Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith

by Mark E. Smith

  You do sometimes get the impression that these labels are deliberately trying to destroy you. In a way, Factory tried to obstruct us when they signed The Happy Mondays, because they wanted a Fall and they didn’t have a Fall. That’s probably half the truth. I’m not having a go at Shaun Ryder and Bez – they’re alright. I’ve always had a lot of time for Bez, in fact. When we won the Mojo award a couple of years ago both Ryder and Bez presented us with it. It was a funny night, that. Bez was still wearing his outfit from this car programme he was presenting – this jump suit with a load of pockets on it. He was walking round asking U2 and all that lot for drugs – hilarious. You can’t take the scally out of Bez. I remember throwing things at The Gang of Four – beer mats and whatnot. And Bill Wyman and U2 were asking for more free wine. Cheapskates.

  The power these labels have is quite frightening. The connections they’ve got. We’ve never taken big advances – not then and not now. We’re autonomous. All these independent labels are the worst. People are just realizing it. Major labels aren’t right for The Fall all the time, but at least you know where you are. The independents pay you less, they interfere and they’re all in each other’s pockets.

  If you’re on a major you get 20 per cent of a record and if you’re on an indie you get 14 per cent. The other 6 per cent goes to indie guys who drive around pretending to be indie. That’s the bottom line.

  In a strange way I think Factory were content that it ended like it did, when it did. Mancunians are not very good at handling success. They’re more into instant nostalgia, knocking out a few records, making a slight impression then going underground. They’re the enemies of longevity. If you look hard enough beneath the pavements you’ll see them with their flares and spliffs talking about Wednesday nights in the Hacienda.

  It’s the polar opposite of the Yank mentality. I think that’s why Mancunians are so well liked over there. They probably see it all as a brave artistic retreat.

  But the worst thing is that the city hasn’t recovered from that period. What with that and the gentrification of the place …

  Before the bomb in ’96 Manchester city centre was populated by some of the best Victorian architecture in the world. You could read history off some of those buildings. They were masterpieces – beautiful combinations of science and art. It’s not like now; it’s just a bad Rotterdam now. Toy Town. I don’t know what it is with architects. Buildings nowadays are not symbols of progress; they’re the result of too many minds regressing into childhood. Just look at them – glorified toys built grand. It’s as if they’ve just stubbornly excluded the trusted expertise of the older lot because they’re new to the game and it’s their duty to change things. They remind me of those fellows who thought they’d redesign the docks in the 70s; and look how much they achieved. Nowadays, the ultimate aim is to force the working class out, that’s what gentrification is all about. They think that by building glorified fridge boxes and passing them off as ‘modern’ and ‘progressive’, everybody who walks by will in time transform into the likes of them!

  Degrees have a way of warping people – it’s not good for people to spend that amount of time at university, acting like rock stars on weekdays. They get so distanced from the real world they haven’t a fucking clue what’s needed. It’s a luxurious prison, almost. Once they get out, once they’re released, they’re good for nothing other than having weekly reunions with their old housemates, getting jobs with their old housemates, or staying on to receive more educational therapy or forming piss-poor bands. And they’ve all got floppy fringes. They all wish it was 1980 and Joy Division were still around. Uniform mentality: my aim is to steer well clear of anything slightly resembling that.

  We did a European tour on the same circuit as the Rough Trade groups, the likes of Stiff Little Fingers. Nobody had a clue what we were on about. It was very strange. We had a conga player instead of a drummer, this insurance salesman guy, because the drummer was too young to play over there. We would play to stony silence doing the Grotesque numbers.

  Everybody would either be a Factory type or a pub-band type, or in Germany it’d be a load of Kraftwerk types. It was all rather disheartening.

  The prevailing idea was that you had to be a punk or Bowieish, and we were neither. It’s no wonder you start appearing negative or cynical in interviews; dealing with dead-legs like that doesn’t make for good relations. Simply put, nobody wanted us there. And you can take it personally and start picking at yourself or you can just keep trucking on. The overriding factor of it all – back then and even now – is that too many people are devoid of any humour. And if they do have a laugh, it’s in the vein of business humour – a forced, Christmas-party idea of a good time.

  But I knew it was right to hang in there and stay true to The Fall. The important thing was being hit by the simple fact that there are no rules when you’re writing. I’d always thought I was ahead of the pack anyway, but I expanded at a phenomenal rate at this point. The earlier stuff was a little hemmed in – it didn’t look out as much. When you’re hit by the knowledge you can write about anything, if you’ve got the imagination, that’s a powerful feeling. Nothing’s wasted; you think you’re idling hours away, but a lot of it comes back, a lot of submerged thoughts and ideas. When you finally realize it, it’s obvious, it’s less of a struggle.

  I think this is why I ended 1981 stronger than any other year. I saw no point in shying away from these cunts; that’s what they expected. That’s always been my way. Even now, I’ll ring record companies before the postman’s even got his trousers on. Hit them when they least expect it, when they’re barely awake.

  Looking back, you can see how MTV profited from these people. It was only a year later they started brainwashing kids and record companies. It all boils down to an easy fix – strait-jacket your acts, get them to deliver simple sentiments, simple albums, and all of a sudden music’s no longer something you carry around in your head but just another piece of TV. I understand that it’s always been about money; that’s a given. But there’s something inhuman about the way in which it’s put into practice. And the swiftness of it all! From idealistic punks to moneyed indie chappies. I prefer to stay away from it all; attack them from the comfort of my abode with a nice cup of tea and The Chuckle Brothers on the box.

  9. Silence of the Riley

  We never depended on John Peel for our livelihood. I don’t put my career down to him.

  I had an argument with Marc Riley about this on a train. We were shouting at each other, like some daft couple. He was saying, we’ve done two John Peel sessions and isn’t it great. And I’m saying, ‘So what? It’s only the BBC. We’re not a fucking rock band.’

  The idea was that you did John Peel, then progressed on to the 7 till 9 slot and so on. We never went that far from Peel, and ultimately that was a limitation for us. You become known as a ‘Peel group’.

  I warned Riley – if you think we work for the BBC we don’t, we work for who we want to work with. He thought we were like Peel’s party band; that he could call on us any time and we’d be straight down there to play for him.

  I had this idea that Peel was a starting point to better things, like the morning show. It was a process.

  Anyway, when we brought out Hex Enduction Hour Peel dropped us for a year or two – because it was on a random label. He wouldn’t even play ‘Hip Priest’ on a session. It was too long and dull. People look at history though rose-coloured glasses. You’ve got to remember that to him I was selling out when we covered ‘There’s a Ghost in My House’ and infiltrated the charts. He probably thought I was doing a David Bowie or a Marc Bolan and that I’d never return to being ‘Mark’ again.

  But eventually he got the message – the two-year gap; and he was back into us.

  I never saw much of him, to be honest, just a few times here and there. I gave him a copy of Malcolm Allison’s autobiography for his birthday; great book that. That’s how this book started out – it was just going to be a
list of all my favourite drinks and hotels: fuck all to do with music – that would have been funny.

  A few of my mates once went out for a drink with Allison, when he was still the City manager. They went to a Chinese restaurant. Allison was dressed all flamboyantly as usual, chomping on a large cigar, ordering bottle after bottle of champagne … These mates of mine are thinking, ‘He’s alright, Malcolm, a good sort, a good laugh.’ And then the bill lands on the table. Malcolm picks it up and holds out his hat – these mates of mine throw in a few notes, thinking Allison will sort the rest out, why else would he now be walking over to the head waiter? Two minutes later the waiter comes up to them and says, ‘Your friend just told me you’ll be paying the bill.’ Allison had just fucked off! They were paying for the pleasure of his company.

  I liked the fact that Peely wasn’t a Manchester United fan – that he supported a decent team like Liverpool. It’s a shame that he’s not around any more. He was a one-off. I know that his radio show meant a lot to a hell of a lot of people, but I was never a huge fan of it myself. I preferred it in the early 70s. I heard a lot of unusual reggae records through it. But I know people who listened to him religiously.

  I can’t see him being replaced very quickly. Everybody’s too frightened of getting sacked if they play a record that might awake the interest of the listeners. It says a lot when Radio 2 is at the top of the ratings charts. It’s like a whole generation of kids are in search of their parents’ minds and tastes. Their entire existence seems to be built upon re-enacting their mams’ and dads’ lives. It’s scary.

  They’re an odd bunch at the BBC. I remember having to meet these two media graduates just before they started filming that documentary – The Wonderful and Frightening World of Mark E. Smith. What a pair they were! One of them was this girl, a festival type, a Jo Whiley-ite. She’d just come back from some festival or other, and that was all she could talk about. She hadn’t a clue who The Fall were, or who I was. She reminded me of one of those NME journalists from the 80s who’d try to get me pissed and fire all these leading questions at me, hoping that I’d react like somebody demented.

  First thing she did as she sat down was cross her legs as if she was about to do some fucking yoga – a modern hippy, in other words. I offered to buy her a drink but she’s like, ‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly have another drink. I drank so much at this festival and have you ever been to a festival and oh we saw so many people at this festival …’ It’s no wonder the documentary was ropey. And she never made an effort to get her round in. What are they teaching them at the BBC?

  It was the same thing with The Culture Show. They interviewed me in Wolverhampton on my fiftieth birthday. Three of them turned up looking like Mork and Mindy and Mork’s half-brother. They didn’t have an inkling about the band, hadn’t even bothered to listen to the new album. They were asking questions like, ‘David Bowie’s going to be fifty this year but I can’t see him celebrating in Wolverhampton on a rainy Monday night. It’s very Fall-like, isn’t it, celebrating your birthday like this?’ I mean, what sort of question is that? For one, I’m not David Bowie – it’s a poxy comparison. And the fact that we were playing Wolverhampton was because we were booked in to play Wolverhampton on a Monday night.

  You can see why Peely was being shunted all over the place. It’s because he was an enthusiast who knew what he was going on about. You’re seen as a threat if you display too much knowledge in those circles; or if not a threat then a nerd. It’s something that needs to be seriously addressed, in my book.

  A strange thing happened to me after Peely died. I appeared on Newsnight. When that Esler bloke was asking me questions, I looked as if I’d lost it. I wasn’t pissed or anything. It might have panned out better if I was. I couldn’t understand what was going on. I had the bloke from The Undertones, Michael Bradley, in one ear and some BBC control-room fellow in the other, and another one asking me these questions. I couldn’t even hear myself, that’s why I probably appeared mad. I didn’t understand what the fuck was going on. But my mam liked it. She apparently said, ‘He’s always very self-assured, even when he’s on TV’!

  Just after that we played a gig in Liverpool with Ben and Spencer and Steve. Before I was due on, I went for a pint over the road in this strange and terrible bar populated by frigid-looking arty girls and blokes with really black hair.

  I should never have gone in. I’m always doing that; dipping in a pub and then regretting it minutes later when some sexless office fellow comes and sits next to me, asking all kinds of inane questions about ‘Bingo-Masters Break-Out!’.

  Somebody offered to buy me a drink, some ex-Damned fan or other. I usually say no thanks, because you never know what they’re up to. Most of the time they’re just being friendly, but you get the odd one and you end up sweating the night out in your own Twilight Zone.

  So he brings over this pint of lager, sits down and starts talking about Peel and how sad it is and how The Fall were Peel’s favourite band and how he saw me on Newsnight, and then the next minute he’s being dragged away by this large clown – this woman with her face caked in black and white make-up, wearing all leather, all black leather – it was fucking scary. I finished the pint and fucked off back to the venue, did the gig, and then in the van on the way home everything turned upside down. I must have been tripping or something. I could feel a presence in my body. It must have been some voodoo gunge. I didn’t crack on to anybody: just got back home and stuck the TV on. But then it got worse. The TV was racing at me and the room had lost its shape and feel.

  I went to bed to sweat it out. It was never-ending. I have a very high tolerance level when it comes to shit like that, but this stuff would have killed the next man. I think it was something to do with the oddball who fed me the pint. He was a browned-off Peel-obsessive who took it upon himself to attack the loon who had besmirched his hero on the goggle box.

  Don’t get me wrong, I like people from Liverpool. I’ve never had any problem with them. He just had it all wrong. I’m constantly in battle with people like that.

  Marc Riley, for instance. At the time you’ve just got to let them do it, you’ve got to let them think that they’re right. That is my philosophy: always let them think they’re in the right. It benefits me because it shuts them up.

  The amazing thing is, they start to believe it.

  The problem with Riley was he started questioning all the credits on Hex and Slates and Grotesque and Totally Wired. But if it had been left up to him and Craig Scanlon, Grotesque and Hex would have sounded like mediocre Buzzcocks LPs.

  Were they capable of writing something like ‘J. Temperance’ or ‘Hip Priest’? You’ve got to be joking. Just look at what they’ve done afterwards. I wrote every note of ‘Totally Wired’ – bass, guitar – told them everything to play. Just because I can’t write it down in chords … I wrote ‘Hip Priest’, but every time The Silence of the Lambs is shown on TV, which it’s used in, the royalties go six ways. I could have had a mansion by now, but it doesn’t bother me. Jim Watts thought he wrote ‘Blindness’. We did a cover version of Iggy Pop’s ‘African Man’, but using a different title, and Jim Watts is writing to the publisher telling them what he’d written on it! I’m like, ‘Jim, it’s an Iggy Pop song. You didn’t write it.’ Jim Watts did write ‘Sparta F.C.’ – so I gave him 66 per cent of it. Actually, Elena wrote some lyrics, and I wrote some lyrics and the arrangement.

  Everyone in The Fall got paid a decent wage, equal shares for everybody, despite the amount of hours I spent in the studio getting rid of Steve Hanley’s mistakes, or Marc Riley’s, and Scanlon’s too. But you need them, you’ve got to flatter them a little bit.

  I’m forever getting letters from people saying, this compilation’s just come out, I’m going to see my lawyer. But they don’t have a case. That ‘Touch Sensitive’ thing, Julia Nagle contested it – every time that car advert shows, she gets two thirds. I wrote the guitar bits, I wrote the riff, but I’d rather let it go – sh
e’s got nothing on me. If she wanted to take me to court, I’d say, ‘Hello, Julia, so who told you to play this chord – tell the truth, you’re in court.’ The proof is that the songs are always better and different without them. That’s what really winds them up. It’s always better.

  And why have they got the time to do all this? If they’re so talented, why aren’t they making good music and raking in the royalties?

  The bottom line is, I get a third because I wrote the lyrics. I’m happy with that – they’re not. It’s not about money, it’s about bitterness.

  It’s the same with McCartney. It’s nothing to do with money, he’s got enough money. It’s just that a lot of people believe that Lennon was the driving force behind The Beatles. I actually think he and Harrison were The Beatles – and Lennon was the real drive. With The Beatles you can always see that McCartney is the goody-goody, which I always thought Riley was in our band. But Marc had to be got rid of. I sacked him on his wedding day! I didn’t know he’d just got secretly wed. I said to Kay, ‘We’ve got to ring him, we’ve got to get rid of him,’ because he was getting out of hand: wanting to do ‘Totally Wired’ twice a night, playing ‘Container Drivers’ with his cowboy hat on and all that kind of thing. Even Kay was a bottler – she got all nervous on the phone. She’s like, ‘Marc, I’ve got something to say to you …’, not getting to the point. So I said, give me the phone – and he says, ‘Mark, how did you find out?’ and I go, ‘What?’

  ‘I only wanted a private wedding, I got wed today.’

  Of course, I thought why didn’t you invite me then, you cunt? And I say, ‘Congratulations, mate, and by the way you’re sacked.’

  So you can see why he’s a bit scarred.

  He was fucking terrible when we went on tour down under in ’82.