Mark E. Smith interviewed by J Neo Marvin
(Part 2, in which our protagonist mocks the anti-rockist post-punkers, rhapsodizes over Santa Fe, low riders, the Northern soul scene and Dexy's Midnight Runners, and reveals the hidden link between petty gossip and British socialism.)
OUR INTERVIEW CONTINUES....
J NEO MARVIN: So is the "Hip Priest" another one of those figureheads that speak for you?
MARK E. SMITH: It could well be, yeah. That gets a bit personal at times. Maybe a bit too personal...
JNM: You want to make it less personal?
MES: I was thinking about writing a song called..."I Invented The Phrase 'R & R'". (Laughs.) About how everybody plagiarized that from me. Hip Priest could say something like that.
JNM: "Rest and recreation"?
MES: (Chuckles.) That could be the punchline to the song. (Pause.) "Reading and writing."(More laughing.)
JNM: The phrase "R & R", that brings up something else. I've noticed lately in the British press there's a tendency for both bands and journalists to kind of look down their noses at "rock and roll", or to say they're somehow beyond it. What's your take on this supposed "anti-rock" attitude that seems so prevalent over there these days? (Note: this was a big meme going around in the early-80s post-punk era, touted largely by bands who employed drums and electric guitars just like everybody else, not unlike the "post-rock" scene in the mid-90s.)
MES: (Laughs loudly) It's totally meaningless, you know? The Subway Sect, of course, said that, about '76. It's the Subway Sect that started that one. Now all the new British bands have started saying this, but if you listen to their material, it's the straightest stuff I ever heard in my life, you know? (Laughing.) It's not even as good as rock and roll, know what I mean? You can't destroy structures like that just by bringing in the word "anti". It's just stupid! But you're talking about the "rockist" thing, aren't you? "Anti-rockist" it's called in England, perpetrated by these Liverpool bands who want their name in the papers every week! I find it very suspicious.
JNM: Who started using that word anyway? It really is ridiculous.
MES: Someone in the New Musical Express probably! What a joke! (Both laugh.) A magazine that is totally run by advertisements for..."rock and roll" albums. I mean, the pure eseence of rock and roll, I always thought, was to be a completely non-musical form of music. Rock and roll is surely not a "music" form. I hate it when people say "this was produced badly" or "I can't hear this" or "I don't understand this"...you know, my attitude is, well, if you want poetry, go read a poet, or if you want notes, go listen to Beethoven, 'cause he did it the best. (Laughs.) It's true.
(Pause in tape.)
MES: We went to Santa Fe, that was incredible. We were the first band from outside for three years. Amazing. It was a real Fall scene: 500 people who hadn't even heard of the Sex Pistols yet.
JNM: So they just walked into this 'cause it's a band coming to town.
MES: And they were really into it. Danced to every number.
JNM: (Excited) Hey!
MES: They danced to "Hip Priest"! Couldn't believe it. I really love places like that, you know. Those are the places. That's what I was trying to do with Slates in England, you know, get across to people who have no music. People who either haven't been told about the music trappings and the rubbish that surrounds it or people who do know it and don't like it. That's why it was a ten-inch, neither single nor album. It's very conceptual, do you understand what I'm saying? It's like, Slates was an attempt to get over to, like, these thousands of working class people, or middle class people, whatever, in England, who don't listen to records anymore, who don't buy records anymore...I'd be one of them if I wan't in a group, I know that.
JNM: So the idea is they'd see something unusual and cheap and pick up on it?
MES: Yeah, but also...the lettering says to these people, "look, I know what you mean", I'm sayin' that.
JNM: Like "you skinny rats"?
MES: Skinny rats, yeah. In England that's like saying "you penny pinchers".
JNM: And the American edition says "Five dollars only, you skinny rats". You do have a knack for coining catch phrases. At the college radio station in my old hometown, Santa Cruz, there were three different shows named for Fall lyrics at one point. (Rebellious Jukebox, Psykick Dancehall, and Underground Medicine.)
MES: God. (Maybe thinking people were actually getting paid there) Here's me, poor, you know what I mean? (Laughing.) I should copyright all these things! You know, people have just, like, taken my phrases and used them! Cast out and you will receive, as my granddad once said to me. It's quite ironical, sort of, bacuse I don't give away my thoughts, really, that's the ironical paradox about me. I'm a very secretive person in real life. In normal life I don't tend to tell people what we're doing, you know. I've always been like that. I always hide me diaries and stuff like that. I don't know why. You see, England is ravaged with socialism, and that's one aspect of it.
JNM: "Ravaged?"
MES: Yeah, Americans don't do that so much. They respect privacy more.
JNM: America's a bigger country. You can always go off to Santa Fe or something. So you're saying people in England are nosier?
MES: Yeah, because there's less to do. I can't quite understand it. Especially the north of England, there's not much to know, so everybody else's life is interesting. Gossip is really rampant in England.
JNM: Yeah, from looking at those music papers I'd have to agree.
MES: But also, where socialism corrupts that is that people think they have the right to know everything. Understand me? You get kids at gigs, like in America after a gig kids will come to the dressing room and knock on the door and ask to come in. And if you say "yeah", which we usually do, then they're really grateful. In England, people think they have a divine right to walk into your dressing room 10 minutes after you've finished and start asking you questions about your songs and things. And I go, "haven't you got any manners?" And they sort of go, "you always say you're independent and you're against the music scene, I've got a right, you know what I mean?" And I always say, "No you haven't." It's a very sort of English thing as well, like, when I go in the bars I go in, they're like, "where have you been these last couple of days?" and I sort of go "blah-de-blah". But usually I just go "I've been away", you know. And they get really annoyed and offended. And it's only 'cause they want to know about you so they can use it against you! In the side of Manchester where I live, they just think I'm a member of a band that's never quite made it. And that suits me really good, you know? (Laughs)
JNM: Just this eccentric that hangs around?
MES: Yeah! It's good, you see, 'cause I don't go on TV or anything, so I don't get the sort of hassle...whereas if I went to the south side of town, where the student population is, and where Factory Records is...I mean it's only a distance of about 5 miles, that's how small England is, you know, but if I go to the south side of town to visit I always get recognized and all that shit.
JNM: Yeah, that's kind of similar to where I live. I'm about a 45-minute bus ride away from this part of town in a neighborhood that's mostly Mexican and Filipino (I was living in the Excelsior district, just north of Daly City, at this time), so I know what you mean about being a bit removed from the supposedly hip side of town.
MES: Really? The Mexicans fascinate me. What's it like?
JNM: Well, they're really into their cars. (Note: in the early 80s, the Mission district was still a huge center of the low rider subculture, before the police started cracking down on cruising in the neighborhood.) The low-rider scene is pretty big. They customize these vintage cars and turn them into elaborate, like, art pieces. Instead of raising them up like hot rods, they do the opposite and lower them until the metal is almost touching the ground.
MES: Wow. Like creepers. "low riders", huh?
JNM: Right, and instead of racing them around they drive incredibly slow down the main drag in these large groups. These beautiful machines just creeping down the street.
MES: Like a float!
JNM: Exactly. And they'll be blasting like, old Mary Wells songs at top volume as they go by. It's pretty cool, actually.
MES: Those are the people I want to play to, you know? And it's great, we get loads of Mexicans. And it's the same in New York, we got all these Puerto Ricans who were really into us.
JNM: That's really cool.
MES: Yeah, it was.
JNM: One of the problems with this whole, like post-punk, whatever you wanna call it...
MES: ...is it's so Anglophile and white! In Britain it's the same.
JNM: It's amazing how racist some of these kids can be without even knowing it. They're imitating skinheads, or what they think skinheads are about.
MES: In England it's a working class movement. Like the skinheads in the North are just totally into the Jamaican culture. I've had people ask me so much about Nazi skinheads, but it's only in London that that happens, you know? Anywhere else in Britain, if a skinhead walked into a bar with a swastika on, he'd just get thrown out, you know. Because I mean...the war, you know?
JNM: They still remember.
MES: RIGHT. Yeah, Nazis...any type of racism or fascism or anti-trade-unionism is like (makes growling noise) to anybody, you know? Conservative and socialist alike. It's just like poison. While in London it's sort of "daring" to flirt with it, you know what I mean? But where I come from there's a big scene called the Northern Soul scene, which is a lot of kids...the kids I'm trying to get to on Slates. They hate punk rock, they hate, you know, all those middle class art college groups. And they're just into, like, Tamla. I mean, they're very young, they're only 18, 19...they're into Tamla, but mainly "Northern soul", which is , like, soul, played very badly by obscure American artists. It's really good stuff, you know. And the Northern Soul scene was four years ahead of the new wave scene; they were into drugs years before anybody else. But because they were like, engineers and people like that, it just wasn't hip. That's why I'm into Dexy's Midnight Runners a lot. Even though they're from the Midlands, they're the only band I think who really represent that scene. It's sickening, you go to Rough Trade now and all the bands, the London bands are all getting into Tamla Motown. They're just getting inot it now, you know? I mean, people in the North are brought up on that from 12 or 13, you know. And you get all these art college guys about 24 going "We're going funk! We're going soul!" These guys who've been playing like, fuckin' Henry Cow type material and think they've discovered what nobody else knew! I mean, Tamla have sold millions of records to the working classes of the world! (Laughing.)
JNM: Right. I grew up on that stuff. It was all over the radio. Kind of hard to miss.
MES: Right! I mean, that's one of the reasons I got into the new wave...for a change from the eternal grind of soul! And now you go into Rough Trade and they're trying to say to the Fall, "Oh, you're not funky enough!" It's so condescending. Middle classes always, like, take working class culture. I mean, older people I know...like, Kay's about 32 and...when the Teddy Boys happened in Britain in 1957 and rock and roll came along, all the middle class were into trad jazz. And the Teddy Boys were into Eddie Cochran, the working class were into Gene Vincent and all that. And like, the students were still wearing silly little beards and duffle coats and listening to Acker Bilk and these fucking tripey clarinet duos and all this shite, you know? Dixieland, watered down, played by Brits!!! And looking down on rock and roll! And then Pink Floyd and all that, they finally caught up with it 10 years later and that's why you had 1967. I firmly believe that man! (Pauses for breath.) Should we wrap it up, then?
JNM: Yeah, there's enough here. Thanks for your time.