Who'll Fall?

Who’ll Fall?

On the face of it, a straight-forward premise. A voice mail - from an era where such things were called ‘answerphone messages’ - from a young man describing a friend’s suicide. The recorded message is then accompanied musically by Coil and released as a single, later anthologised on the Unnatural History II CD, and a slightly different version appearing on Stolen and Contaminated Songs around this time. There are no vocals or lyrical response from Coil at all, rather a discrete and mournful cluster of chords, complimented by atmospheric telephone environment machine clicks, courtesy of c1990 British Telecom.

The haunting quality of the music and the tragic, earnest quality of the young man’s message makes this a Coil fan-favourite. The sensitivity of the arrangement jars with our sense that we shouldn’t be hearing this private communication… especially not on a seven inch single, however limited the release.

On closer consideration, the music, editing and choice of samples can be seen to comprise a narrative in response to the young man’s anguish.

The long, evocative chords evoke a deeply compassionate, caring environment, one which recognises that no words will be enough to comfort his loss, but is instead providing a close, deeply understanding embrace by Coil, here represented specifically (I think) by Sleazy. The sadness is tainted by an even deeper regret - that of the unknown suicide. The caller simply needs to know he’s not alone, and that his marginalising experiences are not unique.

The female BT voice provides a few clues that I think are significant. Behind it, Sleazy is hiding his own voice and response, so quietly and remotely that it’s easy to miss. The various samples are deliberately collaged by Sleazy: obviously they relate to BT calls from the period, but there’s a sense that a phrase like ‘your call cannot be connected’, here means: ‘there’s no point telling this to me, ‘ or: ‘I don;t know how to respond to this’. I wonder if the band screened their calls (actually, I’m sure they did!) and allowed this message to play out without intercepting it. The length of the message suggests the young man wasn’t necessarily expecting anyone to pick up based on previous calls, and had some points ready.

We should also consider Sleazy’s prediction for surreptitiously recording private messages via his short wave radio scanner in the 70s to replay to us as TG consumers - making us part of the subterfuge. It’s a complicated relationship, knowing we as consumers of the product are somehow complicit, especially because it was a non-consensual recording. A design solution like this is sure to backfire!

The BT voice message: ‘please hang up’ suggests both disconnection and an allusion to a suicide method (a hanging, or ‘please end it’).

Some way into the message, the young man’s voice says ‘in a funny way, we’re doing that … just don’t really connect’. It feels like a key word is missing here, and indeed the band describe editing out identifying elements from the recording. There is then a 30 second instrumental passage during which we are invited to speculate on the distance between people. Is he confessing that despite Sleazy being ‘the only person he can call right now’, they still don’t really connect? So why bother?

We have to address the caller’s likely motive. Ways of dying fascinated Sleazy - in the 70s he photographed a series of staged photographs illustrating young men killing themselves, was skilled in recreating bloody medical traumas for paramedic students, and later the band kept a scrapbook of newspapers reports of youth deaths, suicides and murders &c (a page from this appears in the booklet in the ‘Gold is the Metal’ Boxed edition).

Tellingly, he asks: ‘I just wondered what you think that feeling is like?’ Why would you need to know how Sleazy might feel during such a fall, as a means to deal with the death? He says ‘it would help me because I have a terrible fear of heights’. Is this more of an appeal to Sleazy’s dark tastes to secure a personal meeting? I sense Sleazy is expressing something like regret - or at least acknowledging a truth - that the man has to appeal to his dark tastes to secure a connection of any sort. The whole theme of the track is an ode to disconnection…. not about suicide, but Sleazy’s place in the relationship between fans’ expectations, his real desires and Coil’s artistic output.

Sleazy was notoriously shy to sing or write lyrics but had other less direct means to communicate his intentions (don’t get me started on How to Destroy Angels). His art was subtle allusion that may take many repeated encounters to resolve. In his graphic design work, I encounter fragments of a larger narrative that emerge years, decades later. Knowing that nearly nothing he chooses to include or illustrate is there by chance helps enormously.

Finally, the sound of the telephone receiver being replaced is such a decisive, conclusive clang that it’ s easy to retrospectively assign meaning to what would have been a common enough sound in 1990.

Who’ll Fall? It’s entirely a co-incidence, but this was John Balance’s cause of death, 14 years later. Not a suicide, but the exact circumstances of his fall still surrounded by some mystery.

Who’ll Tell?