Publisher’s note:

In early 2017, author and musician Tommy Mackay announced through his weekly newsletter The Daily Reckless that he had written a book about legendary post-punk group The Fall and that he had publishing interest.

I immediately wrote to him asking why he didn’t let me publish the book. We spoke about it on and off over the next few months until he said the publisher had fallen through. At that point we sat down and discussed how we would tackle this book, which Tommy was calling ‘Forty Years Of The Fall’.

Over a series of appropriately boozy meetings at Edinburgh’s City Cafe, we thrashed out a plan to adapt his long-running website ‘The Story Of The Fall’ (established 2006) and add new material including illustrations, a foreword by Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffat, introductions to each chapter, and more nitty gritty detail on each song.

As this work ensued, we were now pushing into the last quarter of 2017 and Tommy decided the title should be changed to ’40 Odd Years Of The Fall’ – at this point, we still felt there could be years of new Fall material to come.

In November of that year, I foolishly passed up the offer to join Tommy for what would turn out to be The Fall’s last ever gig, at The Queen Margaret Union in Glasgow. And even though Mark E Smith was clearly frail and all subsequent gigs were cancelled, it was still a shock to hear in January that the great man had died.

We persevered with the book, knowing that it was shaping up to be not only a great read, but also a quality artefact and valuable resource for fans and newbies alike.

In October 2018, we launched a successful crowdfunder to cover publication and distribution costs, and in true punk style, decided thereafter that the book should only be made available through the author’s or publisher’s websites.

The first edition sold out within a month. This revised edition is very much the same book, with just minor tweaks to the formatting and three or four factual errors corrected. – Greg Moodie

“An adventure… a sturdy guide into one of the most brilliant, contradictory, acidic, psychic and dangerous minds of the last few decades.” – John Robb

Also available from the author’s website: Tommy Mackay