Mark E. Smith- The Fall - R.I.P.*

The N-word in The Classical has always been puzzling and somewhat troubling but, as Jim B says above, Smith moves in and out of first and third person sometimes from line to line like James Joyce so it's impossible to tell if he is mocking the idea, endorsing it (highly doubtful) or putting the words in someone else's mouth.

When Pavement covered the song later on a b-side they left the whole line out. They weren't taking any chances.

 

Yeah, when the Fall brought it back for a while in the late 90s/early 00s, MES omitted the line....

 

Its funny also how a novelist or film script writer can put words like that in a character's mouth and we just accept it but we assume every word a singer sings is their personal opinion. And Smith, out of all the great lyricists, writes most like a fiction or prose novelist.

 

It's an old convention and a hard habit to break for many listeners. It goes all they way back through the long history of song and of lyric poetry, too. In popular song, it's pretty central to the way we tend to receive songs and mythologize singers and songwriters. So, when a song is meant to be understood as something sung from the point of view of a persona or character, it usually has to telegraph that in some obvious way (if it doesn't, it risks being taken in the conventional way with sometimes problematic results).

Smith certainly wrote lots of "persona" songs like that, and sometimes it's obvious (I'm pretty sure Smith was never into CB, for example, and he is not Damo Suzuki). Sometimes it's clear that he's declaiming in propria persona for all or most of a song (you can tell because his thumbprints are on the paintwork). At other times, however, given his elliptical style, it's harder to know for sure.

L.

 

For some reason people have a harder time accepting that some of Smith's lyrics might be sung in character than, say, Randy Newman's lyrics.

 

I'm not sure he's ever singing in straightforward "propria persona."

 

Except a lot of his songs are him personally venting off about various subjects.

 

I don't think it's a matter of accepting as much as a matter of it just not being so easy to know exactly how to take a given lyric. He messes around with language so much, mixing discourses, bits of found language, quoted language, recording snippets, twisting syntax and usage to his own odd purposes, that it's hard to pickup cues the way it's usually easy enough in a Randy Newman song (although the reception of "Short People" showed how people will sometimes miss them anyway).

You're right that very little is straightforward in the Mark E. Smith universe. His more obvious persona songs are slippery, too ("I am Damo Suzuki" slips in and out of Suzuki's voice, for example). Although as @Vangro notes, there's a fair amount of direct personal ranting in his work--even if at times it's hard to tell when he's slipping into a persona in those songs (sometimes to ridicule the persona's point of view).

When you get right down to it, Smith's difficult style aside, no song is ever really straightforward. Once a song is created it comes unglued from anything as simple as direct expression of a writer's ideas, feelings, point of view. Some songs are designed to stay in the orbit of their writers' self-expression, but there's always some distance.

L.

 

Exactly. Even things that may seem to be direct manifesti--in Like to Blow the narrator calls himself a "Spurs fan." Smith is a Man City fan. Or listen to "Bombast"--as far from a direct personal rant as you can get, when you scratch below the surface. Every last one is a hall of mirrors.

 

In reference to your avatar we could also bring up "f****ts" on GBV's "Hit" and "Expecting Brainchild".. things that as a decidedly non-hetero individual never struck me as offensive, the first being part of a frankly hilarious take on an imaginary queercore band name and the latter painting a rather poetic picture of a grimy environment not unlike a Ginsburg poem. And let's not even get into Oingo Boingo or Ween.. (though their use of satire and humor was more blatant)
There's just stuff in older alternative/punk music that (perhaps rightly) wouldn't fly or be attempted today, but in context of the work and time period is clear wasn't meant to be hateful.
I just think Mark E. Smith didn't really give one flying f'ck about what others would think of him though, and being provocative for provocativity's sake was far more likely to upset conservatives in the Reagan/Thatcher era than leftists, for many it was a protest against attempted sanitization of media rather than showing conviction in anything more directly political in the messaging.

 

Yes, true, but your site gets as close as you can to uncovering the truth. I'm still not sure though who makes the Nazi's?

 

The Classical is one of his character songs like Elastic Man and Solicitor in the Studio (from the perspective of an advertising exec IMO). I saw them do it live circa 2001 and this part was thankfully omitted. Hanley must've heard it as unacceptable at the time as he flubs the bass notes when MES says it.

Deer Park, one of my favourites, is MES recounting a trip to London visiting Rough Trade and the BBC. Bar being a venomous attack on "Hampstead Liberals" anyone's guess as to what each line means as it jumps about so much - "F***ing Jimmy Savile?" Deer Park; an English upper-class hunting ground, King Louis's mansion, a Norman Mailer book and an Indian Buddhist pilgrimage site - probably all four at once.

It's the most dodgy of all his lyrics (bar the TV version of Telephone Thing) just for the specific words he chose to employ.

He was neither racist nor homophobic though (a homophobe wouldn't be a close friend with Leigh Bowery).



Not to hagiography him, circa 1993 his on-stage behaviour (and music IMO) was so appalling I stopped going to see them/buy records. Got back into them in 1999 even though the gigs were even more shambolic (Reading Festival was the nadir - though Robert Pollard and MES squaring off was one for the ages.

When Elena joined the band I was back in 100%. Her years with them are my favourite Fall period (Real New Fall LP, Fall Heads Roll, Imperial Wax Solvent, Remainderer, Sub-Lingual Tablet) - Your Future Our Clutter is as good as they got. "If you can't deliver it like a garage band..."

Went every year when they played The Concorde 2 (in a town he professed to loathe) and they were never anything but glorious. Personal favourite was when they played a total of 1 song I knew and that was an unrecognisable 10min+ Can sounding White Lightning.

Sorry for the (Rouche) ramble, my favourite group and it's the final full-stop at the end of your favourite book that hit me hardest - No more Fall!

 

Robert Pollard and MES squaring up? Do tell.

 

From an addled memory (sorry, Fall war story):


Bob Pollard keeps making references, "they are greasing him up" is the one I remember. GBV pack-up the gear, come back and sit stage side.

A curtain comes down (at a festival?) Half an hour goes past. The curtain starts twitching ala The Morecombe and Wise show and MES is literally punched through it onto the stage by the guitarist.

Shenanigans ensue, then he sees the people sitting on the stage. Each member of GBV is told, politely, to "f**k off", last one is Pollard.

Pollard stands up and leans, with menace, into MES there is a weird moment between them and they then then both laugh and shake hands! (One time in your life where you wish you'd brought a camera)

After that it got worse - he made a noose out of the mic-cord and lobbed it over the bouncers head, sacked the band on stage and a lot of the lyrics were about how The Reading Festival had ripped him off for a V.A.T. bill. My girlfriend, another bloke in the front row and I found it show-biz funny. The rest of the crowd didn't and expressed that emotion vigorously.

Recounted that experience to my mate Chris and he told me about the Worthing one he went a few years before with the look of someone who’d got PTSD.

VS of course some of the greatest concerts I've ever seen in my life:

Concorde 2 (all 10 of them) - boinging up and down like Zebedee getting an effusive happy handshake of a perma-grin MES
Reading 1990 - Jerusalem as the sun set behind them. Kim Deal comes on after "did you see The Fall?"

Never, ever, through the motions. Either the best gig of all time or the worst.

 

Pollard and MES, together at last.

 

If it’s me and yer granny on bongos........

...does that make Tromatic Reflexxions a Fall album?

 

Well, the quote is "If it's me and your granny on bongos, it's a Fall gig" so there's no claim about albums....

 

There's been a little research on this recently and the quote's sourcing does not make it seem particularly iron-clad:

dannyno@dannyno_01
@johnrobinson101 re: yr MES NME "Narky Mark" interview, and usually misquoted granny/bongos line - can you resolve an argument on the Fall Forum? Do you remember if it was from your interview, or an earlier line you had read/heard elsewhere? Thanks!


John Robinson@johnrobinson101

Weirdly I think I can. At the time (97-98?), MES PR was a nice, q posh bloke called Bernard. Line in question was reported to me by Bernard as something MES said to him post-NYC drama. Hope that helps! John


Custom Fall Concert

 

I gave this a "like". I'd like to give it several hundred likes!

Poor old MES. It just felt good to know he was on this earth, trudging from pub to pub, casting an approving or disapproving eye on passers by, all unaware of who he was.

 

Great Pollard story. Never being able to see The Fall live is a deep regret of mine.

 

If you'd made the wrong choice you may well have been treated to a Bud Light Lime shampoo.

 

Not a surprise really. Look at Short People and Let’s Drop a The Big One (among others) by Randy Newman.

 

'Wonderful and frightening world of Mark E Smith' on BBC 4 tonight at 10.30 tonight, I've not seen this, know it was released a few years ago.

 

Lung and kidney cancer: The Official Fall Website

He went out bravely, still performing almost up to the end.

 

It’s a fairly well used phrase in the UK. I wouldn’t look too deeply into it...