A RENEGADE, THE LIVES AND TALES OF MARK E. SMITH
By MARK E. SMITH
Viking, £18.99, 246pp
Book review in The Times, Saturday 3rd May 2008.
The bar-room savant, half-cut but swilling dreams and misty wisdom around his tumbler is a staple of literature and drama. Through the haze, he sees all, knows all. The shame is that he is made-up. He doesn't exist. Until now. Over there, by the fruit machine. He's called Mark. He likes his own company. He's in some daft shouty group. Or so he says.
Mark E. Smith is the life force behind The Fall. Not that this matters, for this is a self-help book as much as it is a rock biography. Then again, it might be prose, hard to say. Whatever the classification, it is the work of a gifted writer who lays out his truth, delightful in its directness.
He takes an angle-grinder to life and rejoices as the sparks set alight. First off he's wading into ex-members of his band and then the ostentatious compassion of celebrities: 'They can't wait to get to the Congo and start picking up kids with half an arm.' Sacred cows are gleefully slaughtered - Joe Strummer, Elvis Costello, Tony Wilson, John Lennon, Princess Diana - while he champions unlikely anti-heroes such as Alvin Stardust, Pete Waterman and The Glitter Band. Turn a page or two and he's moved on to mobile phones, lazy journalists and football ('It's been hijacked by the Walter Softies.').
These are not off-pat rants but skilfully composed mini-essays, informed and perceptive. Ruing on a generation of children conjoined to their computers he laments that they are 'empty of wonder' while music producers re-mixing old tracks for commercial gain are merely 'dolling up the dead.' This writerly touch is constant and he moves through the years, the people, the places, and The Fall albums at a cracking pace. The reader can see Smith at his favourite table in his favourite pub (of which he writes evocatively) holding court: 'And another thing….'
Despite the practised snarl of his publicity shots and a willingness to conform to curmudgeonly stereotype, Smith is no nihilist; far from it. He sings a song of common sense, decency, loyalty to your family and community. He writes that he 'doesn't deliberate' and this has meant his art and vision has remained steadfast for thirty years. He seems to have understood, almost from The Fall's first practice, that the values a working-class background instils: graft, self-belief and honesty, is armoury enough to withstand any condescension or chicanery.
Former members of The Fall - fifty at the last count - might tell you he's a boozer and a boor, a reactionary and a romancer but, irksome as it might be, from such stone great writers or poets are chiselled.