Chapter 27

It was the sort of thing I'd dreamt of as a kid - the drummer being passed over the crowd's shoulders

I've started to wonder if any other employer in modern British business operates like The Fall. Searching around for comparisons only throws up the extremes of casual labour - strawberry pickers and the like - who can be recruited at an instant and don't require an interview or audition. You're just put out straight to work and probably last only a few days. But that kind of work is barely comparable to being around the 'Rorschach Test' of Mark E Smith.

In many ways, The Fall operate just like the mills in Victorian England. Smith hates being called a 'mill owner' but in 2003 he told the Observer how his grandfather owned a mill and would stand outside the local prison waiting for recruits. 'That's kind of how I recruit musicians,' he said. 'It's like, "You're on bass, so get cracking".'

But another historical comparison is creeping into my Fall-addled consciousness. Impressment was a notorious form of recruitment used by the Royal Navy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although as early as 1664 it was legally sanctioned by Edward I. The practice gave birth to the sinister term 'press gangs' - whereby groups of soldiers would scour the streets for employees in a not dissimilar way to Smith's psychic radar scanning the streets around Prestwich. To qualify for impressment into the navy, men had to be between 18 and 55, with little or no seafaring experience required. They would then be 'moulded' into sailors in the same way Smith 'brainwashes' The Fall. Although many press-ganged victims appealed to the Admiralty, they were usually unsuccessful. Tales persist of hapless men dragged off to sea without any warning. Similarly, if you think about it, to how people end up in The Fall.

I'm back in Malmaison's bar. This time, I've reverted to rock reviewing mode to cast a critical opinion over James Dean Bradfield, the Manic Street Preachers' frontman who is about to play his first solo gig in Roadhouse over the road. It's a side project he'd never be allowed in The Fall. The assembled gentlemen, ladies and illiterate scumbags of the press have assembled for a pre-gig meal and schmooze - the sort of thing rock journalists frown upon morally but otherwise lap up as it's one of the few occasions where we're guaranteed a decent meal. Bradfield's PR girl is running through the list of his musicians, when she suddenly announces, 'Drums, Nick Dewey.'

I know that name. I tell her as much, and she asks, 'You know him as manager of The Chemical Brothers?'

No, I tell her. For me, the name Nick Dewey can only mean Nick Dewey Who Spent An Afternoon In The Fall.

A couple of hours later, I'm in Bradfield's dressing room sharing stories with a tall, gangly 30-something who has the most wonderfully startled grin. Which you would if you were him and had been involved in one of the most demented Fall entrances/exits of them all. Dewey was in The Fall for eight songs, the duration of their set on 27 August 1999 at the famous Reading Festival, which makes him the second shortest-serving Faller ever. After Stuart Estell. But Dewey's story is even more bizarre.

As the grinning man tells it, he was at the festival with The Chemical Brothers. Everyone was hanging out backstage when this 'drunken bloke' came in who turned out to be Neville Wilding, the guitarist who Smith had told me was 'at it with knuckle-dusters' with him at that very festival.

According to Dewey, Wilding had been sent on a mission to find a drummer - not unlike a press ganger. The story Wilding was apparently putting about backstage was that The Fall were short of a sticksman after Tom Head had been abandoned at a motorway services station. Things were rather urgent, not least because they were due to play in front of a tent containing a thousand-odd people in an hour's time. Dewey reports that Wilding asked all manner of people if they would drum for The Fall that day, including Justine Frischmann who was headlining with Britpop superstars Elastica. When all Wilding's enquiries fell on deaf ears, he descended on Nick Dewey.

Fatefully, for Dewey, one of The Chemical Brothers remembered that many years before he'd been in a 'shoegazing' pop band called Revolver and played drums. Wilding's eyes lit up. 'Brilliant,' he slurred. 'Come and play drums in The Fall!'

The problem for Dewey wasn't only that he didn't know many Fall songs and really wasn't prepared to play such a high-profile gig: 'I said, "Look, I haven't played drums for ten years." To which Wilding apparently responded, 'Don't worry about that, we're all pissed anyway.'

Wilding duly switched into press gang mode.

'He wouldn't take no for an answer,' says Dewey. 'He said he'd have a look around [for another drummer] but I saw him go into the bogs. Ten minutes later, he came back saying, "Nah, no one else can do it".'

Far from feeling he'd been press ganged - which he had been, in effect - Dewey considered it the 'sort of thing I'd dreamt of when I was a kid, the drummer being passed over someone's shoulders'.

Moments later, Dewey found himself being led onto a tour bus with blacked-out windows . Mark E Smith was on one of the tour bus benches, shirt off, 'passed out'.

'They'd obviously had a skinful,' roars Dewey, describing how Wilding tried to wake up Smith and couldnŐt rouse him, so punched him in the face. After two or three blows, Smith finally woke up to be informed by Wilding, 'Mark, this is Nick. He's going to be playing drums for us!'

Wilding describes how Smith put his face right up to his own and said, 'Right, let's have a look at you, cock!' while Dewey tried his best not to look like a prisoner-of-war about to face a firing squad.

Things became even more unreal when Wilding started to show him the songs, and Smith tried to stop him. 'They started fighting over the guitar,' says Dewey. Eventually, Smith got Dewey drumming on a guitar case with the instruction, 'No, don't look at him [Wilding], that's the only way you'll learn.'

Shortly afterwards, Dewey found himself setting up an unfamiliar drum kit in front of the Reading crowd and waiting for The Fall, who appeared 'at the very last second' before they were due onstage.

'They'd had another fight,' remembers the reluctant drummer. 'Mark E Smith's nose was cut open with blood everywhere. I said, "Are we going on then?" and they ignored me. I grabbed the guitarist and said, "Tell me when the songs start and finish".

'He said, "Don't worry, mate. I'll be stood right next to you".' Dewey then recalls Wilding immediately disappearing to the other side of the stage. Unbeknown to Smith though, Dewey transgressed the usual requirements - he was a Fall fan. He had 'tons' of the records. Sadly, this proved irrelevant because, as ever with The Fall, virtually all the set was made up of new material.

'I didn't know a single song,' he laughs. 'It was a mental experience. I was the last to end every song because obviously no one told me!' Smith spent much of the set fiddling with the keyboards and amplifiers, occasionally turning his attention to Dewey's drum kit. But the gig was a success, in a way, even if those who were there remember an 'excellent shambles'. The day-long Faller remembers it as 'an amazing, amazing experience' and something he relishes telling family and pals about to this day.

A year or so ago, a mate of Dewey's bumped into Smith at a party, where the Fall leader had brushed it off saying, 'Yeah, I remember him. Quiet bloke. Didn't say much.'

Dewey is in hysterics. 'He's a genius!' he raves of Smith, still not knowing how he managed to be 'moulded' into pulling that gig off but realising he had a unique encounter with 'one of the great British characters'.

'He reminds me of Bob Dylan,' he says. 'You know he's in control, but his band members haven't a clue what song's coming next and are just waiting for that nod.' Dewey didn't get that nod again - Tom Head managed to get back for the festival's second leg at Leeds and The Fall's reluctant stickman returned to managing The Chemical Brothers, basking in the knowledge he would forever hold a special, if slightly unsteady, place among The Fallen. If Smith can take a musician in such circumstances and make him into a member of The Fall, surely he can do the trick with anyone? Maybe he could even do it with me.