life is a carnival

Zoe Leonard

*     From a 1990 interview of Mark E. Smith by Andy Gill:

Finally, Mark picks as one of his "very, very favourite records of all" something by his fellow curmudgeon Frank Zappa: The Mothers Of Invention's finest hour, 1967's We're Only In It For The Money, which satirised the contemporary hippy movement with a ruthlessness somewhat at odds with the peace and love dictates of the time. 


"I just think it's one of the funniest records I've heard," he says. "I like Freak Out! too, that still sounds great, really powerful, but We're Only In It For The Money is so relevant to the Manchester scene today, it's unbelievable. Like, I walk down Whitworth Street and someone comes up and says, Mark Smith, you created this scene, where can I get some E? Or pot? Ha ha! I say, I don't bloody know! He says, Well, me and the guys came down in a van from Wales to get the scene, but they won't let us in The Hacienda! And they've got the Beloved/Soup Dragons centre-parting, and they're asking about drugs. It's just like We're Only In It For The Money!

"I went to The Hacienda the other day, and it's just like that. It's so commercialised – guys who should be ashamed of themselves, well over our ages, with beer bellies and that, blokes I've known for years in, like, electric-green shirts! So embarrassing!"