Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith

by Mark E. Smith

  Meanwhile, one of these fellows, one of his so-called mates, is singing along to ‘Venus in Furs’ all the time. And he can’t handle it; all of it’s making him worse. And the minute they see the police come to check everything out they get in a car and leave him to rot. They don’t give a shit about him, it’s obvious.

  Another thing I’m reminded of is the film of Rising Damp. I’m a big fan of Leonard Rossiter and Rigsby, and the series itself had a lot more depth to it than people think. Pale-minded liberals have moaned the subtleties out of it, as is their wont. Rigsby wasn’t all that bad. He’s not the bigoted tyke he’s been made out to be. He’s just a bloke from another generation – a lost sort, looking for company.

  It’s interesting, because at the end of the film circumstances force the other characters into revealing themselves. They’ve all been acting behind his back, playing out these powerful visions of themselves with Rigsby as their focus of derision; but in truth he’s at the centre of a sly sham. In the end they stand revealed as bullshitters and con men. In comparison he’s nowhere near as calculating and untrustworthy.

  I can relate to things like that.

  In any walk of life it’s hard to filter out the charlatans from the good sort. It’s a curse. The amount of vultures who have dealt dishonestly behind my back doesn’t bear thinking about. When The Fall are at their best, we’re like a platoon.

  The longer I’ve been around, the more I’ve just learned to take my time about things. In the beginning I was quite sensitive. I didn’t have the right head on to deal with the cretins and cockroaches. I was too busy perfecting the moody writer thing. That can be a real problem. As soon as I started to fill in tax forms and sort paperwork out, as soon as I didn’t have five days to be artfully glum and existential, all that changed. But at the start I couldn’t get to grips with the rock world, with the whole rigmarole and the leeches at the centre of it. When you’re caught up in something that has no grace, it makes sense to take verbal revenge.

  It does get you down sometimes, but there’s no point wallowing in it. A lot of stuff on Perverted by Language (1983) came out of one of those low periods that I tend to have. Kay had left and the band had changed again. That’s not to say I wasn’t excited by it.

  It’s a suburban album. You just have to look at some of the titles – ‘Neighbourhood of Infinity’, ‘Garden’. But it’s not The Jam or anything. They were more BBC2, with a couple of ‘angry’ lyrics thrown in.

  The difference with me is that I always find the present more real than any other period from my life. I know this isn’t the case with a lot of other writers, who spend more time regressing than tackling the here and now. I prefer to look at LPs more as contemporary chronicles.

  Walking the same places, skint, you see a lot of hidden sores when you’re having an off day. Your eyes have changed and the simple actions of other persons take on a significance that may or may not be truly there. These are extreme moments.

  That’s the feeling behind the album.

  Scratch the surface of English suburbia and you’ll see a bored bloke looking back at you asking what you’re up to. We’re not talking David Lynch here, it’s not as lurid as that. But that makes it all the more interesting. Like, why is that person peering out of his window so early in the morning anyway?

  It seemed to me that people started spending an unusual amount of hours meddling with their lawns and privets. Rinsing the paving and touching up the paintwork on their window frames. I’d be walking around wondering how I could finance everything and there’d be a fellow in an ill-fitting pair of slacks adding dabs of white paint to the white paint that was already there. Killing time. Or I’d be sat in the pub and grown men would suddenly start talking loudly about their plans for an extension or how the new curtains are looking.

  But instead of getting it down in a straight-up way, I threw in a Lindsay Anderson feel to it all. I’m a big fan of his stuff. The best thing he did, Britannia Hospital, gets overlooked in favour of If …, but it’s great. There’s a load of shit going on in the hospital with the managers and doctors; all totally inept and scatty. Really, the film’s just a barbed pop at the government and the times. On one side of the wall you had the garden lot, and they were okay, and then you had families who’d been shunted into these tower blocks like a rat experiment. Thatcher got blamed for it, but in truth it was the socialists who built them. Mike Leigh nailed it in Meantime: lads at loose ends and lifts not working, the neighbours barking through the non-walls. It was a nightmare – a daymare. I had girlfriends who lived in these places and you’d sit down and look around and they’re all the same – wallpaper, carpet, even the smell. Prison-life. They had their own awful presence. I feel sorry for anybody who’s had to endure anything like that. It was a terrible time.

  Other bands were resorting to love songs, as is always the case in uncertain times: sugared denial. But I’m incapable of putting a new spin on the love idea. I don’t know what else could be written about the subject. Maybe if you wrote it from the perspective of one musician I know of. I hear that he’d been having a written correspondence with Rose West a few years ago and she wanted to take it a bit further. I should float that idea around.

  Something more accurate than fiction – that’s what I was trying to get at with Perverted by Language. I think you can only get at reality like that in a jarred and abstract way. It sounds ridiculous but I find it has more reality to it than something polished and linear.

  It’s not a very well-liked LP. People find it claustrophobic. But it’s not always about making music in the traditional sense of the word. Sometimes it’s right to try to create a new, imaginary world. There’s some great noises on that record, and I think it works a bit like a short-story book.

  It’s better than Echo and the Bunnymen and all the rest of the gonks around at that time. Indulging in depression, like it’s a lifestyle choice … I hated that. I’ve always wanted The Fall to be the group that represents people who are sick of being dicked around; those that have a bit of fight in them.

  The cover’s the best thing for most people. It’s a bit like that Hogarth engraving Gin Lane. It’s important you get it right with covers, that they reflect what’s contained within. I’ve never really had a problem. The Light User Syndrome and the American version of Reformation are the only two I can think of that I reckon should have been done again. I look fucking terrible on Light User – I wasn’t eating my greens, and my mouth was wearing whisky perfume. Reformation was the work of Bob Gruen. He took that famous picture of Lennon with his arms crossed wearing that New York City T-shirt. He’s done everybody. Sadly, they’re all dead or nearly dead. I’m walking around his studio in New York and his walls are caked in coffin dwellers. In my opinion, he’s still living off all his old pictures. I mean they’re good pictures and everything, but his eye has obviously had its day. The cover looks like a poxy school picture, or a prison Polaroid taken for the family back at home by the screws who have loosened up a bit after a couple of Christmas cans. I don’t know what they were thinking when they packed us off to his studio. They should have just stuck our heads on that painting called The Hustler – the one with the cats and dogs smoking and drinking and playing pool. That would have made more sense.

  It’s a pain in the arse getting covers sorted out nowadays. In the past I’d just hand them the artwork and say, ‘Use that!’ and they’d go off and knock it out in a day or two. All they’ve got to do is follow instructions. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. There’ll be three girls who have worked on it for four weeks or so. It’s like with ‘Reformation!’, the single off the album: they must have sent me about twenty-five shots of how it might turn out.

  ‘Here’s the cover for your perusal, Mr Smith.’

  Not even different covers – just little changes here and there, different lettering. It reminded me of a Dulux colour coordinator – ‘You can have the fireplace like this and you can have your walls like this and this shade compleme
nts your shed perfectly.’

  Instead of sending me three or four vastly different ideas, they send me twenty-five of the same … You’re looking at it wondering, what’s the difference? When I used to do the covers I’d just take a photo and get them to blow it up 12 × 12. All they’ve got to do is follow the instruction that I’ve written out for them, but they’re incapable. For some odd reason they think they know best. It’d be a different matter if the boss imposed some ideas on them; but because it’s Mad Mark they flip out. And the results are wop. In their eyes they’re breaking new ground with twenty-five identical images. You don’t want to have a go at them too much. But it needs saying …

  Simple fact is, there’s a great divide between a graphic designer and an artist. Graphic designers only know how to use a computer – they’re the visual equivalent of an audio typist. They bounce out of college with very boring ideas. I’d rather do it myself than hand it over to one of them. They’re too in control of what they’re doing, they have to be – it’s a fucking computer after all. That’s why it doesn’t flow as it should.

  I’ve noticed that a lot of new covers are poor imitations of the stuff that Peter Saville did in the 80s. All very minimal and cool. It was good when he did it, but not so good when it’s Ben or Luke with his new computer and he’s trying to pass it off as his own. There’s nothing wrong with being influenced by somebody, that’s all part of the process. I’m not that naive. But there comes a time when your own ideas have to take precedence.

  The other thing is: kids getting music off computers. They’re missing out there. It’s all too immediate and empty. For one, it’s not tangible. This sounds a bit romantic, but you’re losing out with that shit. That’s why artwork’s not seen as it used to be. It’s just one more throwaway component. I’ve got a feeling it’ll come back, though; same with vinyl. I still think in terms of vinyl – sides one and two. It’s funny, because there’ll be somebody on the other end of the phone saying, ‘Side one and two? But we’re talking about a CD.’ And I’ll be ranting away, totally oblivious, saying, ‘I want side one like this and side two like that – now sort it out!’

  It helps to be in the know …

  A lot of European painters listen to The Fall when they’re working: both bad and good. It appeals to them a lot. It’s interesting to me, because I’m not really an art person: I know what I like, etc.

  They always seem to feel it a lot more – painters and sculptors. They always say: ‘Don’t understand you, don’t know what you’re going on about. I live on an island.’ But they get the colours from it and the feeling.

  One painter I do like is this lad from Coventry, George Shaw. He does all these landscapes that look just like photographs – Labour Clubs and parks and rows of houses. They’re beautifully executed, really evocative. Some of them remind me of the scenery near where I live, places like Heaton Park.

  I stuck some of his work in Reformation. They’re quite intense. He’s an old-school craftsman. You can tell he knows what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. I like paintings that have the feeling of a story, that appear immediate and easy to understand but gradually reveal more telling details.

  I get a lot of artists wanting to design our covers. Most of them shit. But there’s a few I don’t mind. Michael Pollard, who designed This Nation’s Saving Grace, he was a good bloke. It’s a fantastic cover. It’s got a good feel to it. Sometimes, things just fall into your lap, like with Reformation: it was left up to me to sort the cover out, and I had a few images in my mind, but one day I stumbled across this mosaic that a bloke called Mark Kennedy had done for me as a present, and it punched me in the face as the right image to go with. It has a unique religious feel to it. Quite fitting: we’re a faith unto ourselves.

  Mark’s a mate of mine from Manchester. I’ve known him a few years. He does the live backdrops as well. He gets commissions from the likes of Noel Gallagher and Beckham’s auntie or whatever for his mosaics. But as with a lot of artists he sells them way too cheap. As if these people are skint. They’re funny like that, artists. They’ve got fuck-all business acumen. He’ll be telling me about how he’s just sold one of his mosaics to Posh for seven quid or something. I’ll be saying to him, ‘Mark, you shouldn’t do that.’ But he never listens. What he does is very good. I just think it deserves more money. Most of them don’t understand that money is at the centre of it all; more so than in the music world. If you’re not flogging your work you’re not eating. At least with an album you can flog it and just about live if it doesn’t sell. That’s the good thing about Damien Hirst; he understood this from the off. He didn’t turn his back on it or shy away from it. And now he’s worth a mint. That’s because the art world didn’t know how to cope with his brashness. It’s the only way to go about it if you ask me.

  After Perverted and after Brix joined the group I thought we needed to steer it in another direction. It all got a bit monotonous – maybe that’s why it’s not as well received as some of the others. There’s a difference between plain monotony and creating a syndrome by hitting the same note again and again; when that happens it’s great. But plain monotony can get fucking tedious. There’s no inflection there. I noticed it with some of Craig’s playing. That’s why I decided to pop it up a little and alter the rhythms.

  I’d be thinking about that sort of thing while sorting through a mound of tax bills. It all got a bit much. That’s what you get for not compromising. It’s a real test to retain your hunger when you’re in deep with all that shit. It’s in your head all the time. At the start it’s your problem; but then of course it becomes the group’s problem. And you try and placate them while getting them to keep their heads together and work on the new LP. It’s not easy. I’m surprised we even finished The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall (1984).

  I moved back to where I was brought up around then, as well. I got rid of the vipers, the hangers-on, the piss-and-vinegar lot.

  It’s a good area. I still live there. Strong Jewish/Irish community. You can’t act like a twat. It’s got great scenery as well. Bargain Booze is a particular favourite shop of mine. You can get some good offers there.

  It’s funny when journalists talk about me as a backwoods sort. What they don’t realize is that you can’t afford to be unenlightened where I come from. I’d like to see how the Notting Hill community would cope if they placed a bunch of immigrants on their doorstep. I happen to think the working class have integrated very well over the years – a hell of a lot more than they’re credited for.

  I think it relates to the unashamed way I voted Tory back then. That wasn’t the done thing. They couldn’t understand it. To them, if you’re from a working-class background then you have no right doing things like that. It’s not about choice with them. They believe you should all think the same, because they do – on the surface, anyway. Inside, they can’t abide the proles; they hate to see them get on and it’s worse still if they infiltrate their cosy clan.

  They couldn’t understand that the left and right were never a threat anyway; that the worst thing is a sanitized society ruled by the middle class.

  The working class and the real upper class have a lot in common. They know where they’re from, they like a drink, have a sense of humour. It’s the middle you need to look out for.

  Any left-wing ideas I had had vanished around this point. My ego can deal with the criticism. Ego’s all part of the game. If I didn’t think like that I would have been eaten up by self-doubt back when the Morleys and Burchills were venting their spleen. The hypocritical part of it is that those fuckers played on their ego just as much as I did. What drove all of those late-70s journalists was the fact they weren’t in a band. Looking back, they may have been able to write better sentences than they can today, but the way they hung around the likes of Iggy Pop and Lou Reed and so-and-so was sickening. One year they’re shot to hell with some degenerate rock group, talking about nihilism, getting down with the true heart of punk self-destruction;
then they’re writing about the scourge of Thatcher and the death of communities. It’s funny how so many of them have moved to Brighton now. All led by the devil’s compass. Cosying up to Fatboy Slim and Chris Eubank over a Sunday roast. It’s worse than London. They’ve created their own modern cultural prison. Burchill and Paul McCartney are the screws!

  It started about ten years ago, and now it’s a real middle-class retreat. Shit pubs. Shit atmosphere. They think that if they go there they’ll all live in harmony away from the moths. It’s such a Victorian idea. You can’t hide like that. It’s the Guardian’s version of The Prisoner. They’re so middle class they put pebbles on the beach so they don’t get any sand between their toes. No wonder nothing comes out of it. It’s not a patch on Blackpool. That’s the real seaside town.

  It’s the second Iron Circle, after London; you can’t come in unless you’re making over £40,000 a year and you’re a media puppet.

  Blackpool, on the other hand, that’s a great place to spend a holiday. There’s no cultural elitism there, thank fuck. They’ve got some smashing chip shops as well. It gets a lot of stick for some odd reason. I think it’s because it knows what it is – it’s not striving to ape elsewhere. I like places that know themselves. Not like Brighton … I’d rather have Riley back in the band than live there.

  I can’t believe it’s happening. Two months spent dwelling on my indigestion, and then this, this violent rigmarole. The things you do when skint. ‘Youth-Eraser M25’. I’m one of ten now; but there’ll be more …

  13. Death of the Landlords

  I was clearing out the other day and I came across a review of Frenz Experiment, saying how this could have been great, how it could have been like T-Rex’s Electric Warrior. I never attempted to make an album like T-Rex. I don’t see the point in anybody trying to make an album like T-Rex, although people do. I don’t mind it when journalists make fair comparisons, when they’ve done their homework. But comparing Frenz to Electric Warrior is plain daft.