The Fall: ‘Rowche Rumble’ – psychiatry in music

Released in 1979, ‘Rowche Rumble’ was the third single from fêted indie stalwarts The Fall. It failed to trouble the regular Top 75 charts but did reach number 31 on the inaugural UK indie chart in January 1980. A perennial champion of the band, the late disc jockey John Peel selected the record within his ‘Festive Fifty’ in both 1979 and 1980. The song was reputedly inspired by the group's creative force and only constant member Mark E. Smith's former work as a shipping clerk, during which he claimed that an administrative error resulted in him receiving a large consignment of barbiturates from Hoffmann-La Roche that he duly concealed around Manchester for his own recreational consumption.

Rather than the barbiturates, however, the song's subject matter is unmistakably diazepam, with Roche's blockbusting medication's brand name Valium featuring several times in the lyrics. It is suspected that the Swiss pharmaceutical giant's name was deliberately misspelled in the song's title for legal reasons. Coinciding with increasing evidence of the benzodiazepine's addictive potential, the song offers a damning critique of society's contrasting perceptions of prescribed and non-prescribed substances of misuse, Smith observing large numbers of the population as addicted to prescription medications ‘while condemning speed and grass’. Smith appears to suggest a conflict of interest between the pharmaceutical industry and the government of the day, the perceived hypocrisy further emphasised via the use of the proverb ‘Physician, heal thyself’. In documenting the use of diazepam among middle-aged females, the song shares obvious similarities with the Rolling Stones’ 1966 track ‘Mother's Little Helper’, although Smith's lyrics are significantly darker, referring to ‘menopause wives’ and portraying the prescribers as cynical and condescending.

Formed in Prestwich, Greater Manchester, in 1976, the band was named after an Albert Camus novel. A founder member, keyboardist Una Baines, and an early manager (Kay Carroll) were both previously employed as psychiatric nurses in Prestwich Hospital, formerly Europe's largest asylum site in the early 20th century. Several of the band's songs feature mentions of psychiatric themes, including depression, paranoid ideation, thought interference, mental hospitals and lobotomies. A long-term heavy drinker and amphetamine user, Smith died of lung and kidney cancer in January 2018.