THE MARK OF CAIN - Who is the Interloper?
Words and graphics by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Friday 12th August 2022
A Different Kind of Tension with John Scott
They have spent close to four decades making an unholy racket in Adelaide, and now THE MARK OF CAIN – brothers John and Kim Scott and a long roster of drummers, featuring John Stanier and most recently percussive virtuoso Eli Green – are being inducted into the South Australian Music Association’s Hall of Fame later this month. The hardest of hard rock, with a tone that would leave some extreme metal bands crushed into dust, they are almost a genre unto themselves. I spoke to John about being recognised by their local scene, and tried to identify the Interloper …
You guys are being recognised by the Adelaide music scene…
Yeah, we were talking about it today. We’re not too sure why, and we’re very, very appreciative of it. Both Kim and I are [thinking] that it’s really weird. Like, we haven’t done anything. We’re not like MASTERS APPRENTICES or Sister Janet Mead or whatever – they’ve had songs that have really been in people’s consciousness. I was saying, I challenge anybody who’s not really familiar with us to hum one of our tunes (if you could). But you know what? It’s really good recognition. I think it’s partially recognition, perhaps, because we spent thirty-odd years, I feel, trying to draw the spotlight onto Adelaide, and at least establish that you don’t have to leave Adelaide to do well. I think that was part of it. A lot of bands leave Adelaide. They go to Melbourne and split up, or they go to Sydney and collapse, or whatever. We were always about staying home, and again, we got to work with luminaries like Henry Rollins who came over and produced Ill at Ease. We worked with Steve Albini in Chicago. We worked with Andy Gill from GANG OF FOUR in London. I feel like we’ve had some really good, interesting people, without us having to leave Adelaide. So maybe that’s a good thing – maybe that’s what it’s celebrating.
As someone who has been in the same music scene for decades, how have you seen it change and evolve over the years?
Seriously, I don’t go out much these days. It’s like this thing – you learn everything you want to learn, and you become the old dog. I don’t really go out that much. I’ll see bands that I’m interested in, like PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT, doing two JOY DIVISION albums … I’ll be going to see that in November. That’s the sort of thing I go to. I’m not that plugged into the music scene as it is now. I think what has changed is technology has changed everything. Youtube, social media platforms and that, that is what has changed it. It used to be that you had to be playing, playing, playing, and you had to get discovered by a record company, and that would put you out. You really don’t need that anymore. People can put something out and then everyone will be into it, and then you can do what you need to do. You can record at home. To be quite honest, the collapse of the record company is probably one of the best fucking things that has ever happened, because record companies … they’re just like any other industry. It’s a capital investment [and] return, and what you get when you grab something and you start co-opting that value because you want to make money, it becomes shit … I guess that’s part of our thing. We’ve always worked on “no compromise” … I guess that’s worked against us, too [laughs] but you do what you need to do. I think people have got that ability more now. For me, I think it’s just good that there is a lot more ability for people, who’s music would never have got listened to, to get out further to people. The flipside of that is there is a lot of shit out there as well, so you’ve got to filter through that, but whatever. People have got to work that out for themselves.
Pictured: John Scott
Songs of the Third & Fifth was released a decade ago now. What plans, if any, do you have to follow that up? Can you see THE MARK OF CAIN making new music? I’m guessing I’m not the first person to ask! [Laughs]
Correct. It’s actually been a bit of a common theme, given that there has been that whole two years, call it “lockdown” or whatever. I’m always noodling away and writing stuff, but there’s a lot of stuff that I write that probably I wouldn’t have THE MARK OF CAIN [on it]. It’s my stuff. Kim calls it “The John Scott Experience”, but sometimes I think … We’ve got stuff that we’ll work on, but we’ll never put something out for the sake of putting it out. It has to meet the quality that we need, and I’ve always toyed with the idea of doing something, after we get through this tour, of just messing around and seeing what we can come up with, and we can do an EP or something if it’s good enough. The other thing, though, is we never want to be that band where people go, “Fuck, they should’ve just stopped. That band should’ve fucking stopped. That last album was it, and now they’re crap.” I don’t want to be that band. But there are things that I write, and again, I’d be happy to work with the same musicians, like my brother and Eli, and record something and put it out that is not THE MARK OF CAIN, and people can either love it or leave it or whatever, and it’ll probably have a bit of a TMOC flavour in it, but it would be a bit different. So yeah, there’s a few ideas floating out there, but we’ll see.
There are certain bands that have this utterly unique sound. Everyone from MOTÖRHEAD or SLAYER, bands who just sound like them, and you guys have always had that really distinct sound of Kim’s low-end and you’ve got that Rickenbacker jangle over the top … For starters, have you been using the same Rickenbacker throughout your career? Have you still got the same guitar you had in the early 80s?
Yeah, yeah. I bought a Stratocaster. I was originally a Stratocaster player, and I still love Stratocaster because I’m a big Hendrix fan, which no one would ever know. I bought the Rickenbacker, the A330, in 1982. It was $1050. I traded in my Stratocaster, which I wish I hadn’t, because it was a lovely 1974 Strat, which would probably be worth a mint now. Anyway, I’ve used that same one. I’ve got another Rickenbacker, a black one, that I’ve never been too happy with. It’s maple, and it feeds back like a stuck pig. We’ve tried to wax the pickups, and it doesn’t seem to do anything. I’m going to have, as a backup on this one, a Stratocaster, but yeah, I’ve been using the same guitar – my lucky Rickenbacker. Kim uses an Ibanez copy of a Ricky. A lot of people think he uses Rickies. We’ve tried the Ricky, and they were a bit too mid-y. The Ibanez copy has a really good bottom-end. I don’t know how many of them he’s got. And yeah, our sound, it’s just weird. We’re a combination of a lot of influences, but we sort of have our own sound somehow. It’s weird. People usually know when they hear us that it’s us! [Laughs]
Speaking of Kim, I don’t think I have ever seen anyone use that kind of waistband strap. I’ve always wondered – does he have a bad back or a bad shoulder or something?
Yeah, he’s a cripple. [Laughs] No, that was something we saw in 1987 when BIG BLACK toured. BIG BLACK had the waistband-type ones – they had them made up – and Kim was really taken with that. He had a really, really long leather one, and he said, “I’m going to see what that’s like.” So he put it around, and he said, “Wow, it’s just so much better than having it hanging from your shoulder,” and he just took to it. So he’s always done that, but yeah, credit where credit’s due, that was BIG BLACK, and good enough to steal! That came from that band, and you might find that Albini probably does the same strap-type thing. But yeah, wearing a guitar like that, it’s amazingly freeing.
Pictured: Kim Scott
I actually have you to thank. You kept mentioning the band BIG BLACK in interviews that you’ve done, and I actually checked them out, and when I looked them up, I went, “Songs About Fucking … this sounds amazing!” [Laughs]
Yeah, that’s a really good one. There’s an earlier one called Atomizer which is really good as well. Brilliant band. We did a cover of Kerosene when we played Adelaide last time, and we’ve still got that in our back pocket. We might pull that one out at one of the Melbourne or Sydney shows or something like that.
A question I’ve always wanted to ask you guys – who was the Interloper? And did they have any idea that they were having a song written about them?
No, I think that’s just me, casting around everybody who was trying to tell me what to do. I just always liked the term “interloper” … I was always into westerns, and you know, “An interloper rides into town!” Something like that. I thought, “Man, that term “interloper” is really cool.” And it sort of became part of my lexicon. I’d be like, “All these interlopers!” And then I sort of wrote this song – “Who made you the interloper? Who gave you the right to fucking interfere with what I’m doing?” I sort of like it. It’s a little bit of an angry song. [Laughs] It’s a little bit about relationships. It’s sort of saying, we met, I let you know everything about me, I didn't hide anything, you knew what you were getting, and now you’re fucking complaining? Now you want to change things? Who made you the interloper?”
THE MARK OF CAIN are touring nationally. Get tickets here.
Pictured: John Scott, Kim Scott + Eli Green - THE MARK OF CAIN
