In 1989, writers James Brown and Sean O'Hagan took , The Fall's Mark E Smith, and ' Shane MacGowan to the Montague Arms in New Cross, south London, for a 'pop summit': the journalists were given £10 each by the magazine's editors to entertain the three musicians, which seemed terribly miserly, given that the three had well-deserved reputations as 'bon viveurs'. What followed was a predictably lively and feisty conversation between three men who were far from shy about airing their opinions. “I have discussions like this all the time in pubs,” said Mark Smith at one point.
“I end up beaten half to death on the floor.” In a new [paywalled] interview with , Nick Cave remembers the day being “an absolute fucking disaster” - “It was pure mayhem from the outset,” he once told - but it did initiate lifelong friendships between the three iconic musicians. “Shane had dropped an enormous amount of acid,” Cave recalls.
“Mark E Smith was being very nasty and out of his mind on amphetamines. I was literally one day out of rehab, so it was a horrible situation, but I got to meet two of my heroes. To my mind, they were two of the greatest songwriters of our generation and I remained friends with both Shane and Mark.
” “Shane and I would collaborate very occasionally, but we were essentially friends,” Cave says. “We’d just go out and drink and take drugs and go to parties like friends do. We had a very real kind of relationship.
In many ways, I don’t have th.