The Otherwise

by Mark E Smith

  There's people with blood ’round their mouths, just staggering around. Some guy in a car park – CCTV footage – he just runs across this car park, dives through the back window of a stationary car. Actually smashes his way through. He comes out, starts biting his arm.

  MARK: Flacka?

  GRAHAM: Yeah. There's people biting off their own skin. The high must have to be pretty good to validate that!

  MARK: So you just smoke it like Spice, in a single skin?

  GRAHAM: Yeah you just smoke it in pipes and stuff.

  MARK: Did you ever have any of that Spice?

  GRAHAM: No.

  MARK: This fuckin’ twat I know, he put some in a joint: Spice. Without tellin’ us. Fuckin’ hell, it made you fuckin’ ill.

  GRAHAM: So what did it make you feel like?

  MARK: It was like a bad erm… I had about two pints, and a couple of tugs on this joint. I was really kickin’ up. It was this fuckin’ Spice. Then I felt dead sick. I felt dead sick for about a day, y’know. Spitting up the taste of cannabis. I thought ‘this is a first in my mind’. It was horrible. It's like you see on telly, and you laugh, see ’em in Piccadilly Gardens. And you think nobody's that out of it. It was like that. I thought it'd be just like bad pot y’know.

  GRAHAM: Yeah, I'd assumed that, but that it made you feel sick.

  MARK: I can't see the point of making it horrible as well, y’know. I can't see any reason for that. What they'd sprayed on it is summat daft. Just to make it… Like they used to put cyanide in acid. Rat poison.

  GRAHAM: Strychnine.

  MARK: Yeah, strychnine. Used to put it in acid: if the acid was too good. This is drug-dealers for you. In the 70s, when the acid got too pure, people'd put strychnine in it. So they'd pay more for it. You always used to know when the strychnine was in it. Because you'd feel depressed while you were tripping. Obviously, because you were being poisoned, y’know.

  GRAHAM: I'm not sure I could take hallucinogens again now. It's probably about ten years since last time I took some mushrooms.

  MARK: Is it?

  GRAHAM: How long since you did a trip? I reckon it's about ten years for me.

  MARK: Me too. We should get some! The last good stuff I had was in that place near Matt and Phred's. The Aztec Tea. That was fuckin’ great. This Aztec Tea, it's just like a red leaf. Mad Jewish feller, he lives on his own. This Jewish man-lad he got me this Aztec Tea. It's Aztec stuff. What a trip it was. Like real old acid: like Peyote.

  GRAHAM: So what do you do, do you smoke it or…?

  MARK: It's like… It was stale, so I thought it wouldn't be any good. But you'd eat like a couple of crumbs of it. It was like… you know like when mushrooms were really good? When you first had them and you went “Wow!” It's like that. But it was just a few flakes, y’know.

  GRAHAM: Aztec tea. There's always more. With pills, I suspect a lot of it is just variations on E. With ecstasy it's the day after that I don't like. It's the residual feeling of anxiety.

  MARK: Fuckin’ hell… You're tellin’ me.

  GRAHAM: I've only done it a handful times. It's not really the drug for me.

  MARK: I tell yer what, you notice the casualties of ecstasy quicker than anything else. I'm seein’ ’em now. You know when you go to these Haçienda evenings that Phil goes to. There's people there, they're like 55 – younger than me. And they dance like this (jerks arms). From 20 years of doing E y’know. And you can see, it's more prevailing than a whisky drinker. It's like they're still having the process where they come down the next day. Like they do off speed, y’know. They're trying to dance and they…

  GRAHAM: I think a lot of people who've done loads of E are quite depressed as well.

  MARK: Very much.

  GRAHAM: It's like it gives you all your joy in one burst. And then there's none left, y’know.

  MARK: That was what the bad amphetamines were like, yeah. What ecstasy does to your brain is like that. It just squeezes all the juices out. And this is what makes me laugh about them false drugs y'see. Cocaine stays in your system.

  What they do, they squeeze all the orange out. So you're gonna get depressed. It's a force: you've paid for that. You've had it, and you've got to pay for it like a bank loan. It's how they design the drug. No, you've got to pay for it y’know. Which is why ‘depressed’ won't be in it, y’know.

  GRAHAM: A lot of people who I know, who were big ravers, they're all fucking low now…

  MARK: Oh they were painfully happy weren't they? I mean I could have killed somebody me.

  GRAHAM: (laughs) What for being that happy?

  MARK: No, being on E, I wanted to kill people! I didn't love anybody. But you could see they were just washing it out of their brain. It was quite hurtful for me. There's a night on the E. They never said “Oh you might die, you might have a brain seizure”. The reason you have a brain seizure is the brain's going ‘this is not what the brain's used for’. It's not used for tasting chocolate every ten seconds y’know. It's used to think.

  At least with say, speed, you get so you feel shit, but your body's replacing itself. And it's kicked a lot of parts of your brain that wouldn't be kicked off. Ecstasy doesn't do that. It just gives you all the physical and the urm… y’know. Coz the people who were doing E, were the people who shouldn't have done E. If you're fit, it's the worst thing you could do is E.

  GRAHAM: I suppose I was always quite suspicious of ecstasy, because it's that thing of commonality y’know. “Come on! Love everybody!” And y’know, that's not true. I don't love everybody, because there's a lot of fucking dicks in the world. So I don't need a drug that convinces me that everybody's brilliant.

  MARK: Because they're not!

  (Laughter)

  GRAHAM: No.

  MARK: That was the freakiest thing. I remember going to the Haçienda one night, and I saw this gang of builders from ’round here. I didn't like ’em at all. They were like enemies of my mate: these builders, who were coke-takers. But they were all on fuckin’… ‘M People’. And they came over, and they were dead nice. And it was more frightening than when they used to threaten me and throw me off ladders and everything!

  I was more frightened when they came over and they said they loved me. I was fuckin’ shitting it!

  “Oh we don't mean anything against you and JR, or anybody! Or Mad Graham or anybody! We love you Mark! We always have! We didn't mean it when we said yer singing's shit!” And all this. I was like “Just stay there! Don't come near me!”

  GRAHAM: It's like the kiss of death from the Mafia isn't it?

  MARK: I had a glass of whisky in me hand. And I was like anointing them! Talk about them being nuts. I was fuckin’ as well. I had a whisky and I'm going “anoint!” y’know. “Get away from me!” Coz that's why I started drinking whisky, to get off the fuckin’ E and the Ketamine. It really worked.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  ‘Once talking was my favourite while But now I know a conversation's end Before it's done’

  ‘Living Too Late’ – Mark E. Smith

  LAST

  ORDERS

  Saturday November 12th 2017

  I travel up from Brighton to Manchester. The following day I'm due to direct the recording of two Count Arthur Strong Christmas Specials for Radio 4 at the Lowry Theatre in Salford. Whilst on the train I've been going through the scripts, adding new gags and making notes. I've worked diligently, but I've also been feeling distracted.

  I check into the hotel, take a shower then phone for a cab to drive me out to Prestwich. Although I haven't seen Mark since back in January, when The Fall played in Brighton, we've talked a few times on the phone since he got his diagnosis. He has remained resolutely realistic about the ongoing situation.

  Despite the diagnosis, The Fall have had a pretty busy year. Their fierce and abrasive new album New Facts Emerge was released at the end of July, with the group playing gigs in support of it. Whilst there have
been some cancellations due to the vagaries of Mark's health, the gigs they have played have been a testament to his force of will. Just over a week ago The Fall appeared at the Queen Margaret Union Hall in Glasgow.

  Online footage of the gig shows the group powering into ‘Wolf Kidult Man’ with Mark coming on stage down a ramp in a wheelchair to an enormous cheer. He then proceeds to give a performance of near feral commitment.

  Yet, away from his responsibilities with the group, Mark has generally been lying low and avoiding seeing people. I know he's been having a tough time recovering from the chemotherapy and I thought it unlikely he'd be in the mood for visitors. But I couldn't come up to Manchester without at least asking.

  Rather than bothering him directly, I'd sent a Facebook message to his girlfriend Pam. I'd asked if she thought Mark might feel up to a brief visit. She replied the next day, saying he'd love to see me.

  The taxi pulls up outside Pam's house in Prestwich. As I approach the front door I'm nervous. I wish I wasn't. But I am.

  It's not the nervousness I felt just over a decade ago, as I waited for Mark to arrive at the BBC building on Oxford Road. I'm not saying back then I was an acolyte praying that whatever I had to say would be worthy of his master's ears. However, I'd be lying if I didn't admit there was at least a hint of that.

  Since then, we've talked so much and about so much that I've become loose-lipped in Mark's presence. Not as loose-lipped as Mark obviously. But then few are. Right now, the nervousness I feel is because I'm about to visit a friend who is dying. And it seems unlikely that whatever I have to say will be worthy of the situation.

  Pam opens the door. We've never met before and these are obviously far from ideal circumstances for a first meeting. Nevertheless she greets me kindly. As I'm taking off my coat a familiar voice calls out from the living room, “A’right Graham?”

  I walk through to see Mark sitting on the sofa. Dressed in black slacks and a grey shirt, he looks small and scrawny. He's also sporting a full beard. Something I never thought I'd see.

  He asks if I want a drink but I tell him I've given up alcohol as it was screwing up my digestion.

  “Join the club,” he says with a snort. “I can't either. I've got a red raw mouth from the chemo.”

  Mark talks a little about his illness. Although his tales of being in hospital display his own slanted take on reality and are undoubtedly adulterated by the unpredictable balm of morphine. When he tells me how his hospital bed had “dropped away into a laundry chute” I'm unsure if he's speaking literally, metaphorically or hallucinogenically.

  He's been prescribed liquid morphine whilst recuperating from the effects of chemo. He shows me a box containing a huge, brown glass bottle of morphine about the size of a whisky bottle. I admire the stark design of the box.

  “I wanted to make a cover out of it,” says Mark. “Stick some bananas around it.”

  “Painkillers don't work on me obviously,” he says. “But morphine? Nature's built it. The pain goes. It's a fuckin’ wonder drug. What it does make you do is see things very clearly. Through a morphine haze like they describe. But it's very cold and smoky.”

  Despite the pain, despite the exhaustion, despite the morphine, Mark will be lucid and focussed for the entire evening. We sit and talk about the stuff we always talk about: mutual friends, music, the music industry, drugs, books, films.

  I give him a copy of Philip K. Dick's Dr. Bloodmoney as I had recalled him saying it was one of just a few of the author's novels he hadn't read. Mark says he's been watching lots of DVDs, including P.T. Anderson's There Will Be Blood and the grubby pleasures of Jim Hosking's The Greasy Strangler, as well as re-watching his personal favourites: Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole, Roman Polanski's Macbeth and Lindsay Anderson's Britannia Hospital.

  As always, the best part of the conversation is when Mark slips into telling anecdotes. Stories that take unexpected turns and go on wild divergences. Rants that could not possibly have come from anyone else's loose lips. And we laugh. A lot. After one anecdote, Mark clears his throat and smiles.

  “Sorry, I'm a bit cheerful today Graham,” he says, before adding. “I've had a rough two days”.

  “What happens when you finish the chemo?” I ask. He screws up his face.

  “Either this'll kill it off, or just keep it dormant. Unless it's fuckin’ out of control – then I die I suppose”.

  In a week's time, The Fall are due to fly to Portugal to play a gig at a club in Porto. He confidently tells me he's still planning to do this. I feel a doubt I don't express. Sitting on the sofa, winnowed by the cancer, he looks so infirm. I think it's unlikely he'll be well enough to undertake the journey, never mind play the gig. There's no point in saying this of course. Even now, having been brought to a savage standstill by the disease, he still exudes determination.

  Mark mentions that the MTV Europe Awards are being televised tonight. I'm surprised by how keen he is to watch them. Although to be honest, whenever something comes on that he doesn't like – which is frequently – Mark switches to another channel for a minute or so, thereby intercutting the MTV awards with bursts of local news reports, commercials and fragments of some romantic drama series.

  It would be easy for me to start thinking he's doing a real time Burroughsian cut-up. But in truth it's just another example of how Mark approaches life: rearranging and refashioning as he goes.

  On screen, Stormzy is required to do some presenting. The rapper lapses into monosyllabic utterances.

  “He's a laugh a minute that feller isn't he,” says Mark. “Full o’ quips.”

  During the award for Best Alternative Act, the banal pap of the aptly named Clean Bandit pumps from the TV. Mark hums along sarcastically. For something that's being labelled Alternative it sounds remarkably like Eurovision.

  “This is what it's like in America,” says Mark. “American alternative is like cabaret music. It's like Carole King.”

  A clip comes up of Lorde singing ‘Green Light’. Mark growls with glee. It turns out he's recently seen the episode of South Park which features a piss-take of the singer.

  “I thought she was just the invention of South Park,” he says with a dry cackle.

  He shows me a stylish brown and silver cassette recorder he's bought in order to record audio from the TV. He plays me a bit of Glen Campbell he recorded earlier in the week. I check the time on my phone. I suddenly realise we've been talking for over three hours.

  “I should probably be going. I've got an early start in the morning.” I haven't really. But it feels more respectful to say this rather than ‘I don't want to tire you out.’

  Before I go, Mark wants to play me something. We sit and listen to the first side of Marty Robbins's 1959 country and western album Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs. I've never heard it before. It contains slow, mournful country tunes such as ‘Big Iron’ and ‘Billy the Kid’. Robbins's smooth, reverb drenched voice bounces around the white suburban walls.

  “It's a fuckin’ weird LP this,” says Mark. “It's all about the baddie's side.”

  Now it really is time to go. Pam phones for a cab. It arrives frustratingly quickly. I button up my coat. I lean over and hug Mark's thin frame.

  “Marvellous to see you Graham,” he says, smiling broadly.

  “And you mate,” I say. “I'll see you soon.”

  But I know I won't.

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  p. 6 – Mark E. Smith & Graham Duff – by Jim Moir

  p. 8 – Mark E. Smith & Elena Poulou – by Elena Poulou

  p.15 – Mark E. Smith – by Elena Poulou

  pp. 16–30 – Letter from MES to GD. Including 2 scenes for The Otherwise. One of which was cut from the final draft.

  p. 210 – Mark E. Smith & Gunther – by Elena Poulou

  pp. 240–243 – Letter from MES to GD

  p. 244 – Mark E. Smith & Graham Duff – by Samantha Marshall

  p. 292 – Mark E. Smith – by Jim Moir

  THANK
S &

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Elena Poulou – For your friendship, support and care, for your inspirational music and art, and for all your years of devotion to both Mark and The Fall. Thank you for your beautiful essay and photographs, and for believing in the project in the first place.

  Malcolm Boyle – For your friendship, your inspired notes, and for guiding me back to The Fall when I fell out of love in the mid 80s.

  Imogen Christie – For your positive comments on the first draft of the script and your subsequent insights on the essays.