In November 1987, I took the bus up to Prestwich to interview Mark E Smith, searching for his views on ‘Hit the North’, rap music, and the next album. He told me about black pudding, antique shops in Cologne, the trouble with guitarists, and why he wouldn’t live in Swindon
I reckon this was the third interview I did with Mark E Smith, and I had at least another four or five after this. I’ve written often and in detail about him elsewhere.
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The interview first appeared in my fanzine ‘Debris’. The photograph above by Stephen Wright was from a specially commissioned shoot for the ‘Debris’ interview. The photos were mostly taken in and around Manchester Town Hall. Is it me or was Mark a little Richard-Madeley-esque at this point?
Just to give you a flavour of what else was in that issue of the fanzine - an advert for the new ‘Zumbar’ night at the Haçienda (Laurent Garnier’s first DJ residency), and also one for Geese Clothing (who were then opening a new shop on the first floor of the Royal Exchange). Contents included an extended Jayne Anne Philips Fast Lanes book review; Ian and John from the Stone Roses interviewed just two singles into their career; Marc Riley reviewing Madonna at Roundhay Park; and a chart declaring the Single of the Year to be ‘Rebel Without A Pause’ by Public Enemy.
The Fall had just performed on The Roxy; it had been broadcast the previous evening. The Roxy was a short-lived music show presented by Kid Jensen first transmitted across the ITV network on Tuesday 9 June 1987; it ended then months later.
Mark took me to a Joseph Holts pub on a hill, and afterwards we went back to his house and Brix made some toast.
And so we begin…
‘Hit the North’; it’s an effective slogan isn’t it?
It started out as an instrumental. Brix and Simon put it together. It sounded like ‘Peter Gunn’.
Simon Rogers…
He’s the most South London guy you could ever meet.
There’s lots of chorus.
‘Hit the North’ has a dual meaning; punish it or go there. When we did the video in Blackpool we were in a Yates’s Wine Lodge and all these rugby teams were going ‘Hit the North? What’s that mean then?’ – and this girl behind the bar was great, she said ‘In America they say ‘Let’s hit L.A’ meaning let’s go there’. Eventually all the old dears joined in and everyone was having a big rap about what it meant.
So what’s your attitude to the North?
My basic attitude is that I’d rather live here than in the South and it always has been. I don’t really care where anybody lives, though, and I think the North/South divide is nonsense. I don’t envy anyone who lives in Reading, Swindon, or Northampton; they’re horrible towns and the people are spiritually dead down there.
Preconceptions are a thing aren’t they? I mean, people have preconceptions about Manchester too don’t they?
I was in Germany, Cologne, out shopping for a present for a relation. Cologne is incredible; everybody seems stinking rich and the streets are packed with BMWs and everywhere you get strapping bronzed kids. And there are all these antique shops the size of Woolworths with complete lounges in them. I ended up in a Czarist shop full of original Russian icons. I went looking for the cheapest thing in the shop basically, and they had all these paintings of Russian Orthodox saints and all this Czarist stuff. Anyway, I bought this little thing, and the woman behind the counter asked me where I was from. When I told her, she said ‘I’m so sorry, it’s so sad for the people of Manchester, it was all so vibrant and now they’re all out of work and they have no food’. She was genuinely concerned.