I Never Wanted To Go Drinking With Mark E. Smith

Don't meet your heroes. Don't meet anyone. Don't have heroes.

It's the 90s. Other decades are available and may be used at some point, but here's where we are again today. Where we are precisely is in a small pub next door to another pub called The Fleece and Firkin. Bristol. The Fleece is primarily a venue where bands perform. Bands seen at The Fleece include Cinerama, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Drugstore and many others long since forgotten. And The Fall. 

Today it's The Fall.

The Fall live are good Fall, bad Fall and many shades in between depending on what night you encounter them. Even sad Fall at the very end of their and Mark E. Smith's long career. I first saw them in 1986 (good Fall) at Walthamstow Town Hall supported by The Beloved. (The Beloved were a sub-sub Smiths act with jangly guitars who converted into a dance act and saw some chart action a few years later). 

Brix was a recent addition to the band at that point. She was the glamour. She was the point at which they went from B&W to in color ™. Bend Sinister was one of several Fall masterpieces and here they were touring it. I was with my brother, who lived in nearby Enfield back then, and we were both excited to be there. We'd been converts to the band ever since hearing an epic John Peel session a couple of years previously.

The Fall were great that night. Great songs. Great line up. Brix was coolness personified. Mark had someone at the side of the stage to light his cigarettes for him. And he was wearing a yellow shirt that was pretty much an exact shade and match to the one my brother was wearing. The deal was sealed.

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 I forget the name of the pub. Maybe The Seven Stars. Look it up if it bothers you, the accuracy thing. I am the unreliable narrator. I'm going to say there are five of us in there having a pre gig drink. We're avoiding the support act. There's a truism here - if you see the support act (or acts, the horror. Never with the multiple support acts...) they will be awful, and if you pass them over in favour of a drink or two elsewhere then they will turn out to be awesome, and you'll spend the rest of your life cursing a missed opportunity. (See, in my case, The God Machine).

The conversation is whatever. And then in walks Mark E. Smith. Sans band. Alone. Come for a quick pre gig chaser. I suspect Nick clocks him first. Nick is one of our five. But it's Mark E. Smith. You're not going to miss him in a tiny pub like The Seven Stars. I'm firmly in the never meet your heroes, don't have heroes and for fuck's sake don't have musicians as heroes camp. 

Nick on the other hand has cornered Mark by the bar, somewhere near the gents and is talking to him earnestly about Dr Who. I'm not privy to the conversation and at that point I'm unaware that Mark E. Smith is somewhat of a scholar and fan of the works of Philip K. Dick. Where he stood on Dr Who, we don't know.

Long intro, but main point now. I don't want to personally know the musicians or writers that I enjoy, that I orbit through their works, that can on occasions perform transformative moments in my existence. Before the Internet it was a simple task. You rarely encountered these people in everyday life. There was no shortcut like a social media account or an email you could reach out to at the click of a few buttons.

Musicians and writers are not gods. They are just like you and I. They are in the supermarket. On the beach. Doing laundry. They are also sometimes not very nice people, because as established, they are no different to you and I. 

So I'm not interested in any of that. I'm interested in the worlds they create and where they can take me. If I was Neil Armstrong I'd want to step on the moon, not examine the nuts and bolts that are holding my Apollo spacecraft together. (This is almost certainly a terrible analogy. Check those nuts and bolts. this thing's got to take us to the ruddy moon!)

For the record, no pun intended, I did once email Patrick Fitzgerald - singer and bassist for the fabulous Kitchens of Distinction - and we bonded over a shared love for the writer Jean Rhys. I once wrote (typed, my handwriting is appalling) a general letter to The Band of Holy Joy and received a lengthy and effusive handwritten response from singer Johny Brown. And Claire Grogan liked a Tweet I sent stating that Comfort & Joy was the only Christmas film sanctioned in my household.

Don't meet your heroes. Don't meet anyone. Don't have heroes.

Do seek out The Band of Holy Joy (Manic, Majic Majestic is their masterpiece). Do read Jean Rhys. Do listen to any or all of the original four Kitchens of Distinction albums. Watch Comfort & Joy.

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Coda: Someone, I think it was Nick, found a small sum of money that had been dropped on the floor of The Seven Stars. A few fivers. It could've been dropped by anyone, but we somehow suspected it may have been the passing Mark E. Smith who'd briefly visited pre gig and then just as abruptly departed. It's fair to say a certain level of chaos surrounded him throughout his career. Anyway, presumably after establishing the money hadn't been dropped by anyone in the vicinity of where it was found, we had another round of drinks for free and then proceeded to go watch the band.

Good Fall. Bad Fall. And all the shades in between. As far as Bristol went, this was not their best. That had been a year or two earlier at a different venue. I also don't think it was their most fractious, which may have come later. But memory has its limits and I remain, yours faithfully, the unreliable narrator.