Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith

If you're going to play it out of tune, then play it out of tune properly.

There was a lot of pretense floating around; not just with aunties and all that but with emotions and how people saw you. They had a point. There's a lot to learn from that generation -- the stoic approach. I think it's disgusting how they've been forgotten about in this way. It's the American hippies' fault, they saw an in there, a way of making money out of bad moods. That's all it is most of the time. You can't expect to feel cock-a-hoop every minute of every day. My mam and dad's generation understood this. They were just thankful the bombs had stopped threatening their lives. They just wanted to get on with living.

I knew it was coming. I knew they didn't have the nerve. Three days in and they've got faces like vexed tomatoes, their skins flaking sci-fi style: burnt to fuck. They were an embarrassment; not only to me and the wife and The Fall fans but to their own generation.

We went to this stupid heavy metal disco after the first gig – which was awful – and the group all started dancing to Deep Purple. I told them to sit down, have some dignity.

I used to believe everything I read, but now I'm steppin' out.

I’m annoyed by the lack of smoking on TV as well. It’s terrible. It’s funny seeing old interviewers lighting up, the likes of Russell Harty pulling on a Three Castles or a State Express or a Churchman Full Strength or a Passing Cloud. I think it’s a shame that we don’t get to see this any more. We should have more ashtrays on morning TV and presenters wheezing.

When I fiddle around with their amps, it’s because it needs to be done. I must be hearing it different to them. But you’d be surprised by how many people tell me that it works. Not that I need telling. I know it works.

In 1997 I said they were dicks for voting Labour – but nobody was having it at the time. Three years later people are saying – ‘Oh, you were right there, Mark.’ It’s a waste of time, really, but I still do it. Nobody likes the bringer of bad news.

They fail to realize that 99.9 per cent of people with a healthy diet will eventually die.

On the other hand, I can’t stand these lads thickening up their accents and singing about shit kisses and cigs and chip shops, this affected realism – it’s not that far removed from George Formby.

But I really can’t stand it when blokes feel the need to comment on your drinking habits. It’s rampant, all that malarkey: New Labour trying to keep people alive for ever. I don’t see them berating the royals or their backbenchers about having a cig or a large gin at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. If you put it in the context of the current climate, having a few pints and a Benson after work is hardly the worst crime on earth.

It started about ten years ago, and now it’s a real middle-class retreat. Shit pubs. Shit atmosphere. They think that if they go there they’ll all live in harmony away from the moths. It’s such a Victorian idea. You can’t hide like that. It’s the Guardian’s version of The Prisoner. They’re so middle class they put pebbles on the beach so they don’t get any sand between their toes. No wonder nothing comes out of it. It’s not a patch on Blackpool. That’s the real seaside town.

They couldn’t understand that the left and right were never a threat anyway; that the worst thing is a sanitized society ruled by the middle class. The working class and the real upper class have a lot in common. They know where they’re from, they like a drink, have a sense of humour. It’s the middle you need to look out for.

That’s the feeling behind the album. Scratch the surface of English suburbia and you’ll see a bored bloke looking back at you asking what you’re up to. We’re not talking David Lynch here, it’s not as lurid as that. But that makes it all the more interesting. Like, why is that person peering out of his window so early in the morning anyway? It seemed to me that people started spending an unusual amount of hours meddling with their lawns and privets. Rinsing the paving and touching up the paintwork on their window frames. I’d be walking around wondering how I could finance everything and there’d be a fellow in an ill-fitting pair of slacks adding dabs of white paint to the white paint that was already there. Killing time. Or I’d be sat in the pub and grown men would suddenly start talking loudly about their plans for an extension or how the new curtains are looking.

I keep going on about it, but musicians are a unique sort. The stage is everything to them – there’s nothing outside of it. It’s as if they’re still performing in a school play and their mam’s out in the audience and they’re busting a gut to upstage every other fucker around them. I’ve got to keep an eye on this all the time.

One of the rules of the tarot is that you shouldn’t really take a lot of money for it, like psychics. It’s not good. So I’d take presents, a nice leather jacket. You’d go round to dope dealers and they’d give you two ounces of dope per reading. All their readings would be like, ‘You need more advice,’ i.e. I’ll come back next week when I’ve run out. Especially if you’re rich. I’ve got that type of face that people want advice off – I get it all the time. It must be the nose or the way I drink.

We’re living in a re-issue world, filching from the past like magpies with a Tardis.

Mark, how did you find out?’ and I go, ‘What?’ ‘I only wanted a private wedding, I got wed today.’ Of course, I thought why didn’t you invite me then, you cunt? And I say, ‘Congratulations, mate, and by the way you’re sacked.’ So you can see why he’s a bit scarred.