Mark E. Smith: Talking about The Fall

Mark E. Smith is The Fall. There’s been more than 30 band members over the years, but he has been the constant in the release of nearly an album a year since 1979. Many of them are brilliant, including the recent Fall Heads Roll, which seems to hearken back to the rawness of the band’s early sound with driving repetitive rhythms and often-inscrutable – yet enlightening – lyrics.

Smith seems like a regular guy, but I was intimidated to talk to him. I’d heard he didn’t much fancy the press and had refused to do interviews with the likes of MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL Rolling Stone and Spin. I’d been warned not to ask him about the past, about the drunken punch-ups and fallouts with ex-band members, but at the time I hadn’t yet heard the new record and his back catalog changed my life. All of my fears melted away as he spoke to me from his home in Manchester.

SLUG: Fall’s just coming on so it’s a good time to be talking to you.

MES: Oh, right, right, right…

SLUG: I think about 26 years ago this month you were recording Dragnet, but I have to ask you this important question: What do you think about Manchester United [soccer team] being purchased by that American carpetbagger Malcolm Glazer?

MES: Well, have you heard about the new team? We have the team called F-C-U-M. They’re set up about two miles from my house. They’re called ‘fuck ‘em.’

SLUG: Do you still consider yourself a prole art threat after all these years?

MES: I should think so. Yes.

SLUG: Maybe more than ever…

MES: Probably. If you turn on the TV and the radio, you have to keep going up.

SLUG: What do you think of all the crap that’s going on in the U.S. with the class struggle coming back to the fore?

MES: Has it?

SLUG: I read somewhere that you were a Civil War buff.

MES: Very much so.

SLUG: And, in some ways, the Civil War is still going on in the South.

MES: Yeah, but we get very sanitized news here. Prime Minister Blair is a close friend of your president, so it’s all very watered-down. The only truth that you get is if you watch fucking German or Greek telly, to be honest.

SLUG: It seems like you have a special place in your head for German culture.

MES: No, not at all.

SLUG: Well I’m thinking of songs like “Bremen Nacht” and…

MES: Oh, right, right, right.

SLUG: … and I assume from “I am Damo Suzuki” that you were a fan of CAN.

MES: Yeah, very much.

SLUG: I try to explain some of your more Euro-centric references to my friends, but I don’t have a lot of luck because they’re pretty thick to begin with. For one who is new to The Fall, what would be a good starting point? What influences you philosophically? Where should one begin? There have been so many reissues…

MES: Yeah, it’s very confusing, isn’t it? It’s funny because a lot of the reference point to teenagers at the moment is Hex Enduction Hour, which I find quite amazing, really, because I’d just been a teenager when I did it. So I’d say Hex and the last two LPs. That’s who I am.

SLUG: You sounded in fine form on your Peel Sessions last August as well. It sounds like you’re rocking out more, not doing as much of the electronic stuff.

MES: Yeah. That’s the group. They’re a good ten years younger than me. That’s the good thing about it.

SLUG: I had to laugh back in the late 80s and early 90s when you were doing more electronic stuff; there was a backlash among the supposedly cool people here, like, ‘The Fall sells out.’

MES: Yeah, [Steve] Albini and all that bull… you know he wanted to do the new LP?

SLUG: That might be interesting from a production standpoint.

MES: Oh, fuck off.

SLUG: Who produces you now?

MES: Me.

SLUG: Good.

MES: You’ll like it when you hear it.

SLUG: It’s interesting that you mention Albini because he’s originally from Montana, and there were some kids in the record store the other day who had driven down from Montana to buy Fall records because they couldn’t get any up there. You might be surprised at what a groundswell of support you have here in the Mountain West.

MES: I know that. I just did an interview with somebody in San Francisco and I was trying to explain it to him and it was like talking to a brick wall. He was like, ‘What are the best places to play?’ I said ‘Texas, the mid-west… you know, places that most British groups don’t do well in,’ but he can’t understand that.

SLUG: I’d say that Salt Lake City has some of your most ardent fans anywhere.

MES: You’re joking me. My auntie lives there, you know.

SLUG: We’re just like the non-Catholics in Rome, except the [LDS] church is a cult.

MES: I know. I’ve been there. I went to visit me Auntie Joan. She was a GI bride. She had six kids.

SLUG: I know you tour a lot, so hopefully you can come here. I assume you’re fit and working again. I know you had a fall last year and busted some stuff up.

MES: Yeah, I’m walking now. It’s amazing actually.

SLUG: Some of the covers that you play indicate that you’re into American roots music. What covers are you playing these days?

MES: Well, you know we did The Monks covers on Extricate. We just did [another] one because they’re making a film about The Monks, which was quite interesting.

SLUG: “Black Monk Theme” helped me get through my divorce.

MES: That was the second divorce for me actually.

SLUG: Do you still do “White Lightning”?

MES: Oh, of course… every night. It sounds really good now with the changed group. We do it a lot more rockabilly.

SLUG: Do you see any parallels between your work and that of Captain Beefheart?

MES: Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. The best thing he ever said was ‘It’s all in the drums, and if you don’t get the drums right, forget it,’ and I’ve always agreed with that.

SLUG: Maybe that’s why Hex works because you have…

MES: … the two drummers. Yeah.

SLUG: You’re very self-deprecating and I think people don’t give you enough credit as a writer.

MES: Yeah, right.

SLUG: I know you’ve done some spoken word in the past couple of years, but you never really went the Nick Cave literary route. I think I’d rather read your stuff than his.

MES: It’s all lost to me now, you know. It’s funny that, because I [had] a literary agent yesterday talking to me. It’s a different world, that, and I don’t know if I can fit into it. Last time I saw Nick I said, ‘What are you up to?’ and he said, ‘I’ve stopped writing the books,’ and I said ‘Well that’s good news all around, that.’ [Laughs] He said, ‘I’ve got to be a songwriter,’ and I said, ‘That’s right. I could have told you that from the start.’ That’s the last thing I said to Nick. He hasn’t talked to me since.

SLUG: It seems like maybe you don’t care whether people understand what you say or not.

MES: Yeah. There’s a lot of it. I don’t like giving things away too easy.

SLUG: It would be interesting to read a primer for those of us who don’t understand the inside references.

MES: I find that Yanks and Belgians and Irish people, they know fucking exactly what I’m going on about. Obviously you do. You know what I mean. I think in Britain they’re a bit illiterate, really. I mean, you just said you liked Hex the best. No fucking DJ or writer would say that to me in Britain. They just think it’s noise. Their idea of poetry is John Lennon and Paul Weller and all that.

SLUG: You mentioned the DJs and the radio over there. Now that John Peel has passed away, what’s radio like over there? Are there good shows to listen to? Who’s going to play The Fall’s records now?

MES: I don’t think anybody. I don’t think we’ll be playing again, to be quite frank. The great thing about Peel was that he was on the world service, so you got fans in Brazil and Russia. That’s a great thing which you wouldn’t have, but I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on it. We’re always at arm’s length with anything like that. The BBC’s like the ‘golden organization’; we’ve never been a Manchester group, we’ve never been a London group…

SLUG: You’re misfits everywhere, yet you fit in everywhere.

MES: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people have said, ‘What’re you gonna’ do now that John Peel’s gone?’ Oh, it doesn’t really affect us anyway.

SLUG: Aren’t you supposed to play at a John Peel Day celebration?

MES: Yeah. I’m trying to find out what it’s about. We’ll just do a half hour and fuck off. There are a couple of other groups on it and I know for a damn fact that, although I didn’t know Peel very well, he hated the guts of them groups. I don’t know what’s going on to be honest. You know what it’s like? It’s like when Johnny Cash died and suddenly all of the journalists in Britain are into Johnny Cash. When I used to say I liked Johnny Cash, they used to call me a fascist swine. Now, suddenly, they’re all writing about Johnny Cash.

SLUG: Somebody told me that Marc Riley [early Fall bassist] is a DJ now.

MES: Yeah, on Radio One. Maybe he’ll get the job. It’s none of my business, my friend. I keep well clear of it.

SLUG: Do you ever talk to any of the old bandmates like [guitarist] Scanlon?

MES: No, I don’t. That’s a common question. People think it’s weird. Do you think it’s weird? I mean, I don’t want to talk to them. Do you talk to the people you went to primary school with?

SLUG: Nope, nor my ex-wife.

MES: Do you talk to your ex-wife?

SLUG: No.

MES: [Laughs] Good for you. Don’t do it.

With that he said he had to get off of the phone to do another interview. I didn’t believe him, but I felt like the man whose head expanded. Fall Heads Roll is out now on Narnack Records.