Mojo - The Music Magazine

They met in a Chicago restaurant in April 1983, and by September they were married and in the same band. Fall conducator Mark E said initially he didn't want his guitarist wife joining, but was impressed by her talent at arranging and the way she took the group in hand. Her first tenure marked a retreat of The Fall's early nord-west murk, and included such long-playing treats as 1985's thunderous This Nation's Saving Grace and The Frenz Experiment in 1988, as well as two as-yet unmatched chart hits. In 1989, their marriage collapsing, she left the group and made a shortlived go of it with the Adult Net (she'd also have a romance with original mockney Nigel Kennedy). Speaking to David Cavanagh about his ex-wife, Smith grumpily commented, "One of the things that used to fuckin' piss me off about the wife was everything was always her idea, and it wasn't at all." They didn't have any kids, but if they had, says Brix, any male issue would've been called Gunther.

Unexpectedly, harmony was restored in 1994 when Brix (born Laura Elisse Salenger) suddenly reappeared at a somewhat chaotic gig in Edinburgh. Two more albums followed, but by 1996 - not a fantastic year for the group - she'd departed once again. There are grisly details aplenty about crazy behaviour and her threatening to bash Smithy's head in with her guitar in this book, which also retells hearsay that as a young woman Brix had a plan to bag herself a British rocker. She now runs swish boutique Start with her new husband Phillip and appears on TV programmes and in newspapers as a style vizier. For his part, Smith continues to lead The Fall, which currently features his wife Eleni on keyboards. [CP]