In bored conversation / In recalcitrant silence
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
I have just returned from a once-in-a-life-time-but-never-again-thanks experience: Mark E Smith ‘In Conversation’ at the London Literature Festival at the South Bank Centre.
It was exactly as I expected. A brilliant train wreck of an event which only Mark E Smith could possibly get away with. He ambled on stage clutching a bottle of lager, promptly managed to break the microphone then spent 30 minutes varyingly tussling with/ignoring/attempting to wind up interviewer and co-author of his biography Austin Collings.
In between recalcitrant silences, random Smith ‘facts’ emerged:
- The Fall are not a Manchester band. Manchester bands are embarrassing.
- He likes the Searchers. He does not like The Buzzcocks.
- Shiftwork is one of his favourite Fall albums.
- British journalists are selling themselves short and letting the internet take over their jobs. Soon they will be like American journalists who just re-write press releases and have no objectivity.
- There is no difference between him now and him in 1979.
- He doesn’t like to think about the past.
- He’s been trying to get a pot belly for 30 years.
- He’s never writing a book again.
- This one (biography Renegade) is a pack of lies anyway.
After a while Smith just got bored and left the stage. He was reluctantly coaxed back to alternately answer/ignore a handful of questions from the audience. Not for long though – we were all back out in the foyer within the hour.
None of this suprised me. What did take me back was that Smith and Austin Collings were flanked by two silent blokes, one with a beer, the other supping a bottle of red, who just sitting there. I don’t mind Mark E Smith being difficult, random or belligerent, I expected it, but I never thought that he would be the kind of person who needs to have his hand held by a posse of lackeys, Elvis or Beyonce style. Disappointing.





Stood by the bar and fastidiously avoiding doing any actual networking, my colleague and I engaged in shoptalk until her attention was captured by a black and white photo of a classically mid 70s looking guy clutching a beer. She wondered who it was.
It all started a few months back when I set out one sunny morning to Soho to buy the boy a Roy Ayers LP and myself, well, anything interesting that came along. I went to 






