Many have tried it, most recently the Sleaford Mods, but the man with the side parting that falls over his left eye in his sometimes angry, sometimes insulted, sometimes laconic, sometimes dismissive stage performances remains unrivaled when it comes to stoicism and slinging syllables. Or about dissing others with his own proletarian self-confidence.
It’s been almost 30 years since an acquaintance took me backstage in Frankfurt to meet Mark E. Smith. Back then I was doing my own fanzine, with a tape recorder under my arm and hoping that the thin, grumpy man would give me an interview. He did more than that. He offered me an orange juice. He didn’t count for any of the bands of the time except Felt.
Incredibly coherent work
He called Billy Bragg irrelevant and Paul Weller politically naïve. He said: “The independent scene in England is boring, shitty records, a waste of time.” He was clearly proud of his then-wife and guitarist Brix, who tried to cheer us up with Nazi jokes.
Mark E. Smith is one of the fearless in an anxious world. With his band The Fall, which, despite occasional changes, lasted almost 40 years – in every respect – he recorded over 30 studio and as many live albums without caring who would buy them and with which ones label he would have to put on. The changes in the sound and intentions of The Fall were minimal, running like an ellipse through the work.
Sometimes a record rumbles a little rougher, sometimes Smith almost lets himself be carried away to sing; the bottom line is an incredibly coherent work, consisting of unwieldy song titles and a complaint about the depravity, blindness, mendacity of the world, written forever in oiled Mancun.
The archive text comes from the series “ROLLING STONE turns 20. Our Heroes”, which was published for the 20th anniversary of ROLLING STONE.