Edie

Written by: Brix E Smith

Studio release:

This Nation’s Saving Grace (Omnibus Edition) [track entitled Edie (Rough Mix Backing Track)]

A rough backing track version of a song which would later acquire lyrics and be released by The Adult Net (a vehicle for Brix Smith who was joined for this single by Simon Rogers and Karl Burns) in November 1985. The song was never played live by The Fall.

From an interview by Terry Christian with Brix Smith published online in The Biggest Library Yet:

TC: Before I play this I’ll go back and talk to you again about it, because your second single you released with the Adult Net – Edie – about Edie Sedgwick who was the original bimbo in a way. And, I think the Cult, their next single is going to be about Edie, as well.
B: Is it? They’re such copycats. And Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians have a song called little Miss S which is about her as well. It’s quite a hip thing to write about now, thank God I did it five years ahead of everyone else.
TC: Why were you so impressed with Edie Sedgwick? I was quite lucky to talk to Nat Finkelstein who was a photographer for Andy Warhol and all that kind of… not art deco, but whatever they had in New York in the sixties…
B: Pop art consciousness.
TC: I could certainly do with a bit more consciousness, look at it that way. And he seems to reckon that she was a complete and utter airhead and he’d never met anyone so shallow and insipid in his life. He said it was quite sad.
B: Well, that is sad, but I think visually speaking she looked fantastic and she had a wonderful sense of style and she lived her life on the edge. When I wrote the song I was 17 and that seemed so exciting, you know, but she did take a lot of drugs and she was constantly tripping and doing all sorts of wild things and burnt herself out very quickly. She also had anorexia, she was the first of the really thin Twiggy type people, and she was just an American tragedy and it was quite a sad story. In the end she burnt herself out and had a heart attack in her sleep at the age of 26.
TC: And that made you want to write a song?
B: Yeah, and I also went to school with her cousin, Rob Sedgwick, who was my suite-mate at college.
From Drowned in Sound:

“the instrumental version of the future Adult Net single ‘Edie’ is [great]. Once more Simon Rogers’s bass is at the fore, the band behind him are only just managing to keep up.”