Star date: 25th January 2018

MARK E. R.I.P.

Salford legend Mark E Smith passed away yesterday, with tributes pouring in from all over the music business and beyond. Terry Christian summed it up on Twitter: "R.I.P Mark E Smith - Salford Lad but the originator and guru of Manc Attitude..."

Here, the Salford Star editor gives a personal account of brushes with The Fall front man...

Full details here...

It's one of them. Mark E Smith...been around Broughton and Prestwich forever...you'd see him in The George, see him in the chippy or just mooching around Sedgely...It would be him; or John Cooper Clarke walking his mum's little dog up and down Bury New Road. Here it was. The centre of the alternative universe. And no-one gave a shit. They were part of the street scene. It was all very, very normal.

Way back, sometime just after the mid-Eighties, I interviewed Mark E in the old bar at Victoria train station. It was for the front cover of the TSB 'youth' magazine which had a readership thirty times the size of the NME. This was proper, proper mainstream, somewhere around the time of Hit The North, There's A Ghost In My House and Victoria; and Mark E wanted the limelight for a change.

Would love to quote him on all this...but fuck me, I can't remember a thing about it. All I remember is being amazed that someone could drink so many pints that fast. I was arseholed trying and failing to keep up. It was a top interview, I think.

The TSB mag is now gathering dust somewhere in the attic. The UK mainstream never truly embraced Mark E. He was just too musically off kilter for them...

Fast forward to summer that year, driving around California in a hire car and wazzing through the radio stations...fuck me, the surfing stations are playing The Fall on repeat...how globally huge are this band?

They say it's hardly the goldfish that can discover the existence of water. And there are still too many people who think of The Fall as just a cult Salford/Manc thing. They were a different thing, in a samey world, where anyone who didn't want to be samey found them. 

Now fast forward again to 2012 and Mark E on stage at the Lower Kersal Social Club. A taste of what it was like from the Salford Star... 

"The next hour is non-stop musical diatribe of anti-rock from The Fall's never ending back and present catalogue of acid-toned, relentless sounds that kick you to places where other bands fear to tread. The honed noise of crashing guitars, clashing keys and hurtling beats are only broken while Mark retreats to the back of the stage, perusing his crumpled notes like a gastronome choosing his favourite matured cheese to put next on his smorgasbord..."

Like the review stated, it was one of those iconic Salford nights, with a real icon iconising. The Fall, fired by Mark E, just did what it did; no frills; no pretence.

I never did get to interview Mark E again, even though he was a true Salford star. It wasn't for the want of trying. With each live gig or track he brought out he was going to phone, going to meet up...but it never happened.

The thing is, with Mark E Smith you really do let the massive musical legacy speak for itself. But if you do need his words, try these...

"Rock n roll isn't even music really: it's a mistreating of instruments to get feelings over..."

Mark E. Smith R.I.P.

'Those big, big wide streets
Those useless MPs
Just savages
Hit the North...'

The Fall – Hit The North Part 1

Main photo of Mark E Smith at the Lower Kersal Social Club by Karin Al;Bisson

Words by Stephen Kingston