Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith

by Mark E. Smith

  I think it’s a shame that kids are growing up with that sort of accepted corruption in football. Football for me was always a bit of escapism. You didn’t watch it to be reminded of your spiralling tax debt; you watched it because it was about blokes giving their all on an afternoon, regardless of dough. Funny how the problem coincided with the anti-drink brigade – as soon as they eradicated that side of it, it became a money show. They sucked the camaraderie out of it at the same time. Now when they have a drink it’s in some gaudy bar in Soho and they’ve got five security guys tagging along. George Best never did that, and he was the first of the real celebrity footballers. He drank alone or with his mates.

  I always buy When Saturday Comes, the football magazine. It’s very good. They ran this brilliant piece on football autobiographies just after the 2006 World Cup; how most of them got sent back and how Cashley Cole sold fourteen copies of his. But the interesting thing about it was the way in which these publishers put their faith in these berks. I mean, they were never going to win that World Cup; and never underestimate people’s reaction after something like that. You can’t shit on your country like they did, crying and fluffing penalties, and then expect some call-centre jockey to go out and devour your book for eighteen quid. But that’s the esteem these people are held in.

  The Dudes got a fright when all that kicked off. It was the first weekend of the World Cup and they’d just flown in from LA to Manchester; we were playing the New Century Hall that night. Jet-lagged and frazzled, their first English sight is a bunch of pissed-up England fans with seared faces falling over and mauling each other.

  Hilarious. It was one of the hottest days of the year. Everywhere they went they were confronted by pissed-up men, half-starkers, yelling football songs.

  ‘Is this normal?’

  I was pissing myself. Fat blokes on heat screaming ‘Rooney!’

  It’s amazing the power these players have over some fellows: the hold. It’s very homoerotic. We’re talking about blokes with mortgages and shrieking kids. I don’t think they’re that bothered about their wives. They seem to get off on football more; football and Carling and themselves.

  It’s the same with the likes of Elton John and those guys off Little Britain. They’re beyond royalty in a way. Elton John has more clout than the Prime Minister. All he’s ever done is bung a few quid Watford’s way. (I was inspired by him, actually. I was thinking of buying Bury football club when they were in the shit a couple of years ago. It would have only cost me about £2,000.) It’s astonishing how he’s become a whole new medium in himself, because he never really says anything. He’s become the king of the New Homosexual Elite all of a sudden. It’s tricky ground, but he seems to be the head of all that stuff about inspecting people’s wardrobes and kitchens, telling them how out of date and clueless they are for still having brass in their living room. And somehow people have bought into it and he’s beyond TV and even fucking music. He can literally do what he pleases.

  I’ve done interviews where I’ve been purposefully arsey. It can be quite amusing. But I’ve only resorted to it when the interviewer’s not prepared properly. It’s usually a bloke. I don’t like doing interviews with women; they always fall on their arse. It never feels right. They never know what to say to me.

  But it’s not always that clear-cut. A lot of the time these things get distorted. When I did that interview with Michael Bracewell at the ICA in London in ’94, the critics wrote it up as a complete balls-up along the lines of me being pissed and uncaring; and Bracewell being out of his league. The hacks lay in wait on that one. I wasn’t pissed. The first half of it went okay. Maybe some of the questions were overly academic, but that’s what he is; he wanted to get down with this idea of the ‘self-taught artist’. That was the crux of it.

  I’ve nothing against him. I think he’s good. But he’s another casualty, he worries that he’s over-pretentious. Compared to Paul Morley and most other writers Bracewell’s an artist.

  There was a hell of a lot of media people in that night, and not many fans. And most of them had had a fair few. As soon as I sat down I got the feeling they weren’t taking it seriously. Like always, they were just there to see me make an idiot of myself. As soon as Bracewell had finished his questions he asked the audience if they had any questions and the first person to speak was a half-cut hack:

  ‘Yes, I’d like to know if you’re still a piss-head, Mark.’

  That shows the calibre of journalists I was contending with that night. I had a few bottles of beer with me in a bag and a few on the table, I suppose that’s why he asked it.

  But it’s hardly a good starting point, is it?

  After that I couldn’t be arsed. It was a pointless exercise. But it’s not a big issue. I’m surprised it still gets written about. It was just another failed interview. I’m sure I’ll be at the centre of a few more.

  Bracewell shouldn’t be bothered about it, to be honest. He tried his best on a bad night. That’s all you can say about it. As for his writing, he’s one of the better cultural commentators. He doesn’t jump in with the pack as much as the other so-called journalists.

  It says a lot about them when they start harping on about the lack of real heroes nowadays; and how fame has been cheapened by the likes of The Spice Girls and reality-TV contestants. What they don’t realize is that most of the people they revere – people like Elton John and Mick Jagger and John Lennon – are or were cunts.

  Mel C seems an alright person to me. At least she never acted like an imperialist in America, unlike Lennon. He was already very arrogant, but when he met Yoko and started doing all that public protest malarkey it became an amplified arrogance. You can’t go to a foreign country and act like that; thumbing your nose to the government. In their eyes he was just a hop-head with these silly ideas about equality and peace. He’d stopped living in the real world; at least when he was in The Beatles he had something to concentrate on. In the end he just became a bag of loose ideas. There was an element of madness in him; voicing principles like that but living the life he did. He got away with it because of his music.

  They were a horrible, conceited bunch, that 70s lot – Elton John, Clapton and Bowie. It’s indicative of the age we’re living in that they’re still revered the way they are, when our recent Prime Minister wishes he was one of them.

  I have a great problem with elevating people like this. I still try to steer the group away from that world. I used to be more forceful in this respect. Last thing anybody wants to be doing is bumming up a bunch of rich musicians. This should be obvious. The only people I ever really looked up to were Link Wray and Iggy Pop, but that was then and I was in the minority there …

  And Harry Dowd of course. He was as far removed from the modern footballer as you’re going to get. He was City’s goalkeeper in the Championship-winning team in 1968. He was brilliant. Funny bastard as well. He worked as a plumber, like my dad. He’d come and talk to us at games; plumbing talk, copper joints and drain unblockers and all that … He knew what he was talking about, too. His mind was a lot sharper than Frank Lampard’s.

  What I do love about football is the shirt brigade. The pundits: Alan Hansen and Alan Shearer and crisp man Gary Lineker. I like the way they all wear their open-necked, big-collared shirts in a casual style. I bet they all shop together. Ring each other up before they’re due on, asking which colour they’re going to be wearing tonight. It’s that uniform mentality again. Policemen are the same. You can spot a cop party miles away. Michael Owen and Alan Shearer look like policemen as well.

  It was funny when Grandstand asked me to read the final scores out. I think it all came about from this girl who was working for Peel as an administrator before he died. She was transferred from there. Apparently, Ray Stubbs is a big fan. He was alright. He’s very good when he’s presenting the darts. Whereas other fellows would just take the piss and do it in a tongue-in-cheek way, he throws himself into it. It’s a different world, the sports world – ther
e comes a time when you’re speaking to those sports people and you start thinking they’re on a different planet altogether.

  The producer woman was really smart and sharp, taking me round, telling me what everybody does, pointing out Mark Lawrenson and Crisp Man.

  ‘And this is Carlton Palmer. And this is Garth Crooks, and this is what they do and I’ll see you later.’

  They were all strapped down to their chairs at this stage with their shirts on.

  After she’d buggered off they assigned me these two women. But they had to do it in shifts. I was supposed to watch the second half of the City match, but of course I couldn’t do that. I kept walking off to the bar. Even if I was at the game I wouldn’t watch the second half. We’re not talking a United fan here, analysing every second of the game.

  And this first girl is pointing out every nook and cranny. Because they have a load of daft soccer players walking around the place who haven’t a clue where they’re going, people like Bryan Robson. But I’m trying to tell her that I know where I’m going, that I’ve been here a few times. Then she starts getting visibly annoyed.

  It’s a Saturday afternoon, remember. She obviously wanted to be somewhere else. Shopping. Not watching me drink a pint.

  And then this other girl turns up, a Jo Whiley-ite, who only wanted to talk about Oasis.

  ‘Have you ever met the Gallaghers then?’

  I’m on my third pint at this stage. ‘No, love.’

  Talking about festivals and Noel, and that the last festival she went to she happened to see Liam. I just wanted a bit of peace.

  ‘Wouldn’t you rather be somewhere else? I won’t tell anybody if you just leave me here and do a bit of shopping …’

  Saturday’s a very holy day for me – I don’t like working on a Saturday still. I never have. It’s my day off. Start at twelve and drink all day. I’ve always done that since I was sixteen. Play records. Piss around. Go out for a pint.

  ‘Oh, I can’t do that. I’ve got to make sure you get back.’

  And she kept reminding me how long I had left before I was due to read the scores out.

  ‘Only twenty minutes to go now …’

  And then this big Jamaican woman barges in. ‘Mr Smith, you now have to go to room something or other. They’ll be waiting for you.’

  There were more people working behind the scenes than on the pitch!

  And of course the game itself was a load of fucking cack; worst City game since the last.

  Garth Crooks was a good bloke, though. He was asking me about Kevin Keegan. I told him that I thought he was shit; that if you were to split him open he’d have ‘loser’ imprinted down the middle, like lettering in Blackpool rock.

  I find it quite funny that they’re using ‘Sparta’ on the programme. It’s hardly a friendly football song. But I’m glad that it’s on there. I always used to watch Final Score. I don’t see it as selling out – as long as you get paid enough. I think people have a completely different notion of selling out from me. Selling out to me is compromising the sound of your music, or watering down your lyrics so they read stale.

  It was a bit different when they used ‘Touch Sensitive’ for that Vauxhall Corsa advert. I didn’t have full control over that. And at the time I needed the money. Sometimes that’s the sad case. We’re not all Elton John.

  The good thing about ‘Sparta’ is that it’s reached a new audience. I hear a lot of people have got into The Fall from tuning in to see how Raith Rovers went on against Kilmarnock. Football’s the new religion in that sense: the opium of the masses. You could really subvert it – beam subliminal messages through Chelsea. I reckon they’d be up for it as well. They’re already halfway there. They’ve already dragged other clubs into the money race. They can do anything they want. Watch out!

  All done now, anyway. Another mobile to investigate. More names for The List. More gone. He said G.B. may even drop the uniform off personally. And then a line enters my head like an axe, ‘Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes’ …

  19. To Hell and Back

  The Marshall Suite (1999) was my glorious return after the New York ordeal. John Lennard, who’d managed us on and off since ’85 and who was an all-round decent bloke, was the only guy who’d touch me at that stage. He was pretty good. He took a bit of advantage, but I wasn’t in a position of any power. Nobody gave a fuck about me – ‘Big mouth Smith falls on his arse again!’ I wasn’t bothered about that at all. They had a point.

  John just said, ‘We can’t have you not recording’ – which was nice. We’d left him in nasty circumstances after the Middle Class Revolt LP in ’94. I think he was under the impression that we were U2 and that we’d go on to sell enough records to go out together and buy a house each.

  But he was now on his uppers a bit and he just wanted me to do an LP.

  I asked for the best studio in London and he paid for it. But he didn’t tell me that I wasn’t going to get any money. That’s London for you; he’s a Chelsea boy, John. I got about £100 every three days but not a cent off the album.

  But there’s not many labels who’d have helped me out like that. I’ll always be grateful to Artful for getting in touch. It’s not like I asked them to do it. It couldn’t have been an easy decision for them. The whole group were a bit bonkers at the time. I wasn’t any better, but Neville Wilding and Julia – we’re not talking stable personalities here.

  It wasn’t a stable period in England full stop. I remember doing an interview with Loaded magazine in ’97. One of my best interviews, in fact. It’s still talked about now. I was pretty pissed and this Loaded fellow was very persistent and very boring, and so I sabotaged the whole thing. But it was exactly what they wanted. All those journalists used to try to provoke chaos in me – well, that was it in motion. I knew what I was doing. I thought he was shit. That’s why I called him a cretin and a frustrated pervert. That’s all Loaded ever was – a semi-porn mag, like the porn mags in the 70s. Everybody was reading it in secret – NME writers, Guardian writers …

  As soon as you question these people, it’s a big deal. Beforehand, you’re the rebel, the cool rebel, then once you do or say something that doesn’t include them they distance themselves. It’s alright having a go at obvious things, at fucking Wet Wet Wet or Take That, but once you question the worth of their own so-called rebel mag they don’t like it.

  Funniest part of it was at the end, when Ash tried to start on me. Pathetic; this bunch of de-balled soft-arse college rockers getting all uppity. Not an idea between them, poor lads.

  At the time, I thought it was the end of my career. Everybody who’d read it said I’d blown it. It’s funny to me.

  But 1997 was like the death of innocence. You only have to look at it now; England will never back a politician in the way they did Tony Blair; they were the last days of all that shit. And Diana; what was all that about? She was the perfect martyr for the times, in that she never stood for anything, never did anything. The same people who talk about shitty celebrities now could be seen signing her condolence book back then in 1997. It sounds harsh, but death saved her in a way. I’m not against the royals actually. They are what they are; and most of the time they’re not the real problem. It wasn’t long after that that Friends became the new religion. After believing in Blair and after being sold down the river by him, people turned to this daft American comedy. You can see where the ‘shoulder to shoulder’ thing came in with Blair and Bush; it was little more than an extension of Blair watching too much of that shit. I’d go into pubs and there’d be groups of women and men acting like these characters. Single men were suddenly seen as a genuine threat. Cultural brainwash … The idea of Friends, of this bunch of well-to-do New Yorkers, was an idyllic head-trip for people, in the same way that pot entered middle-class suburban America in the 70s after Watergate. After which these people turned into the ‘SS Frappuccino’; purveyors of froth and enemies of Nescafé.

  England hasn’t recovered from that
year. I have; but England hasn’t. They bought into something so faithfully with the Labour Party that they’re still reeling from the after-effects. Sunshine and well-spoken promises does this to people. The day that Blair won out, when all the cameras were privy to the new dawn and the sun was shining, that’ll be filed alongside Nazi propaganda in the future.

  It’s always the same when you’ve got a writer or a musician who’s hit a low but isn’t willing to start creeping to their so-called betters. That’s what they wanted me to do after ’98. They wanted me to fall in line and become a ‘friend’ of theirs, to hang around with them in the hospitality tents, drinking and snorting lines; one more paid-up member of their all-boys club … Fuck that. I knew what I had to do and I did it. The Marshall Suite’s still a good album. I’ll stand by that one. It must have annoyed certain people when it was released, because the general consensus was I’d had it; no more comebacks for Mad Mark, and all that.

  That’s how they treated Malcolm Lowry, the writer. Left to rot because he didn’t think like them.

  When you’re in a loop, your behaviour is constantly being assessed. You might not realize it, but there’ll come a time when you’re hit in the face with it. After all the shit I’d been through with Julia, New York and that poxy Loaded interview, it happened to me at Glastonbury. It seemed like a small thing, but it happens like that. It’s not necessarily the big things in life, like love and death, but the small moments.

  We’d just finished playing and Bob Dylan was on after us. I’d been standing on stage playing to all these idiot fans. And it’s going nowhere. So we wrapped it up. It’s a nice day and the group had fucked off to see Bob – being musos. And I fell fast asleep as soon as he started playing. It was about 8 o’clock. Bob’s droning on and I’m konked out near the pre-fabs and the dressing-room huts. There was nobody around. It was the only peace I’d had all day. I’ve got my hands behind my head, thinking, ‘Ah – no mitherers …’ And just as I’m drifting off I hear …