The Otherwise
Page 17
GRAHAM: Houses in Hebden Bridge are worth a fortune now.
MARK: I know. It's like two point… And I said to him, y’know “Fuckin’ look, I'm not doin’ it.” Y’know, when you're 17!! He said, “I'm fuckin’ doing you a big fuckin’ deal, comin’ up here. You will be… you will be sorry man.” In his Aussie accent. I was like “Fuck off!”
GRAHAM: I'm not sure the ones in Haslingdon would…
MARK: Is Haslingdon not good?
GRAHAM: No, it's alright. It's not as flashy as Hebden Bridge!
MARK: Anyway, whatever.
GRAHAM: They reckon Burnley is the cheapest place for property. I don't know if it still is, but for a time, it was the suicide capitol of Europe.
MARK: Really?
GRAHAM: Yeah. It's brilliant that John Cooper Clarke stuff about the hotel in Burnley. What is it… “It was a small room. I put the key in the lock and I broke the window.”
(Laughter)
MARK: “I asked for a suite with a view and I got a Polo mint.”
(Laughter)
MARK: What I didn't know about Clitheroe, was how far away it was. For someone who's been everywhere…
GRAHAM: It's about an hour from here isn't it I suppose?
MARK: No it's not. That's one of the weird things. It's actually about as far as Liverpool from our house. You wouldn't think that. The last time I went to Clitheroe was like in 1983, to play a free concert at the castle. When it was all fuckin’ stumbling salesmen in the rubble and weavers committing suicide, y’know what I mean? You go back to it now and it's…
GRAHAM: It's a bit gentrified isn't it?
MARK: I dunno, fuckin’ hell, I wouldn't live there for all the money in China y’know.
GRAHAM: My sister's been living there for about two years.
MARK: Has she? The bass player lives there.
GRAHAM: Oh does he? Before that, she lived in Great Harwood. I don't know if you know Great Harwood.
MARK: Vaguely.
GRAHAM: It's between Accrington and Blackburn. It's just a little market town that hasn't had a market for probably about twenty odd years. That's where we grew up.
MARK: I mean imagine if you're in a studio. And even the bass player don't turn up – who lives in the fuckin’ town – won't turn up for a session. There's summat up there isn't there? Y’know what I mean? This is a good sequence.
GRAHAM: I think the haunted studio is…
MARK: I've got all the out-takes.
GRAHAM: Deal me in.
MARK: It is very good. We could do a reconnaissance of it. It's all up there. Coz it was the EP, and it was doin’ me fuckin’ head in. It was just like fuckin’ ridiculous. It's got to be done man. The more I think about, it's the Grand in Clitheroe. Do some research on the Grand in Clitheroe. We played the Grand in the dark. And they said y’know… Coz we didn't want to play Clitheroe, like on the tour for the last LP. So they said if we played they'd give us a week's free studio time.
GRAHAM: Oh really? Well, why not?
MARK: It's pitch black as we check in, so I thought ‘oh right’. And we played there, so we took ’em up on their offer.
GRAHAM: So did you stay in Clitheroe, or did you ‘commute’?
MARK: No I didn't stay in fuckin’ Clitheroe!
(Laughter)
GRAHAM: Everybody I met in Clitheroe was pretty rude.
MARK: Very rude. Animalistic.
GRAHAM: It's like a principality! A feudal state!
MARK: Well Dave lives there. He keeps getting these blokes in pubs picking fights with him. They're all over familiar.
(Laughter)
MARK: We can set it in a different… This studio in fuckin’ Clitheroe, the stories I could tell you. I go there on me own to do the vocals y’know. We got all this free time, but I couldn't get in there.
GRAHAM: What, in the actual studio?
MARK: Yeah, yeah, there's different times. We had this week and a half free time. So I go on me own, on the train. And I went through, and I didn't know all these towns. On the train from Victoria to Clitheroe, like there's one called something like Ingo and one called Trrunkakkkkk!
(Laughter)
GRAHAM: I tell you, I think the best one is just outside Blackburn. It's called Hall-i’-th’-Wood. Like Hall in the Wood.
MARK: Come on, it's pure Twilight Zone!
GRAHAM: I know: it's brilliant.
MARK: It's like (sings) dat-du-der-dat-du-der! Mark Smith, in a white shirt gets in a taxi, from his house. Dut-du-der! To Piccadilly Train Station. Rush hour. Dat-der-der… Gets on the Clitheroe traaaaaain…
GRAHAM: And everything goes dark.
MARK: It didn't get dark. It got brighter and brighter, and crowdeder and crowdeder. And they weren't, they weren't, they fuckin’ weren't… It was six o’clock and they were not office workers! Where were they going? And they wouldn't get off the train.
Hey, there was this fuckin’ woman on the train right and she was… The day before I got on with Elena. About 4 o’clock or summat, which was really nice. And I got on the fuckin’ six o’clock late, like an idiot, the day after. It set off fuckin’ virtually empty from Manchester. And it just filled up with the… Like these two rich kids sat next to me, and they sort of pushed me over, y’know what I mean like? Two lads: one was Asian and one was fuckin’ white, and they were just like gettin’ on me fuckin’ nerves.
You think ‘It'll be over soon’ y’know. And then it just got like crowded, by all these school kids. It's like ten past six. And there was like farmer types getting on at three a go. Then, all these mentally ill people. And then they were all like talking in these codes y’know what I mean?
Twenty past six, then suddenly we're in Bolton North East or summat, and then a load of fuckin’ yobbos get on who sit in the bicycle pit. They want to be tough. And like they're not even threatening, because they're so mentally feeble. D’yer understand me? There's about six of them and they're all about eight foot six. And they're so retarded. And it's like H.P. Lovecraft or something d’yer understand? It's a fuckin’ nightmare.
And then this woman gets on with glasses. Her body all contorted. And she's like Rosemary West, but fat y’know, like this. And like there's all these fuckin’ kids, and like none of them are giving her their seats. And she's obviously a crip’. This lad next to me, I says to him, “Just get up for the woman will you?” So he gets up and I says: “Sit down there love”. And she says “You what?” You know you're in the hills right! I says “Sit down there love.” And she says “Just you stop fuckin’ harassing me!!”
GRAHAM: Like hillbillies.
MARK: But worse. Worrrrse!! Coz you look out the window, and you can't get out, coz them trains they're all sealed aren't they? And it's just trees flashing past. Wrrrrsssssss!!! Wrrrrsssssss!!! Wrrrrsssssss!!!
♦ ♦ ♦
6
“HE KILLED THESE S.S. MEN”
GRAHAM: Blackburn though…
MARK: It's peculiar isn't it? Blackburn. And Bolton as well.
GRAHAM: I don't really know Bolton so well. But Blackburn's always been rough.
MARK: Oh it has, yeah. I got attacked by a fuckin’ train-load of fuckin’ Blackburn fans once, on their way home from some… But yeah, they're fuckin’ weird aren't they?
GRAHAM: When I was a kid, there was always a big skinhead… y’know, National Front thing…
MARK: Yeah, yeah, well I remember we played Blackburn town hall, through Alan Wise. It was quite like ‘Where are we then?’ It just got smashed up, the whole place. And I thought ‘how dated this is’ y’know.
This is a weird thing; my Grandad, when he got back from Dunkirk, he was assigned to Blackburn y’know: to watch the people.
GRAHAM: In what way?
MARK: Well, he was at Dunkirk. But he got honourably discharged because he killed these SS men. So they had to find summat for him to do. He was a Sergean
t Major. So, he used to go to fuckin’ Blackburn. And they had to guard the factories in Blackburn. Coz there was sabotage: the Black Shirts. It was the Black Shirts! They wanted to be, alone with Rochdale, they wanted to be the puppet government of the Nazis, see?
I mean in Blackburn, in the Second World War… 60% of the cloth in the world came from fuckin’ Britain. And half of that was from Blackburn, so they had more power than anybody really. Nobody would have any clothes!
♦ ♦ ♦
7
HOTEL FREUD
MARK: Where you staying?
GRAHAM: Just the Ibis on Princes Street. It's weird, there's no reception any more. There's just a young man and woman with a laptop, sitting on bar stools, and that's it. And they've all got red T-shirts that say ‘Welcome Home’. Then in the rooms, there's no phones, so if you want to get an iron or whatever, you've got to text them using your own phone.
MARK: It's a fuckin’ joke man. I was in this writing trial about a year ago. And this publisher fuckin’ put me up in that Clement Freud's house in Maida Vale.
GRAHAM: Right. What, as a punishment?
(Laughter)
MARK: I had to stay over night. I had a separate block, y’know what I mean? To do this fuckin’ stupid creative writer's trial.
GRAHAM: Why Clement Freud's house?
MARK: Y’know, where the psychiatrist lived.
GRAHAM: Oh right, Sigmund Freud.
MARK: Yeah. It's where he lived in Maida Vale. It's been a hotel for years. I forgot to remember. But it's been like a B&B in fuckin’ Maida Vale. It's just near my publisher – ex-publisher. So I was determined… Coz I stayed in this separate house. So I had to be y’know, getting in there ten o’clock the night before the trial, ‘be up in the morning’ y’know, read all the stuff… And the fuckin’… I get in this room and it must have been that part of the house that was his surgery, y’know what I mean?
GRAHAM: Oh really? Oh wow.
MARK: So I've got that side of the hotel to myself, y’know what I mean? So I walk in, it's just a goldmine going in the place. You've got Freudian problems by the time you get in the room!
(Laughter)
MARK: You walk up these fuckin’ steps, then there's just more stairs. It's like Psycho or something. Then you go past this room. This room is just a table – a low table with about six chairs around it. And it looks like six people have just left the room. It's really spooky.
And you go up another fuckin’ floor, and there's this massive big fuckin’ bath! Biggest bath you've ever seen. I'd drove all the way up from Manchester, on speed of course! I don't wanna go to this trial, you know what I mean. I'm fuckin’… I'm fucked! And it's like a hundred and ninety quid a night this fuckin’ hotel.
So I walk up another bleedin’ flight, and I finally get into this room. And this room has like a fuckin’ brass bed. A brass bed with knobs on it. And loads of like… Y’know, like somebody's taking the piss, like having psychiatry things y’know.
I could just about fit on this double bed. And it's all gold tassels. It's got like a hundred cushions on it, what women'd have, you know, to talk about their sexuality. But yeah y’know, it's alright, I can deal with this. But then, the phone starts. They've got like a little porta-phone. It just started ringing the minute I got in. And I couldn't work out how to answer it, and it went on like this. Like it was a Freud show. It went on like that for the next twelve hours. It kept ringing! I threw it against the wall! I went downstairs and put it in that shower thing!
(Laughter)
MARK: You know what the shower was like? You know where people shrink and the shower looks like… That's what it was, was like that.
Anyway I don't know why I'm telling you that. Ah! That's what it was: I had to go down to the front desk, which was locked certain times of day, in another building. And they said it's standard in London now, y’know. And it is. The posher the hotel… I mean, it's like yer don't wanna say it, but what if you have a fire? How do you ring reception?
GRAHAM: Exactly.
MARK: Say you're being murdered in your room, how d’yer ring down?
GRAHAM: So many of these things are disguised as being something else, when really it's just to save them money.
MARK: But there's free wi-fi yeah? Free wi-fi! Then they say they want a hundred and fifty quid deposit to open the phone line. That's the new one.
GRAHAM: A hundred and fifty quid for what?
MARK: In posh hotels. The Hilton and all that. So they can open… So they can do what they used to do anyway, y’know. That's a luxury hotel. You just pick up fuckin’… their line, and ring all your enemies and go “fuck off”!
(Laughter)
MARK: Most of the posts have been usurped. No, it's wrong, it's horrible – especially if you're trying to get somebody. Say I tried to ring you up y’know. They'd never tell you if you were in the room or not. So you end up with foreign journalists. They end up hanging around the hotel, hoping that someone comes out who looks Norwegian. It's fuckin’ stupid y’know.
(Laughter)
♦ ♦ ♦
8
GANGSTER FILMS, TELEVISION & COINCIDENCE
MARK: What I've always liked, y’know… I like a few old films. Film is like how… the good ones, the old ones. They're not that long y’know. Like White Heat with James Cagney it's about one hour ten. You wouldn't think it. You watch it, it's just like fuckin’ hell! Bam!! I was watching that one with what's he called? Brad Pitt: Public Enemies or something.
GRAHAM: I've not seen that. It's the thing about Capone is it?
MARK: No, it's where they're all in suits and it's happy hour. It's just about Dillinger an’ that. It was on the other night. Can't have been out four years y’know. It's about three hours long. It wouldn't end. And you couldn't hear what they were sayin’ y’know.
GRAHAM: There's a real vogue now for…
MARK: They mumble, they're all mumbling, to make it ‘realistic’.
GRAHAM: Yeah. It's that thing… something can seem realistic, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's interesting.
MARK: It's not.
GRAHAM: A lot of the best film is really stylized y’know. I don't think it has to be film's job to present the real world.
MARK: I know. Well it's not the real world is it. It's fuckin’… people who've been to film school – the art school. It's like music's the same. I mean come on! Every girl rapper has been to fuckin’… a London art class, y’know. It is the whole thing, y’know. Talent shows…
GRAHAM: It's like going back to the notion of Tin Pan Alley isn't it really. All this sort of X-Factor stuff is just encouraging people to think ‘oh you just learn a bunch of songs that are already famous, work on your chops and that's good enough.’
MARK: It's like the old Guinness advert isn't it y’know. (posh voice) “The rain in Spain”. Give her a fuckin’ can of Heineken. And she goes (cockney drawl) “The raaain in Spain…”. A fuckin’ 60s joke isn't it: the false cockney accent and all that. I mean it is Tommy Steele. It's a Damon Albarn world isn't it really. What he wanted. Hey that could make a good episode!
GRAHAM: Damon Albarn World?
MARK: Damon Albarn World!
(Laughter)
MARK: D’yer remember, I told you his favourite musical is Oh What a Lovely War?
GRAHAM: Oh yeah.
MARK: What about that Who Do You Think You Are? Have you ever watched that?