Press and Interviews

(Plays Shadow Figure)

Richard Skinner: You're another person who's released a BBC session on a single, because that was originally for Peel,wasn't it?

Marc Riley: Yeah, we'll do anything to get played on the radio.

RS: You first came to my notice as a member of The Fall a few years back, and I'm wondering how now looking back at that period important that patch of being in The Fall was to you.

MR: Well it was obviously very important but now I look on it as a sort of apprenticeship, you know, because you're always behind Mark. Whereas with what I'm doing now I've got to make the decisions myself.

RS: That's true, because it's very much the Mark Smith show isn't it, when it comes down to it?

MR: On appearances it is, it's not really underneath but that's how the media treats it as such, so everybody believes it.

RS: Why is there such a big turnover of people in The Fall? It's unbelieveable, he's the only one left isn't he, of the original line-up?

MR: Well surely that speaks for itself. I don't want any libellous comments...

RS: Are you still in touch with Mark Smith at all? Do you meet him?

MR: No. Well if we're in the same club he sort of walks on the balcony above me and comes down the other side.

RS: Is there any influence then from that period in The Fall in what you're doing today?

MR: Oh yeah very much so. Mark's attitude was something that was indoctrinated in the band and has been a really healthy one. His ideas for the first five years of The Fall were what I intend to carry on. I'm not sure The Fall are carrying on in the same way but that's what I intend to do so.

RS: Well we observed on this show that the singles sound much more commercial nowadays.

MR: Yeah.

RS: But in fact as they demonstrated live, they're still very uncompromising in terms of live performance.

MR: Yeah.

RS: So the attitude more than the music is the thing that comes through from those days.

MR: I would say so, yeah. The thing that people seem to forget when they say that the Creepers sound like The Fall is that I wrote the music for The Fall for maybe four years so I took my little piece of The Fall with me. But people say 'ooh you sound like The Fall', well The Fall was as much me as the rest of the band.

RS: You sound less like The Fall as time goes on, to be honest. What we just heard there was a big change. Are you aware of the direction in which you're moving the music?

MR: I think it's just a case of progressing, you know. It's not like maturing but I'm finding my feet now. I did Favourite Sister, the first single, I did that completely like a poppy single to get away from The Fall. But then went straight back into the arrogant stuff after that to confuse people.

RS: Favourite Sister did very well in terms of putting your name on the map, because it seemed to be played and played and played on the radio.

MR: It was played and played and played but it wasn't bought and bought and bought!

RS: People didn't buy it. I think it's a good record. I do like this one as well. It does seem to me that sense of humour is very important part in what you do.

MR: Basically Snipe is a list if things I like because I don't find writing about things I do like very pleasing and satisfactory. I write about things that annoy me. And people used to say it's very tunnel vision, so I got a list of everything I liked and put it into this song. But at the end I say 'But still I gripe'.

(Plays Snipe)

(Saturday Live, October 1984)