Uncharted territory: how the Fall’s fractious New Zealand tour nearly sank Flying Nun records

When Flying Nun announced in 1983 that it was going to issue a new live album by the renowned Mancunian outfit the Fall, the news came as a bit of a surprise. The label had positioned themselves as advocates for New Zealand underground music and here it was doing a live record from a prominent UK act. Yet Flying Nun’s Roger Shepherd and Chris Knox sensed an opportunity. Knox and Doug Hood, also working for Flying Nun at the time, had recorded the Fall’s appearances in Auckland the year before and had managed to secure a tacit agreement from the band to release it on Flying Nun.

Unlike back home in the UK, where the band had the backing of taste-makers such as John Peel but meagre record sales, the Fall were minor stars in New Zealand. In fact, if there was a barometer of New Zealanders’ distinctive musical tastes in the early 80s, it was their unparalleled support of the Fall. When Gap Records from Australia licensed the Fall for the territory, their single Totally Wired landed in the New Zealand singles chart for six weeks in the middle of 1981 (it peaked at No 25). The following year Lie Dream of a Casino Soul made the Top 20 and Hex Enduction Hour reached No 11 in the album chart after the band’s short New Zealand tour. Thanks to Knox and Hood’s tapes from two of those shows, Shepherd found himself with an unexpected opportunity. Putting out a Fall record on Flying Nun could make the label some real money and help offset the cashflow problems that threatened its stability.

The project had its origins in 1982, when the Fall were booked for a string of New Zealand shows that August. Chris Knox detailed the particulars in stalwart New Zealand music magazine Rip It Up:

Three months ago (or so) Helene, who runs Sydney’s Stranded venue, and Ken West … managed to convince the Fall’s manager, Kay Carroll, that they were eminently suited to bringing her bunch of Northern Soul Boys (joke) over to Australasia … A tour was born. Being a Wellingtonian by birth (nine years in Levin, hardy soul), Helene thought NZ would benefit from the Fall, and maybe even vice versa. So, completely bypassing the normal promotional avenues, Mainstreet in Auckland, Victoria in Wellington and Christchurch Town Hall were booked through people in those three cities who had never had any experience with overseas acts.

For Kiwis, this was a big deal. Relatively few international punk, post-punk or new wave bands ever ventured as far as New Zealand and to have legends like the Fall coming was big news. When the band arrived in Christchurch in mid-August 82, a local photographer was there to meet them. The next day a photograph of a smiling Marc Riley sauntering through the airport appeared on the front page of Christchurch newspaper the Press under the headline Happy Fall Guitarist. For anyone familiar with the band, a shot of any of them smiling was a rare sighting. Press reporter David Swift later wrote about the origins of the headline. “The news editors were so taken with the image of the gangly Marc Riley swinging his suitcase at the arrival lounge of the airport they ran it on the front and told me to caption it in a way that even grannies would understand. So I did, with tongue in cheek!”

The irony of the photo and blurb became more apparent after the tour was over. The Fall arrived in New Zealand on the brink of disintegration. Their time in Australia had been plagued by infighting, fuelled by the increasingly irascible Mark E Smith. Tensions had boiled over at a Sydney nightclub, where Smith slapped the other members of the band for having the temerity to dance to the Clash’s Rock the Casbah. Marc Riley’s response was to punch Smith in the face. The following day, the two were forced to appear on Australian TV show Sounds in a brutally awkward interview where neither looked as if they wanted to be anywhere near the other. Just before the band were due in New Zealand, Smith gave a prophetic interview with the Sunday Times where he cuttingly declared “everybody’s temporary in the Fall”.

All that tension and aggression cascaded into some high-octane gigs in New Zealand. After packed houses in Christchurch and Wellington, the Fall arrived in Auckland for two sold-out shows at Mainstreet. Greeting the band as they got into town was Chris Knox, who had already spoken to Mark E Smith for a fairly disastrous interview (Smith later told Rip It Up “I said to him you can’t even do a fuckin’ interview man so don’t start tellin’ me what to do” after Knox offered him advice on his forthcoming trip.) Knox and Doug Hood offered up their home to the band and hosted them for a party. As the booze started to flow, Knox put a proposal to his guests: “They were nice and drunk around at our place and we asked if we could record them on a four-track,” he said. “We came to a verbal agreement that we could release it on Flying Nun Records.”

Documenting the Fall’s live show seemed a good idea given Smith’s preference for playing live. During that tense TV appearance in Australia Smith had said: “We’re very much a live band, it’s not the same as the records, it’s the only reason we keep playing.” Knox and Hood had two cracks at capturing the band at their best. The first night was a bit of a downer, at least for some. One reviewer wrote in the Auckland Star that “by the fourth song in the one-and-a-half-hour set … I was ready to go home.” Night two was a different story. The blitzing 17-song set captured the band at the height of their powers. Upon playback, it was also evident that the quality of the recording was good enough to follow through on the previous night’s drunken deal.

In the ensuing months, Knox convinced Roger Shepherd to release the record under the title Fall in a Hole. Reports in the press claimed permission had been granted by the band, including one in Rip It Up that said the “official OK for the album came recently in a letter from singer Mark E Smith”. The decision to release Fall in a Hole would take Flying Nun into uncharted territory, releasing a record by an international act for the first time. And while it had potential to be a commercial boon, it required serious investment. The length of the live tapes meant that the release had to be a double record, an LP with a bonus 12″ of the encore songs.

Initially the risk seemed worth it. EMI’s chain of record shops got behind the record and advertised it extensively in the papers. More important though was the potential interest overseas, something acknowledged in early reviews. “Will get New Zealand into the New Musical Express,” wrote Colin Hogg in the Star. In a piece titled The Fall for Export for the Press, David Swift wrote, “This is the disc which could put Christchurch’s Flying Nun label in the international market.”

These forecasts came true quite quickly, as European and American record importers and mail-order buyers tracked down this obscure label on the other side of the world and brought Flying Nun into contact with markets they desperately wanted to reach. Flying Nun ordered up a pressing that far exceeded anything they had done up to that point. A report in the Press around the launch date put the number taken by foreign distributors alone at 1,000. The Star hailed the development as the “first time a Kiwi indie label has managed to make inroads into the British market”.

The exact story of what happened next has taken on mythical proportions over time and many of the facts still remain unclear. In the lead-up to Christmas, Fall in a Hole debuted at No 47 in the album charts but vanished a week later. Its disappearance was due to a big problem. According to Chris Knox years later, the trouble began when he failed to deliver copies of the album to Smith:

Unfortunately, I neglected to send Mark his free copies and first he knew about it was when he saw a copy for a vastly inflated price in his local vinyl purveyor. I got the 20-minute rant down the phonelines and it transpired that his (vastly superior) memory had it that the LP was to be an Australasian release only! Shit! I’d fucked up big time and cost poor old Flying Nun quite a few bucks and a great deal of embarrassment. More importantly, I’d incurred the wrath of the third scariest man in the history of England.

In his account, David Swift argued that Smith’s anger was less to do with territory rights and far more with who was on the cover. By the time the LP was out, “Happy Fall Guitarist” Marc Riley was persona non grata, having been unceremoniously fired after the band’s return from the New Zealand tour. Swift believed Smith was incensed that a Fall record was out in the world with a sacked member on the front cover.

Regardless of Smith’s motivation, his reaction was strong, and the impact on Flying Nun was disastrous. Via his publishing agent in Australia, Smith contacted the label and declared no permission had been granted for the release. Demands were made for an immediate royalty payment and a halt to all sales. When the dust settled, Flying Nun’s Hamish Kilgour found himself surrounded by stacks of an unsellable record in the label’s office.

After a year riddled with money troubles, Flying Nun suddenly found itself in a situation where a single record risked crippling them entirely. Yet a few months later, Fall in a Hole unexpectedly started to pay off. In the UK, the record earned some write-ups in the press and considerable airplay. “Almost 90 minutes of raw psycho-boogie rumble … a bargain at twice the price in any country,” wrote David Fricke in his near-euphoric Melody Maker review. “Fall into this whole and you many never want to come out.” On BBC Radio, John Peel started to give the record weekly airplay, playing cuts on his massively popular show for over a month. The Fall’s biggest fan was suddenly playing a Flying Nun record, and not long after gave airtime to other bands on the label.

Fall in a Hole became a collector’s item as fans struggled to track it down. Eventually, Flying Nun found ways to covertly get stock out the door. A bulk batch was sent to Jayrem in Wellington so it could sell them through its export business, and eventually German label Normal started selling copies at highly inflated prices through their mail-order catalogue. What had started out as a fiasco had unpredictably become a marketing godsend that took Flying Nun international for the first time.

• This extract is taken from Needles and Plastic: Flying Nun Records 1981-1988, published by Third Man Books, £21.99