The Fall's Mark E Smith Is No Luddite But Don't Lend Him Your Technology

There's no doubt that UK post-punk legends The Fall are a great band — you don't get to survive nigh on 40 years and release 31 studio albums otherwise — but they're also something of a unique musical proposition for their rotating line-up. With their one anchor being notoriously cantankerous frontman Mark E Smith, The Fall has survived roughly 66 members — a third of whom lasted less than a year — with the current incarnation incredibly proving one of the most stable in the band's history.

"We have our fall outs, but I'm surprised they're still with me because they're really good," Smith cackles. "Last time we were in Australia, about two years ago, they'd been in the group a bit but since then it's like they've got married or something. It's relatively a long time, six or seven years. I don't think any of them were Fall fans, but now they are. They have a different attitude to me."

"I thought I'd make the first half of the record something you'd want to hear on a Saturday afternoon, so that's what I fucking did."

Somewhat staggeringly The Fall are still releasing vital music, although Smith admits some trepidation about excellent recent long-player Sub-Lingual Tablet.

"A lot of the tracks were done a good nine months before the release, and I was having a bit of a nervous breakdown, which I've never had before really in my whole career," he tells. "I was sick of worrying about it so I just said, 'Fuck it!', and I thought I'd make the first half of the record something you'd want to hear on a Saturday afternoon, so that's what I fucking did. The first six or seven tracks are like that."

Including Stout Man — a reworking of unreleased Stooges track Cock In My Pocket — which highlights The Fall's inherent generation gap.

"That was a bet actually, with the group," Smith tells. "They're a lot younger than me, and they've all discovered the fucking Stooges now and are saying how great The Stooges are, and I'm like, 'I bought one of the fucking Stooges LPs with my first month's wages in 1975!' Which is true, and they're telling me all about it! They were saying, 'We can play this Stooges number', and I said, 'Anybody can play that! I can fucking play that!' So I was trying to come up with the most complicated one for them."

Yet it's technophobic album closer Quit iPhone which has really had people talking.

"I think it's quite a cheerful old piece but people say to me, 'What? Are you fucking mad?'" Smith laughs. "I thought people would say, 'You're a luddite!' but they like it! I'm a bit allergic to machinery anyway, I don't mind computers but I don't have a mobile phone so what I used to do is borrow people's, but I've noticed recently that people won't lend them anymore — maybe it's because of me? I lent one off a bloke who did one of our covers years ago to ring the wife and I fucking erased a month's worth of new ideas and paintings off the fucking thing! But you shouldn't be carrying it around like that, should you really?"