Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith

by Mark E. Smith

  I remember meeting a girl when I was about thirteen or fourteen – Sharon, she was called. Met her at Radcliffe bus station. She was with this other girl and I was with a mate of mine. We ended up in a barn somewhere. My mate’s getting into this girl, and I’m sheepishly kissing Sharon. Anyway, a few days later, there’s a knock at the door. Sunday afternoon this was, we’ve just had our tea, my mam answers the door, and there’s Sharon and her mam; pair of them all dressed up. I couldn’t believe it. My dad wanted them out. He just kept saying, ‘Get ’em out!’ But my mam’s not like that. She sat them down with a cup of tea and cake.

  I had to go out the back with Sharon. We walked around while they all had a talk about me and her … but my dad was having none of it. He didn’t want to see me stuck with this girl from Radcliffe who I’d only just met. I didn’t even want to be with her. But her mam thought we made a really good couple. Like mams do sometimes … When they finally got rid of them, my dad took me to one side and asked me what I’d been up to and all that. I hadn’t been up to anything, and I told him that.

  I think they had the right idea back then. You see dads nowadays, always hanging around their kids. It’s ridiculous. It’s more about them than the kids, their ideas. My dad worked all day and he’d be out at night. But that’s how it was in those days.

  When I was on tour in the early days I used to ring my dad up and ask him to collect the mail, and he’d be like, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m in Germany.’

  ‘What you doing there?’

  ‘Doing very well.’

  ‘You must be mad.’

  Because he saw Germany as just a load of old women walking round with sticks and a load of rubble; still thinking it’s 1946.

  ‘Is this what it’s come to?’ he’d say.

  I used to love it. I’d tell the other fellows and they’d go, ‘I’d cry if my father said that to me.’ But I used to piss myself.

  I’d say to him, ‘Well, it’s 1979, Dad, things have changed a bit.’ And his answer would always be, ‘You can kid your mam but you can’t kid me.’

  He never really understood why I was doing it. Better that than those other dads picking you up at the airport when you’re thirty-one! Like Steve Trafford’s dad, asking how many people turned up and how much money we’d made.

  I couldn’t even afford to go to college; went for about three months but I never had any money. Looking back, I never liked college anyway, I educated myself better. But my dad was good like that. His philosophy was – ‘Look, if you’ve got a fiver in your pocket on a Friday night you’re made.’ Real English working class – what you once thought of as a handicap comes in really useful later on when you’re down on your luck or the band’s got no money. I’ll never forget that.

  2. Grandad versus King Kong

  Fred, my grandad, was a real pragmatist. He had a big plumbing shop in Salford near Strangeways Prison on this green hillock. Eighteen apprentices. His idea of a good time was reading a book on plumbing, on how to dispose of shit.

  He’d stand outside Strangeways and recruit ex-prisoners, get them making lathes and pipes. At the time they were recruiting for the army and he’d say, ‘You’ve got a choice, you either go to Ireland or you come with me.’

  I used to sit around with all these blokes who’d just been released from prison. I bump into them when I’m in Manchester sometimes. Fellows who are about fifty-five. They just come up and say, ‘You’re Fred’s grandson, aren’t you?’ and I’ll be thinking, ‘Oh fucking hell, what they going to say now?’ But they’re really complimentary, they say things like, ‘Your grandad met me outside Strangeways one Wednesday afternoon, and he turned my life around.’

  Different times then, different people, unlike the ungrateful musicians I employ. They say that there’s a generation gap: you’re not actually like your mam and dad, you’re more like your grandfather or grandmother. You skip a generation. In this respect I had more in common with my grandad than I did with my dad – just hiring people off the street. If they go, they go, if they don’t, they don’t. I’m not really bothered where people come from.

  My grandad would hang around the cinema and say to his apprentices, ‘Look, lad, your brain will turn to water watching that.’ He didn’t like the idea of people wasting their time, and back then the big source of entertainment was the cinema.

  He had a particular grudge against King Kong. He was seriously worried about it, people staring at this big monkey that didn’t even look real. I like that. I understand where he’s coming from, in a way. Not that I’m against watching films. It’s more the idea that you can kid yourself too much. To be honest, it’s probably more relevant today than it was then. Now when you go to the cinema you’ve got to be dead silent. It’s bollocks. People actually believe what they’re watching. I remember when I used to go and watch films with my Irish mates as a kid, we’d be yelling at the screen, at Dracula with all this blood on his chin, which was obviously tomato sauce or whatever; it was more of an experience then. There’d always be a Carry On film on every Saturday around Prestwich and Salford and Manchester; for the dirty old men. We used to get thrown out when Sid James came on; thrown out after about five minutes – because they were shit. Holiday-camp shit. My Irish mates would be shouting out, ‘This is the bit where Sidney puts his hand up the girl’s skirt!’ And we’d get thrown out!

  I’d prefer to see a good film, like Albert Finney in Charlie Bubbles, or Dead of Night. But now you get the BBC with their Carry On seasons! It’s trash! The Beano was better.

  I can’t go in the cinema now. I went to see The Blair Witch Project with my sister. Ten minutes in, I’m going, ‘Ohh, this is scary!’: joking. People were turning around telling me to be quiet. After about half an hour I’m saying it’s a home movie, it’s not a horror film.

  Whatever you say about Hammer Horror films, at least everybody used to have a good laugh. I used to watch them and go ‘Aaarrgghh!’ when Dracula appeared. If you did that now you’d be booted out, people take it so seriously. When characters used to get shot, we’d shout out, ‘That’s a lot of tomato ketchup, that!’ and the audience would laugh. Nowadays people think it’s art. Hammer Horror films never pretended to be art. It was what it was; nothing wrong with that. It served its purpose.

  I can’t believe they remade The Omen, though, that’s a great film. You watch it and think, ‘Right, he’s had it, he’s in for it now, just wait …’ Brilliant.

  There’s a dearth of original scripts, that’s why Hollywood has to remake everything. The only one I didn’t mind was The Manchurian Candidate; not as good as the original, but there was something there.

  Nothing touches Dead Man’s Shoes, though. British film – set in Nottingham. Not many people have heard of it, because it isn’t your average idea of Britain. It’s not Notting Hill or Hugh Grant, and it’s not even Mike Leigh or Ken Loach. It doesn’t patronize or meander and it’s not afraid to tell a story. I like the way it captures Britain in the summertime, when some people don’t have enough money to go on holiday and they spend most of their time drinking or doing drugs: walling themselves off. There’s a lot of frustration there; it doesn’t help when they’re seeing their bosses and workmates fucking off on another holiday. You can see it in the pubs; men who’ve been out all day in the sun with big red faces that you could fry an egg on, bruised complexions – looking at you …

  You could go in The Forresters – a pub near me – and nobody would look at you ten years ago. It wasn’t the way they were thinking. But now they feel they’ve got to look at you. I’ve seen people, heard people in pubs, saying, ‘That guy over there – he’s weird.’ They’re not weird. You’re weird: a grown man looking at everybody else. Fellows are worse than the women.

  One thing that shocked me when I first went to Europe was the way in which Dutch people and French people used to stare at you. I found it very offensive. Not because of who I was; but because it was an incursion on my space. It just didn�
��t used to happen in Britain. The strange thing now is that it’s not just old people; it used to be an old person’s game – looking. Not now, though. All ages are into it.

  Things like Big Brother I find very strange. Why should anyone want to watch somebody asleep at night? Now that’s weird.

  They asked me to replace Johnny Rotten on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. I’d never dream of doing anything like that. He must have been seriously broke to have even considered it. But that’s his business. Programmes like that remind me of wartime Russia when they’d make so-called subversive artists dig holes and plough fields. It’s very sad: every year at a certain time we get to have a laugh at celebrities who are skint or desperate or just simply mad. The worst part about it is that kids watch it; that’s the last thing I’d be doing as a kid. I would never have dreamed of wasting my time like that. Though I must confess I sometimes do it now, spend days watching the TV knowing I should be getting on with something else – it gets like a drug. I remember one year when I watched nothing but Dallas – it was great. JR: fantastic. Didn’t mind Dynasty either. Me and Elena like Neighbours as well; Doctor Carl, he’s great. I particularly liked that band he had at one stage. Good band: good TV.

  But as a kid I had more on my mind. I wanted to engage with my surroundings, do things. Nowadays everybody’s just looking at everybody else. I don’t care. I don’t care how much so and so earns a week. It’s not my business. Something happened around 1997. All of a sudden we’re interested in tittle-tattle. All of a sudden people are making money out of tittle-tattle – I’m talking about the Big Brother mindset here. Suddenly from doing interviews about how I came by lyrics, and why am I obsessed with horror, and why does this album sound like that, blardy-blah; to how often do you have sex a week? Or, what’s your favourite LP? What’s your favourite LP? – who cares? They’re supposed to be journalists, aren’t they? That’s not my idea of a proper journalist.

  I heard a story the other day about some daft fellow naming his kid Keegan after Kevin Keegan. If I’d have told my dad or grandad about that, they’d have said, ‘Stop hanging around with people like that. You should get away from people like that.’ I mean, how stupid is that? Naming your son Keegan … Now that’s tittle-tattle gone too far. What sort of mentality is that?

  It’s a shame that people are living their lives like this, because it goes much quicker than you think. I’d rather people concentrated on their own ideas a bit more. It’s as if they don’t think their own lives are of any importance; completely different from people of my dad and grandad’s generation, who at least had an understanding of what it was to exist, to try and do things and not waste time.

  When I formed the group it wasn’t about me trying to get my picture in some paper or magazine or other – like it is with a lot of bands nowadays – it was because of sounds; of wanting to make something; combining primitive music with intelligent lyrics.

  You’ve got to realize and accept that you’re never going to be on Top of the Pops every week if you’re in The Fall, that’s not what The Fall’s about; The Fall’s about hard work. At the time I wasn’t conscious of this but later on I soon recognized that this was what it was about. You can’t be flaky about these things. You have to face up to it. There have been many times I’ve thought about packing it in and going off to do something else. I’ve always wanted to write a really good British film – something on a par with Dead of Night. But I’ve never quite got there. Other things have got in the way.

  3. Prelude to Revolution

  They used to have job agencies in those days, these bureaus. You’d just walk in and say, ‘I’m sixteen, got five O levels, get us a job.’ And they would. Imagine that now. If you got sacked you could just get another job. They were great like that, and they were free. So this bureau sent me to this meat factory to deal with the clerical work. It was the biggest meat-processing plant in Manchester, owned by Louis Edwards, who owned everything from Cheetham Hill to Victoria Station, every factory.

  So Martin, his son, who later became the Chairman of Manchester United, walked in. ‘You’ve been sent by this bureau,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t think it’s enough money. I’ve got offers for fourteen and fifteen quid a week, and yours is only eight and half a week.’

  ‘Well, here’s your documents, and here’s your filing cabinet and you start on Monday.’

  ‘No, Mr Edwards, I don’t.’

  ‘There’s where the lorries go out, there’s your packing staff, and you’re in charge.’

  ‘You don’t seem to understand me; I can’t do it for eight and half quid a week.’

  ‘Well, I’ll just leave you with the papers and I’ll come back in half an hour.’

  So I thought, alright, I’ll have a look. So I start looking through the papers, and it’s all about processed steaks and how many they need or don’t need. Instantly, I knew it was all shit. I knew I couldn’t do it.

  After half an hour he hasn’t come back. I thought to myself, fuck this, I’ll go to my next interview – which you could do in those days. But I couldn’t open the door. So I knocked on the window with a ruler to get the attention of one of the meat packers. One of them turned around and said, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Fire!’ I said. So this guy goes and gets a security guard, who unlocks the door; but they’re like, ‘What’s the matter? Mr Edwards said you’re the new packing clerk.’ Which makes me think, because years later when he was at United it was much the same: ‘You’re here now, so fuck off’ type of philosophy.

  Though, looking back, if I’d known he was going to be head of United in years to come I wouldn’t have even gone to the interview in the first place.

  After that I went to the docks in Salford as a shipping clerk. They were much more free and easy. I was sixteen. People were great, working with dockers and shipping agencies. At the time it was incredible: big ships coming in from Canada, Nigeria, Ghana, full of fruit. I enjoyed my work. It was better than being at college. Got to see all sorts of people – Yanks, Nigerians, all wanting a pint as soon as they’d got off the boat – but I had to clear them, make sure all their insurance was alright.

  I used to write in my lunch hour, jot things down. The docks gave me the time to do that.

  But it’s a good thing The Fall did happen because I got fired by this dickhead; got fired because I was a bit late. I’d been late a few times, but they’d just got this new management. Things were changing. Three-day week, candles on your desk … One day there’s no boats from Nigeria. All of a sudden it’s machine parts from Germany. We’re part of the Common Market now, so the dockers were mooning about, all miserable, blaming I don’t know who.

  I remember having a distinct feeling that this was all going to collapse around me. One minute I’m in the office doing imports and exports; going to work in my shirt and pants, normal-like; on a motorbike, going down to the docks, earning the money – and suddenly there’s these twats there in Rod Stewart suits, running the fucking company. But they had this old accountant there, about seventy, I’ll never forget him: Trevor. He was like Rumpole. Smoked a pipe. He’d been in the Royal Navy fighting the Japs; and he was always telling me – ‘Get out, Mark, get out now. You’re too intelligent for this job.’

  He used to follow me to the toilet. Asking me why I’m still here. He was looking after me.

  The new manager looked like a footballer in his big pink suit; and the deputy manager like Rod Stewart. Going to the girls, ‘Oh, your skirt’s nice,’ and all this shit. And we’d be sitting in the manager’s office, and I’d be like, ‘Yeah, what’s the problem?’ with all this stuff on my face because I’d just come from the docks. And Trevor would be there with his pipe.

  And the first thing this fellow said was, ‘I had the best jump of my life last night.’ He’d just got married as well!

  I remember Trevor looking at me, and later saying, ‘Even the lowest sailor wouldn’t say things like that.’

  I me
an, I wasn’t a saint in those days, but fuck me … This fellow with his big suit and sun-tan. We’ve got two boats holed up in Salford; you could see it was going down the drain. And all he’s talking about is his car, or last night’s jump, or how ‘things are going to change’.

  They came in like New Labour – a total overhaul. It all changed – the whole office. I’m glad I witnessed that. I’d be talking to India or wherever, and they’d be asking me stupid questions like, ‘Have you not done those machine parts from Switzerland yet?’

  This is the new sales rep saying this; they sacked the old one, who was this bearded guy with a tweed jacket. Used to get everybody leathered, all his clients. He’d come in pissed out of his head – ‘There’s two boats of cloth from Nigeria sorted out’ – but he’d get the contracts.

  But they couldn’t sack Trevor, because he only worked part-time. He used to say, ‘This is what happened in Singapore, before the Japanese invaded.’

  I knew I was for the push, though. They’d always be getting me on my time. Out with the old and in with the new; but what did the new do? How long did they last? Eighteen months. Every container you saw on Salford docks was owned by that company, and now it’s a casino.

  I went home, on the dole.

  Around 1979 I rang them up for a laugh, to speak to a few old mates; one of them had seen a review in the NME and tried to get in touch. So I rang him back but there was nobody left.

  In a strange way, I’m still very clerical about most things I do. I suppose I’m still in The Fall because it forces me to make something of myself, which in its own way is a very desk-job attitude to have. It’s probably why I record so much. If it wasn’t for The Fall, I’d be at home right now trying to motivate myself to write, but probably doing every other thing possible not to write. Fucking around with this and that. Going to the pub. Watching TV. It’s that old writer’s dilemma. Unless you’re forced to work, you find yourself cleaning out the backyard as an excuse.