- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Viking (24 April 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0670916749
- ISBN-13: 978-0670916740
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.6 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 196,217 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Andrew O'Hagan, The Observer
'Possibly the funniest music book ever written'
Product Description
Reams of stuff have been written about me in the past, but never in my own words: this is the proper one’ Mark E. Smith
Still going after thirty years, The Fall are one of the most distinctive British bands, their music — odd, spare, cranky and circular — an acknowledged influence on The Smiths, The Happy Mondays, Nirvana and Franz Ferdinand. And Mark E. Smith IS The Fall. For the first time we get to hear his full, candid take on the ups and downs of a band as notorious for its in-house fighting as for its great music; and on a life that has endured prison in America, drugs, bankruptcy, divorce and the often bleak results of a legendary thirst.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
When I was five I used to go and sit with my next-door neighbour, Stan the pigeon guy, in his back garden. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
When I was five I used to go and sit with my next-door neighbour, Stan the pigeon guy, in his back garden. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Ive just come in from the garden on a particularly lovely May evening having finished both this biography and three bottles of Aspalls dry cider. (sorry if this lacks coherence)
I'm quite partial to both of them in moderation. Whilst the cider was very good but nothing new I must admit that I was hoping I gain something new fom reading this book.....a different insight and to world of the Fall and Mr Smith. Sadly that didn't happen.
Somewhere around the half way point I couldn't help reading between the lines about all the musicians he's sacked, voting tory, etc, etc. At this he starts to become the grating, misanthropic, reactionary drunkard in the corner of the pub strungling with his false teeth. This side of him soon wears thin and my subsequent interest in the book started to wain. However in the second half there are enough interesting anecdotes of him pulling himself out of impending oblivion and serious scrapes to keep most readers hooked. I also enjoyed his Lady Di, Beckham, Elton John, New-Labour bashing.
I can't forget that this is the man who has given us Sparta, Hit the North, Mr Phamacist and dozens of other stunning, witty, and insightful records over years and years. The over-riding power of this book is that M.E.S is rather like the character of Johnny in the film Naked: the down-trodden, intelligent, dissatisfied outsider looking in on society and commenting on the obvious broken mess around us that most people accept or don't even see. The Fall made really wonderful music. There's much about the tenacity in his life lived through the tough times pretty well described in the book that informs and often powers the music of the Fall.
No great revelations here but it will be a very sad day when he stops.
I'm quite partial to both of them in moderation. Whilst the cider was very good but nothing new I must admit that I was hoping I gain something new fom reading this book.....a different insight and to world of the Fall and Mr Smith. Sadly that didn't happen.
Somewhere around the half way point I couldn't help reading between the lines about all the musicians he's sacked, voting tory, etc, etc. At this he starts to become the grating, misanthropic, reactionary drunkard in the corner of the pub strungling with his false teeth. This side of him soon wears thin and my subsequent interest in the book started to wain. However in the second half there are enough interesting anecdotes of him pulling himself out of impending oblivion and serious scrapes to keep most readers hooked. I also enjoyed his Lady Di, Beckham, Elton John, New-Labour bashing.
I can't forget that this is the man who has given us Sparta, Hit the North, Mr Phamacist and dozens of other stunning, witty, and insightful records over years and years. The over-riding power of this book is that M.E.S is rather like the character of Johnny in the film Naked: the down-trodden, intelligent, dissatisfied outsider looking in on society and commenting on the obvious broken mess around us that most people accept or don't even see. The Fall made really wonderful music. There's much about the tenacity in his life lived through the tough times pretty well described in the book that informs and often powers the music of the Fall.
No great revelations here but it will be a very sad day when he stops.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
There is something of the Bennett monologue about Mark E. Smith. Perhaps the easy familiarity with his listener that comes from recording your own self-important observations, or perhaps simply the fact that our narrator is one of the most unreliable imaginable; in any case the tone and dry humour are alluring, and give this exercise in pub-philosophy and scattered memoir all the readability it may have. Unlike Bennett's men, however, Mark is no so downtrodden and beset by wolves as he likes to believe, (Renegade is a synonym for turncoat) and part of the amusement to be found here is deciphering when he is and is not simply adopting his one-man-against-the-world shtick. Flawed? Sure, as an "autobiography", the text has massive failings, lacking the self-honesty and introspective personal analysis that marks (ahem) the best of the lucrative memoir genre, but you weren't really expecting honesty from Mark E. Smith, right?
What you might have expected, however, given how often Smith likes to remind us how well-read he is, would be some prose originality. Not so, indeed this anecdotal tract is ghostwritten. I am disappointed, Mark. This could have been a wildly interesting experiment in writing, this could have been structured, intelligent storytelling. At the very least it could have been penned by its eccentric drunken subject. Rather it is a collection of transcribed and seemingly only slightly edited interviews, (almost certainly conducted in some drinking establishment or other) so scatty and jumbled you wonder why he even needed a ghostwriter. The only nods to "real" prose come in the form of intermittent "Voices" chapters that dot the text, but these are an extreme superfluity, adding nothing but a heightened sense of the subjects own poet-storyteller pose.
For all its failings, this does seem like the book Smith was always going to produce: a slipshod, bitter, unreliable, funny, readable, irritating and dishonest prose exploration of his own self-image. He is what he is, for better or worse, and so is the memoir he drunkenly pours onto the pavement for Fall-lovers to lap up. It is a testament at least to the overblown Dickensian nature of his own character-caricature that the book is also so compulsively enjoyable. Renegade is also an anagram of Near Edge, and it seems that is always what Mark E. Smith is; never quite close enough to fall, but surely too close for comfort.
What you might have expected, however, given how often Smith likes to remind us how well-read he is, would be some prose originality. Not so, indeed this anecdotal tract is ghostwritten. I am disappointed, Mark. This could have been a wildly interesting experiment in writing, this could have been structured, intelligent storytelling. At the very least it could have been penned by its eccentric drunken subject. Rather it is a collection of transcribed and seemingly only slightly edited interviews, (almost certainly conducted in some drinking establishment or other) so scatty and jumbled you wonder why he even needed a ghostwriter. The only nods to "real" prose come in the form of intermittent "Voices" chapters that dot the text, but these are an extreme superfluity, adding nothing but a heightened sense of the subjects own poet-storyteller pose.
For all its failings, this does seem like the book Smith was always going to produce: a slipshod, bitter, unreliable, funny, readable, irritating and dishonest prose exploration of his own self-image. He is what he is, for better or worse, and so is the memoir he drunkenly pours onto the pavement for Fall-lovers to lap up. It is a testament at least to the overblown Dickensian nature of his own character-caricature that the book is also so compulsively enjoyable. Renegade is also an anagram of Near Edge, and it seems that is always what Mark E. Smith is; never quite close enough to fall, but surely too close for comfort.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
One thing I'd never expected from this book was to be bored, but in the end it was a real struggle to finish it. There are of course plenty of interesting bits amid the repetitive rambles, but overall its a wearying read. As other reviewers have noted, it's rather like getting trapped with a stoned drunk - ok at first, until you realise you're being talked at rather than talked to, & then start to feel, "Yeah, you've already told me that 3 times".
It's a real shame, because there's obviously a fantastic story to be told here, but we just get a few erratic fragments. This makes the book all the more frustrating - there's some great stuff about "Hex Enduction Hour" & "Grotesque", but when we get to "Saving Grace" & "Bend Sinister" - many people's favourite Fall albums - he dismisses them abruptly, saying they've been talked about enough (tho imho it seems to have more to with antipathy for Brix Smith). But all too often a couple of interesting pages trail away into a lot of vague grumbles about how the young musicians aren't up to it these days, Guardian-reading liberals, & an increasingly boring contrariness (e.g praising Bernard Manning & Mel C/ putting down David Bowie & Iggy Pop).
I'm not sure whether the book's flaws are down to the publishers or the co-author being too much in awe of his subject to impose any direction on the material. Whatever, it's drastically in need of editing - there's a good magazine article in there somewhere. As someone else says here, some of the book's best parts come when Mark Smith talks about reading, books & ideas - so its a pity that most of the book feels so lazy & shapeless. The chapters are vaguely themed around various topics - Manchester, alcohol, drugs, That Stage Fight, bankruptcy, Edinburgh, football, for example - but they're interspersed with some pretty pointless cut-up passages (ironic in view of his lack of enthusiasm for Burroughs) & some dire scraps of lyrics/poetry.
There are times when the book does develop a bit of a rhythm, & you can feel the spirit of the Fall coming thru, & the book even starts to seem a bit like a Fall album. What I've always loved about the Fall is that for all the diversity of their many albums & personnel, it's always instantly recognisable as music that couldn't have been made by anyone but the Fall. In some ways, I feel that if Mark Smith was an American eccentric auteur type (think Captain Beefheart or Tom Waits, for example), rather than a prickly Manc, he'd be a lot more acceptable to the liberal arts media he so despises.
All in all the book's probably required reading for serious Fall fans, for it's not without merit & does contain the odd nugget, but really it's a frustrating missed opportunity & frequently dull read. I'll stick with the music from now on.
It's a real shame, because there's obviously a fantastic story to be told here, but we just get a few erratic fragments. This makes the book all the more frustrating - there's some great stuff about "Hex Enduction Hour" & "Grotesque", but when we get to "Saving Grace" & "Bend Sinister" - many people's favourite Fall albums - he dismisses them abruptly, saying they've been talked about enough (tho imho it seems to have more to with antipathy for Brix Smith). But all too often a couple of interesting pages trail away into a lot of vague grumbles about how the young musicians aren't up to it these days, Guardian-reading liberals, & an increasingly boring contrariness (e.g praising Bernard Manning & Mel C/ putting down David Bowie & Iggy Pop).
I'm not sure whether the book's flaws are down to the publishers or the co-author being too much in awe of his subject to impose any direction on the material. Whatever, it's drastically in need of editing - there's a good magazine article in there somewhere. As someone else says here, some of the book's best parts come when Mark Smith talks about reading, books & ideas - so its a pity that most of the book feels so lazy & shapeless. The chapters are vaguely themed around various topics - Manchester, alcohol, drugs, That Stage Fight, bankruptcy, Edinburgh, football, for example - but they're interspersed with some pretty pointless cut-up passages (ironic in view of his lack of enthusiasm for Burroughs) & some dire scraps of lyrics/poetry.
There are times when the book does develop a bit of a rhythm, & you can feel the spirit of the Fall coming thru, & the book even starts to seem a bit like a Fall album. What I've always loved about the Fall is that for all the diversity of their many albums & personnel, it's always instantly recognisable as music that couldn't have been made by anyone but the Fall. In some ways, I feel that if Mark Smith was an American eccentric auteur type (think Captain Beefheart or Tom Waits, for example), rather than a prickly Manc, he'd be a lot more acceptable to the liberal arts media he so despises.
All in all the book's probably required reading for serious Fall fans, for it's not without merit & does contain the odd nugget, but really it's a frustrating missed opportunity & frequently dull read. I'll stick with the music from now on.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The pop-star in a parallel universe
A rant across a few hundred pages that was presumably either shouted into a old style tape cassette recorder, with the tapes then chucked willy-nilly into a cardboard box... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Clive Power
hilarious
A slim ghost written text based on Mark E Smith's at least semi-drunken polemics. The book is very funny throughout and also entertaining. Read more
Published 13 months ago by calamitybob
ramblings
There isn't really too much of substance here. In fact I read it about 6 weeks ago and can hardly remember a word!!! Read more
Published 15 months ago by Hugh Crawford
Enter the Dragon
Wondrous joyous, a hoot from start to finish as he hurtles along at 500mph with his random thoughts, insights, inner screams and outer fights. Read more
Published on 26 Mar 2010 by Dr. Delvis Memphistopheles
How very disappointing this is
Seemed to take me an age to get around to reading this. Now I wished I hadn't. As pointed up by various reviewers this is a tedious and mean spirited rant of a book. Read more
Published on 12 Feb 2010 by S. Rogan
Probably the most miserable man in the world...
Probably the most miserable man in the world writes probably the most self-serving and spiteful biography ever. Read more
Published on 18 Jan 2010 by J. Morgan-evans
lost in music
This is one of those books that if you read a page & someone asks "what just happened on that page" you would answer "dunno. Read more
Published on 6 Oct 2009 by Divvey Fallfan esq.
Powder Keg
A book that, perhaps inevitably, has managed to divide 50,000 Fall fans. 'Reams of stuff has been written about me in the past but never in my own words: this is the proper one'. Read more
Published on 15 Aug 2009 by M. Jones
Yes, he probably hates you too.
Mark E Smith seems to me to be a person who manages to maintain his renegade status by continually defining what he's not. Read more
Published on 6 Aug 2009 by M. A. C. Jackson
I'm glad I didn't buy the hardback...
...which I nearly did. But this is an OK read as a disposable paperback. It feels like an extended interview: we don't get much from MES that we haven't heard already. Read more
Published on 24 Jun 2009 by lifeclearout
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