Mark E Smith Interview

Extracts from Transcript 'Rhubarb Bomb and Mark E Smith at Balne Lane Working Mens Club'. For the full exclusive interview please see issue 1.3 of Rhubarb Bomb.

Rhubarb Bomb: Peter Hook has done a spoken word tour, don’t know if yr aware, he’s done a book too, went to see him at Wakefield Theatre and this is what he said – he’s ‘found a way to make a future out of talking about the past’. What do you think about that?

Mark E Smith: That’s not bloody news is it.

RB: Is that the opposite of what you do?

MES: (Still pondering) Is that what he says? Tsshhhh, he’s a weirdo int he?

RB: Can’t sympathise with that at all?

MES: A mate of mine in Salford, he got a copy of the book for nothing, he read it, said there’s summat about me in it. He rang Peter Hook up, I said you don’t have to do that! He got his private unlisted number, and said how dare you say that about Mark, I said you dint need to do that y twat… but erm, but he is, he’s bitter and twisted… I could tell y some stories…

RB: You can if you want…(no response) have you had many run ins with him then?

MES: No no, I like him, but all he’s concerned about is the past, it’s true what you just said. He just goes on about Tony Wilson all the time, (Exasperated) Tony Wilson’s DEAD! But erm, I shouldn’t tell ya this… another mate of mine he got (laughs cheekily) He was working on the Hacienda when it shut down and he got a load of panelling, the floor. Japs buy it for £70, a panel of the fucking Hacienda dance floor. So he had about 5 or 6, he had about half a dozen, so he made up some himself… (laughing almost uncontrollably)… Peter Hook is selling Hacienda floor, for £75 and this fella I know was selling it for £25! So he got a lawyer on him… and they bought him out for all his pieces, but half the pieces aren’t even real ones!

RB: Bet he weren’t happy about that!

MES: He doesn’t know does he!? He just gets em and signs em, sells em to Japan.

RB: That really is just making money off the past int it?

MES: Damn right. Least he’s honest about it. So what else was he saying? Bet that was depressing. How much you pay for that?!

RB: Well, it was ok, it’s a well known story that he tells int it…

MES: Yeah the Joy Division

====================================================

RB: Sorry to keep quoting the book, coz I know you can’t quite remember it but…!

MES: I’m interested to hear it….

RB: …But you say in the book ‘lads under 35 are empty of wonder’.

MES: (laughs dismissively) Ghost writer there. I don’t remember that. That’s terrible that.

RB: Were you saying that people these days get it handed to them more, coz they don’t have to work as…

MES: Nah… I don’t think that. I don’t actually agree with that… not empty of wonder. I think young people get a hard time. Definitely

RB: From the media?

MES: Its a load of shit - compared to when I was 17.18 on the dole, you couldn’t walk out in Salford and Manchester without getting yr fucking head kicked in. Its not like that NOW. Demonisation of em…

=========================================================

RB: In reference to John Lennon, you said you found him a bit arrogant, because he was always playing as the artist, you said “it’s more important to be a man than an artist”

MES: (enthusiastically) Yeah!

RB: Can you elaborate on that, what do you mean by that?

MES: Well it’s an old saying, its not one of mine….

RB: Do you think with you, people confuse the man and the artist?

MES: Definitely. I think…. If there’s anything wrong with arts in western civilisation, It’s very self appreciating… . Its not really doing its job, to get back to the point you made about the topicality of the LP, I think that’s the job (mock posh) of an artist. I don’t think of myself as an artist though, I’m a singer, I’m a writer…

RB: That’s quite a grounded attitude would you say?

MES: Yeah, course we’re not U2 or anything, people think coz yr underground you are an artist, I never really think that way. I could do. And I could live as a rich man, loads of mistresses, and all this, but it’s never appealed to me, it’s a pointless exercise.

Interview and Photograph by Dean Freeman

The Fall @ Balne Lane Working Mens Club

I turn up early at Balne Lane Working Mens Club in anticipation of grabbing an interview with The Fall frontman and end up catching the band sound checking. It’s a fair old racket they are producing, but there is one key element missing. Mr Mark E Smith is nowhere to be seen. I’m told by the tour manager he’s ‘wandered off’ and he’ll try find him. 10 minutes later a familiar face pops out from side stage and the band instantly halt their noise, like a piano player in a western when the new sheriff in town walks in the saloon. He looks around and pauses for thought. ‘Turn mikes up’ he says. The band members then quickly test each microphone. He’s happy and leaves them to it.


Later that evening, Balne Lane is full, with bodies and anticipation. Which Mark E Smith would we get tonight? Would it be 30 minutes of angry grumbling before a swift disappearance? Well, after 5 minutes of them hitting the stage I realised that any chance of me giving this the ‘normal’ review treatment had completely flown out of the window. There’s plenty I could talk about. Mark singing with two or threee mics at once throughout, throwing them aside when he’s bored. Turning up the guitarists amp (at the right points too, in my opinion), stealing a mic from keyboardist and wife Elana in the middle of her chorus, holding some handwritten lyrics for the guitarist to sing to, the most diverse moshpit I’ve ever seen with young girls and old hippies bouncing around, and just the pure heaviness of it all, the almost non stop, incessant drum and bass driven sound that is still bouncing round my head now, almost a week later. And then the encores; the first with Mark sat in the small room at the side of the stage, completely out of view. Then the second, where he rejoined, and shouted out - I’m sure I didn’t imagine this – ‘I Love you all’. Wow.

It was chaotic and incomparable to anything else I’d seen. And impossible to recount in words really. Its one of those ‘you had to be there’ moments. And if you weren’t, why not? The whole thing about them being so many years old, and so many albums old, and onto their 50th member or whatever – it all seems nonsense, because I saw the passion of a band doing their first ever tour, a brand new band full of confidence and focus.

And we did get that exclusive interview. It’ll be in Rhubarb Bomb Issue 1.3

Words: Dean Freeman / Photos: Joel Rowbottom

p.s. A MASSIVE amount of respect is due to Mr Christopher Morse, who managed to book The Fall to play Wakefield in the first place. Good work. He’s promoting nights at The Hop in Wakefield now, so keep an eye on what he’s got coming up.