Over time we aim to collect articles on the Fall live and other relevant pieces

1977

Review in Sounds (December)

1978

Danny Bakers Zig Zag Interview (February)

Malcolm Heyhoe Interview NME (March)

---

Bingo Masters Press Release (June)

---

1980

Printed Noises Interview

 THE FALL: Information

The Fall are Mark E Smith (vocals, interview), Craig Scanlon (guitar, interview), Marc Riley (guitar, electric piano), Steve Hanley (bass), Mike Leigh (ex-drums), Kay Carroll (management, interview). The Fall have 4 singles and 2 lps out, plus 2 tracks on the Virgin Electric Circus lp. The Fall have a lot to say, so I won't waste space trying to say it for them....

THE FALL: Introduction

You have heard of course of those tiny fish in the rivers of Brazil that attack the unwary swimmer by thousands and with swift little nibbles clean him up in a few minutes, leaving only an immaculate skeleton?'. Well, that's what the organisation is.' Do you want a good clean life? Like everybody else?' You say yes, of course. How can one say no? OK-You'll be cleaned up. Here's a job, a family and organised leisure.' And the little teeth attack the flesh, right down to the bone. But I am unjust.I shouldn't say their organisation. It is ours, after all. It's a question of which will clean up the other.' (Albert Camus, The Fall)

THE FALL: Interview

PN: Why are you in music rather than anything else?

MES: It's like having your own business. I didn't join the band as another career, I mean if I'd have wanted a job, I'd have got a job. This is what people don't differentiate with The Fall. A lot of bands that are going around now are doing jobs, and as far as I'm concerned I'm not doing a job.

PN: What did you think of the music industry before you started?

MES: I thought it was pretty ridiculous, and I thought I'd never touch on it. I thought I'd just have a laugh for a while. As it is, I'm still there, so I'm using that power to still attack it.

PN: Has having records out and doing tours changed your opinion of it?

MES: I've found out a lot about it and a lot of it is very shocking. Actually I thought it was a bigger load of shit than it was, but in a lot of ways I've been shocked as well.....little details like support bands pay to go on tour with big bands, things like that.

PN: Are there any other ways you're unhappy about the music industry?

MES: A lot of bands are continually in debt. One thing I started The Fall out to do in that we would never pay to play. In the early days we used to turn a lot of gigs down from people who'd say "Come and play with us, we really want you to play with us, but we can only give you a tenner...." and things like that.We always turned that sort of thing down, because that sort of thing is stamping out creativity.

KC: It's `cause the musicians accept it as well... .

MES: Yes, that's what I'm saying It's very easy to say it's everybody else's fault, that the record companies are bastard, the agents are bastards. That is the case, but it's their job like, and the musicians go along with it. The new wave sold out a sight quicker than any other fucking wave. In my personal opinion they copped out a lot faster than a lot of people do in a lot of other arts and a lot of other musical waves. There's a lot of bands who, when they're asked to go on television, say yes straight away, when there were a lot of bands say ten years ago who I doubt would have done it.

PN: Have you been asked?

MES: Yes, well we have been on tv, but I wouldn't sell my soul to go on tv, which is what a lot of other bands do. A lot of bands sell their soul to go on John Peel sessions, which is another thing you may not know. You don't get on a John Peel session by being asked most of the time. The Fall are one of the few bands who have been on a John Peel session who have been asked to go on.

PN: How do you think environment affect people? A lot of people think tv has a great effect on people.

MES: There again you can only switch it off, I know it's a cliche but it's true. I lived without tv for a year, it didn't bother me, People need television, people need cars. A lot of the reason people work on an industrial estate is to buy cars and houses and in my estimation they deserve everything they they fucking get. It's self-perpetuating you know, the whole system is self-perpetuating. The more money you get the more money you want.

PN: How do you stay out of it then?

MES: I just keep out of it. You can live by your own rules, that's what I try to do. You've got to pick our own culture, pick your own way of life. If you don't recognize systems they don't (work? Unreadable).

PN: Craig, how do you go about writing songs?

CS: We have this team like Lennon and McCartney, me and Marc Riley. We usually get together and write the music, or maybe Mark's got an idea on his guitar and we build on that, or take away from it.....All the songs on Dragnet have got tunes, but not all of them are intentional. I have a little piece, Marc'll have a little piece, we'll put them together and they'll just fit. It's a big coincidence, all the music fitting together.It wasn't made that way.

PN: Are you happy with the production on the lp?

CS;Yes,everyone's kind of against the sound on the album for some reason, it's because of their conditioning.

KC: You've got people who are new wave musicians, who are saying "break down the system", who get a production manager and spend ú50,000 on a record. It's total hypocrisy. What happened with Dragnet was the band wanted do something, and the guy who produced it liked the band. For people who are getting into it it's great, but it's not meant for the consumer.

PN: A lot of your songs are about The Fall and the relationship between yourselves and the music industry...

MES: Yes,it's just what influences come up. Dragnet has, if there's anything wrong with it, a balance towards songs about the band. It's very introspective. That's why there's things like Flat of Angles, Spectre vs Rector. Flat of Angles I like because it's an objective, story song. I only write a song like that once in a while.It's difficult to be objective. A lot of Flat of Angles isn't objective, a lot of Bingo wasn't objective. I go off at different bearings. I get really psychotic in life, bring out loads of songs about the music business but who wants to know? It's a bad thing but I think it should be told. Printhead is like that - a lot of people don't realise about print, and what the papers do. A lot of bands live by the papers, y'now they get stomach upsets in the morning. I went through it for a short while but I think it's very funny. I've met loads of people who were crying their eyes out because they'd jut had a bad review from someone that's just learned to write. In my mind it's just pathetic. They get away with loads of things because they think journalism is a subculture,which it isn't. I've read reviews of our gigs which are just reiterations of what I, or somebody else has said. It's disgusting that people can get L100 a week for doing that. The Fall don't get many bad reviews, we've noticed, because a lot of journalists have sussed we'd know exactly what they were up to. I could tell you so many journalists who've copped out on The Fall, they've just fucking broken. They've come down to do something very good or very bad on us, we've pushed `em to do it, and in the end they couldn't.

KC: All you've got do is write the facts as they are, that's why fanzines were so good, and that's why the music papers ripped off all the best fanzine writers.

PN: What do you think of being identified as the band who are going to take rock into the 80s?

MES: I think that's a good thing, but I don't think it's possible. I think our spirit has existed for 50 years - you always get the 2 per cent who don't take the shit. I can't say I like all rock 'n' roll, I like all reggae. Personally I can see the good bit is about 2 per cent. I look at The Fall a lot in that way as well - like the new wave movement was a good thing, the roots movement was a good thing, but when it flowered there was only 10 per cent of it that was any good in my estimation - obviously other people think differently because they buy other stuff. There's a lot of bands out now that derive a lot from The Fall. It does annoy me in some ways, `cause that's not what it's about at all.

KC: Saying "The Fall into the 80's" is a cop out. It's like saying "Don't worry kids, it's gonna be alright. We can see the future.You've got a band here who are gonna do it for you" - it's all crap. I mean how can you be a band of the future? It's ridiculous.

CS: It's really lazy as well.

MES: Journalists are always wrong anyway - they never gave Iggy Pop any good reviews in the 60's, but you can't read a paper nowadays without reading how Iggy was oppresses in the 60's. Charles Shaar Murray and Nick Kent and all these people who were around then then never wrote about Iggy Pop or anybody else who was in the vanguard of the new wave, but now people like Nick Kent are writing "This guy, who was spat upon by the music papers - i.e. ME", but they don't fucking say that do they? Anne Nightingale's like that as well - they're cowboys. And people put them in positions of authority.. A lot of bad reviews I take as a personal insult - that some jerk who reviews us doesn't understand us.

PN: What sort of bands do you see as having the same sort of spirit as you do? You've been compared to PiL and Joy Division.

MES: I feel a bond with PiL. PiL are doing a lot of what we've always wanted to do. They've got the power as well. PiL's stuff is really good stuff in my estimation - turning it all round, which is about time.That's what I mean about having your own style. Can were a perfect pop/rock 'n' roll band in my estimation. A lot of people don't see Can as rock 'n' roll, or PiL as rock 'n' roll, but I do, because it's music you'd never get on the television. There's something out that your parents would not sit through. They're all cliches I know, but a lot of letters we get from kids say "my mum and dad will not allow this in the room!" You get people saying "That guy cannot sing", "He's horrible" or "Listen to the production". It's not just the older generation I'm on about, it goes all the way fucking down. You have to sit down and get into the primal part of it, and they don't want to do it. It's the old Outsiders theory - the rough eventually gets absorbed into the whole. The Clash are just the Rolling Stones of the 80's, it's as simple as that. Good luck to them, I say. Saying they're doing anything special in wrong. I'm into a lot of oddball stuff that irritates people. I'm into bad sounds, I'm a bit tone deaf. I think where a lot of our strength lies is I don't get into a lot of it anyway.

CS: I used to listen to a lot of music, I've stopped doing it now, since joining The Fall. I can't listen to these bands now because if I listen to these records that are very well produced, I can't relate to it anymore. As far as I'm concerned The Fall is number one. It's not being bigheaded, it's being objective. I think "What are they doing? Nothing. What are they saying? Nothing."

MES: The thing is you cannot contrive spontaneity - this is where experimental bands fall flat on their backs in my estimation.You said do you see yourselves with Joy Division?. We feel offended by being compared to Joy Division, not because we hate Joy Division's guts or anything, but because we recognise ourselves as something different altogether. We know nothing about music but we don't make an ego trip out of it like other bands do. We are a very retrogressive band in a lot of ways. I believe that you can't sit down and say "This record is going to be really weird, nothing else is ever going to sound like this", `cause that's crap. The Pop Group are the greatest example of that. The Pop Group's stuff is good, but they tried so hard to be different, they just fell flat on their faces, and innovators don't do that. When you dissect the Pistols they were a sub-Who heavy metal band. It came out beautiful because it was unconscious. That's why with our stuff, I don't want to make it faultless like, `cause then you've just blown it. On the last tour I could see a lot of things getting synchronised which is something we've got to come to terms with. We could be a really good rock band, I mean The Fall could have been a really good rock band two years ago. If we'd got our shit together we could have been a top 50 band like The Ruts. There's bits where I'm trying to catch the band out, where I'm fighting against the band for them to do something off the wall `cause it's more interesting to me.

MES: Also you get things like Music Scene,which in very personal, in a way it's very self-indulgent, but also it says a lot, because it's so personal. People just take anything from it - it's amazing, the interpretations that Music Scene has had. In fact it is getting across in a weird sort of way. That's what I'm saying, you must never contrive it, a lot of things get across you never thought were getting across. Psycho Mafia is the classic one for that, I mean the interpretations of Psycho Mafia are amazing. A lot of what kids have come up to me and said "This is what I think Psycho Mafia is about", I think "Fucking hell, I never even thought of that one!", and that is just amazing.

PN: Isn't that inviting things that aren't there?

MES: Yes, but who says they aren't there? You're saying I sit down and write things like "This is bad", which is what was wrong with the new wave. That's almost a preaching point of view, that's not music, that's not art to me. You look at pop hits right - if you look at the lyrics down on paper they're crap, if you look at the chords down on paper a moron could play `em, right? But there's something there that gives it........This is what music should be moving back to in a lot of ways. PiL do that - there's a bit on Memories where you get a sort of nostalgic feeling with a surge of anger as well. I mean that is nothing contrived, which is what we're against. When groups start believing their own press they start to flounder - trying to re-create that or create it.

KC: If Mark gave you all the lyrics and told you all the stories, the five of us here would still interpret it differently. There's no way you're going to get a basic interpretation, so what's the point of trying? Why do people have to know why that person is doing that thing? Is it so that that person can get on with living his life? They're frightened of "Oh, it might be that or it might not be that..". That's what human beings are frightened of - they're frightened of being themselves. They want a guide,they want a system to tell them how to behave. Fall music doesn't do that - it just throws it up, and it's whatever you want to see in it.

PN: What about `Taxi for Mr Nelson'? That doesn't suggest anything to me.

MES: You must have been in a pub when someone calls "Taxi for so-and-so"?, well ..

CS: That's all it is.

MES: Jukebox, doesn't it connect? It's a play on words, like The Fall. Well in any case it doesn't matter, `cause it really happened. I'm not going to change it to make it easier for someone to relate to.

CS: Be happy in your ignorance.

PN: But when people hear that, it's a striking line....

MES: Well then, it's scored one point already if it's a striking line.

CS: It's a striking line for you, don't worry how someone else interprets it, it depends on what you think.

KC: What do you want? Do you want someone to write a book., and then write another book to tell you what it's about?

PN: I don't want everything explained, it's just that people might be put off by the fact that they can't approach it, it's too obscure....

MES: Well they must be pretty fucking gone then, mustn't they? You're being an intellectual, treating me like an entertainer, saying "Look boy I understand everything you're trying to say, but look, the proles don't." Well it's about time they fucking did - I'm a prole, right? Nobody told me what to do, and I'm not telling them what to do. People like that aren't worth having around anyway.

PN: You're saying think for yourselves. I could just write "Think for yourselves" for this article.

KC: If you wanted to, yes.

PN: But people aren't going to have anything to think about.

KC: I'm only talking to you, I don't care about other people.

PN: But surely you care about other people enough....

KC: Give a shit? No, where did you get that idea from? You haven't got to go through this for anyone else but yourself.

PN: But surely the whole point of putting out a record in to make contact with people?

CS: No,maybe that's why The Clash release a record, that's why they're trash.

PN: Then why do you make several thousand records instead of just one?

KC: Because we need the money to put out others. `S mad, isn't it?

PN: Yeah.

KC: Me personally, I couldn't fit into any other system than this, because I'm hooked onto it and I dig it, so we make records to stay in the system.

MES: But that's because we've got the attitude that a record should be a mark, a statement, they should be everything, an encapsulation of life, and the only way you're going to get that is if you're totally into it. You're not going to get it by allowing for people - y'know, "Cut this bit out because people won't understand it" or "Leave this bit out because it's too obvious", then you've blown it, you're not thinking about what you're doing, you're thinking about what people will think, which is usually the great detriment of creativity. We notice people buying our album and saying "I like a quarter of it but the rest of it is shit". But that quarter is more than they'll get from anything else. It's better to have an erratic good thing than a mediocre thing that people can relate to on every level.

PN: What would you say was success in terms of the group?

MES: I think I'm already successful, I think I have been for a while, but obviously you've got to push it a bit more - use your success instead of lying back on it. We've got to make it better, I'm not saying there are no mistakes in it. There are compromises in some of the stuff we've done, but only the band can know that. We're not successful record-....[illegible]...we want to get out, though it takes time. Because we're with an independent, we have to wait three months for stuff to come out, which means all our stuff is immediately dated, but it's worth it. A lot of groups, when the record comes out it's the first time they have seen the cover, or it's the first time they've, heard it because they just record it and give it to a producer...

PN: In reviews of The Fall, the word that comes up most is arrogant.Do you agree with the description?

MES: Yeah,being arrogant is just the same as being your own judge, if you know what you are there's no need to worry about it. Arrogance in a very necessary thing, because musicians are still treated as an offshoot of the jester/entertainer thing,which is a bad thing. In some ways it's not progressed since the 30's, y'know "Thank you Ladies and Gentlemen, it's very nice to be here tonight...", and if you look at a lot of new wave bands they do exactly the same thing, "It's very nice to be here tonight. This in our first single, it's called destroy everything...I hate all you bastards, thank you you're really great here.." You know it's still showbiz, it's a waste of time. We've never been consciously arrogant, I can honestly say that. A lot of that comes from playing with bigger bands - we've never gone on thinking we were better than them, we've just known that what we were saying was more heartfelt than what they were saying, and that came across as arrogance.

CS: The press invented it, y'know you're arrogant if you don't say "Hello Oldham" or whatever.

MES: Or if you say "You're a bunch of fucking twats, which is true sometimes, a lot of the audiences we get are a bunch of morons. We've been playing halls on this latest tour where there have been 200 people, and only 50 or 60 of them had heard The Fall before. But those 50 or 60 were calling out all the old numbers, which we didn't want to do, so we came down on our own fans really, which seems arrogant an nasty but it's true that if those people come to see The Fall they've got to take what we give them. Otherwise we're just giving them what they want to believe, and it's a lie. When we played Blackpool, there were only 10 people there who knew who the Fall were, there were about 100 punks and about 300 disco idiots stood at the back. We came on and the 10 kids at the front were sort of going "We're into the Fall and you're not", and that sort of thing, and were saying "Play, this, play that", and we were saying "Fuck off, you've no right to say what we do - You've come to see us, if you don't like us then go home and get your money back. You're supposed to be into The Fall, not "We want Frightened, we want...", you've got to keep pushing it. You always hurt the one you love, it's a shame but you've got to keep pushing it or you just stagnate. Obviously it's gonna go down in the end because when people walk 10,000 miles to see us and we go on and say "We're not going to do that,because we hate doing that", those people will never come again, which is just life.

PN: On what basis should your relationship with an audience be?

KC: We expect nothing from our audience, and in the same vein they, if they are a Fall audience, should not expect anything from us. It's a matter of "I want to go there, I want to hear it, I want to go home", and that's all it should be about. There's too many people in audiences that just want escape, they want people up there to live out their fantasies and you just can't give it `em.

MES: Just because 10 people out of 50 like you, it doesn't mean you've got to be patronizing to those 10.

THE FALL: Judgement `The prosecutor, paused again to wipe the sweat off his face. He then explained his duty was a painful one, but he would do it without flinching. "This man has, I repeat, no place in a community whose basic principles he flouts without compunction. Nor, heartless as he is, has he any claim to mercy......I am following not only the dictates of my conscience and a sacred obligation, but also those of the natural and righteous indignation I feel at the sight of a criminal devoid of the least spark of human feeling. (Albert Camus, The Outsider).

 

Ian Penman Interview 5th January

1981

Mark E. Smith interviewed by J Neo Marvin 1981

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?

(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.)

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.

---

1983

"Who's been sleeping in my brain? Interviews post punk" (February)

Review of "Perverted by Language Bis"

---

1986

Mark E. Smith Interview from BravEar Vol. 3 Issue 5 (1986) by Michael Lang

First the myth (usually passed off as atmosphere): some streets were flooded it was raining so hard. My car was getting pushed around until I found the club. A word or two, and I was in a place called The Nut House, drinking lots of beer with Mark E. Smith.

One of his remarks: "There isn't a lot you can write about rock music. I've never thought there was." This may be true, especially if you consider the experiential aspect of rock music, the emotion and the physicality.....subsequently, the general disregard for introspection and intellect. Yet it is Smith himself who pushes at the limit of rock music, generating unusual forms for that context, forms resembling the written world of fiction and essay. Smith's comment reveals not so much the inadequacy of rock writing as our inadequate concept of the Fall. However rock The Fall may sound, the most valuable approach to their music cannot come from rock criticism or history. Smith's output problematizes categorical distinctions in the same way Iggy twisted, knotted and balled sexual relations. Either you drug/dance yourself to the Fall (in which case Smith would be talking to himself), or you think about why there isn't a lot to write about rock music.

Mark Smith, clarity Michael Lang:

MS: I was in the dark generation. That strange sort of age group in Britain. I was thinking about this the other day. We are dispossessed, the middle age group. I'm 28. The group that wasn't completely musicfied, it's now 8 and 9 year olds who are the main pop buyers, but when I was a kid we didn't get a record player in my house until I was 14. My father wouldn't have a record player in the house; it just wasn't a necessity. There were no pop shows. Radio One only started in '68 when I was 12 or 13. What I remember...I remember the 60's because my father used to make me work with him when I was about 11 on summer holidays. Every kid had 2 months holiday, and I'd be sweeping up after my father, which was great 'cause he had a lot of apprentices in this big plumbing shop. All of these apprentices would be listening to The Kinks and The Move, always playing the radio full blast. And I'd only hear it downstairs (cups his ears). When I got my first record player, I remember the thing that was happening was T-Rex. In school before that everyone was into the Beatles. I remember we used to have polls and I was the only one in my class who didn't vote for the Beatles, the Rolling Stones or the Monkees, because I didn't even know what it was. I voted for John somebody and his Playboy Bunnies just to be awkward. The weirdest name on the paper got my vote. I always hated all pop music when I was a kid. The Beatles, The Rolling...it was more of a girls thing when I was brought up. I suppose it is now. But then, the generation of mine was the one that started off the new wave, punk. The generation that rejected all the singer-songwriters, which is a strange thing. It went back to real bone-crushing guitars. In Britain, it's the generation that's going around Europe killing off foreign football fans. These guys, they're just like me see, because we were getting teenage in the 60's, when it was boom time, and we came to manhood in the fucking real bad recession and it's gotten worse since then. I was one of the last of the working class to get a really good education...all the ideals of the Labour Party fused in the 60's. It was unusual for kids like me to go to real good schools, so we had a real good education, and then we end up in the middle 70's and there's no jobs or anything. So what you've got is a Clockwork Orange situation. You've got all these pretty clever guys with nothing to do. But the kids younger than me, they're OK because they're used to it. They're a different breed altogether. They like music like the Smiths, Everything But the Girl, they don't mind that the music is...somewhat different...it's a strange thing.

BE: What about the bands that remain from the previous generation, how do you feel about them, the bands listed next to yours in, say, the New York Times?

MS: The sad thing is that things are very polarized right now. But I do see the band names next to mine in the New York Times, and the majority of them mean absolutely nothing. That's how they must look at us I suppose, not too much. The Cure and the Banshees are just nothing to us. You see a lot of Americans in London, like the ones who went to school with Brix and that, they like the Fall because they think they've got to like the Fall, they'll give you that, but they'd really like to meet Siouxsie. Whereas we used to play with the Banshees, we were always like the drips and the pullovers, and they were walking around with this regalia. We'd be tripping them up and going, "art students!," pushing them and shit. That's like real war. You've got polls in England, and you get Banshees, Fall, blahty, blahty, blahty, blah. We couldn't be more...when we were starting out we used to struggle to get concerts, so once we'd play with the Banshees, once we'd play with the Clash, and we were so different. It's a British tradition, they basically are art students. They're all art students. They come from nice families, and they put on this fucking rebellious, fucking socialist, fucking you know, con, and they all pretend they are working class and it's all real funny. I find it very hard to relate to bands as I get older...I read all this stuff, anything they said, I know what they're going through. I read an interview and I say, 'hey, can't you say anything more interesting than this.' Like in Britain now, they either talk about themselves or they talk about politics, it just depends what paper they're talking to. I was reading this book the other day, at the place I was staying in Frisco, it's got the Rolling Stone interviews from 1970 to so and so. I never read Rolling Stone, I found it completely unreadable. So I sat down and read some of these things...an interview with Jim Morrison, and they're asking him these tedious questions, of all the things you could ask Jim Morrison. And they've got this real artistic picture of him, you know like, this is not a pop magazine, this is a real serious magazine. And full of all these details about stupid little things, Morrison trying to talk to him about beer, but they guy just wouldn't have it. It's like they do Johnny Carson now, and everybody who does tries to play up to the game of it, try to turn their intellectual back to the guy. That's what you get in Britain a lot. In the pop magazine, you'll have Siouxsie--well, they do it with us as well, we're not completely guilt-free of it. Like, 'what's Brix's favorite color, what kids of clothes does she like to wear.' Siouxsie and the Banshees are like that: Siouxsie wears so and so shoes in one magazine and then in the other one it's (whispers), "the working class have been oppressed too long in this country."

BE: You once commented on your admiration of Lydon, how he maintained his own line in spite of some success...this was about the time of Public Image's first album. Does that still hold up?

MS: (laughingly) No. No, I changed my mind completely. He's produced a crock of shit, it's just shit, basically shit. Rather cynical shit as well. I don't blame him...you read interviews with him, he puts his case across rather well. I think it's what he wants to do, I suppose. It's just this attitude...I don't know, it doesn't sound good mainly, you got to start from there. That single... he does well in Britain, people buy it. It's like Tom Petty, it's just like Tom Petty. He sounds real silly, because his voice doesn't fit in with the music. What I hat about it...my younger sister goes out with a guy 18, 19, never had a job, no hope, and I gave him all my old Sex Pistols stuff and he's mad on it...now screwing with the kids like that, I don't like it...using Ginger Baker, and all that fucking...I'm not against those blokes, it's just that the sound is shit. The sound to me is revolting. We've got a guy in our band, Simon, he's a brilliant musician, he went to the College of Music. It's all session man's tricks, duum, dum, duum, you know, the bass that you hear on every fucking record, you know the $300 an hour guys...with his voice over it, it just sounds crazy, and his rubbish lyrics that used about 4 or 5 times. That's what I hate about the late Public Image. I mean there's a certain resentment there from me of course, because I used to like him, also why should that guy get away with stuff that I throw in the bin.

BE: You mentioned once a guy named Thomas, as Irish friend of yours. I wonder if you'd elaborate...

MS: (laughs) Where'd you read that?

BE: An old Slash. I remember you said he's an influence, he was a friend.

MS: Yeah...he was a bit barmy. I don't see him much. He was an influence on me when I was growing up. He had that great Irish thing: all the kids I was brought up with always did what their parents told them to do; Irish kids never did what their parents told them. They'd always take the piss out of kids who really had nice clothes and stuff...it made me more secure in myself. I had great parents, but Thomas was one of those guys who could reduce you to tears and laughter just by talking. That's why I had a really nice childhood, because of Thomas. He was a few years older than me. His sense of humor was completely absurd. Like there was this guy, he used to call him 'Simon of Diarrhea' and he used to invent these stories about what Simon's house was behind the doors, and how he lived off diarrhea...you know, disgusting stories that would go on for ages. He'd throw in some real cheeky things. It's strange about Thomas, I haven't thought about him for a few years. I don't see him at all...he's gone completely...he was too tuned in.

BE: It'd interesting you mention your parents. I wanted to talk about your father...the father/son relation comes up a lot...in Totale, Lay of the Land.

MS: (laughs...laughs harder) Yeah. Well you got to know that it's a very Manchester expression 'son' as well. I could call you son. You've got to remember that.

BE: What about NWRA, "look where you are, the future death of my father?"

MS: Yeah. Right, right. (long pause) My dad's all right. He's strange...I get on better with him than I used to. I left home when I was 16, I couldn't stand it. But since the last 2 years, well about a year and a half, I moved into this house in the next street of my parents after 10 years away. I get on really well with him, it's strange. I go to bars and drink with him; he's like another person now. There are lots of things I learned when I left home about things he taught me that made me a lot more secure in myself. Like, my dad had never given me money, just never gave me money. He wouldn't even...I wanted to go to college when I was 16, so I did for a short while, but he gave me no money...(laughs)...So my ribs would be sticking out. I'd hate the bastard. I'd go, 'you bastard. Other kids are getting money.' But when I thought about it I didn't really like college anyway. I educated myself a lot better. I don't have any real money problems...I never have. I've been in real bad debt with tax due to the group. But I've always been able to live on anything. Some kids go through life and because their parents gave them a lot of money they are in a permanent state of debt and personal insecurity...they totally depend on a certain amount of money coming from...somewhere. I think it's great that parents, especially American parents, are generous. I think it's great. But what you think is a handicap comes in real useful when the band's got no fucking money...like my father always said to me, "look, if you've got 5 pounds in your pocket on Friday, your life's made," which is great. That's the ideal. That's a real English working class...They were brought up during the Blitz. They don't throw anything away. They're that type. I was the first child of 4. My father wasn't well off when I was born. He was working for his father then. That's a lot of why I left home, because the idea was to carry on the plumbing business in the family...one of your stereotyped stories. Which I wish I'd done, I really (laughs) wish I'd done a plumber's apprentice. It'd be great to be able to do your art and have that back up. Plumbers make fortunes. They never used to when I was a kid. Nowadays...they used to get nothing. Now, they're so in demand. But I just don't have it in my hands, you gotta have it. I can't even change a plug now, it's real hard.

BE: You mention the idea of a back-up. You give the impression of someone who could look the situation over and say, 'I've got to get out.' That's how I felt 4 years ago about you. Is that as true today...I just gotta quit. And what kinds of things are you thinking about?

MS: You tend to think about these things as you get older. Like what are you going to do when you're 40, but it's never worried me. If I ever wanted to make money, there are lots damn easier ways, like up January I was doing the management of the group as well. So this year is real strange for me because we have a real good manager now. WE went through 3 or 4. That was sort of the situation when I was training them what to do, they'd get good at it, and then leave. So I said fuck it. I'll do it myself. I really enjoyed it, but I became more of a clerk than...writing songs. 2 days a week was for filling in tax forms and shit. Which was really enjoyable...that's why these last 2 albums have been particularly good. I think, because before that, I was a very violent person, the early days of the Fall are very, very violent. Aggressive, real, didn't give a fuck. I had loads of time to be the moody writer thing which I despised in myself. I always hate...like you hang out with these "sensitive" British groups, and they're all (screws face). Oh God, you look at them, oh God, they're so mysterious and creative. It's not good for your work. I found by throwing myself into taxman and accountant, it teaches you a few things. You realize that you're not that important. The strange thing about it was that then the writing came real easy...I was doing it for pleasure rather than sitting down and go (thinker's pose.) And it made me think, when I started the band that's what I used to do. I used to write my songs during the dinner hour. I mean on the typewriter.

This guy from Miami Vice came to see us in LA, the guy who decided the music. We couldn't see him before the show so he made and appointment for afterward...(laughing) he never came back. He saw the show and never came back...he must have run like hell. The main thing that I despise about that show--somebody said this in a magazine--why are these cops so arrogant, who the fuck do they think they are? I thought the thing was good, 'cause what the guy was doing was busting basically poor people trying to make money. This is forgotten. It's not like in the fine American tradition of the private type stuff, like Chandler and that, which is fucking brilliant...genius. These guys are pretending to be drug dealers and suckering people in. Why is it hip to be a cop? I don't like it. I respect policemen, I think policemen should be completely respected. But I don't like policemen like that, there are too many fucking policemen like that. Too many got a grudge against the fucking world. Those kind of guys should be in the fucking Army.

BE: Any bands on this tour that you've played with that are worth mentioning?

MS: The clubs are so tight right now, put the clause in your contract that you choose the opening band, and they cross you out. They always think they know better. Have you ever heard Artless, from New York? They're the Republican band, well that's what they say, it's a joke. They're great. He's got his own label this guy, and he brings out real weird records, like country & western records, like Blind Man's Penis (John Trubee), stuff like that. It's fucking good stuff. He's totally nuts. We had this band with us in Chicago called Doxy (?), real heavy metal band, reminded me of the Stooges, they look like Van Halen, but they play like the Stooges. And the difficulty we had with them is that we insisted on 5 dates, and we finally got them on 3: each time they'd open for us, they'd have to be the first of the 3 bands, because of some promoter's choice, more often than not a Gun Club imitation, you know some dicks who work in a record shop, or at a club. So Doxy would go on first...they'd come on and look like fucking Van Halen, man, and people are going 'booo', booing it and that, and they're fucking great, going, tchka, tchka, tchka, tchka, tchka, boofch. It's just like fucking Funhouse, man. Brilliant, great singing. I thought it was great contrast to the Fall. No, no real objections to it.

You got to remember that a lot of people--especially nowadays--are out to be entertained, which is fair enough so I don't expect much from the audience. For me the it's like part of the...'act,' in inverted commas. to concentrate on one's singing, and trying to make it a bit more interesting, to get it moving. The only thing I like to give the audience is a kind of mental stimulation, that's really if I got good. I mean a lot of my work, if you look at it the way you're asking the question, a lot of it is very selfish. That goes with printed words as well. Sometimes I think: why should I just outright tell somebody what the song's about? I'm in an ideal position because I do write anything I bloody want to. I don't have to take in commercial critical considerations, and I'm supporting myself doing it. It's a big thing really. A fine line. Whereas to an outside observer the Fall look no different from any other British post-punk group, whatever the fuck you call it...we are a lot different.

BE: I want to clarify a few things I don't know that I'm hearing correctly. In "Pay Your Rates", the "debtor's escape estate, a socialist state invention?"

MS: Yeah, it's like they call them estates in Britain, but they call them projects here. When the socialists came in in '45, that was their first term of power, so they knocked all the slums down in the north of England, which were real good community places, and they shipped them all into these obscene, fucking, new bloody things that resulted in a lot of pain for a lot of people. There's a great playwright called Mike Leigh...

BE: His films...there's a whole series of films right now, he's a director, right? The San Francisco Film Festivals begin this week, and he's highlighted within it.

MS: Go and see it, man, it's fucking brilliant. Great stuff. He did one about estates. It is just exactly what it is like. These places are horrible to live in. And it's weird because the people blame Thatcher and that, but it's the fucking socialists who built that shit. The people who built that should be fucking executed. You sat in these houses...they had everything the working class wanted then, you see, because you're getting central heating, fridge, and the rest of that fucking crap, you know. But you can hear people shouting next door, you're not allowed to paint the front of you house, they got crime and that, because they got lifts. The lift's always broken. Someone will come along with some sense and knock them down. A nightmare. A nightmare. Like all these people who lived on estates, before the war, they used to walk in and out of each other's house, even though they were in abject poverty, nobody ever locked the door. But now with these estates, it's like rat experiments. Essentially what it is. You're closing people up. I used to go out with girls when I was a lad, and they'd live on these estates, they'd just be unbearable, man. You'd go in these houses...they'd all be the same. They all have gardens and shit, little gardens. But you go in, all the wallpaper is the same, the smell is the same, like being in prison, very, very similar.

BE: On "What You Need" you say a "bit" of Iggy's Stooge, is that right?

MS: A vid, a video.

BE: Of Iggy's Stooge, OK. Then 3 rules of audience, same as from Cash-n-Carry, and then it is the book, "Death Is Vision" by the brothers Copeland.

MS: No, it's just a private joke, Miles Copeland, who used to own IRS and manages the Police, "Theft as Vision." And his brother who runs FBI, and his other brother is the drummer for the Police. He's never paid us any royalties in 5 years, from Dragnet and that, he just paid us 2 weeks ago. Meanwhile, you see Miles Copeland get up and talk at the Conservative Party conference about his ideas for a new Britain. "Why can't we stop all this defeatism in Britain?" I mean the guy is American. He had this program on TV, and it's very strange 'cause we got our money about a week before this program went on where he's talking to all these Liverpool lads and saying, "You can get out of this, say I offered you a record deal." It was a real sick program. And these guys were going, "well I don't want to dress like a fool." These guys were really great. And he'd scream "let's say I offered you 500 thousand pounds to sign with me on my label!" And the guy would go, "it depends on what you were going to offer me...look, I just want to be a bass player." So, Copeland: "you are so defeatist here, you've been brainwashed by the Marxists." Unbelievable. The guy hasn't paid his own fucking debts, he's a glorified con man. Going around telling Britain how to live, and probably America as well, he's got the Bangles...he was brought up in a completely privileged...his father was a CIA hitman. And lives in St. John's Woods. And he's shouting at these Liverpool kids who have been brought up in abject poverty that they haven't got enough drive! Incredible. There was such a reaction to him in Britain, even the rightwingers were going 'the man is an idiot.'

BE: So, what's the video of Stooges?

MS: That's a 2 way thing really. It's like what you really need is something like the Stooges, but also, Iggy is a very hip college thing in Britain. Every time you go to a college, to play a college disco, they always play an Iggy Pop solo thing. And it's like if they'd play the Stooges, it'd be a lot better. There are a lot of students in Manchester who've got videos of (softly) Iggy Pop, and think they're really cool. It's like all these new Velvet Underground fans...nerds, where were they when it was fucking necessary?

BE: I like everything that Iggy has done on his own, but my heart's in the Stooges.

MS: Yeah, there's a lot of Iggy solo stuff that I don't like at all. But I know what you are saying, you can't dislike the guy. "What You Need" is a Twilight Zone episode where this old peddler sells this guy what he needs. I got it mixed up with this other Twilight Zone episode which is "The Four of Us Are Dying," where this guy could change his face by looking at a picture in a newspaper and have it become his face. It's just a crazy song, really, just images. But it's also, the main theme of the song is that there are a lot of people in Britain, and a lot of people in America, too, telling people what you need. And in America, especially, I find this really scary.

It's very hard to get into America now...just to play and work, even though I've got, what, 12 visas in my fucking passport. And I've always left. I don't want to live in America. The presumption is that you are a Third World Savage who wants to take American money out of the country and blah, blah, blah. I know these 5 groups from Manchester who applied for concert visas and we were the only ones to get in, and we got in on the last day. They're turning bands down. They've changed it from where the embassy used to decide, it's now the immigration, who are taught to be paranoid about everybody. There are all these fucking lame brains running immigration service. I seriously object to it, as a Briton...maybe if I was from a totally impoverished country, I could mildly understand it. I just object to it because Americans can go to Britain any time. They can play there, they can work there. Brix has never had any trouble. Britain is one of the few countries in this world that is an American ally, and you are treated like some sort of crook. It's really stupid.

I'm real big on American old films...I like that sort of thing, I'm mad about it, like I like Billy Wilder...fucking genius. That's what's missing nowadays. And I like Lyndsay Anderson. He's generally hated in England, 'cause he did this great film, "Brittania Hospital," which is just like Britain on film. It knocked everything in Britain. But it did it in a Benny Hill style, in a comedy film style. Like the nurse is behind the screen with the doctor...amazing film, but it just bombed everywhere. That stuff is real good. I always liked Fellini as well. I identify with people like that...I don't have access to that sort of communication. I like Fellini and Anderson, people who stay where they are. I think John Waters did that. I like the fact that he works out of Baltimore, and that he sees the surreal in the ordinary. I strongly identify with that, I really do.

Every building I ever have from Prestwich on the back of my covers gets fucking pulled down. The church on Grotesque is probably one of the few photographs left of the thing. Like the building on Elastic Man was pulled down, the building on Hex Enduction Hour was pulled down, the building on Dragnet was pulled down, (laughs) it's unbelievable. All these places I cherish are pulled down. I chose them because they are good.

I've written a lot of songs from dreams. Like Paint Work is probably the most favorite track of people who listen hard to rock music. When I write a dream down, I can see it in my head, but you have to think, to some people, it's just a collection of words. I think that's where your skill as a writer comes in.

A lot of people think my interpretation of history is really kookoo. I did this Melody Maker interview and I was saying things that...like another thing about British groups is that you've got to be pro-IRA, it's trendy. So I was going, well who the fuck wants to be ruled by the Pope, it's stupid. Like in the Republic of Ireland, you can't even buy contraceptives. These people who are always left-wing are espousing this cause. The Protestants in the north just don't want anything to do with the Pope. I think it's cool, they got a right to do that. But you can't say it. Well, I go, look at history. If Britain were fucking Catholic, we wouldn't be anywhere, we'd be 200 years fucking backwards. People go, "Ohh, Nazi!" And I'm saying look at the Ethiopians, we're sending billions of pounds to the Ethiopians when fucking people in Manchester are half starved on these fucking estates. People are getting fucking 25 dollars a week to live on and eat...grown men of 35. this survey says that they're suffering from malnutrition. And just because on TV they got the Ethiopians, who have always been fucked up, the government's fucked up, because they're Marxists. The government is corrupt. Britain is sending their last fucking pennies to Ethiopia, the food is rotting on the docks. You got Band-Aid and all this shit, I find it really annoying. And then people say, you got a weird view of history. I think everybody's got a weird view of history, everybody re-writes their own history anyway.

I'm not that down on the left anymore, I'm really not. But I'm not pro-left at all. What really annoys me is that people can't really get into their head that there really isn't any threat from the left or the right really. The threat is some kind of standardized horrible society. Run by a bunch of fucking idiots.

BE: Well, aren't the left and right really collaborating? Don't they need each other to fight each other?

MS: Yeah, it may be like the Fall needs all these bad groups to keep on going. It kept me going a lot of times. When you've been at the lowest depths, like in '83, '84, no money, no decent record company, band disintegrating, tax debts, and you think, what's the point, might as well just throw it in, but then I think, if there were no Fall who's going to check these fuckers?

1997

Tape Delay

 

Time Out Interview (December)

---

1998

Review of Oxford Gig in "Nightshift" (January)

2007

Q Magazine Interview (September)

 

---

2009

Review of Koko Gig 1st April 2009 in Independent (6/4/09) by Nick Hasted

3rd May 2009 - This Much I Know Interview - The Observer

B92 Interview : September 

Do you remember the first gig you had here in 1990?

Yes, I remember. It was good last time. I look forward to a new meeting with the Belgrade audience.

"The Fall" has been around for more than three decades and have an impressive discography with as many as 27 studio releases. What will we play at this festival?

I think it will take up half the set list of songs from the new album which should come out in January. Of course there will be songs from all periods of the "Fall" total material.

Your last album "Imperial Wax Solvent" got good critical acclaim, and you found himself on the British Top 40 list. What do you think of this commercial success, bearing in mind that your are an underground band

The basic reason for this is the audience, which is at least in Britain, all younger.

Until now, the "Fall" has featured over  40 musicians. What is the team currently?

Well, to be honest, the only thing that would now be able to say that the oldest of them is younger than me by 12 years.

Once you said that you only played with musicians who were not fans of the band. Why you it was important and why it was a plus for them?

This is because I wanted some access

If you feel you still need to play the same as in the beginning, what is your motivation?

 
I do it because too much nonsense that surrounds us, in music, and otherwise. This is the only motivation that I need. Turn on TV and see all this nonsense. And music. music is, unfortunately, today, is intended primarily for the middle class

Why is your opinion on "Fall" being  one of the few bands from the   punk period that still plays?

I think this is due to the fact that we have never been punk rock band

Have you ever thought that you deserve more, or if you are satisfied with the position where you are currently?

I think that our time has been full of success and downs. It is interesting to us is going well when all the others in the problem. I do not know why this is so. We are "The Fall"!

What do you think about current musical trends in recent years more and more rely on punk?

What do you think it comes from where? I do not know, but it seems to me that today is the most direct musical direction

I have the impression that you do not have so good opinion about the current music 

Correct

Is there a newer band that you like?

Actually I could not say. I still hear the old term and rege en rol. When I have time, of course. At this time, not listening to anything after recording his new album. I am mad from it all takes much longer than planned. Will not be completed for several weeks, and will only come out in January. I am not used to such things.

What's the problem? Is the economic crisis and recession in Britain in some way affected, and the "Fall"?

Not really. In our case, this crisis has been ongoing since 1999.

This year you signed a contract with an independent label "Domino Records.

Yes, new records out of "Domino" and the deadline is January next year.

On the first album the band concert, "The Fall" - the first thing they said was the audience - the difference between you and us is that we have a brain. Do you still think so on the fans and if so, why?

I do not think more. On the contrary, I think kids today are much smarter. That was long ago, during the eighties.

What can we say about the impact of John Saw the band "The Fall" and his contribution to music uopše? He served as the inspiration for the setting of the festival where you play.

Obviously we are missing, but the two of us we always kept in rastojanju. We never were partners, we became good friends. He would have sent me cards, I am there, and that's it. However, I think it worked without a lot worse. Radio in the UK!

Are known as a big fan of football club "Manchester City". What do you think of the current team, new players?

The "Manchester City it? I do not know really. It is a good question. I do not know. Today is all down to the image, not the game. The most important news is that about a month before the new collection of shirts thrown. I do not go more on the game. I do not know, maybe I start to I support someone else. Perhaps the Red Star

And finally, do you have a message for the fans in Serbia?

Yes, I rejoice that I will see. I promise a good time!