When David Bowie turned 50 ten years ago, he marked the occasion with a giant concert in Times Square, New York. When Mark E. Smith, the lead singer of the Fall, celebrates his half-century, on March 5, it will probably be at The Robin 2, in Bilston, near Wolverhampton, where his band will be playing as part of a tour to promote their new album, Reformation TLC.

I say probably, because at the time of writing, less than two months before the gig is to take place, the whole Fall tour is unconfirmed. While the figures we salute as the mavericks of rock — from Bowie to the Stones to Jarvis Cocker — have their diaries filled two years in advance, Mark E. Smith and the Fall seem to be in chaos. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Bloody hell, I hadn’t even thought about it,” he laughs. “We played there, God knows, in 1977 or something, and it was full of people with long hair who didn’t give a s*** about our music at all.”

This is typical Smith. While bands he shared a bill with during the 1970s punk explosion, such as the Buzzcocks, have grown chubby and tour endlessly, churning out a greatest hits package with the odd unappreciated new song thrown in, Smith refuses to be drawn: “There is nothing backwards about this band and there never f****** will be” is his mantra. His band will play almost no old tunes in concert, and he remains lean to the point of emaciation. Just like his band. Or, rather, bands.

In the 30 years his group has been together, more than 50 musicians have come and gone, entire bands have been summarily sacked, or walked out, often mid-tour. Invariably, they are replaced by inexperienced musicians who can be moulded into the Fall way of doing things. Whatever that is. You want a rock maverick? Meet Mark E. Smith, the most difficult, obstreperous and temperamental man in music.

By rights, the Fall should be one of the top-selling indie bands in Britain. They were, of course, John Peel’s favourite band, while Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party and Radiohead cite the Fall as an influence. In 1998, Smith received the NME God-like Genius Award, whose other recipients include U2, the Clash and Morrissey.

Smith’s response? “I think the award should go to anyone who can read the NME from cover to cover,” he sneered with his gong in his hand. On Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party: “To me, there’s no belief in what they’re doing . . . It’s like they just want a career in music. I’m always suspicious of people like that.”

It’s not that mainstream success has eluded the Fall. It’s that Mark E. Smith has actively avoided it. In 1978 the Fall were the new wave darlings of the music press. Smith went instead where he was most hated, recording a live album on a tour of northern clubs. The audiences’ absolute loathing for the band, its music and its singer — “Call yourselves bloody professionals?” — is never far from the speakers; likewise Smith’s joy at the atmosphere of antagonism he has created. “It’s funny,” he says. “I get into a kind of nervous hysteria when I’m recording an album or about to go on stage. When I finish something, it all disappears and I can relax, although I don’t listen to what we’ve recorded very often.”

The closest the Fall came to a big commercial breakthrough was in the 1980s. Under the influence of Smith’s commercially minded American wife Laura Salenger (better known as Brix), the Fall produced a series of punchy pop songs, made videos, released acclaimed albums and composed and performed I am Curious, Orange, a well received ballet, with the dancer Michael Clark at Sadler’s Wells. The consensus among fans was that the Fall had grown up, and were perhaps losing their edge.

We should have known better. By 1990, Smith was estranged from his wife, and back in the business of sacking his band. With their belongings packed to leave the Australian leg of a tour for Japan, the keyboard player Marcia Schofield and bassist Martin Bramah were handed tickets back to England by the band’s manager. No warning, no farewell. Later in the decade, another version of the Fall would splinter even more spectacularly, as a 1998 New York gig disintegrated into an on-stage fist-fight. “I think constant change is what the Fall is about,” says Smith unapologetically.

I first met Smith in 1997, after 20 years of listening to his music. On the rare occasions that journalists meet their heroes, a touch of nerves is common. I was nervous for different reasons. The week before, I’d heard, Smith had stubbed a cigarette out on a journo’s face. I got him on a good day, although it had its moments. At lunch in a London café, the waiter asked him what he wanted from the menu. “Meat,” he replied. “Just meat.” He then tore through a plateful of cheap steak with his bare hands. The rest of the day passed in a happy blur of lager and conspiracy theories about his (and my) beloved Manchester City. My generally sympathetic interview was printed. I met Mark again after a London gig. He turned his back on me and refused to talk. These are the ups and downs of the man.

In the ten years since, Smith has continued to produce brilliant records at a rate that would make other musicians blanch. And the tantrums have continued. Tomaso Capuano, an art director at The Times, played bass with RICO, a Fall support band in 1999. He recalls that one night, before their soundcheck, Smith fenced off the Fall’s equipment with white gaffer tape: “Anyone who crosses that line is a dead man!” “We soundchecked with our drummer in the cloakroom because there was no room on stage,” laughs Capuano. “Sounds crazy, but it sounded great.” Shortly afterwards, from Smith’s dressing room, came the sound of furniture being kicked, then the after-show sandwiches were hurled through his door, one by one.

Halfway through the recording of the new album, in 2006, Smith lost his band, which many fans had thought to be his tightest for years. He says he fired them, they say they left. “I think he’s going through a phase where his tolerance for alcohol has dropped,” the newly departed guitarist Ben Pritchard said in an interview on the unofficial Fall website. “He was falling asleep in the dressing room five minutes before we were due on stage.”

Smith’s own take on his fractured and fractious existence will be made public this summer, when Viking is due to publish his autobiography. “I’m trying to make it like a parody of a footballer’s autobiography,” he laughs. A spokesperson for the publisher tells me that the typescript has been received. Smith tells me that he hasn’t finished writing it yet.

Before publication, of course, the line-up of the Fall, whose new members Smith currently describes as “a godsend”, will almost certainly change. I doubt that the same can be said of Mark E. Smith.

Reformation TLC is released on Feb 5.
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