A piece I wrote on Mark E Smith for the Triple R magazine in April

An edited version of this appeared in the April edition of the RRR magazine for subscribers, THE TRIP.

“He was some kind of man… What does it matter what you say about people?”

Marlene Dietrich at the end of the Orson Welles classic film, A Touch Of Evil.

“Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their writing, and so their house – and street – life was trivial and commonplace”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“So Queen Victoria
Is a large black slug in Piccadilly, Manchester
Our city hobgoblins
Our city hobgoblins
And they say
We cannot walk the floor at night in peace”

CITY HOBGOBLINS by the FALL

It feels good to write a note about Mark E Smith in The Trip. A lot of people who subscribe to Triple R would know more about the work of the Fall than me. Others would know some of their sounds. Many others would at least know of their caustic mystique. Many might be interested in listening to them now that Mark E Smith has left the building.

Because it’s the work, the music, that will live on with the Fall. It was a powerful brew. If you’ve heard early Pavement or Arctic Monkeys, you’ve heard the Fall. Or at least sounds, licks, chords and arrangements put through a strong Fall Filter.

Mark passed away in late January. He’d been ill for a year or so but had continued to perform – up until late December, in a wheelchair.

He was still burning up life- or it was blasting through him – and was still unfinished business. He defied shit. He was definite. Very funny in a dry way. I always remember him saying, when asked about Live Aid, and Ethiopia, “any country that could be invaded by the Italians must be a right load of cobblers”. He also didn’t shy away from being positive about the Falklands War when he was touring here in 1982.   He was like a latter day Wyndham Lewis (who declared himself the “enemy of everything” and founded the modernist magazine BLAST).

I don’t pretend to know how to talk all around him. Maybe I’ll just tell you of the few times our paths crossed. 

The Moodists played with the Fall in Melbourne in 1982 when they toured. The venues were the Seaview hotel in St Kilda and the Mt Erica Hotel in Prahran. I absolutely loved their singles and albums at the time, Grotesque (1980) , the fantastic 10” SLATES (1981) and the then current HEX ENDUCTION HOUR. An incredible racket. Singles like City Hobgoblins (with the amazing b side How I Wrote Elastic Man) .

They also invented “Country and Northern” with blasts of power like “Fiery Jack”, “The Container Drivers” and “T-t-t-totally Wired”.  

The band were really nice to us in 1982- though Kaye Carroll tried to set my hair on fire (in mockery of its bouffed up trendiness). We played with them several times the next few years in the UK . Our young mixer Victor Van Vugt was much in demand in the UK and worked with them and the Pogues and then the Bad Seeds.
Clare Moore and I took a bus down from London to the Hacienda for its third birthday in 1985.

I dunno why I didn't write about it in WORKSHY but there was a funny party in London with the FALL there and Karl Burns was giving me shit about my jacket and seemed to want a fight while Genesis P Orridge was giving Clare the evil eye from across the room. Years passed and I played at Livid in Sydney in 1990 when Redhead Kingpin was the headliner but wouldn't play so the FALL stepped up and did it. Always a powerful live band . Went to say hello to them then. The band very quiet and Mark the cold ruler.

There was a bogus “meeting of three giants”  in a UK with Nick Cave, Shane McGowan and Mark in 1985 or so. It was notable only for Mark seemingly travelling at three times the pace of the other two and them having to take all his wild raving because – he was MARK E SMITH - he had the mozz on them.

When we did Night of the Wolverine , our then manager Mick Geyer took me aside to play me the new Fall LP, The Infotainment Scan, which had a song going on about time of the Wolverines... great minds! 

The Fall worked their own seam, unique. Unfollowable , really. I met a young friend in Hobart in the mid 2000s. In their early 20s, they had tuned into the FALL and proudly held strong opinions and views on many of their then 25 album releases. (My own opinions and views being limited to their early 80s works). I was impressed. In later years Mark E was held up by conservative curmudgeons as a type of shield against all other pop vagaries they may have been forced to grapple with. They hid behind Marks trouser legs. (Like others do with Bob Dylan – Mark was fresher yet dryer. Pretty much powdered, actually).

But don’t let that grim lot put you off.

Mark was a hero and a villain. There was lots of drama you heard reports about. The version of the band that walked out on him in New York in 2006 and how he replaced them immediately and finished the tour, famously quipping, “if its me and yer granny on bongos – its the Fall.”

He was probably, often, a bastard. Who isn’t?

There was a book called “The Fallen”, written solely about ex members of the Fall. All bruised and still tender from the experience, all recognize being in the band with Mark to be a peak experience of the lives. There is  also a band led by Brix Smith-Start of some of those ex members called The Extricated.

Brix wrote a memoir, “the Rise the Fall and the Rise”,  as did bass player Steve Hanley with his “The Big Mid-Week”.

Mark wrote a biography in 2009 called Renegade.

Marc Riley, guitarist in the Falls “Hex/Grotesque” period and currently a dj at BBC6 said that Brix and Steve Hanleys books could be made into a a great tv show, as one was like Dallas and one was like Coronation Street. 

What did Mark seem to like? He spoke highly of Link Wray and the Stooges and Dr Karl from Neighbours (especially his band) and the Fall covered songs by Sister Sledge, the Saints, Charlie Feathers, Pete Seeger, Lee Perry, Tommy Blake, Iggy Pop, Nervous Norvous, The Groundhogs, Wanda Jackson, R Dean Taylor, Gene Vincent and The Blue Caps, The Other Half, The Searchers, the Sonics, The Monks and The Kinks. He loved a British writer by the name of Arthur Machen.

But before all else you should dive into some of their music. 

https://thefall.xyz/ 

In 2010 they toured here and I opened for them again with Adele Pickvance and Tim Byron in Brisbane and in Sydney and with the mistLY in Melbourne. At the latter Mark pretty much made us go on as the doors were opening. He was acting up with the mics and all, turning amps on and off etc. I went to their band room after the Melbourne show, expecting to see a big sulking post argument scene. The band were all quite happy and Mark was sitting by himself. He was being very funny about mutual acquaintances. Evil humour. He asked me to go with them to Golden Plains the next day but we had a gig booked to play a private party and I wanted to be able to pay my band properly before Xmas. He would have understood. Like Howling Wolf, he valued being a  “pro” more than anything.
Saw them play again in 2016 at the last ATP Festival in Wales.
He brought all the drama and noise.

A terrific influence on me.  On their classic album Grotesque,there is a track called “C and C S mithering”. Mark lays into his then ambitious peers , saying

“All the English groups
Act like peasants with free milk
On a route
On a route to the loot
To candy mountain
Five wacky English proletariat idiots”

He then lampoons the false bonhomie of travelling bands  years before Spinal Tap , saying

"see ya mate- yeah see ya mate" in a parodic, matey tone.

Oh he was harsh. And unfair. RIP to the Hip Priest.

Australian – New Zealand dates 1982 by the Fall.

Thursday, 22 July 1982   Musician's Club, Sydney

Saturday, 24 July 1982   Family Inn, Sydney

Sunday, 25 July 1982   Stranded, Sydney

Monday, 26 July 1982   Stranded, Sydney

Tuesday, 27 July 1982   Canberra

Thursday, 29 July 1982   West Town Hall, Geelong

Friday, 30 July 1982   Jump Club, Collingwood, Melbourne

Saturday, 31 July 1982   Crystal Ballroom, Seaview Hotel, St. Kilda,

Monday, 2 August 1982   Prince of Wales, Melbourne

Thursday, 5 August 1982   Prospect Hill, Melbourne

Friday, 6 August 1982   Mt. Erica Hotel, Melbourne

Saturday, 7 August 1982   Crystal Ballroom, Seaview Hotel, St. Kilda,

Tuesday, 10 August 1982   Trade Union Club, Sydney

Wednesday, 11 August 1982   Trade Union Club, Sydney

Thursday, 12 August 1982   Wollongong University, Wollongong

Friday, 13 August 1982   Old University, Brisbane

Saturday, 14 August 1982   Manly Vale, Sydney

Tuesday, 17 August 1982   University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

Wednesday, 18 August 1982   Town Hall, Christchurch

Thursday, 19 August 1982   Victoria University, Wellington

Friday, 20 August 1982   Main Street, Auckland

Saturday, 21 August 1982   Main Street, Auckland, New Zealand

1990 LIVID Festival

2010 Australlian tour , including Golden Plains

2015 Australian tour including Melbourne Festival