Mark E. Smith interviewed by J Neo Marvin
This interview was originally conducted for a long-forgotten punk fanzine whose name I won't mention, because I don't want anyone running off looking for rare back issues and discovering some of the appalling writing I got away with when I was younger. (Or let's put it this way: you're free to look for it, but I won't help you.) The early 80s were probably my all-time peak as a rabid Fall fan, though I continued to follow their music long after. But when Dragnet, Grotesque, and the 10-inch Slates EP were released, I was mesmerized by the magical combination of crude garagey stomp, raw experimentalism, and verbal complexity that Mark E. Smith and his crew were unleashing on the world, a music that was too rude and fluid for the punk scene at large, though it fed off all that energy. I had just seen the band for the first time the night before, at a club on Broadway called the Stone, where they had blown me away with new material that would eventually appear on the Hex Enduction Hour LP: long-winded, eerie VU-esque sprawls like "Deer Park" (which they opened the set with), "Winter", and "Hip Priest". I was very excited and more than a little intimidated. My past attempts to interview bands had not been great successes, and now I was about to meet one of my idols. Can you say "petrified", boys and girls?
I met Mark Smith at the York Hotel, in San Francisco's theatre district. He turned out to be far more outgoing and friendly than I had expected. Despite his infamous opinionated bloody-mindedness (which certainly comes across below), I remember Mark as an highly charming, personable fellow who enjoyed a good laugh and showed admirable patience with the nervous young man before him stammering out questions he could barely read off of his own notes. I realized the first part of the interview was a total loss when I looked at my tape deck and saw the batteries had run down. The transcript picks up after I find a convenient electrical outlet. Oops.
J NEO MARVIN: Testing....
MARK E. SMITH: Start with a coffee?
JNM: Uh yeah, let's...
MES: Could we have two more coffees please, love?
KARL BURNS (drummer): (in funny voice) Hul-lo tharrr. Hi.
MES: (equally funny voice) Havin' a bit of an equipment problem here.
KAY CARROLL (manager): Bye! (K & K take off.)
MES: See yer. Karl's lost his passport, you see. (Waitress returns with coffee.) Thanks. Thank you.
JNM: I was surprised to see him on the way over here. I didn't know he was back in the band.
MES: Yeah. Right. He's lost his bloody passport and (laughing) can't fuckin' find his number or anything. We're going home in three days.
JNM: UH-oh....(both laughing)
MES: (in fiendish voice) Let's get down to business, shall we?
JNM: Down to business, yes, we were talking about...
MES: My latest Broadway show.
JNM: Totale and his dancers. We were talking about...(forgetting)...about writing. How you considered yourself more of a singer/noisemaker than a poet...
MES: No, um, I was saying, um, I don't see why I can't operate on both levels. That keeps it from being routine for me, you see. I was trying to explain it to a boy the other day...we did an interview. [I think he's referring to my ex-roommate Adam Parfrey, who also did an interview with him at this time that, as far as I know, never came out either.] The comparison I made was, like, levels and using forms...to get over what you actually want to say. Using loads of things, you know.
JNM: Instead of just using words alone?
MES: Yeah, right, I'd find it really boring to be like...Bruce Springsteen, you know, you can see in his writing, he's so closeted by having to be a "good writer", you know. Dylan is the same as well. It just becomes rubbish after a while. The nearest I could compare it to is...Colin Wilson, the writer. You ever heard of him?
JNM: (surprised) Colin Wilson? Wow.
MES: Yeah, that's the nearest thing...if you know what Wilson does, 'cause that's what he does do in a way...like he'll write a science fiction book, but it's not really about science fiction...
JNM: Or maybe it'll start as a science fiction book and turn into something else.
MES: Yeah! Yeah, which I think is amazing. Or he'll write a detective novel and tell you who the murderer is on the second page, you know, and then just go off to describe his own theories all the way through the book (chuckling) which I think is really...it's very similar really to what the Fall do. You know? Beacuse we also play pretty trashy music, in a way, so that's good. See, that's another level I want, know what I mean?
JNM: Trashy, not in a derogatory sense, though.
MES: No, of course not! (laughing) In an emphatic sense!
JNM: "Totally Wired"...I was wondering if you got that phrase from Californians. It's like something you'd hear a surfer say.
MES: Really? Really? Wow. Great. (laughing)
JNM: "Totally" is a pretty big word in Santa Cruz, where I grew up.
MES: "Totally" is a very big word in Manchester. "Bloody totally" this, "totally" that, you know. "He was totally wrong about it all"...
JNM: In California you have to draw it out more. (Demonstrating) "To-o-o-o-dullyyyyy".
MES: (giggling) Californians. (goofy nasal voice) Yes, I've been hanging out with them for years now.
JNM: I had no idea. I thought...maybe...the last tour, you met some beach punks or something.
MES: It's good stuff. I'll use it! Ha ha ha... "I became disillusioned with the surf scene. I walked off...over the sunrise."
JNM: Couldn't get a decent tan?
MES: (still laughing) Yeah...I was untannable.
JNM: The lineup of the Fall seems to have changed a lot over the years. Are there a lot of disagreements in the band or do people just come and go as they please? (Silence) Do people not fit in with your plans, or...
MES: Yeah, yeah, they feel that, usually. They feel that they don't want to be part of those plans. It's quite hard, you know. I imagine it's quite hard sort of...working with me, you know. Working for me. That's the good thing now, I mean, most of the band now are just genuinely into it. They were into it before they joined.
JNM: And Karl being back in the band...
MES: That's just a temporary move. [Turned out not to be, in fact; Karl Burns remained in the Fall lineup for several years after this tour.]
JNM: Because you weren't able to get Paul [Hanley] to come to America?
MES: Working permits. Too young. It wasn't the Americans, it was the British...if you go abroad to work, you gotta report to a police station before you go, and when you come back, in Britain. And we just weren't prepared to do that, because it'd mean we'd have to go there and reveal all our business to the authorities. I mean, that's why things like that are there, you know? We could have got him over, legally. It would be easy. But it's just, uh, a very secretive operation, you know, I don't want to, sort of...(trails off enigmatically)
JNM: So he's still the Fall's "official" drummer.
MES: Yeah. But it's good to have Karl there. It's always good to have somebody ther who's not completely...Fall-orientated. That's something I've always worked on, like, that's why I have Kay work with us a lot, Kay the manager. She's very good 'cause she's got, like a totally different attitude to music and everything. She sings sometimes and does write the odd number now and again. Like she wrote "Muzorewi's Daughter". So I think it's good to get...and Karl's now like into sort of "new music" in his own group...he plays guitar for the Future Primitives.
JNM: "The Future Primitives"?
MES: Yeah, it's this Manchester group, yeah. They're very sort of "post-nuclear".
JNM: So they dress in rags and glow in the dark?
MES: Ha ha ha! (Big guffaw)
JNM: There's a band in San Francisco called the Longshoremen who dress as cavemen and play sort of..."inept jazz".
MES: (Laughing) They sound funny! "Inept jazz" would be great!
JNM: So I sort of asked you this question at the start, but what was it that led you to become a singer in a band instead of, say, writing books? Was it just that that was what was happening at the time...
MES: Yeah, and I was very into music. Very into my form of music, which I thought wasn't being said, you know. Still don't think it is. It's very quest-like. Sometimes I feel like..."stuff it", you know? But then I think, "God, there's nobody else around!" The main thing is...why, as opposed to writing...in England that's just impossible, you know. There's two things that people...or, that young men can do to get out of the class system. One is getting into football, and one is to join a group!
JNM: So you opted for a group instead of football.
MES: (Laughs) Of course, ha ha ha. No, I mean it wasn't planned as that, but I find it amazing that people ask me that 'cause to be a writer is just impossible! There's no way I could take a book to a publisher in England, you know. If I left school at 16, there's no way. And I'm also into it...I mean, music's changed since I started the Fall. When I started the Fall, music wasn't available, really, it wasn't on TV and that, know what I mean? Now in Britain you can turn the TV on and see a new wave band for probably about 5 or 10 minutes. And there's always, like, advertisements for record collections, you know, and things like that. I mean, you can always see Blondie on TV once a day, you understand what I mean? But four years ago you were lucky if you saw fuckin' George Harrison. It's changed very quickly, new wave did that in Britain, got everybody and his bloody uncle started makin' records, you know? (Laughs)
JNM: It seems like every friend of mine who's been to England says that the trappings of music, more even than music itself, the trappings of it seem to rule people's lives...the badges, the right clothes, picking up the music papers every week, it takes precedence over everything else...far more than you ever see in America.
MES: Yeah. This is what I like about America. it's really great to have...like...Mexican guys coming up to me and saying "I'm really into your stuff", you know? Or like a guy says, "sorry I couldn't make it last night, I was playing baseball!" So it's sort of fantastic that in America, people from all walks of life are into the Fall. Whereas we do do that in England, but most bands in England have, like what you say, these hordes of people who live that way. It's horrible. No matter what group it is, you know? I mean, Joy Division filled that need so well, of the people that went to college, have short hair, have posters of him when he's dead, just like Jimi Hendrix except with different clothes, you know. (Pause) A romantic...sentimental...maudlin scene. See, I don't talk or hang around with those people at all, I live at the opposite end of town from Factory Records. I don't know anybody who's in a band, you know. It's great. Like, the last club I went to in Manchester before we went to Europe was about two months ago, to see Snakefinger from the Residents. I went out for the first time in six months to a gig in Manchester, apart from when we've played there. It was just so sad, you know, the audience...there was all these bands like the Buzzcocks and the Passage, all standing about, just waiting to be noticed. I felt like hiding behind posts all night!
JNM: Something I always try to ask bands...I don't know why interviewers don't ask this more often...is, does your music support itself financially? Are you able to...
MES: Eat?
JNM: Yes, exactly!
MES: We're one of the few independent bands in Britain who do.
JNM: None of you have to have day jobs, then?
MES: Yeah, I mean...it can be done. But a lot of that has to do with Kay. Kay is like a financial wizard in a way. You see, you gotta remember we are all a pure working class band, so I mean, we're not used to a lot of money. A lot of bands fuck up because they're given like 40 grand, so they put themselves on, like 300 dollars a week, and after a few months the record label can do what they want with them! (Laughs) Or you get independent bands who wanna be like big bands and make a lot of money...and they never make any money! I mean...we're losing on this tour, but me and Kay kept the Fall running from the beginning of '78, you know...on just nothing, no money at all. We were turning down money from record companies, but I mean, like...me and Kay at first were living on like...$18 a week. We started being able to eat just shortly after Witch Trials was released...even though we haven't gotten any royalties off that! (Laughs) I mean a lot of it is...we play a lot, you know? I hate the sort of snobbish attitude of the British underground scene where you get all these new bands saying, "oh yeah, we don't really want to play a lot". They think they're being like the Fall, but the Fall didn't play a lot because we couldn't get any gigs! Simple as that. we're like the Cars, we'll play for anybody, you know what I mean? We never paid to play, though, that was our motto from the beginning. I'm surprised how many bands think it's gonna be worth it to play with a big band, you know? And lose 200 pounds.
JNM: To get 5% or something? Yeah, I know a lot of bands who've done just that.
MES: Every band in America.
JNM: (Looking out the window) Look, there's a "new wave" person. (Pause) No, actually it's not.
MES: He's quite good, actually. Got a lot of style.
JNM: He looks like he's not trying to be cool, which is good.
MES: Looks like a member of the Panther Burns. (Laughs)
JNM: Oh yeah, I've heard of them. Did you play with them?
MES: No, but we met them in Memphis.
JNM: You mentioned Memphis before. Did you like it there?
MES: (excited) It's great! I mean, a lot of places that are supposedly good, like New Orleans...they're really bad places.
JNM: But Memphis was good?
MES: Yeah! I usually find I'm very contrarian. I rather like places that are completely up to date or completely out of date.
JNM: The ones in between...
MES: Are really bad news! Yeah!
JNM: So are you happy with Rough Trade? I suppose that's a relative question.
MES: There seems to be a real obsession with record labels. That's one thing in England, people are obsessed with what label you're on. To me it's completely unimportant. Rough Trade have their faults, you know, like any record label.
JNM: But are you able to do what you want to do?
MES: Oh yeah, we insist. I mean that's the irony about independent labels...I'm not a champion of independent labels; people misinterpret me as one. It's the best of a bad bottle. I mean, Rough Trade did try and influence us at first, but we put our foot down straightaway. There's no way they're gonna be an independent label and have control, you know...the nerve of the people! They have said it, like "this track isn't very good, you should go and do it again", and we say, "it's none of your business", you know?
JNM: Something I've noticed about the Fall is that there seems to be reoccuring theme of...an interest in mysticicsm, or the supernatural...for instance, i'm thinking of "Psykick Dancehall"...
MES: You mean, sort of dark...like "Spectre vs. Rector" and that?
JNM: "Psykick Dancehall" doesn't seem dark to me, it's almost...happy...about the idea of your vibrations living on...oh God, I don't want to sound like an old hippe here, but the whole notion of a life after death where your energy can be perceived as music...I liked that.
MES: Yeah, that's what the song was saying, really. That was written at a time when we were in a really bad state, financially and everything. So I wrote this song about this dancehall, which does sort of exist in Prestwich...or doesn't anymore...they were going to have a disco with no music. Just old psychics, you know, like 50-year-old women.
JNM: Just sort of, like, projecting, huh?
MES: I mean, it was also saying that, it doesn't matter if the Fall are never going to be very big in London and don't think that I feel a bit of a failure because...my soul and personality will outlive anything I ever did on a record, I know that. It'll change more things. Me meeting you, hopefully, will have as much effect on you as the records. I've always had in me this very sort of Puritan northern Englishman in me that finds records sort of...childish. I mean when people go "why don't you produce this" or "when is this album coming out" and I just think, "I don't fuckin' know!" We do in-store appearances in America, and I get really embarrassed! (Laughs)
JNM: (Back to the "psykick" question) So do you believe in these sort of...occult ideas? Things you can't see that are following you around, that are responsible for things you can't explain?
MES: Yeah, I believe in all those things...I don't think about them much. I'm not an "enthusiast" for that sort of thing. I went through aphase in my teens where I read all the books on the occult. The only reason I was into it is that it's fascinating, really. But you can't really go around talking about it, or people will just come out with facts, books and lists..."oh yeah, Crowley, blah blah blah..." all these boring farts, you know. I believe that things leave vibrations, you know. America's good for that, you go to all the Civil war places where they had the battles...the atmosphere is incredible. You can really reach out and feel it.
JNM: It's just something that's there.
MES: Like cats, you know cats are always looking at things you can't see at all. When we started the Fall in Manchester, Martin Bramah, who's now in the Blue Orchids and all that, he was very heavily into it and I used to avoid it...he used to do Tarot readings and all that...which I still do. But once you get a hold of heavy drugs and start getting into all that stuff it gets really insane. It just gets silly. I'm more interested in stuff like where Philip K. Dick is going. 'Cause it's real, you know? About time and stuff like that, the way writings can prophesize things. Like I've found a lot of my writing is actual prophecy. It's really strange. (Laughs) Like some of Totale's outrageous claims...
JNM: So you have Totale to say all the things you wouldn't dare say yourself?
MES: (Laughs) Yeah.