That Nation's Saving Grace

Here's a nice treat from The Guardian:

My rise and Fall

Outspoken singer Mark E Smith has led his group the Fall for 32 years, surviving continual fights with an ever-changing cast of musicians to create dozens of albums in his own maverick style. At 51, he remains one of rock's most individual voices. In this first extract from his autobiography, introduced by Dave Simpson, he looks back at the formative moments of his childhood and the birth of the band.

Mark E Smith has been called a drinker, a druggie, a tyrant and a nut. He has spent a night in the cells following one punch-up and been ordered to attend anger management. With his group the Fall, he has become one of the most influential musicians of the past 30 years. However, he is as famous for sacking band members as for his music, having dispensed with more than 50 musicians - including various wives and girlfriends - while making approximately 26 albums (there have been so many that no one seems entirely sure).

Smith formed the Fall - based in Salford - in the punk movement of 1976 and fired his first musician, a drummer whose name no one can agree on, before the group had made a record. Since then, he has been the sole ever-present member, in a reign that has seen off five prime ministers, the Falklands, Balkans and Gulf wars, more than a dozen record companies and innumerable changes in British music, while making the hard-driven, repetitive music that John Peel described as "always different, always the same". The Fall have never been a household name, but have had more non-top 20 chart hits (16 in all) than any other group.

The Fall's fans, who include everyone from Alex Kapranos to Frank Skinner and David Bowie, routinely hail Smith's "genius". It's less certain what that genius is. His horror-humorous lyrics - inspired, perhaps, by the sci-fi writers HP Lovecraft and Philip K Dick, along with hallucinogens - are pored over like the Bible as fans chuckle at his descriptions of British People in Hot Weather ("beached whales in Wapping, drunk before ya!") and ponder the true meaning of bizarre songtitles such as To Nkroachment: Yarbles.

Apparent prophesies, such as the song Powder Keg, released just before the Manchester bombing in 1996, convince many that he is psychic. And yet this musical colossus can barely play a note. He is reliant on musicians - whom he holds in contempt - for his lifetime's work.

[Read the whole article]

Listen to "Bombast":

[Download the MP3 Here]
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(Thanks Phil)