RIP Mark E. Smith

Think I read something in one of the older MES articles/interviews that made the rounds again that he very much liked Claude Bessy of Slash, at least at the time.

p sure bessy arrived in the UK in 1980 (and worked for rough trade) after slash ceased publication?

I don't know anything about Slash other than what I just watched, but the editor was a Brit and I saw they had a Joy Division article in an issue they were prepping on screen, so it's possible by analogy that The Fall might have reached LA by 1980?

Ha, more than that -- key information here:

http://thefall.org/gigography/gig79.html

Scroll down to the dates starting December 5. VERY much not only played LA by then, but were on a bill with the Germs!

Christ all those LA gigs in that run sound insanely great. And X was on that Germs bill too! Good lord!

So suffice to say yes, I could easily see MES and Claude having met in December 1979, so.

oh nice one! X too, good gig

hah xp

(And the Skip King mentioned in various entries is a long-time friend, you can vouch for the stories and provenance in general.)

I love how small history gets sometimes, mentioning another band on a different bill:

"The Nu Kats -- a horrid skinny-tie/spiky-hairdo "new wave" band -- was fronted by Freddie Moore, who was the husband at that time of one Demi Moore (who has retained his surname to this day). They had a huge following for a brief moment and then disappeared shortly thereafter, mercifully never to be heard from again."

(editor was claude bessy wasn't it? french not british, tho he moved to the uk when he quit LA)

also we can check if slash covered the fall: you can download the entire run here! http://www.circulationzero.com

all the same, this is how he dressed then:
http://thefall.org/gigography/79dec14_flyer.jpg

Ah, no need -- this story from Chris D. of the Flesheaters confirms it:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1816055401738951&set=a.101240486553793.2754.100000035277218&type=3&theater

I can't remember how I became friendly with Mark Smith, but it had to have had something to do with my writing for Slash magazine and the positive reviews Claude'Kickboy'Bessy and I always gave The Fall's records. In fact, everybody who wrote for Slash loved The Fall. I know I was already working at the record company in '81 when The Flesh Eaters opened up for The Fall and Blurt at Myron's Ballroom in downtown L.A. in that summer. I'm pretty certain that was the last live gig for the "Minute to Pray..." line-up until our 2006 shows. Below is a photo taken by Gary Leonard after everyone had played their sets. A dour Fall frontman and an unusually cheerful Flesh Eaters frontman. We were all shitfaced, but Mark, per usual was way ahead of all of the rest of us. I kept in touch with Mark through postcards and letters. I have the image emblazoned in my mind of a beautiful card he sent me of a snow-covered church in Iceland with a volcano spurting lava a mile or so behind it in the background pasted to my Slash Records office wall until I left the job in early 1984. Surprisingly Divine Horsemen got on the bill with the Fall (w/ Mark's approval) when they played the Palace in Hollywood in, what was it? 1985? -'86? Brix had joined the band and was singing backup as well as playing keyboards, if I'm not mistaken. Believe it or not, the bands meshed surprisingly well together. I was a big fan of The Fall and especially Mark's brilliant, surreal, absurdly funny lyrics, from "Bingo Master's Breakout" (one of my favorite song titles ever) and "Psycho Mafia" onward. I played the LPs "Live at the Witch Trials,""Hex Enduction Hour," "Grotesque," and "Dragnet" incessantly, though kind of lost touch with Mark and his music in the early 1990s. We saw each other for the last time in 1997 or '98 when Lydia Lunch kindly asked me to join her and Mark at a poetry/prose reading at The Knitting Factory in Hollywood. I was newly sober. I may have been paranoid, but I had a feeling my sobriety may have caused some uneasy moments between us. As always with Mark, it was hard to tell. We were both socially awkward. I'd been reading about his health problems in recent years, and I knew this day was probably coming sooner than later. It makes me sad I did not get to ever talk to him again. I hope he's resting easy. A brilliant, funny, acidic, cantankerous, sometimes-impossible-to-get-along-with person.

Said '81 photo:

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/26904566_1816055401738951_8790473706108392726_n.jpg?oh=c73902f4c96fc99dd5171e4ff80dc1b7&oe=5AE5A41B

xxxp you're right re. the editor, I stand corrected. The Brit was a woman who I think was senior editor or co-publisher or similar. I've switched off the DVD now so can't check.

my favourite fact from watching and reading up on Decline... (apart from he MES sticker of course) was that Exene Cervenka was married to Viggo Mortensen. But I'm sure everyone knows that apart from me!

So do I think the sticker is him, not really, but did they know the Fall back then, oh heck yes.

wow they did shows with Monitor! a Joe Carducci favorite

http://disasteramnesiac.blogspot.com/2013/04/monitor-st-world-imitation-1980-reissue.html

also wow would i love to have heard Mark's reaction to the Germs lol

Don't think it's MES on the sticker, but this has turned into a great story all the same

This is a fantastic detail from the show of 15th September 79:

"Supporting were Methodisch Tune (writer Ian Penman's band - that's not a typo!), Scritti Politti (in the days when they were experimental and before Green decided to become a pop star). In the audience were Peter Purvis from 'Blue Peter' and Mike Robinson from 'Fingerbobs'."

also important and relevant:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0c3rgsIUAAmN5X.jpg

No, sorry, I'm not buying Peter Purves.

<3 Viggo

My next best guess for the identity of sticker person: Joan Jett

xp, yeah. More John Noakes' thing I suppose.

Quoting Captain Mainwaring? That is so perfect!

no, he's quoting napoleon. sorry i wasn't clearer there.

Mainwaring/ Napoleon, same thing.

Mainwaring/ Napoleon/Smith, same thing :)

"don't panic!"

https://resources.stuff.co.nz/content/dam/images/1/d/j/x/7/j/image.related.StuffLandscapeSixteenByNine.620x349.1dg7oq.png/1471913713286.jpg

"Stupid boy" surely?

also: re the fall in slash magazine, there's a LOT (which still surprises me but it turns out that's my parochialism projected onto slash): mentioned on 56 pages in 29 issues

(most of them are capsule reviews on a larger page with other stuff but even so)

Is that the infamous "happy" photo of Riley arriving in NZ, which got printed in the local papers (Lie Dream of a Casino Soul was top 20 there!), and so hacked off MES that he fired him?

Yes, though I don't think that was the only reason. MES claimed that Riley wanted to wear a stetson when he played "Container Drivers", for instance.

Well, there was the incident earlier on that tour (shortly after arriving in Australia) where the band were drunkenly dancing to Rock The Casbah in some nightclub, so MES slapped them all. And Riley hit him back. They did an interview on TV the next morning, MES w/black eye.

The version I read said it was dancing to Deep Purple that was beyond the pale

The full details.

http://static.stuff.co.nz/1471318288/188/15625188.jpg

what was their Top 20 hit in New Zealand?

love the stetson hat story the most out of all these details (if true, even if not it's very funny)

also love the historical detour into the relationship the band had with the Slash scene

That poster that mark s. posted is A+.

"Lie Dream of a Casino Soul" got to #17 in NZ.

Great pair of pics.

I don't know about MES being bothered about Riley getting the magpic, he did make a joke about it on that live album. Which has the same photo on the front. Which did get MES approval until he found copies in UK shops before he'd received personal copies, at which point he insisted it get withdrawn.

Still, the MES photo would have been better - he looks a bit like Steve Marriott there.

The story I heard from Chris Knox or whichever NZ musician is that the music mags got distributed to NZ months before the actual songs being pumped up by the NME or whatever got distributed, which is why Joy Divison has a couple of top 5 hits in NZ

drunkenly dancing to Rock The Casbah

TO BE FAIR they were not slapped hard enough for this

Slapped hard with bonuses maybe

Still, the MES photo would have been better - he looks a bit like Steve Marriott there.

― Mark G, Saturday, February 3, 2018 9:53 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Feargal Sharkey, more like.

Marc Riley has a joker hysterical face

This should be a poll surely?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DUeU4l7XcAARuZy.jpg:large

Harsh on Telly Savalas imo

Yes, a lot of that list deserves to be hated but not Kojak.

he is a tit tho

There's an article on Mark E Smith in the Waitrose free paper.

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TuUOgzcfOeg/V2XBRTTzvrI/AAAAAAAAE2s/f4eB_81C0IIXhThpD3KpbGVAtUys9iaBQCLcB/s1600/Tina%2Bvs%2BErich.gif