brussels sprouts and green carrier bags on Oxford Street,” thus offering a much more fitting atmosphere to a Fall festive anthem.
In the end, this impromptu, improvisational Christmas jam lasted just over a minute or punk-fueled, Chet Atkins-inspired ‘Jingle Bell Rock’, before Smith and the band called time. Nevertheless, it remains a festive favourite for Fall fans everywhere, sitting in between tales of protein and junkies – if old Saint Nicholas was from Prestwich, perhaps he would sound like Mark E Smith, after all.
