Mark E Smith - Messing up the Paintwork: The Wit & Wisdom of Mark E Smith

I cant look back like some fans can. I cant get beyond the fact that most of it was shit

Renegade

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Epub ISBN: 9781473561335

Version 1.0

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Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,

20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

London SW1V 2SA

Ebury Press is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

Copyright Ebury Press 2018

Research and captions by Tom Clayton

Design by Estuary English

Cover designed by Estuary English

Cover photograph by Steve Gullick

First published by Ebury Press in 2018

www.eburypublishing.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781785039850

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders where appropriate, but please contact the publisher if there are any errors or omissions.

Extracts from Renegade by Mark E. Smith (Penguin Books, 2009) reproduced with permission from Penguin Books.

Copyright Mark E. Smith, 2008.

Extracts from The Fallen by Dave Simpson (Canongate Books, 2008) reproduced with permission from Canongate Books. Copyright Dave Simpson, 2008.

Extracts from The Big Midweek: Life Inside The Fall by Steve Hanley and Olivia Piekarski (Route Publishing, 2016) reproduced with permission from Route Publishing. Copyright Steve Hanley and Olivia Piekarski, 2016.

The publisher thanks the following authors for their contributions to the book:

. MES by Stuart Maconie, copyright Stuart Maconie, 2018.

. Search: Mark E. Smith by Paul McGrane, copyright Paul McGrane, 2018.

. Meeting your Heroes by Phil Harrison, copyright Phil Harrison, 2018.

. Summer 2004: MES at the Malmaison by Tim Cumming, copyright Tim Cumming, 2018.

. Untitled by Emma Garland, copyright Emma Garland, 2018.

. Mark flies home to Baby by Emma Hammond, copyright Emma Hammond, 2018. @EHwords

. I kind of expected it but hoped otherwise by Tim Wells, copyright Tim Wells, 2018.

. Mind Rocker by Dave Haslam, copyright Dave Haslam, 1986.

. Illustration by Damien Weighill, copyright Damien Weighill, 2017.

. Machete Head by Daniel Cockrill, copyright Daniel Cockrill, 2017. First appeared in In The Beginning Was The Word, Then a Drawing, Then More Words, Another Drawing, And So On, And So On published by Burning Eye Books, 2017

. Perverted By Language by Hayley Scott, copyright Hayley Scott, 2018.

. And a tow, row, row, row. In memory of the Captain by Michael Nath. Copyright Michael Nath, 2018.

. Late Fall, Early Winter by Tom Clayton, copyright Tom Clayton, 2018.

. To the Fallen by Mark Coverdale, copyright Mark Coverdale, 2018.

. The Fall at the Zodiac by Art Lagun, copyright Art Lagun, 1998 and reproduced with kind permission of Nightshift magazine.

. TWICE by Karren Ablaze!, copyright Karren Ablaze!, 2018.

. Material from When Saturday Comes copyright When Saturday Comes, 2018 and reproduced by kind permission of Andy Lyons.

. Snakes in my Boots by Roddy McDevitt, copyright Roddy McDevitt, 2018.

. Originally published as Legend of the Fall in the Guardian, copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd., 2018 and with additional thanks to Dave Simpson.

. Attitude by Pauline Sewards, copyright Pauline Sewards, 2018.

. Tribute by Frank Skinner as read on Absolute Radio on 24th January 2018 and reproduced by kind permission of Frank Skinner.

WHETHER MARK E. SMITHS death in January 2018 prompted feelings of loss, or fond memories, or simply piqued your interest in the life and work of the great man, I hope this book will contain something for you. In looking through the vast archive of available material on Mark, Ive tried to paint a portrait of the man in his own words and in the words of those who met and admired him. Weve also included new essays, poems, sketches and tributes, intended to highlight the artistic legacy that he leaves behind.

Mark may be gone but The Fall will live forever. TC

So I take my Dixons portable tape recorder from my bag and place it on the table but before I can even phrase my first question Mark E. Smith seizes upon this

Where dyou get that? I want one of those. I went into a little Asian electrical shop in Prestwich to buy a tape recorder like that; something to get my ideas down and the bloke said You need this, sir, a little mini cassette recorder dictation device and I said no, mate, I want one that takes ordinary C60 cassettes. I could be in Oslo, I could be in Naples or Chicago and I dont want to be faffing about trying to get hold of those little tiny cassettes

And he says Oh sir, you are living in the past. These are what everyone uses now. And everywhere sells the tapes, everywhere So I said, go on then, give us one of those recorders and youd better give us ten of those little tapes.

And he says Sorry, sir, we dont sell them!

MARK EDWARD SMITH became one of the most storied figures in British popular music without ever becoming a celebrity. He was not a star in any accepted sense of the word. It was entirely possible to live a life as a pop music enthusiast and never have seen him perform live or on screen, or perhaps even to have heard his work at all. The Fall never appeared on Top of the Pops and their biggest selling single, a cover of someone elses much bigger hit, only reached number 30 in the UK charts. But MES will always remain legendary in a way that many of his better-known and more richly remunerated rock peers might even conceivably envy a little, even as they park the Maserati in a Knightsbridge mews far, far from Prestwich.

Stories abound, and those stories are mostly terrific. Like most people who knew him even a little, I have scores of vignettes like the above. But just as journalists are encouraged never to let the truth get in the way of a good story, we shouldnt let the stories, good as they are, get in the way of the truth. Mark E. Smith was irascible, aloof, funny, belligerent, wayward, slippery, complicated and smart. But he was more than just a character. He was also a very real creative talent responsible for a unique strand of modern British art: the music of The Fall.

The punk upheaval was, as a hundred thousand generic articles have pointed out, necessarily purgative, primitive and bracing, a litter-strewn cyclone of rancid urban air, a rough beast slouching towards the establishment bent on sedition. The Occams razor of punk thinking may have been crucial and necessary in a music scene sedated and de-politicized and largely in the hands of a tedious, neutered transatlantic aristocracy, but much of punks actual music qua music was and is terrible. Its hard to imagine anyone other than lime-haired nostalgists listening to Eater, Chelsea or 999 for pleasure now. The Falls music was engraved upon this boilerplate of loud, insistent, inexpert primal sound but soon acquired a dimension of its own, spectral echoes of krautrock, glam, northern soul, even country. But what set it furthest apart were Smiths words and his persona.