by Mark E Smith
GRAHAM: No. Well, I saw some of the Paxman one, a couple of bits.
MARK: So many of them celebrities turn out to have really crooked pasts. Have you ever noticed? I mean if I was them, I'd say ‘Stop now!’ wouldn't you?
GRAHAM: What, before you find out too much?
MARK: Yeah. It's a boring programme. It's like… it's what I've always thought, because I can read faces, y’know what I mean. I am pretty shrewd at that. And I've always thought certain people they just look bad. Like Nigel Lawson I always thought. I mean like Nigella Lawson.
(Laughter)
MARK: It's unwatchable, that programme. But it could be useful, about three minutes of it in something. It is very Twilight Zoney. Don't go into your past y’know. That is the inherent message.
GRAHAM: It's that idea… having more information about the past can change how you behave in the present. It's like someone starting to behave with airs and graces because they find out they're distantly related to some Duke.
MARK: I have a weird thing, which is very… If I think of anybody and I switch the TV on, and their face comes on. Happens all the time.
GRAHAM: Really?
MARK: Happens all the time… Like for instance, when we were going to Ireland right, as we were taking off I was fuckin’ seriously crashing to be honest. And I knew I was gonna y’know… it's like you know you're going to have this revelation…
The flight from fuckin’ Manchester to Ireland is great. It's like fuckin’ half an hour. And who walks up the fuckin’ aisle but Bez. Anyway, he's in a white jumper Bez, and all his hair's grey. And I wanted to ask him if he had any fuckin’ drugs on him. But it wasn't appropriate. And I'd just been thinking “If Bez was here…”
(Laughter)
MARK: Coz I'm going to Ireland and I know I'm not gonna get anything for the next three days. Not that I'm a fuckin’ junkie or anything. But then you think like that don't yer, coz it's half fuckin’ six in the morning and you're like urrrgh.
But then Bez walks up which was really good y’know what I mean. And you wanna fuckin’ say “Bez! What yer got?” But then it's “Everybody fasten yer seat belts” y’know. It's one of those things you can't do. Coz you know you're gonna get thrown off don't yer, you know what I mean? I'm sweaty. “Bez!!” Sat with a load of big, fat Irish businessmen. You know it's not gonna go down.
So anyway, so I get home, on the couch for a week, ill (laughs). I'm just thinking about that incident. I switch Granada Reports on. Bez comes up in his white pullover and he wants to introduce pigeons or something … No, he wants to introduce bees to fuckin’ Manchester.
GRAHAM: What?
MARK: No, it's not really convincing is it?
(Laughter)
GRAHAM: It's weird though isn't it? People tend to think coincidences are these rare things, but coincidences are far more common than that. There's a really obvious pattern to stuff some times.
MARK: Oh aye.
GRAHAM: About a year ago, I was shifting some crap in the garden and I had a Throbbing Gristle album playing. An electronic thing and I was thinking ‘fucking hell, this really reminds me of Tangerine Dream’. And it was a track I'd been listening to for years and years. But you know when you suddenly hear something in a slightly different way? And I thought ‘I used to have a couple of early Tangerine Dream albums years ago. I should try and get them again.’
And then my mobile buzzed in my pocket. And it was my sister Susan's husband: Simon. It was a text saying “I'm getting rid of a load of records. I've got a few Tangerine Dream albums, would you want them?” What a coincidence y’know.
MARK: Really?
GRAHAM: And then, about a week later I was in London with Malcolm. And we were in a bar, and I was telling him the story. “I was in the garden, thinking about Tangerine Dream and my brother-in-law texted me saying do you want these Tangerine Dream albums”. Malcolm goes “Oh that's weird.”
Then my phone goes again in my pocket and it's Simon saying “Just sent you those Tangerine Dream albums in the post”. So it was like, as soon as I mentioned it again, it came up. So yeah… I don't read anything into it. But when this stuff happens you think well that's…
MARK: Yeah, yeah. Have you ever had that where you think of people, and they turn up on the fuckin’ front door, y’know? Freaks me out. It's happened to me once or twice.
GRAHAM: But do you get that thing as well, where you'll be walking around town or wherever and you'll see someone and you'll think oh that's y’know, Bob or whoever? But it's not. But then ten minutes later you actually see the person that you thought it was.
MARK: No I've never had that one! That's interesting isn't it?
GRAHAM: I have that one quite a bit.
MARK: Oh that's weird isn't it. That is a weird one isn't it!
GRAHAM: It's like… I dunno… without wanting to sound too wholemeal it's like their energy was, was…
MARK: …in the vicinity. So what do you do when you see the real one?
GRAHAM: I always say “Oh I thought I saw you.”
MARK: You're not prepared?
GRAHAM: I don't know.
MARK: I always get this thing, where I get this person in my mind. Then I sort of force it out… force it out. A lot of the time it's a woman and I'm just not interested. So a lot of time it's a negative… and I force it out and it's just… I just sort of deal with it very well.
Then erm, I'll walk ’round the corner and there'll be that person. Y’know, they'll just go “it's all in your fuckin’ head”. You know what I mean? Know what I'm saying? If you haven't got any power, you haven't got any fuckin’… So shut up about it y’know. And you'll just be going along, very happy, very relaxed and they'll fuckin’ come out of nowhere. It's like a delayed sort of… But you've got one that goes first!
GRAHAM: Yeah.
MARK: You've got a warning thing haven't you?
GRAHAM: Yeah. I had this idea a little while ago. It's quite a Philip K. Dick idea in a way. I was going around this supermarket and I was quite stoned, and I was having that thing where I was thinking ‘Is that such and such a person?’ No, it's just that they had that sort of look. Y’know as you get older, people tend to fall into types more readily.
MARK: Right, right.
GRAHAM: And the idea is about this man who starts seeing people as types. He sees less and less variation in people, until in the end he can only see one kind of man and one kind of woman.
MARK: Well it's the truth!
(Laughter)
MARK: I've been all over the world. It's the truth! It's the truth! I've always thought there's only ten or eleven. There's only twelve people in the world. There's only twelve people.
GRAHAM: Do you think they're the original tribes?
MARK: No, no, no.
GRAHAM: No? What is it then?
MARK: There's only six. I've noticed. I know and I've been… There's only one kind of Russian now. There used to be loads of types of Russians. There's only a couple of types of Germans now. When I first went to Germany, there were a lot of types of Germans, y’know what I'm sayin’?
I mean come on, you're from Lancashire. There were a lot of different types of fuckin’ Lancastrians, of our age. I mean come on, y’know all them lunatics, y’know. I mean do you remember all them loonies in fuckin’ Blackburn?
GRAHAM: Oh yeah, real rough, rough lads.
MARK: Chucking pint pots – but also very clever. They're all… It's a form of communism.
GRAHAM: But is it TV saying to people you must aspire to a certain lifestyle?
MARK: It softens up their brains a bit.
GRAHAM: Well, there's that, but also… it's like you're taught what you should aspire to. We're fed all these images from Big Brother or whatever.
MARK: They haven't got a filter system have they? What I'm saying is they haven't got a filter system. Like I have, or you have.
GRAHA
M: No, but then you're, for want of a better word, sophisticated aren't you? Y’know, you're a thinker. A lot of people aren't.
MARK: Oh course not. Like I understand where they're at. They've got jobs to do and all that: kids and all. But y’know, I can see their shoes. It doesn't take much to drag ’em out of their fuckin’ depths, but it's just hard work in my personal experience.
♦ ♦ ♦
9
DREAM OF 400 PROPAGANDA FILMS
MARK: I had this dream, where there was 400 films made by the Americans, during the Second World War: propaganda films that featured three brothers. This is what I actually thought, in me head y’know, was reality.
I was telling these African people at around ten o’clock at night, how these films used to come out during the Second World War, where you'd have Laurel and Hardy. You know ’em! I'm talking to you in the same way! Where Laurel and Hardy and maybe Stan Laurel's brother, or Oliver's brother would join ’em. And the three of them would volunteer for the army to fight the Japanese.
I'm going to this old African woman:
“You remember them don't yer?”
(v. high pitched) “That kind of film doesn't exist!”
Then there'd be The Three O’Mulligans Go To War. And there'd be another one called… for the Germany audience it'd be The Three Fritzheimers Go To War – you remember ’em!
“There's no way you can get ‘em!” I said to these Africans.
But it had all these film series, y’know like you'd see on Breaking Bad and all that. I believed myself that they existed. You know, like Bob Hope and his two brothers join the army. Like Saving Private Ryan but 30s.
♦ ♦ ♦
10
RECORD COMPANIES & ‘WORKING FROM HOME’
GRAHAM: I got that Can Lost Tapes.
MARK: Oh right, yeah?
GRAHAM: Have you heard it?
MARK: Yeah, yeah. What the big fuckin’…?
GRAHAM: The box set, yeah.
MARK: Yeah, it's hard work isn't it?
GRAHAM: There's too much of it really. But…
MARK: There's a good Malcolm Mooney one. What is it like…? ‘I Am Me’ or something? What is it? The Malcolm Mooney one: it's like fuckin’… he had to stop. I like that. No I think it should have been lost that.
(Laughter)
GRAHAM: What, you think it should have never been discovered? There must be hours of it still. You can't digest it all at once, but there's some great things on there.
MARK: Oh definitely, definitely. I forgot about that. I was gonna bring you some crap down. Those country and western ones y’know, the ones they sell on the fuckin’ shopping channels.
GRAHAM: Like trucker's songs and stuff?
MARK: Yeah, yeah. I give most of them away, to some grateful people. But erm… I'm trying to compile a live LP and it's just… I don't really wanna do it. It's like it's a weird situation.
GRAHAM: Live Fall stuff?
MARK: Yeah, yeah, from the last fuckin’ years. Like fuckin’ 2008 to now.
GRAHAM: Well if you want any sleeve notes doing…
MARK: Yeah, you do ’em. Yeah. Like a fool I gave away… I had that fuckin’ Brighton one that you were at, that you said about. I gave it to the fuckin’… the bleedin’ rat catcher.
(Laughter)
GRAHAM: What is it, a desk recording?
MARK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
GRAHAM: Is that the only copy? Has that gone?
MARK: No, no. But I mean… where do you start, y’know? I can't be objective. Fact is, Cherry Red have compiled their own y'see – of their favourites. And it can't go out. It's just the worse thing you've ever heard in your bleedin’ life, y’know.
GRAHAM: Poor recordings or…?
MARK: No, it's stuff I've give ’em and stuff they've got y’know.
GRAHAM: But you don't think it's good enough?
MARK: No, half of it can go out y’know. It's just the fans who work in the record company. Y’know what I mean? It does need to be done. But how can I sit down and listen to it?
GRAHAM: It is very hard to be objective about your own stuff.
MARK: That's what I'm sayin’ y’know. I know it's not a big deal. But y’know, typical… They don't think you're on the ball y'see. I did the EP straight away. And it only turns out this week… they're so fuckin’ computerized. They all work at home nowadays. So you think you've got fuckin’ problems, y’know what I mean?
It's a fuckin’ EP man! You can't just ring the fuckin’ office. Coz y’know, the guy you're dealing with, he only works at this record company two days a week. He works with Universal one day a week. And he's freelancing – he won't say where – the other day of the week. The boss is on fuckin’ holiday! The fuckin’ one who does the fuckin’ artwork, she only works Tuesday and Wednesday, y’know. It's like if they had an office y’know, then I could say…
And I have to post all the artwork off and all the track listings, and I have to talk to the guys. But it's like if they just had an office, the five of them sat together, from ten 'til five… I mean what's the matter? But they all think they're all ‘working from home’. They're all ‘working from home’. Y’know, I mean it's the biggest con, I think. You're a writer, that's different. It is the biggest con. They're all ‘working from home’. Well, you're not working from home! Y’know?
It's only a 6-track EP. But y’know at the end of the day… it always happens! You leave it to them, you send ’em the emails – I don't deal with ’em. I always say “use the phone”. They never use the fuckin’ telephone. So they always have to come to me through email. Y’know, so it's like… If they all just fuckin’ got together, four hours a fuckin’ day, like Americans do. Americans, they get together, even the shittiest… They go in at six in the morning, they knock off at two.
It's fuckin’… it's Cherry Red, y’know what I mean? We just give ’em the only top 40 LP they've ever had, y’know in the last twenty years. And still they're trying to get a live LP and all this, you know what I mean, it's like… You wonder why British industry… You just get fed up in the end. But no, do some sleeve notes, that'll be good. That'll confuse ’em! That'll confuse ’em! I'll send you a track listing tomorrow. I'll send you a load of track names and say… make it up.
GRAHAM: I can make things up.
(Laughter)
MARK: If you can imagine it, I've got things like ‘Hamburg Wedding’. No God bless ’em, the Cherry Red one's are alright: ‘Croydon 1984’ y’know. (laughs) ‘Psychick Dancehall’… It sounds like it's recorded in your fuckin’ toilet.
GRAHAM: Is this something you want to bring out this year?
MARK: Yeah.
GRAHAM: For the Christmas market?
(Laughter)
MARK: I don't think so!
GRAHAM: Do you just say “right, this is the track list, this is the order of the tracks”? Do they ever try and say “no, we want…”
MARK: No, not at all.
GRAHAM: Is that in the contract?
MARK: Well it's better for them isn't it? Then they can blame you.
♦ ♦ ♦
11
FLACKA, SPICE, STRYCHNINE, ACID, AZTEC TEA, ECSTASY, SPEED, KETAMINE & WHISKY
GRAHAM: I was looking online, about this drug called Flacka. Have you heard about that?
MARK: No.
GRAHAM: It's a legal high. It's in two or three states in America. A bit like Spice. A bunch of herbs and they spray it with this stuff. So it can be anything. It just turns people into psychopaths. There's this footage – you'd think you were watching a zombie movie.