Kay Bateman obituary | The Fall

My friend Kay Bateman, otherwise known as Kay Carroll, who has died of lung cancer aged 71, was the first manager of Mark E Smiths band, the Fall. Although few women held such roles in the 1970s, she fearlessly took on musicians, rowdy audiences and industry moguls. A recording of a telephone conversation posted

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Kay Bateman obituary

My friend Kay Bateman, otherwise known as Kay Carroll, who has died of lung cancer aged 71, was the first manager of Mark E Smith’s band, the Fall. Although few women held such roles in the 1970s, she fearlessly took on musicians, rowdy audiences and industry moguls. A recording of a telephone conversation – posted on YouTube – captures her caustically scolding the Factory Records boss, Tony Wilson: “You’re pirating my bloody stuff, Tony!” However, behind the public image, Smith’s “attack dog” was a kindly, funny soul.

Born at home in West Gorton, Manchester, Kay was the daughter of an Irish builder, Frances Sullivan, and his wife, Hilda (nee Jones). Frances was killed in a traffic accident when Kay was just five weeks old. She attended Ardwick secondary school for girls, leaving at the age of 16, after which she started work at the newly built Boots the Chemist in Manchester.

Slum clearances relocated the family to Whitefield, near Bury, in 1966. Kay studied as a nurse in Prestwich, and in 1969 she married Tony Carroll, an insurance clerk.

Kay Bateman at Eric’s club in Liverpool. Photograph: Michael Finkler

After abandoning that marriage and two children, Andrea and Gareth – a decision she regretted – Kay plunged into the nascent punk scene. In 1977, while working at Prestwich psychiatric hospital, she met Una Baines, Smith’s then girlfriend and the keyboard player in the fledgling Fall.

The same year, Kay succeeded Baines as Smith’s girlfriend and became the band’s manager. The group became a dictatorship ruled by Smith and Kay – “I brought an ideology to the Fall and Mark carried it on” – she said. Kay insisted the group would not “sell out” to major labels and a revolving door of musicians and record companies kept the music fresh. The long-serving bassist Steve Hanley feared her dressings down – “You’re playing like a bloody pub band!” However, his younger brother and drummer, Paul, saw a caring side: she made sure he sat his A-levels.

Kay negotiated record deals, encouraged Smith’s spoken-word vocals, performed backing singing, kazoo or percussion on classic albums such as Dragnet (1979), Grotesque (1980) and Hex Enduction Hour (1982) and – eight years Smith’s senior – was obliquely referenced in the song An Older Lover Etc. She left the band after a row outside a Boston bar with Mark, her legacy complete. She later hooted with laughter after reading that David Bowie didn’t like the Fall’s music as much after 1983, “the year I left!”.

Kay stayed in the US, working as a doctor’s assistant. Her second husband died of Aids, and she became a nurse to people with HIV in Portland, Oregon. She married again, to Mark Bateman, but after 20 years they divorced, in 2017.

A brilliant, hilarious, unconventional interviewee for my book The Fallen (2008), Kay sent hours of comical vitriol (“Regrets? That I didn’t hit Mark more!”) on cassette. Before Smith’s death in 2018, they had reconciled after she returned for a family visit, spied him at a bus stop and joked, “I’ve come back to kill you.” By then, Kay had reunited with Andrea and Gareth.

Kay is survived by those children, her daughter Megan, from her marriage to Mark, five grandchildren and by two brothers.

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