Category: The Man Whose Head Expanded

Written by:

Mark E Smith, Steve Hanley, Craig Scanlon, Seaberg

Initial release:

The Man Whose Head Expanded, Rough Trade 7″ RT133

Date:
27 June 1983

Subsequent reissues:

Palace of Swords Reversed, Cog Sinister COG1 LP; COGC1 Cassette; CDCOG1 CD; 23 November 1987
Fiend With a Violin, Receiver Records RRLP211 LP; RRCD211 CD; 19 February 1996 (alternate version of track; see commentary section below; reissued 24 September 2002 on DVD-Audio: Sanctuary/Silverline 288099)
The Other Side Of… Receiver Records RRCD506; 14 October 1996 (box set; contains Fiend With a Violin; details above)
Archive Series, Rialto Records RMCD214 CD; May 1997 (box set; contains Fiend With a Violin; details above)
The Less You Look, The More You Find – Recall/Snapper Music SMDCD132, July 1997 (same version as on Fiend With a Violin; details above)
Palace of Swords Reversed, Cog Sinister/Voiceprint COGVP107CD; 20 February 1998
United Kingdom of Punk Vol. 2, Music Club Records; 21 April 1998 (compilation CD)
Northern Attitude, Music Club MCCD350; June 1998 (same version as on Fiend With a Violin; details above)
Anarchy, Angst And Bollocks: The UK Punk Anthology, Varese Sarabande VSD1027, 9 February 1999
Psykick Dance Hall, Eagle EEECD010; 7 August 2000
The Rough Trade Singles Box, Castle CMEBX526, 15 July 2002
Totally Wired – The Rough Trade Anthology, Castle/Sanctuary CMDDD461; 15 July 2002
Essential Punk Rock, BMG Special Products; 25 September 2002 (compilation CD)
The Rough Trade Singles Collection, Earmark (Italy) 40014 LP; 8 September 2003 (vinyl release of The Rough Trade Singles Box; details above)
50,000 Fall Fans Can’t Be Wrong – 39 Golden Greats, Sanctuary SMEDD017; 31 May 2004
The Rough Trade Singles Box, Earmark (Italy) 40014S; 22 November 2004 (box set of vinyl singles; reissue of The Rough Trade Singles Box; details above)
Perverted By Language, Castle/Sanctuary CMQDD1134; 20 June 2005
The Fall Box Set 1976-2007 – Castle CMXBX1558, 10 September 2007
The Fall: A Sides 1978 – 2016. Cherry Red CRCDBox 42; 24 November 2017
The Fall: Singles 1978 – 2016, Cherry Red CRCDBox 30; 24 November 2017
The Fall – 58 Golden Greats, Cherry Red CRCDBox74; 7 December 2018

Officially released live recordings:

In A Hole, Flying Nun (NZ) MARK1 LP;: MARK2 LP with 12” 45; late 1983 (recorded at Mainstreet Cabaret, Auckland, New Zealand, 21 August 1982)
In A Hole, Cog Sinister/Voiceprint COGVP102 CD; May 1997 (reissue of above mentioned)
Backdrop, Cog Sinister/Voiceprint COGVP127 CD; 5 February 2001 (track released on Bang Zoom tapezine no. 7, 1986; the album was originally released as a bootleg: Pseudo Indie )PIL05CD; date and venue of performance unknown)
Austurbaejarbio, Cog Sinister/Voiceprint COGVP125 CD; 5 February 2001 (recorded at Austurbaejarbio, Reykjavik, Iceland, 6 May 1983)
In A Hole, Cog Sinister/Voiceprint COGVP137CD; 3 February 2003 (reissue plus bonus tracks of above mentioned)
In A Hole, Cog Sinister/Voiceprint VP241019 CD; 6 October 2003 (album coupled with Liverpool 78)
In A Hole, Castle/Sanctuary CMQDD1225; 23 January 2006 (reissue plus bonus tracks of above mentioned)
Rebellious Jukebox Volume Three, Secret Records SECDD013; 21 June 2010 (same live version as on In A Hole; details above)
The Fall: 1982 6CD Boxset, Cherry Red CRCDBox82; 2019; version as on In a Hole; details above)

Video and DVD releases:
Perverted By Language Bis, Ikon Videos IKON8
Perverted By Language Bis and Live at Leeds, Cherry Red CRDVD30; 12 May 2003 (recorded at Riley Smith Hall, Leeds University, 17 March 1981)
Kicker Conspiracy: Live at the Hacienda, Cherry Red CRDVD181; June 2011 (recorded at The Hacienda, Manchester;9 October 1985)

Radio session:
The Complete Peel Sessions 1978 – 2004, Castle/Sanctuary CMXBX982; 25 April 2005 (recorded 29 September 1985, broadcast 7 October 1985)

Group on initial recording:

Mark E Smith – vocals; Craig Scanlon – guitar, keyboards, Steve Hanley – bass; Paul Hanley – drums; Karl Burns – drums, bass
Commentary:

MES quoted in The Biggest Library Yet, no. 8 (February 1997) from an unattributed source:

“It’s about this fellow who’s been fucked up by too much misinformation posing as real information. And then it goes into this thing which is an obvious paranoia trip when he thinks the bloke from a soap opear is ripping off his lines and writing them down. But his thoughts are too intense for him to do anything about it. That’s why the vocals are doing Burrr! and the song is very untogether. I’m a bit pissed off that people find the song undecipherable. I find it pretty clear.

I enjoy the line about the Sociological Memory Man. Did you ever hear those sports memory men who used to stand up and people would shout at them “Who won the world cup in 1920? How like, you get sociological guys telling you about how many people didn’t have houses in 1945.”

Craig Scanlon plays keyboards on this and Karl Burns a second bass.

The alternate version on Fiend With a Violin (details above) was described by Bob Osborne in The Pseud Mag no. 16 (June/July 2007) as “a manic remix of sampled vox and synth noises – the production values are not great and the whole thing comes across as a jumbled blanket noise of soupy sound. Interesting but not great.” According to Dalyzach on The Fall Online,” it’s clearly a mid-90s job. Mike Bennett looped part of the song and dropped a sample over it.”

The first performance of this song (details below) feature a few keyboard riffs not found on the single version. As for the lyrics, the words “The man whose head expanded” are not uttered by MES at all; the only lines are the ones about space invaders and “sounds like hick wap “. The same keyboard riffs are to be found by the time the track was played on the Australia/New Zealand tour a few months later, but by then the title words had appeared along with the famous lyrics about the sociological memory man.

Tim Ellison, writing in Modern Rock Magazine (San Diego; January 1999):

The first of these singles featured one of the most extremely avant-garde rock A-sides of all time, “The Man Whose Head Expanded” (June 1983). That The Fall were creating catchy songs with such blank musical canvasses as used when guitarist Marc Riley was in the group was (and remains) quite incomparable. That they did so over these couple of 45 releases with only the even more raunchy and dissonant Craig Scanlon on guitar is even more extreme. In this song, a foundation is established by a two-note bass riff (on the root and fifth of the key of F#), though bassist Stephen Hanley randomly improvises around the F# minor pentatonic scale on occasion, creating sporadic emphasis in random places throughout the song (similar to the effect of the randomness of the drum fills in “Iceland,” for example). Several types of simplistic keyboard sounds appear, one of which is set on a programmed, repeating octave riff on the note A (creating a slight dissonance against the bass riff in F# minor). The other keyboard sound is most prominent in providing a downward melody in F# minor of the notes F#, E, and D–consonant, though consisting of a mere, laconic, three notes ending on the unresolved sixth of the scale. A slow middle section provides the only contrast structurally in the song, and features the first entrance of the guitar, playing ragged chords which emphasize the key of F# minor, though in a random pattern that only resolves with a lost minute switch to the parallel F major as the main section of the song reappears. (These guitar chords in the slow section also lie in counterpoint to a boss line that switches to outlining a new chord progression of D major, E major, and F# minor, though this chord progression has nothing to do with what the guitarist is playing in this section.) The song continues in its repeating primary section until the end, when the guitar re-enters with, once again, its parallel F# major chord, thus ending the song yet again on a strange guitar chord.”