Mark E. Smith is either the music world’s greatest tyrant or its hippest priest. Heading into his third decade as leader of post-punk legends the Fall, the man is eager to confess but impossible to kill. By Bruce Miller. Photos By Brennan Cavanaugh.
Twenty-seven years have blinked past since the original Fall lineup crashed through its first gig at an arts-collec-tive basement in Manchester, England. The performance was uneven but impressive to those few in attendance, including hometown notables the Buzzcocks. It’s been nearly as long since Mark Edward Smith-lyricist, frontman, instigator and terrorizer of all things smug-sacked said lineup, declaring forever his dominion over the Fall. Since, he’s fueled the band with pure venom, ranting authoritatively on topics ranging from life in Thatcher-era England and unskilled laborers to ex-wives and theme-park tragedies. He’s fired a dozen band members as necessary (twice that many have quit), badmouthed and changed record labels at will and is seemingly bent on destroying a band that, despite his worst intentions, refuses to die.
A furious, two-day session resulted in the Fall’s debut, 1979’s Live At The Witch Trials. Later that year, Smith and an almost entirely new lineup (which included guitarist Craig Scanlon and bassist Steve Hanley) recorded Dragnet, an album of impenetrable lyrics and Neanderthal-yet-complex song structures. The Fall blue-print-Bo Diddley-on-crank raggedness and repetition verging on annoyance, buoyed by Smith’s vitriolic out-bursts-was firmly in place. New albums and singles appeared like roaches in the summertime, and the consistency was tremendous.
In the mid-’80s, Brix Smith-an American who started out a Fall fan and ended up Smith’s wife for a time-brought brittle-yet-catchy guitar riffs, vocals and a professionalism that resulted in some of the band’s more solid, commercial work. 1984’s The Wonderful And Frightening World Of and 1986’s Bend Sinister attracted larger audiences and guaranteed the Fall’s addictive clatter would be indelibly stamped on many a respected band’s forehead. There’s no question about Kurt Cobain’s use of some Smith-like verbal cut-ups for In Utero. From the lo-fi jitters of Pavement’s early singles to its cover of “The Classical,” Stephen Malkmus and Co. made plain their debt to the Fall.
Not one to dwell in the past, become complacent or quit, Smith dragged the Fall out of the ’80s, losing (then regaining, then losing) Brix and plunging the band into experiments with everything from ice-cold quasi-techno to the country songbooks of Johnny Paycheck and George Jones. The output barely slowed, and if 1990’s Extricate, 1991’s Shift-Work or 1993’s The Infotainment Scan don’t stand out quite as much as the previous decade’s tri-umphs, it’s perhaps due to already having overseen a dozen years’ worth of brilliance. Not that Smith cared.
Reports of his deteriorating mental health due to too much alcohol and speed were proven accurate during the band’s East Coast tour in 1998. An erratic, abusive performance in New York City was followed by Smith choking keyboard player/girlfriend Julia Nagle (who, oddly enough, didn’t quit the Fall right away). These antics bought the man a bit of jail time, but it wasn’t about to be the last of Mark E. Smith. Though longtime Fall members Hanley and drummer Karl Burns promptly walked out, Smith cobbled together a new band and finished the tour. Even as the late ’90s/early ’00s brought a flood of reissues, archival live recordings and useless compilations, the Fall continued to release new albums—2000’s The Unutterable and 2001’s Are You Missing A Winner—that proved the band was far from irrelevant.
Despite a fractured hip and femur (caused by a slip in the snow), Smith is touring behind the strongest Fall album in years, The Real New Fall LP, Formerly Country On The Click (Narnack). Though he’s changed band members like socks, Smith has staggered on, churning out more good records than bad ones, all the while questioning what the revivalists of his era, from the Buzzcocks to Patti Smith, have to offer now.
Before a show at a converted Pittsburgh brewery, MAGNET pinned down Smith at a motel bar. Seemingly older than his years and a bit worn around the eyes, Smith was cordial in conversation. In his ubiquitous collared shirt and slacks, he looked as plain as the wallpa-per, but you couldn’t help but feel those around us knew he must be somebody. Despite his reputation as a difficult interview, Smith was patient, witty and revealing. He might’ve spent some of the conversation pulling my leg—or perhaps being delusional—but at least he didn’t put any cigarette butts out on my head.
You were once a dock worker in Manchester, an unpretentious job in a working-class, perhaps decaying, environment. There’s nothing hip or “of the moment” about that, nor does there seem to be in the Fall.
You get the impression that life’s repeating itself. [Laughs]
How so?
Well, like the docks, the record companies are closing down. We were with EMI for a bit recently, and we had an idiot for a manager for a few weeks and he fucked up. I just read that about a quarter of the groups have been kicked off (EMI’s roster) and about 50 percent of their staff as well. We were at the top of the list.
I know you’ve complained in the past about labels—Rough Trade and Beggars Banquet, to name two—jerking your chain. Is this still the case?
There’s only so much a record label can do. They don’t like the fact that we’ve got such-and-such number of followers already. We don’t have to run around getting press. They can’t mold us in any way. I think they’d rather take on a group that loses ’em a million quid. I don’t see the point, and I finally have to say, “Let’s work.” It’s really getting to be quite a middle-class busi-ness. I mean, they sign you up for 15 years and these four idiots will be in charge of your life. It’s amazing how a musician’s supposed to be “liberal” or “alterna-tive,” and they make you sign on the dot.
What’s your trust level like after all that? Do you finally think, “Oh, I’ve heard all this before”?
Yes, that’s about it. You’ve got to be aware of it. They tell you what to do, like a kid, you know.
You’ve had a couple of nibbles hit-wise over the years. I’m thinking of the near-success of (1988’s) The Frenz Experiment, and I know The Infotainment Scan hit in Britain. At this point, does it even matter to you if there’s a bit of success?
I don’t think it’s good to think along those lines, but i suppose maybe I should. Other musicians get frustrated with me about this, but I don’t really think more than three or six months ahead. Which they don’t like. I mean, you’re supposed to have a game plan.
But then you’ve got a record out every six months. What keeps you motivated?
I got an urge to write. I mean, I can turn on the TV and see the groups there and get really annoyed about it. This was the same case in ’85 and even ’79, you know.
But those bands fade away quickly, it seems.
Yeah, well, you’d mentioned that Can album, Tago Mago, earlier. These things that continue to matter … mean, I get a letter from someone in Texas who’s bought a computer and who’s 20. They say, “I’m looking at the Fall, and I realize regular people can actually make records.” It’s a different generation from us.
When I look at magazines, even if a band is supposed to be “alternative,” “independent” or what-ever, they’re still largely a gang of 23-year-old males with hair like Rod Stewart in ’71, passing that off as essential to something current. The Fall never bothered with this.
The Manchester scene in general could be this way. When we were teens, that’s why we liked Tago Mago. It was something that didn’t necessarily come out last week. You get these grunge groups, or the Strokes, and the press mentions, “Sometimes he has a whiskey before he goes onstage. Sometimes he has a cigarette.”
Holy shit! The shock!
And his father works for the record company. There’s a lot of people like that. They’re overqualified. This is especially true in Britain.
The longer you stick around, the more opportunities bands have to say they’re influenced by the Fall. When you look back, which of those records comes the closest to being whatever a Fall record is supposed to be?
To be honest, I don’t listen to them. I mean, by the time they come out, I’m well fed up with them anyway. Maybe not fed up, but, say, when The Infotainment Scan hit the top 10, the band said, “Let’s play the new LP every night.” But I don’t want to, you know. Just something in me, I suppose. There have been a lot of reissues coming out in Britain.
It’s confusing.
Yeah, it is, and I was getting a bit annoyed about it. But there’s nothing you can do. I actually listened to Dragnet about a month ago just to see about these extra tracks (the Cog Sinister label) put on. I thought, “What’s this?” It gets me a bit pissed off because I conceive of it as an a-side and a b-side. I still do.
Even though it’s your second record, Dragnet seems to me to be the first proper Fall album.
You think so? Well, me too.
On Witch Trials, (drummer) Karl Burns sounded like he was listening to this arena-rock thing, but Dragnet sounds like a group of guys who could only play what was on the record.
Well, the blurbs will say, “It sounds like the group are fresh off the streets,” and all this rubbish. “Don’t be put off by the sound.” But at the time, the label (Step Forward) didn’t want to release it. I mean, the studio in bloody north England was embarrassed to let this out. You forget what people’s minds were like in them days. Now it’s “seminal,” “classic” and all that, but then it was like, “Hey, this isn’t the Sex Pistols. And it’s definitely not Queen.”
What do you think about it now?
I thought it was quite good.
What’s the Fall album to top?
(1982’s) Hex Enduction Hour. That’s the one to watch, to get back to your original question.
It seems like much of that record’s power came from using two drummers.
Yeah, it did. Mike (Leigh, from Dragnet) was a teddy boy and was one of my sister’s friends, really, and he’d only ever done rock ‘n’ roll. He wasn’t into our sort of stuff. I remember he was like the old man because he was already 30 at the time. Anyway, we got Paul (Hanley, Steve’s brother), and we used to lie about our age— which is the opposite of what people do now—to get into the clubs. I used to say I was 21 when I was really 18. Paul was only 15. He should’ve been in school, to be quite frank. When it was time to go overseas, I couldn’t take Paul out of the country, so I got Karl (Burns) back. [Laughs] Now people are surprised when they find out I’m 46. They say, “You’re 52,” because they read an old interview where I claimed I was older. [Laughs]
What became of some of the former band members?
The roll of tragedy …
Let’s start with Karl Burns. He plays on some great Fall albums.
Well, after he quit the third time, he formed a group behind my back with (Steve) Hanley. They were called the Ark, you know, without Mark. Nothing I want to jump into, you know. I was sitting in the gutter the last time I saw him, to be quite honest. Same place he was when I first met him back in Manchester. It’s hard to be nice to people who … He left me in jail in New York.
What about Craig Scanlon and Steve Hanley, guys who spent 15- and 18-year hitches with you?
I see Craig now and again. He’s OK. He’s got a job in the welfare system. Hanley works in a school or something. I don’t check up on them. Anyone who I fall out with or I don’t like, I always wish them well so they’ll never darken my door again.
How did it feel losing them? Did you just say, “Well, it’s time to move on”?
I always keep these issues at arm’s length. I like to work in an artistic sense or a professional sense. You can’t get too friendly with [bandmates]; you don’t get what you want out of them musically. I mean, they get set in their ways. I don’t understand guitarists. I don’t know what they get their fuckin’ heads around.
Do you hear things the band doesn’t?
Yeah. I got a layman’s ear.
How close does the band get?
I go right to the top of it. I end up stumblin’ over the guy who’s at the bloody desk … This is why I have troubles. The records aren’t publicized well. The companies don’t really work. All I really care about is the record from day fucking one. I’m in the studio for every fucking minute of it.
The new album falls into this category, right? You went back and remixed it.
Yeah. EMI fucked about with it, then (U.K. label) Action screwed around with it, then Grant Showbiz (a Manchester producer who’s worked with the Fall, Smiths and Billy Bragg) of all people screwed about with it. You’d think he’d know better. I mean, he did Dragnet. I couldn’t believe that anybody would dare to do this to me.
Well, it sounds good now.
Yeah, there’s about two or three tracks that sound similar to what they wanted to bring out. But if it had come out like that, it would have been disastrous. I hadn’t been that angry in a long time.
* * *
A thorough listen to any of the Fall’s albums—all of them so densely packed with words it’s a wonder they could be remembered onstage—is bound to cause confusion. A quick trip to the internet, where you can view every declaration, bark and insinuation Smith has ever uttered on record, doesn’t necessarily alleviate the problem. That much of this verbal onslaught is poured out in an unsingable Manchester brogue makes for some uncomfortable listening. (Some find it infuriating.) But this is part of the addiction.
I brought some of your lyrics into a college freshman composition class I teach, just to see what kind of interpretations I’d get from the students. For (1984’s) “Disney’s Dream Debased,” most of them figured out it was about a fatal accident at an amusement park. But some of the class went on to say it was an act of terrorism. Were they close?
God bless ’em. [Laughs]
They were stumped by “D.I.Y. Meat,” from The Light User Syndrome. They thought that the character emerged from a tent on a concrete slab only to find a gravedigger/handyman talking to the protagonist’s dead wife. Is this correct?
Well, in Britain at the time, the TV and magazines were filled with do-it-yourself ads, and as a result, nobody wanted to be a plumber or a builder anymore. This went against tradition, because if you can’t read or write and you’re not fit for the army, you become a tradesman. My father was a plumber. When he was 18, he knew everything about his work. Nowadays, if you can’t do anything, you pretend you’re a builder. [Laughs] So every time you’d look out the window, you’d see some guy digging the gutter or doing the roof. He doesn’t have a fucking clue, really. Any time he was supposed to be working, he’d be talking to the wife. It was like some old British comedy. But really, that song was a bit of filler.
What does it mean at the end of the song when you say, “They have cheese”?
It’s a youthful thing in Britain. People in their twenties use this word, cheese, to refer to someone who hasn’t washed their underpants or some such. [Laughs] But it means something else, and I can’t get to the bottom of it. Maybe it means “nervous.”
Julian Cope once said your lyrics are code-speak for absolutely nothing.
Well, when people talk about the Fall’s lyrics, they like to talk about themselves. They want to relate to something that isn’t there. Like it’s an open slate and they can write anything they want.
Is anger a good fuel for writing songs?
I think so, yeah. It’s not me talking, either, though. People used to misunderstand this a lot. With any good writer— say you write a book about a sheriff or something—it’s not what you think. I’m surprised at how many people read Macbeth and think, “Shakespeare is fucked up.” It’s that Silence Of The Lambs thing. There’s people who actually think I was involved with the film because the Fall’s music was in the movie. I did enjoy the book.
I know the drive is still artistic, but do you ever think, “I’ve got to get this record out, pay some bills. Fuck, this is my job”?
Well, it’s a bit of both. I mean, if you made two million pounds, you wouldn’t go out of the house again, would you? A mate of mine played with Paul McCartney once, and [McCartney] held a press conference at 8:30 in the morning. He’s got eight or nine journalists, but only one will get anything close to what he’s got to say printed.
Does Paul McCartney know who you are?
I don’t know. Probably. He knew who the Smiths were. He was very threatened by them, so he invited the guitarist from the Smiths to go play on his LP, and after that, the Smiths split up. Paul McCartney used him, of course. [MAGNET contacted Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr for comment. “Yes, that’s exactly what happened,” Marr replied sarcastically.]
You seem to thrive on tension. Nothing seems to be allowed to stabilize with the Fall. You even mess with the band’s amps onstage. Is this all to keep complacency away?
People actually expect me to do that these days.
So you do it to appease fans?
No. Sometimes the sound gets on my fucking nerves.
Less than two weeks after this interview, the Fall tour— which featured Smith singing into as many as three microphones at a time from a chair onstage—dissolved prematurely in Houston. “Mark’s got a busted hip and is on painkillers,” says a Narnack Records spokesperson. “The tour promoter took a huge cut—perhaps in order to make sure he was paid back—and that didn’t sit well with the band.” Smith issued a handwritten statement on a crumpled piece of paper that read, “The Group/New York Agency + Tour Manager are too lazy to play. 50% refund to all ticket holders. M.E. Smith.”
