Original subtitles

I came top in English for like two years on the run and they never thought it was

me.

All the other Smiths used to get congratulated. I like that. It's good

being a Smith sometimes.

You get away with murder, you know.

The difference between you and us is that we have brains.

Cause we're not a white crap, but we talk back.

That's what we're doing, alright.

Bang, fucking bang, the mighty ball.

Before we are one, and now, John Pell.

Time for me to warn you that it is possible that in the course of the next

hour and 55 minutes or so, you may hear some rough language or be introduced to

concepts you find unwholesome. If you fear that this is a possibility, clearly

you should be listening to something else.

As regular listeners will know, there are few words in English finer than

tonight, a news session from the fall, and that's what we've got for you. We

think it's the 24th, but we're not absolutely certain about it.

Before I play you the first track, an email from Chris Goodhead, the first of

the night. Chris, there's a quick message to say that I've had a bloody

awful week so far. Nevertheless, I'm still excited at the prospect of another

mighty fall session. I've been to a couple of recent shows, and they've got

a really good song that mentions Harold Shipman. They've been playing Walk Like

a Man. Their old bass player is now the guitarist. It's all business as usual,

really. Chaos, but good.

No one exemplifies attitude,

more than Marquis Smith.

He is attitude personified.

Mark's an inspirational character and also an awkward get, you know.

His behaviour has become kind of more mystifying and erratic since I left. I

mean, people do use the word genius quite a lot, but I do think he's a

genius.

I think he's got talent, he's got charisma, like it or not. He's not a

nice guy.

We don't know anything about him as fans. All we know is this absolutely

distinct stage persona and voice.

I think you can compare any other bands to The Fall, because nobody really

sounds like The Fall. When bands do sound like The Fall, you just kind of

go, you're trying to rip off The Fall, fuck off.

With the fall, you can never be absolutely certain what you're going to

get.

Sometimes it may not be what you want, but it's still, they're the fall, that's

all you need.

I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.

Need some out of the end, just go... Just be yourselves.

Clats.

Grylls.

My dad's sort of attitude was he'd follow me into the business, you know,

or go into the army, otherwise it's a waste of bloody time, isn't it?

I used to work for my dad in the school holidays, summer holidays.

For about ten years, when I was six or fifteen, I worked for my dad every

bloody school holiday.

I used to think he was a rat bastard, but either way, it's good, you know.

They virtually chucked me out of the house, which I don't like that.

Because it's like, you know, nowadays they can't get rid of the lads. Can they

stay at home till they're about 35?

I don't know.

It's actually awful.

Must be hard. I couldn't bring up any kids. I mean, it's hard with a bloody

group. That's enough for me.

I found the group because I wanted to write music.

I was like laid off the docks and all this shit.

So it was a way of earning money at the start.

The first group, it started just as there was like three people.

Freel, Grammar, Baines.

They realised that the true mission was to be in the fall.

It wasn't taken seriously in them days. In them days, it's a bit like now. You

just think you've got to have a million quid before you start a group.

It was about like that then.

I think I was 76.

I was writing a lot, and so it started as like a sort of poetry reading and

that. Pissing around, really.

We all used to meet up and hang out at my flat on Kingswood Road in Prestwich

and listen to music.

We were into punk before punk.

We were into the garage groups, like the early 60s groups, you know.

In 1974-75, you could be interested in music like Iggy Pop and you could be

interested in avant-garde jazz and electronic German music, all sorts of

strange things.

And that was in the air anyway.

And I think people were beginning to put bands together anyway that had those

kind of weird influences. It just didn't have a focus, it didn't have a name, it

didn't really have a sense that it could ever be anything other than local.

The Sex Pistols coming up those two times completely shattered all that and

made everything intimate and close and doable.

Those gigs galvanized Manchester musicians or wannabe musicians.

People came out of the woodwork.

Closet Stooges fans, rabid Captain Beefheart fans began to touch base with

one another and start making their own groups.

In hindsight, you know, they turned out to be They turned out to be The Fall,

they turned out to be Mosey, they turned out to be all sorts of interesting kind

of Manchester groups that at the time didn't think that they had it in them to

be musicians, to be a group.

So everybody went to the gig, but I mean, I did, so I'm so fucking up.

Psycho, psycho!

Well, we got involved in this, like, North West Arts thing. It was like a

musicians' collective.

It was like...

Brass bands and bird noises, there was a fella.

Did symphonies out of bird noises.

Anybody could get up and do a performance, so it really suited what

the fall were about at that time.

So we thought we'd just do what we were doing in the bedroom, you know, like

read it out, poetry over a bass and a guitar.

Then you've got a drummer and it's kicked off, you know.

After the Sex Pistols.

There was lots of strange things happening in our basement clubs in

Manchester. Obviously the Buzzcocks had started up, and if you went to see

Buzzcocks, there would be interesting support groups that had also come about

at the same time.

Well,

that was a big break, Richard Boone offering us support for the Buzzcocks,

because that's when we started doing regular gigs.

They were startling.

They had the thrift store styling, totally anti-fashion, with the

threadbare sweaters and the awful shirts.

They were totally a garage band and they obviously had it.

Incredibly exciting if you knew your Iggy Pop and you knew your Can and you

knew your Captain Beefheart because it seemed to have the same thing going on,

this crunching together of strange rhythms and odd...

shafts of sound just sort of cutting against it like it's a glass and a

really peculiar guy at the front ranting away.

Once Spiral Scratch had been released and we'd been working with The Fall

on a live, occasional basis, I thought it was important that their work

was recorded too.

Yeah, well, actually, I've got to say this. The Buzzcocks played through our

first recording.

Good blossom.

I would have loved to put it out myself, but things around Buzzcocks got

commercially chaotic and I was distracted, so I gave them the tapes.

Good evening. Welcome to What's On for World Cup Plus. I think Richard must

have mentioned...

the band to me. I certainly remember getting a copy of Bingo Master's

Breakout thinking, this sounds bloody weird, this sounds like part of the

explosion. And I remember taking a film crew up to a basement in a house in

North Manchester in Prestwich.

The music was offensive to a lot of people.

Coming from the north, you've got this inoffensive, cap-touching attitude,

which we're trying to break out of.

I always think it was more attitude than music.

I think that's what the fall brought to Manchester.

Again, they brought this great oppositional thing, which is...

They loathed wankers like me from South Manchester and Marky epitomized that

You see it's more than just the songs you're playing yeah, yeah, I mean it is

more than the songs I mean the music is secondary really the music scene does

not communicate to people We try to it's where we fall down

To this day, I always say I'm not quite sure whether I like The Fall's music,

but I like The Fall. I mean, just a song called Ya Ya Industrial Estate.

Fantastic.

I felt, I mean, and I think everybody else would agree with this, that we were

just all equal members of a band.

Do you not get tired of being poor, though, lads?

Yeah, I get tired.

Yeah, to not make a living out of it, it's... And you don't make a living out

of it, do you, President? No.

Please give me some money.

I think as the fall evolved, it emerged as Mark as very definitely, you know,

the voice of the fall.

It was a solo act, but it was a solo act that needed everybody around him.

So it had a kind of weird dynamic that he couldn't have done it on his own.

Give me a name, then.

Well, give me a name, then.

I met Kay through a friend.

She worked at Prestwich Hospital, the same time that I did.

And when she split up with the partner, she came to live with me.

And at that time, me and Mark were drifting apart. We were splitting up,

really. And they got together and she became the falls manager.

What do you mean you want some money? What are you talking about? You're

pirating my bloody stuff, Tony. What are you talking about?

I pay for your equipment.

Kay was actually the tough, abrasive one. She was the boss then.

Kay, can I have all our love?

Hello, lovey. Kay would get very drunk and was even tougher than Mark and would

jump on you and attack you and go on about the money or generally act in a

ridiculous way.

And one could be quite fond of her, but I was quite scared of Kay Carroll, to

tell you the truth. In a way, I've never been scared of Mark.

He's being an arsehole and he's calling me, you know what I mean?

The idea of a manager seemed to be against the original ethos of the fall,

so that was a bit problematic.

And Tony left.

I left.

And then a whole new fall emerged.

Right, noise!

So, we're going to get really speedy. Finally, Bingo Mass' breakout was

released, much later than anybody had intended.

But there was a certain amount of redemption involved.

Some critics got where the fall were coming from.

Well, it was actually my producer at the time, John Walters, who...

first heard them, and I think they were a support band at a gig in Croydon, and

Walters heard them at that and wrote a letter. John Walters wrote me a letter

and said, you know, you are the worst group I've ever seen in the history of

mankind.

He's got that John Walters voice. You ever meet him?

No, he's fucking fantastic.

He said, you were the worst tuneless rubbish I've ever heard.

Even worse than Suzie and the Banshees. This is what he wrote.

You were even worse than Suzie and the Banshees.

I didn't believe it was possible.

It was a gem. What a gem.

He said, please do a session.

Get to start again, uh, uh, pardon? Get to start again. Oh!

Eh? Oh, it's been really good, this!

Oh, really, having a really good groove through it.

Nah,

do it again. Alright, sir. Yeah, yeah, of course.

We're doing it again, kids, with a bit harder rhythm section on the keyboards.

Steve, you've got to play a bit harder. You've got to be in tune and you've got

to do it on the changes.

You heard a taste of this earlier on. It'll be slightly louder now. I think

I've seen the fall and blindness.

To be realistic, if you barely need anything else, do you?

The 24th session for the programme, as far as we know, the very first of them

was recorded at Maida Vale on the 30th of whichever the 5th month is, in 1978,

and broadcast... The four were on their way to do a John Peel session, and the

bass player at the time, he'd had a few ups and downs, a guy called Eric

Ferrett, and I think the actual...

The point at which Eric was thrown out of the band was he decided that he

didn't want to come along to a Peel session.

So I was going along to help him with the gear, and when we got back, I got a

phone call from Mark asking me if I wanted to join.

Now, bearing in mind, it was my favourite band.

I was happy to be a roadie, and I was being asked by Mark Smith to join the

fall, and I was still 16 years old, and I didn't have to think long and hard

before saying yes.

Like the granddad, you used to stand outside prisons and that, and when they

say,

I remember once we went to record Live at the Witch Trials and we ended up

recording the album in a day.

So we were wandering around London, particularly Martin, Carl and I.

And I remember them saying to me, you're Mark's puppet, aren't you?

And I'm like, what?

And they were saying, yeah, you'll do anything that he tells you. That's why

he got you in. We wanted our mate in. I'm going, oh, I'm sorry. What can I do?

I think they were the seeds of the split in the band and it becoming not a load

of mates all pulling together and working together, but Mark wanting to

foist his own kind of intentions on everybody else.

It was a matter of control of direction and where they were going.

And Mark had a certain idea, I think a fixed idea, of how he wanted it to be

portrayed. A year after I joined, Steve and Craig joined.

And again, we were all in the same situation. We were there and happy to

be, you know, Mark's foils in his backing band, really.

Whereas Martin had already got sort of disaffected with the whole thing. You

know, him and Mark being the sort of core of it and the real creative force

behind it.

Martin had realised that he was kind of being sidelined, so he just had enough

and went.

It was a drastical fucking chant.

It shaped my palms.

Not literally,

I mean, I was scared to death.

The guys who I'd seen carrying the equipment onto the stage were suddenly

playing because Steve suddenly went onto the bass and Craig Scanlon then became a

guitarist and Mark moved on to guitar. So it was this ever-changing kind of

movement of the fall.

I don't know how we ended up going around with them, but they're just like

these really strange people from the other side of Manchester who just seem

to be really into the music.

Is there anybody there?

Yeah!

Dragonite was like... It was like a 390-year-old song.

Not even that, it was like a fucking... Half the group wasn't even allowed to

work, I can't remember.

In them days.

They're too young.

At the time, we didn't even know how young they were because he would add

years to the ages of the group because, you know, they couldn't play in the pubs

they were playing in or whatever, you know, because they were so young.

I like to get on and tutor them.

It's the word, I suppose.

You understand?

It's amazing what you can get out of them.

It is incredible.

It wasn't, to be absolutely honest, it wasn't until about, you know, the second

or third record or perhaps even the second or third session that I started

to think actually this is really something fairly astonishing.

It fitted into the John Peel Show because it was in a way made out of the

John Peel Show. It was a soundtrack that was based on listening to the John Peel

Show. The strange sense in the early 70s of listening to this show late at night

that was bringing things from around the world that were just so exotic and so

strange.

I first heard The Fall in about 1981 on John Peel.

The mad kid ran left side, south side towards me. He was about seven.

You know, you kind of used to listen to it under the bedclothes, that sort of

thing, in the middle of the night. And I remember not really liking it.

And the mad kid said, give me the lead, give me the lead, give me the lead!

And I just thought it was annoying and incomprehensible.

But then that in itself became fascinating, and the good thing was you

get kind of exposed to it.

There was a feminist Austin Maxey parked outside.

with anti-nuclear, anti-nicotine signs on the side. Anyway, two weeks before...

It's that fascinating thing of this superficially ugly music and these

really fascinating, incredibly well-thought-out words.

Mark

does

use language extraordinarily well and in such a way that you're

perhaps made to

think more deeply about something which you may have taken for granted, you

know, in the way that a poet or a painter would, where you just may think,

actually, I never thought of it like that.

So I resign to bed I keep bottles and comics stuck by

its head Fuck it, let the beard grow He has an amazing

eye for the mundane.

and at the same time for the complete strangeness and

otherworldliness of things.

They're all caught up together.

They seem to come from some other place.

Politically, he's neither left nor right.

He sometimes espouses views that you might think were right-wing.

But then he'll come out with something that's extremely radical.

He's neither one or another.

He's critical, essentially, of everything.

And perhaps suspicious of everything as well.

I don't understand that.

See, I think it's the best way to write.

I'm still like that. I don't know what I'm writing about.

I have to tell.

I don't want to give my secrets away to these fucking idiots on the BBC.

Do you understand that?

We are all living Leggings So close

My brain is imploding But everything is alright

I am a rabbit from Germany I was very

happy

I could frolic around on ads by the Leipzig station.

But tonight, of course, is a night for the fall, and this is What About Us.

What about us?

What about us?

What about us?

Well,

I am tempted to say that this is possibly the best fall session that

we've ever had, but I'd probably say that about all of them. That was called

What About Us.

Well, this is the lecturing part of the concert.

He likes to have a dominating influence, I should say, like a paternalistic

influence over you.

Very much like an old Victorian paternalistic boss.

Most of the time, we just got on with it and pretty much did as we were told,

didn't we?

At the beginning, yeah. At the beginning.

Like a matter of life or death, the fall gig, wasn't it?

Oh, yeah.

Couldn't be seen to enjoy yourself, could you? No.

I've never been in a room that's so crackled with malevolence. I mean, we

had our backs to the wall at the far end of the room and were extraordinarily

grateful to have done so. I mean, there was so much hostility and rancour.

I remember the one gig we did. It was only a little club, but it was that low

that we couldn't hear what was going on the other side of the stage. I couldn't

hear Steve and Craig, and they couldn't hear me. So me and Craig swapped

oversides. Up in the room, there's a cloud of smoke.

Yeah, fucking get it together instead of showing off.

Well, we got right bollocking when we got off. What are you doing?

Who do you think you are? You're not in a big rock combo. You're not in U2, but

you're swapping sides and messing about.

No, I think Mark's got a different idea.

I don't think the other guys quite grasp it. Mark Riley's from a different

background again and his culture is different and he thinks in terms of a

conventional group writing nice songs.

I don't think Mark Smith wants to be a pop artist or a rock star, you know.

My relationship with Mark Smith started off brilliantly and ended not so

brilliantly, really.

You could kind of see it coming, I think. You know, there'd been various

arguments and...

you know fallings out and it seemed to be a lot of difference of opinion on how

things should be done i was probably just a little bit more vocal about it

which would still be not very vocal and it certainly won't be you know fist

flailing and fingers pointing it just like well excuse me but we're not quite

happy about that you know mark smith is quite critical of mario's playing and

you know his attitudes mark riley he wanted to

do

Stuff his way and I think that kind of that clash.

Well, you wanted to do the hits every night It was like there's only one

leader in the fall, you know mark and then I suppose mark was a bit of a

challenge to that He said we're going to Europe in in about a month. I went. All

right. Okay says but don't you to come?

I was like What then he said yeah, we're gonna do it without you.

I said, all right, okay

He said, if you don't go very well, we'll call you when we get back and you

can rejoin the band. And I'm like, right, OK.

Like, in a daze, you know. So the next thing I knew, it was about a month

later, I think, and we were going to Europe.

I've still had the phone call.

Well, it just carried on, really.

Kay was still the manager and she'd set this American tour up, so we went and

did that and Kay...

I don't really want to say that, do I really? I don't want to say that K left

Mark and then he met Bricks all on the same tour.

But that's how it happened.

You have something to say, don't you?

I don't like your record as much, but what are your lyrics about?

So we just got on from there? We got married?

No, that's not what I said.

I said...

I thought you guys were brilliant but I can't understand your lyrics and they

irritate me because I can't understand them.

The story of the fall and Mark E Smith over the last quarter of a century has

so many elements that it's got to have a soap element and it's got to have the

Elizabeth Taylor and Burton element. It's got to have the Paul and Linda

McCartney element. It's got to have that kind of weird odd sexual thing going on

and it was the last thing you would have expected Mark E Smith to get involved

in.

you know, having his wife in the band.

Kicker! Kid Conspiracy!

Kicker! Kid Conspiracy!

J-Hells!

Panic Break! Ask Lickers!

He got saved!

I thought it was one of them things that, you know, I was on the verge of

splitting up, really.

So Brick sort of brought a bit of a new life back into it, I think.

Different ideas and, you know, it wasn't just the miserable blokes from

Manchester involved.

What's a computer?

It's a computer!

What's a computer?

She brought a particularly different American work

ethic into the equation, which is get some money, try for a

hit.

I actually sacrificed my principles in order to get the fall on.

I wanted to pick somebody who was a favourite of mine for a number of years,

and funnily enough, they've never done national TV in this country before.

They've done a couple of local things, but they've never been on national TV,

which seemed to me to be shocking.

So I quite wanted to go down in history as the man who put them on TV.

When they'd said to me, you know, how much do you want for coming up today? I

said, I'll come up for nothing if you let me pick a band to be on the

programme.

It's The Fool!

I think Brix's impact on the band was, one, sartorial. You can see that they

suddenly smartened up, and they looked like a proposition that could get in the

charts.

Secondly, I think that she brought a more overt kind of American rock and

roll sensibility to it, which softened up a lot of the rough edges of the

sound.

That was great, that whole thing when they were suddenly on TV and they would

have champagne in the dressing room and it was great and Mark was wearing those

cool suits.

The best thing was meeting Bo Diddley.

And he was on this old rock and roll tour or something, and he said it was

the biggest load of crap he's ever experienced.

And he said, but I did see you on that Tube show.

He said, I was watching it in the hotel.

I said,

Elton John and that, Paulie Yates, what the hell's going on there?

There's only one good rock and roll group, and it was you.

He goes, and it was you?

I'm like,

it's Paul Diddley.

Just for a little bit of time, they were like Mr. and Mrs. Rock and Roll.

You know, or Mr. and Mrs.

Strange Deranged Rock and Roll. You know, it was great.

How long can you carry on, though?

Because... Would you like us to break up now?

You see, if you're in a business where it's all in pursuit of novelty, I mean,

that's fair enough, that's cool.

But I mean, we're not, no.

He doesn't want to be in a rock band.

And I don't think he sees The Fall as a rock band in any sense.

So I suppose he's always been wanting to take it into the artistic dimensions.

Now, when I was working in Edinburgh during the summer, lots of arts lovers

were dribbling the claret down the cravats and getting very excited over a

young dancer by the name of Michael Clarke. But when it comes to dancing,

I'm a bit of a philistine myself, although I did have to sit up and take

notice when I heard that this lad was dancing to music by the fall.

Because he has a genuine desire for an artistic expression.

That's not false.

It may be...

Naive or primitive in the sense of the artist which you like through a

primitive artist, but it's a genuine desire All

the

groups they don't so much the old great was this not that I would personally But

you couldn't see the group that was the funniest bit

They stayed up to watch it with all the parents.

And all you could see was like Michael Clarke, baring his ass on the fucking

screen. It was fucking great.

It was dead funny.

When a group keeps going as long as the four have done, and they have a sound

that fundamentally is actually a commercial sound, I mean, at its most

sort of fluent, for all its experimental and avant-garde edges, it's a commercial

sound because it's about the attack of pop and the attack of rock and the way

that a good lyric has a catchy chorus.

Well, Marky Smith has never really, even at his most peculiar, obstinate and

strange, veered away from that notion that he wants to reach the masses.

And I think that they kept going for so long that fashion sort of does weird

dips, you know. And definitely, you know, at the end of the 80s, it hit that

time that people noticed them.

And they'd become fashionable and they started to have bigger audiences.

He had never been fashionable. He'd been anti-fashion.

And for a very short period, he became fashionable.

I was so glad when we got very popular.

I remember the time that my mother told me that Elton John was on the tube and

said he liked the fall because it was rock and roll.

I thought we were doing something wrong, actually.

An email here from Sean Cordell, and it reads in part, My youth can be tracked

through the development of the fall.

A good way to spend your life, I think, Sean.

Wrong place!

Right, sorry.

Because you have to walk to the vegetarian organic shopping medieval.

Ah!

One! One!

Here's the first take. Come on. Yeah, the first take. You can find that.

One, two, three!

Ben! A rag town.

I used to think I could do what I wanted to.

A rag town.

For me alone.

I want the streets to complete my home. Shut up!

I can't dance. I can't sing.

Took her ever at the Yarmulke round.

Oh, my clerk said I'm a bastard.

He is the reason I'm with Yarmulke round.

Go and see him.

And while I'm there, I can't wait to see Anthrax took him down.

Well, nobody could believe it with Curious. We were dead to put it on in

Edinburgh.

What was interesting about the idea of being associated with a ballet was that

it seemed one of the few moments of utter logic in the history of The Fall,

in a way. You know, a series of clashing illogicalities constantly.

Here was something that was quite logical, as if there was a narrative

kind of development of The Fall.

This is the moment when they're deemed to be quite artistic, really.

I remember going up and just overseeing the recording of it in Edinburgh and

seeing the play and it was great, it was really good.

Math, bricks on the handbags and it just was, you sort of smiled all the way

through it.

You have the fall fans at the back in the cheap seats and then you have the

ballet fans down the front with the fingers in their ears.

I thought it was hysterical. It was wild. It was free. The group played

really well.

Some of the dancing was fantastic.

Michael runs a mean troupe.

In a similar way to Mark running a mean band.

It's good doing ballet.

Because there's a discipline there, you know.

You know, you have to be in there at seven.

for half an hour, then you've got to go on stage at 9 o'clock and you've got to

get fucking off at something, and that's fucking it. And if you don't get it

right, you're fucked.

It's different.

It took Mark to a new level of audience. It made him a favourite, you see.

He suddenly became of interest to the chattering classes.

It's the very middle class crowd and bourgeois crowd that he doesn't like

himself, if the truth be told.

Just as it was going really well, I think Mark just said, you know, I'm not

really what you're saying I am. You know, I'm not this thing. I'm Mark E.

Smith. I am not like your pet.

And just veered off in another direction.

It's a difficult time for Mark, you know.

I think she was looking for fame.

And Mark, I'm sure he doesn't mind fame, but he's not looking for it in the same

way.

You know, he doesn't value fame, and he doesn't really value the opinion of a

load of famous people who don't particularly care for him.

Mark's personal life was always entangled with the fall.

Last week...

After a dinner steal, I had crow's feet

under my eyes.

Fancy days were getting hot.

They all felt dead sorry for me, you know, blokes on the dole in the fucking

pub, like, it's a pint mark, come on.

All that happens to us all, lads, you know, and all that, you know, it's like,

it's all right, you know.

These are the finest times of my life.

This is the greatest time of my life.

Mark just seemed to keep working through things.

Whenever things happened like that in his life, he just seemed to keep working

through it. There was never, like, I'm going to take a break for six months or

anything like that.

This is Craig's tribute to Frank Zappa.

Now we can all laugh about this but this is his tribute to Frank and so it's

called I'm Frank.

Just about to do our first album for Phonogram and Bricks left and Martin

Braumer came back for that for Extra Cake.

I mean we all like Martin anyway because he was the original guitarist so we're

quite chuffed to have him back in the band.

You know, even with Mark, the strangest things you just take for granted. You

know, he would just think, you know, he needed some kind of replacement for

Bricks. Maybe the best way would be go back to the very beginning.

You know, maybe some strange notion that he could get a bit of the formula back.

He didn't really work out in him rejoining, I don't think,

because it was like, When they formed it was probably equal, you know, he was as

much of his band as Mark's, but then when he rejoined he had to take a bit of

a back seat.

We've done the 24th session for the programme, as far as we know. The band

have recorded sessions for the programme pretty much every year. The sessions

have been 82, 89, 97, not quite sure how that happened. And then for some reason

there were no more sessions after 98 until 2003.

John, can you tell us why this was, it says here?

Breakdown in communications, I think probably the best reason I can give you.

I wrote this script for this.

You know, like, I'd come in and start shouting at you because you haven't done

the track yet. So why have you done the fucking track, son?

When we think of The Fall as a group, this is one of his more brilliant

illusions. That he's kept that idea that The Fall has been going for 25, 30

years. But in a funny sort of way, there's been about...

30 or 40 groups that Marky Smith has had. Well, they've been so many of them.

I mean, you know, go out and do a straw poll, you know. I mean, you could go

outside the door now and probably bump into somebody who's been in the fall.

Don't call me.

Well, he got this thing, his reputation was like, he was a sack master, you know

what I mean?

Keep firing people and all that. This is even like common knowledge now. Even

anywhere I go now, people on the street go, you're the one who's had all them

group members. I don't see what the problem is.

Obviously, it's become almost a kind of joke, except to the people concerned,

you know, the kind of passage through the fall. And then, by and large, people

then disappear without a trace after they've gone, which always seems to me

to be... I don't know whether he's killing them or what. You have to be a

fairly strong person, I think.

You know, there was quite a few musicians and people around the band who

didn't last very long.

It's not like an ordinary group.

People do it because they love it.

They do it for nothing or they do it for a lot of money, but they will fucking do

it.

I know it's in the 90s that what was happening with Marky Smith

was what...

had once been sort of almost sympathetically registered in a certain

area as the old curmudgeon or whatever or the old fart but you know what a

genius he suddenly became you know a fucking asshole i guess is the phrase he

suddenly become you know not enough you realize that there was large parts of

marquis smith that were not very nice i don't think he's made his behavior any

better by his use tremendous use of drugs and speedy drugs speed and various

things that would Make his nose worse, but he's a tough tough character.

It shows on his face He shows on his faces as a hardline drinker. He shows on

his face as a tough guy became a moment when it turned and that abuse that we

put down to just him living on the edge and the Speed and the and the booze it

started actually to be something that was really if you know clearly just

affecting me affecting him as an individual That was the moment when you

kind of thought Oh my God, you know, what if he wasn't a genius? He was just

an old drunken tramp that when he got really drunk started to spout phrases

that made a kind of sense and we read too much into it, you know.

Just a little bit of that started to come into it, you know.

I don't think an award like God Like Genius or Lifetime Service Award or

anything is relevant to them because it suggests that it's stopped. And it

doesn't look like it ever is going to stop.

You know, the point where everybody thought it would end was the mid-90s

when you didn't seem to be able to hold a line-up together, you looked terribly

ill, and you really felt like you were living in the last days.

It was turning into a bit of a shambles by this time. I think everybody would

admit that. There was a lot of financial trouble the band were in, you know,

which was kind of affecting everything.

Gigs got cancelled and rowing the sound check and we wouldn't get to the gig.

The writing was on the wall, really, I think.

But I don't know why we went to America.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

My last gig was at Brownies, which is pretty well known as a disaster.

A lot of aggression on stage and I think the odd microphone being thrown about

and kicked over.

Well, they started on me and I started on them, so that's fair, I think.

By this time, I'd had enough, I think.

I maybe should have got out of it a couple of years before.

That band had just run out of steam and yet because it was Steve, because it was

Carl, I think he had a loyalty to those people.

All the equipment was pushed over and Mark was fighting with Carl and trashed

the drum kit.

So they attacked me as well.

I ended up in jail, but at the end of the day, I think it's probably the best

thing that ever happened. That scrap on the... I

felt like I was carrying these old fellas around all the

time. I really did.

They're all about my age and they're shit.

There's no two ways around it. They're crap.

A fucking animal on drugs. A fucking idiot.

He'd let it go too far.

He'd fallen out with his group, he was drinking too much and he was gradually

losing contact. He had no various management, no friends were working with

him. Couldn't get any work, couldn't get any jobs in Europe.

Banker, anything.

Zip.

Britain even.

The point about him is that you've got to play the game a little bit, and he

knows that.

You can't completely ditch everything and expect your fame to carry you

through.

I think it was after that low point...

He realized that you have to have a band, that he was known. He went back to

the basics of his success.

When you just think, you know, he's too drunk, he hasn't got a band, he's

forgotten his lyrics, who the hell is he? He'll end up putting together a set

that's utterly mesmerizing. And you realize what a great artist he truly is.

What he produced was rather good. He came up with one or two incarnations of

the form that were very...

very talented there were so many people that would love to be in that band that

are great musicians that could join it and often you think god just get someone

in they can and sort it out you know that there are people that would

contribute to this that are brilliant but that would be exactly the wrong

thing to do don't want fall phones you know because i've had i've had feelings

you know vlogs who like the fall filled it on base i guess out and they

play like the fall they think the fall is and it's rubbish

The first time I met Mark I was about 15 years old because he used to come

drinking in the same building that used to be my youth club and I kind of saw

him on and off for about four years and then I just got a phone call from a

friend of Mark's who was giving me a ring asking me if I wanted to come and

do a day's work for the fall in Manchester.

We went down and recorded some tunes off the Unutterable album and I think on the

strength of that

performance that I did on that day, he kind of offered me the job.

Everybody who works with The Fall is very regular people, and

I won't pick them otherwise.

It's got Eleanor now in the band, and that has really focused down. Another

very strong woman, knows exactly what she wants to do.

I didn't want to join for obvious reasons, being the wife and so.

But then I found it quite easy to play with them.

And, you know, I just stuck with it. I mean, I treat Ellen completely

differently when she's in the group.

It's not like I treat her like everybody else.

It's a bit hard sometimes, you know.

I don't think it's important to Mark. He doesn't differentiate between women and

men.

As humans, as people, and certainly not as musicians, so it makes no difference.

No, women are a lot better, actually.

A lot of things, musically, you just take it up.

You can just give them an idea.

A lot of fellas, you know, they want to know the mechanics of it all the time,

which I can't explain to them, because believe it or not, I still don't know a

D from an E or a F from an A.

I know an A and an E.

And this email says, play a fall track for Mike in Froome and Ben in London. I

sold sados. And to all the young fall fans, big up. And Spencer is a top fall

drummer.

See what I mean?

Great, shot it.

What I'm saying is we could improve on that. We could start off somewhere.

We don't have to do Wrong Place again, do we?

Creatively, it's the best band to be in. It really is, because the songs we

release, some are written by individuals and some are written by the entire band.

It gives you a lot of leeway.

I just give them the freedom, which they don't get in, you

know, like, rock bands and all that.

At the end of the day...

Once you hand that song over and he's sung over it, it's his song, it's his

tune.

He'll do his thing to it that makes it a little bit special.

I love the way he reduces the basic idea of the fall to being raw sound with

weird singing over the top. He's not a singer, but he's one of the greatest

rock singers there's ever been, and his whole way of turning...

the drunken karaoke singing with the at the end of everything has become

unbelievably powerful.

My singing is getting very good actually. I'm getting really good

at singing after 25 years.

No, I really am.

I can't hear the grass grow.

I can't hear the grass grow.

I can't hear the grass grow.

I can't hear the grass grow.

I can't hear the grass grow.

Well,

this has been just magnificent, I think, and thanks, Mark and the rest of you,

for making an old man very happy. Two tunes from the fall, wrong place, and

the moves, I can hear the grass growing.

Come on, one, two, three.

The latest band now is just fantastic.

Who can you say that 27 years and and and he's got a stunning banner I saw

them a week ago and they were like five new songs in the set and they were the

best five songs One

of

the sort of classic moves in the last five years on stage has been him turning

up people's amps switching bits of care off

Mark does a lot of live mixing on stage, like he moves microphones, puts it in

the bass drum or so, and I think there's no other band that does this, like a

live mix by the singer.

What's he doing? What's he doing now? He's coming over, he's messing with your

amp, and it's like, I don't know what he's doing, but in his head, you know,

he's, right, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this.

No, it's the back of my head, the group, not the crowd.

I'm not bothered about the crap when I've never been around.

It don't interest me.

The experience of being in the

fall will give you the most fantastic time of your life that you would never

have had in any other band. But at the same time, you also get some of the most

frightening experiences. I mean, it's kind of like that.

It's kind of like that.

It's very easy to kind of assume that when you go to a gig and all these

people have turned up, you know, that you're partly responsible for this.

And that's when you start your slippery slope downhill because once you start

thinking that, you know, you've got to come into this band and you've got to

know your role.

Oh, God, I will tell you how it will change.

There was a song on Hex Induction air, Hit Priest, that they redid on a Curious

Orange soundtrack, which has got this line, he is not appreciated. And every

encore for Time Immemorial now has involved him handing the mic out to a

member of the audience who can then shout, he is not appreciated. And I

think that there's a kind of feedback loop there of the audience.

Flattering Marky Smith saying we know how good you are, but you're playing to

these kind of crowds of this level But there's also a bit of flattery going the

other way.

It's one of those rare moments where he is Approving of the audience and saying

but you know, you know, I'm really good

It's

part of him that is so fucking furious with his obscurity and his poverty

considering how how brilliant he is and then part of him that really really just

wouldn't want it any other way i think there's a lot of deception going on

sometimes with mark he wants an audience he wants to be appreciated he deserves

to be appreciated or feels he does and some of it's just showbiz i'm an anti

-star but i shine brightly

He lives in his own weird little world, and it's not a world I particularly want

to be part of.

But, you know, it's Mark Smith. What he does is brilliant, and you can never

write him off.

It is to Manchester's glory that, yes, we

have Ian Curtis and Sean Ryder and Ian Brown and, let's forget the Gallagher

brothers, but...

Without Mark E, that heritage would be a much, much poorer place.

And the fact that I'm calling him heritage, he'll fucking hate, so I'm

glad I said it.

I respect Mark for continuing to beat his own

path through the...

The jungle that is life.

You know, even if there's a well-worn path, three or four feet to the left or

right of him, he's still going to go down the middle.

And that's got to be good.

I've got plenty to say, you know. I'm going to carry on saying that.

Okey-doke.

Check the record! Check the record! Check the guy's rock record!

Check the record!

Check the guy's rock record!