Have you met any famous people? I met John Cleese twice. Once, on a school trip to London, we saw him in line at the bank under Harrods, we did the obligatory silly walk past him three times and he ignored us. On reflection I am not sure that counts as ‘meeting’. I did sit next to him in the basement of a packed restaurant around the corner from Lord’s at lunch a few years later, while at a test match with a customer. He had an earpiece and a ‘transistor radio’ and so I asked him for the score as we were all late back. Apart from my subterranean encounters with Cleese, I asked Rod Stewart for suggestions on where to go for a night out, I also gave my views on baseball to Tommy Lasorda, Ian Dury tried to serenade my girlfriend with J.J.Cale songs. My daughter, Holly and the ex-wife shared seaweed baths with Tim Booth (of James fame) and anonymous girlfriend. Holly got hit on by Thierry Henry, Rachel got hit on by Tarrantino and Vincent Gallo; all of these encounters happening in LA so that’s where you need to be, obviously, to be celebrity adjacent.
I was wondering whether Mark E. Smith ever met Frank Zappa.
Mark obviously liked Frank’s music and The Fall regularly played Hungry Freaks Daddy, the geeks tell me they played it live 33 times in fact. Mark also wrote “I’m Frank” which was supposed to be guitarist Craig Scanlon’s tribute to Zappa. They have quite a lot in common. Both were ridiculously prodigious. The Fall released 32 studio albums over a 38-year period with 42 Live albums and 51 compilations. The reason behind the vast compilation catalog is that Mark tended to burn through record companies almost as fast he went through band members. Frank Zappa tended to mix live and studio work so it’s hard to subdivide his vast catalog which includes both releases under his own name, releases as The Mothers of Invention or a mix of the two but there are 62 albums and 82 compilations. The Zappa estate, which is a story in itself, continues to release material so Frank’s musical catalog starts in 1967 and continues to this day so 54 years, 55 albums have been released officially since his death. Both men were chain-smoking auto-didacts, self-educated in the fringes of culture. Zappa was a fan of Varese and music concrete, a fan of Camus and existentialism but also finding it pretentious as fuck. Smith had a fascination of the macabre writings of H.P. Lovecraft, Wyndham Lewis and M.R.James. The band’s name is from the Camus book, ‘La Chute’ although that was said to be fellow band founder Tony Friel’s fascination and Tony lasted just over a year.
Both Frank and Mark loved a good cover song, which tends to suggest they had that purist’s view of music, they reserved the right to like or detest anything, popular or otherwise.
The Mothers covered quite a lot of doo-wop, ‘cheesy music’ as Frank thought of it but a reminder for him of growing up in the 1950’s. Mark had a soft spot for 50’s rockabilly, the Fall were referred to mistakenly for a while as “punkabilly”. The Mothers released an album of self-penned doo-wop “Cruising with Ruben and the Jets” as well as covering the Four Deuces “WPLJ” and Jackie and the Starlites “Valarie”. They regularly played live Richard Berrie’s ‘Louie Louie’ and the song Plastic People on We Are Only In It For the Money is based openly on the same riff. The Fall covered the Big Bopper’s ‘White Lightning’ and Tommy Blake’s “F’olding Money”. They both were fans of garage music from the 60’s, the difference being Frank actually was in the garage in Lancaster, CA making that noise with the Captain, Don Van Vliet while Mark was discovering the Other Half and The Sonics from the Nuggets compilations in the 80’s but “Strychnine” and “Mr Pharmacist” were live staples of The Fall. They both liked to take a popular song from one genre and make it their own. The Fall had pop chart success with covers of the Kinks’ “Victoria” and R.Dean Taylor’s “Ghost in My House”. I had the original 1974 single which was memorable as at the time he was the only white artist on Tamla Motown. One of my favorite Fall covers is Sister Sledge’s “Lost in Music”. Zappa took on the staples of Classic Rock radio the Allman Brothers Band’s “Whipping Post” and played “Stairway to Heaven” relatively straight as a live number, although I think that was his bizarre way of showing he could outplay Page and the ‘rock god’ guitarists.
They were both interesting if tough interviews for journalists, both always good for some snide line about the music industry. Frank’s famous quote about journalists defined his sense of disdain for them: “Writing about rock music is like dancing about architecture”. Mark was not unpleasant per se, he was just oblique, and interviews famously involved trying to drink with him, or you paying for Mark to get shit-faced. Woe betide the young journo from NME who fetched up in Prestwich to chat to Mark over a quiet drink in the Forester’s, only to be poured into a taxi to get to the train back to London several pints and several hours later. Frank was famously abstemious, made it a point of honour to not take the drugs always on offer. Mark was an alcoholic and suffered in his later years with broken bones due to one too many drunken falls. Both died of cancer as poster children for the concept of not eating well or treating your body with any sense of propriety. Naturally skinny and workaholics neither had any body issues to shame them into taking better care of themselves until they became ill.
They both found love through music, or in Zappa’s case frequent sex. Mark had a relationship with Una Baines in the original line-up, followed by Brix Smith who he married and brought some commerciality to the band, after their divorce he married Saffron Prior, who was running the Fall fan club. He then dated the keyboardist Julia Nagle, but after a fraught drunken assault on the other band members that came to an end. His next partner was Eleni Poulu, who played keyboards and they were married from 2002 until 2016. In his final years his partner was his manager Pamela Vander. Frank was married straight out of high school but that was over by the time he was making music. He married Gail Porter, who worked at the Whisky-a-Go-Go in LA and was a self-confessed groupie. They were married in the 8th month of her pregnancy carrying Moon-Unit, the first of 4 kids. Frank indulged his penchant for groupies for the rest of his life, he celebrated groupies in his songs including the “Jazz Discharge Party Hats”, most of the Live at the Fillmore album, “Magdalena” and of course, the glorious “Road Ladies”.
Both Zappa and Smith were egotistical and self-centered in the way you have to be to get up and take center stage night after night for a living. They both burned through band members, both metaphorically and in many cases physically, very few former Fall or Mothers/Zappa sidemen went on to have a successful career outside of the original band. Lowell George and Steve Vai being major exceptions but no-one from the Fall seemed to be that enamored with rock music to pursue it as a lifestyle option. They both had interesting artwork on their music releases – either unique graphics and art or portraits of the band and/or them featured prominently, yet always not just a flattering good light shot, an odd view. Frank played live from 1960 until 1988 regularly, prior to his final live gigs in the new Czech Republic in June, 1991. Mark played his first gigs in 1976 and his last on Saturday, 4 November 2017, at Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow, 42 years on the road, the last gigs from a wheelchair and clearly still wanting to be there.
They both brought not just the music, they brought an ethos, an approach to music and life, completely uncompromising. Frank changed his band when he got bored of their limitations, Mark changed the band when they exceeded their limitations, before they got too good. Mark famously said “no fucking improvisation” whereas Frank had his bands drilled to respond to elaborate hand signals to foster improvisation and unlikely key changes. In their own way they had an inner drive to create that was both uniquely personal and unrelenting. If they did ever meet I am not sure whether they would hate each other for being so self-assured that they and only they were doing the right thing, doing it the right way, or they would have got on famously, due to a mutual respect of a true artist. They would have shared a cigarette, Mark would have asked if there was anything to drink and if the answer was no, probably headed off elsewhere, down the road.
For those with Spotify here are the Fall covers, and here are the Zappa covers.
Anecdotes and Antidotes in Burgundy 
I recognise both your first Cleese encounter and the chat with Rod Stewart through the window of his Roller in a Soho back street, which as I recall both happened in the Days When Dinosaurs Roamed the Earth. What a nose Rod has!
One of my mates had a box at Lords and we regularly saw celebrities in the next door box (belonged to a bank, but I can’t remember which one). Lily Allen seemed very nice. He sold his company and no longer has the box, sadly. Another of my mates got stotious with Grace Jones on a Virgin Flight and lived to tell the tale – just.
Love Zappa, can take or leave Smith.
Still no Tidal, eh?
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We were together for the Cleese first fiasco and for Rod, and I have the same recollection about his proboscis! Surviving Gracie is a badge of honor!
Mark needs more exploration and it’s worth the effort. The problem always with the prodigious is to separate the wheat from the chaff, same with Frank and Mark. I actually think Mark aged between than Frank in terms of output but that’s partly because Frank disappeared down the twin rabbit holes of “classical” music and synclavier offers of a musician free world!
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