'Songs like 'Industrial State' -that was the second or third song that I wrote the music for, but the lyrics came first it's a sort of poem: a hard poem. You can tell it was written at work. It's about working on the docks, on a container base. o of course I presented it to the group and they wanted to know what it's all about. They would prefer me to write about velvet shiny leather, the moon and all that kind of thing, like Television or The Velvets. As a compromise I wrote the chorus - 'Yeah, yeah industrial estate' - to make it a bit more American rocky. And I wrote this sub-Stooges music to go with it, Stooges without the third chord. At the time people thought it was terrible, because it wasn't the way it should be, it wasn't 'in tune'. But I never wanted The Fall to be like one of those groups I didn't care.
That's what grabbed me about The Stooges. You can't imagine how difficult it was to get hold of Stooge records in those days. I'd harass every record shop in town when I was nineteen to get The Stooges. I'd keep going in every week, take a day off work, post for i - anything. I used to get all this shit from Virgin Records: 'No we haven't got any Stooges LPs but why don't you try this,Tubular Bells, it's on special offer. But it was worth it when I got it. There was nothing like The Stooges in the 70s. They weren't hippy-drippy. I'm not a guitarist but I can play their songs - I like that. That's what's great about them. And the fact that they wrote the first album in a night is fantastic. They only knew about three chords and had to get it down. Not enough bands work like that nowadays. They're too precious. It's the Stone Roses syndrome: five years to record an album. Just get in there and fucking do it. That's your job'
From Renegade: The Lives & Tales of Mark E. Smith . Go and get it! Just got mine from an HMV shop for £3.99.
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