Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith
Page 20
‘Mark! Mark! Mark!’
… this big, stupid voice. And there’s Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer and a journalist who I can’t remember.
‘Come on, Mark. You can’t do this.’
‘What? What can’t I do?’ I wanted a lie-down.
‘What you doing, Mark – do you know what you’re doing?’
‘Yeah … I’m having a kip.’
‘Come on, Mark, don’t lose it. Come to the celebrity tent and watch him with us. Don’t do this to yourself.’
Journalists and cameramen are walking past now, after hearing Vic Reeves’ big mouth.
Bob Mortimer’s going, ‘Come on, Marky! You don’t have to go in the crowd.’
I think I had a lot of white powder up my nose. They were looking out for me in a way, because I wasn’t hanging out at the hospitality tent. And they walked off, no doubt thinking, ‘Oh, it’s a shame for him. No going back now …’ As if I was some old blues singer whose best days were over – ‘He had it all at one point, now look at him: falling asleep next to an empty Portakabin.’ We never played any festivals after that. Vic Reeves never rang me again. Don’t know why not. He used to ring me a lot, even wanted to record something with me at one stage. But that was the end of that.
Things like that don’t bother me. I’m not in it to be like them. I know who my mates are, and that’s more than a lot of others do.
I always used to have an entourage when I played Manchester. Because it can go either way – people can be looking out for you, like Vic and Bob, or they can have a few drinks and start acting like Chuck Norris.
Some Salford lads always used to come to gigs with me. They’re all good lads, they’d do anything for me, and they don’t even like The Fall. What I’m saying is that you do need protection when you’re playing those council gigs in Manchester, with their rules about bouncers, about people having to have licences to be this, that and the other, because there’s always some mad bird from Chorlton on E who you shagged twenty years ago who’s trying to come up to you with a knife. And the bouncers are either reconstructed criminals who are only bothered about what you’ve got in your wallet, or they’re gym teachers. You go backstage and there’s about twenty-five of them sat in front of their computers not giving a fuck. Anything can happen up there.
I’ve always had loyal people around The Fall. You don’t want too many fans on the inside, because they’d rather be watching the show than keeping their eyes peeled for head-cases.
Those lads really helped me out. And not just at gigs, but with LPs as well; like Are You are Missing Winner (2001) – they were there throughout the recording. Ben can talk all he likes about the atmosphere of the times; how shit the studio was and how I never turned up, etc., etc.
We got the studio on the cheap, I’ll admit that. But it was good – the spirit was there. It’s not as if he moaned about it at the time. We could only get in for four hours at a time. We all chipped in, all the Salford mob; even Sean Bainey, our manager then – even he was good; same goes for Jim Watts and Spencer. It wasn’t a nightmare. And then Ben goes on to say how the album wasn’t very good. Then why didn’t he say something? I played him the LP and his reaction was typical: ‘I’m not saying anything, you’re the boss.’
That wasn’t an easy time for me or for the group, and we all stuck in there. But the way he talks about it now it’s as if he’s wasted five years of his life on The Fall. And it wasn’t always shit.
Just before Are you are Missing Winner was released, we’d booked this tour of America. We were broke and we wanted to get back there. We got offered this tour – two gigs in LA and two or three in New York. We’d already booked the tickets, but in between 9/11 happened. But we needed the money at the time. There was no way we were not going to go. It turned out to be the only time we played America and came back with any money. When we got to LA we played two nights at this place but every other British and American group had cancelled all their shows. Everybody came trundling in once they found out that we were the only band in town and that all the others had cancelled. We were on a fucking roll.
But in New York, Sean had found us this bloody stupid hotel overlooking the 9/11 site. This Armenian place. It was dead cheap. You couldn’t open the windows, the stench was that bad.
We got a day off on the weekend. And we’re all glad to be there; surprised, in fact, they’d even let us in the country, because we’d cancelled a lot of American tours and a lot of people had cancelled on us since that jail business. So we didn’t go just for the money this time. If we hadn’t played then that would have been the nail in the coffin for the States. Because there was another idiot – a total phoney who put up tour dates for America on the sites a few months beforehand and we never had any intention of going there. So this time it would have been the fourth time we’d jipped out.
Thank fuck we didn’t …
We had money in our pockets for the first time in ages and so we all went out for a drink in New York. I’ll never forget it. We’d been in America for a week but not really noticed it – because we’d been busy. The smell was unimaginably grim. It’s weird with The Fall – everywhere we bloody go there’s always something. I just said, ‘Let’s get out of this area. Let’s go to Wall Street.’
We went on the main drag and I swear seven out of every ten men had a uniform on: coppers, marines, national guards, park rangers, boy scouts, paratroopers … we really stood out as the only civilians. Everybody was looking at us, especially at Sean, because he was unshaven.
We were a bit feisty, though.
‘What are they looking at us for?’
All the old timers have come in for the Sunday afternoon – dug their old uniforms out of the cupboard.
None of the rubbish had been cleaned up. And there were all these ghouls around the rubble. Not one of them is helping. No fucker’s doing anything.
The fire station they had around there was like Camberwick Green – it’s farcical considering the money they’ve got.
Gradually, Sean’s accent changes and he starts talking about his Irish roots and all this shit. He suddenly changes into Gangs of New York. As soon as he gets to Wall Street, he’s turning round shouting, ‘I told you this tour would turn out well, Mark.’ We had thousands of dollars in our pockets. Not before or since have we ever had so much money. He was like Jimmy Cagney.
‘It’s fantastic! Top of the world, Ma!’
‘What’s fantastic, Sean? Everybody’s got a uniform on.’
And he says ‘Let’s have an old drink, to celebrate.’ So we go into this Irish bar on Wall Street. Not a proper Irish bar, of course. William Fitzpatrick and Patrick Fitzwilliams, as we used to say. We walk in the bar through these double doors and he starts walking like Popeye. Inside, there’s all these rich Irish guys in suits. Barman pulls this morose expression; not being in a good mood at that particular time of the year. After that thing, I don’t think they were in the right mood for anybody. Least of all the new American Sean …
‘Hello there, my son,’ he says in this ridiculous New York-Irish accent. I’m thinking – what’s he playing at?
He walks over to this strapping guy in a suit. ‘I’ll have a pint of Guinness and three pints of lager for my English friends.’
I thought, you fucking twat! And the barman says, ‘I’m not serving you. Under New York law I don’t serve people like you who have obviously lost their senses. I’ll give you the lagers, though – for your buddies.’
I was pissing myself.
There were all these concert posters of Morrissey on the streets as well. Just his big face looking out at you from every other corner. And Sean was just high out of his head – he’d never been to New York before.
‘Yeah, it’s really weird – that jet-lag: I keep thinking I’m seeing pictures of my Uncle George everywhere I go.’
Apparently his Uncle George looks like Morrissey.
I was saying, it’s a surreal environment to walk into after coming from
LA, what with all these uniforms and rubble and the overriding smell.
And Sean’s like, ‘I know how you feel, Mark. I’ve not seen Uncle George in ages.’
It was a great tour, though. The lads had played well and we all came back with a few quid. After that it hit me that it might be a good idea to start re-building The Fall again. Not that I was ever going to quit. I’d just come to the end of a lot of shit, and there was something there with the lads that I felt was worth pursuing. And it was like that for a time. Something like Country on the Click: The Real New Fall LP (2003), that came from nowhere. I know for a fact that people were surprised by its quality. We’d been written off again and nobody expected us to come back with something as good as that.
I went through a lot of shit trying to get it out. We nearly signed to Mute at one stage. What a palaver that was! They were always interfering and fucking about with it. We had to do it all again in Manchester. And it was the same thing there – cunts coming down from London, knocking on my door on spec because they just happened to be in the area; asking me when the LP’s ready.
In the end I just told them to fuck off. They never did any work. Sat there asking me what ‘Sparta’ is about. I spent three months with them – used up half their money, and half my money. It was a farce. I’m too proud to beg – that’s the problem. I’d rather fund myself than go asking for three days’ studio money.
That’s why we had to go to Action records.
As is always the case, the problems began when Ben and Steve started grumbling about credits. In their minds they did everything. They can’t just be in a group – they want it all. And as soon as Fall Heads Roll (2005) was released and the reviews came in, they wanted all the credit for it. The thing that bothers me is when they actually believe it themselves. It’s alright telling every ear in the vicinity that you’ve done this, this and this – if they want to believe you, then fair enough. But when it gets to a stage where you start believing it yourself, then you’re just deluded. But for me, Fall Heads Roll would have been a mess. I was the one who brought it together. There’s a thread in that LP I was trying to get at. The group didn’t even realize this. I always wanted to make an album that had a thread of words and that’s what Fall Heads Roll is – I think so, anyway.
It gets quite maudlin in a way, quite depressing. I thought about trying to tart it up a bit, but it seemed best just to leave it. About three quarters of the way through making it some people were saying it’s getting quite hard, this; and I’m just telling them to stick with it. That’s what I wanted to do.
Sound-wise it was difficult as well. You had every Tom, Dick and Harry interfering: ‘What about this and that and that and do this one and put this there.’ It’s worse than it’s ever been for things like that. You get A&R men thinking they can sort the track listing without even asking you what tracks you want and in what order.
Unlike everybody else, it seems, I still look at it as an LP with a beginning and an end. But in a way we’ve gone back to the mid 60s, where you had one hit single and eleven duff tracks – that’s how the industry wants it.
Everybody wanted ‘Blindness’ as track one. They’re regressing, with their iPod minds. Suddenly, everybody’s a connoisseur.
They did the same with Orson Welles. The studio-heads couldn’t just leave his work as he intended – it was all, ‘Well, what about this, Orson?’ and ‘I don’t think this works.’ What did they know?
I don’t know a great deal about him. But I like the way he looked at things – especially Citizen Kane; how to tell a story from different angles. And his Macbeth – that’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen. And Touch of Evil – that’s great too.
An engineer gave me a tape of these commercials that Orson did in the 60s and 70s; and it had all the outtakes on it as well for these fishfinger and processed-pea commercials. It’s hilarious.
He was obviously having a few money problems at the time. From Citizen Kane to Mrs Pickford’s processed peas – it’s a bit of a departure. But the funniest part of it is that he can’t read the script. It doesn’t add up for him. He needs to know the thread of the story. And he keeps asking questions like, ‘Who wrote this?’ and ‘How do the fish get into the fingers?’ – he’s obviously drunk and he can’t grasp the fundamentals behind it.
I like the way he saw life as a story; how his narrative eye was so finely honed. He was in another zone. Telling stories on stories until in the end he himself is a story. He didn’t seem afraid of living in that world; and it’s childish in a way, but when you can deal with it and use it, the results are evident. I think it’s like heightened awareness, similar to when you don’t eat for a few days or you’ve been on a bit of a bender – you see things differently. And not always in an obvious way.
Voices 4
How strange and sad the familiar can be. How complicated and pointless … I refuse to lose it in the eye of poverty and too much beer and hearing the same voices in the same places … A life lived forward can only be understood backwards … And so backwards I look back with a scalpel eye on afternoons wandering the city with a flapping bag of cans for company; the rusted humour of besuited men/women laughing in my face; unshaven loners shuffling like pence … Sat on a park bench under an egg-carton-grey sky; the day ahead much like those before and seemingly after … And this stubborn cough that erupts like an urban volcano … There used to be a time when that was it. But it changes; your head and all else … An endless pattern … And then the sticky situations that once disabled the days return as experience, hard fought … and this then is a new life, a new tale … And onwards.
Outro
THE WHITE ANGEL
And to end …
Do not worry – The White Angel will re-form in your midst in the near future, my friends.
All the best,
Yr pal.
M.E.S.
Acknowledgements
Austin Collings would like to thank the following people who were there when it mattered while this book was being written. First and foremost, Mum and Dad (Joan and Michael), whose advice, born from the Golden Age of plain common sense and thoughtful stoicism, is always appreciated. And, more importantly, thanks for letting me have so many days off school to dream and fall into music, burn through books, devour films and think of myself as different. It was the best education a boy could ever have had.
And the rest of the family – Mark, Jonathan, Beverley and the two most gorgeous girls on this blue and green ball: Hope and Milly.
And in no particular order, for you’re all as priceless as one another:
Tommy Dunn and Tommy Dunn Jr – you couldn’t ask for two better diamonds; long may our adventures continue – James Ricks, Phil Hayes, Nicola Probert, George Shaw, Chris Ogden, Dodge, Joanne O’Connor, James Fennings, Jimmy Muffin, The Neck, The Dudes, Estelle, Amy Lee, and all those in America who helped show me what a truly wondrous place it is, Michael Bracewell, Mark Hodkinson, Ian Travis and the Guidance Centre, Mark Alcroft, Ian Littlewood, Graham and Andrew Madeley, Sorry John, Emmanuel Ohajah, Mark Chambers, Ian Walker, Richard and Danny Murphy, Oliver McCombe, Joe Devlin, Mark Kennedy, Dan Davies, Michael Gildare, Steve and Laura: all of whom, at some point, have ‘seen me right’ when I’ve been low in the pocket or helped re-remind me that writing a book is preferable to sitting in a chewing-gum-grey office, bored witless, thinking of better elsewheres – cheers.
Thanks are also due to the always-patient and optimistic literary agent that is David Luxton; and to the long-suffering but good-humoured Tony Lacey, and everyone else at Penguin who had a hand in helping.
And to Mark and Elena for letting me work on something truly unforgettable and life-changing.
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published 2008
First published as an electronic edition in Penguin Books 2014
Copyright © Mark E Smith, 2008
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ISBN: 978-0-241-97243-4