"If you take a right from here, there's a mosaic of me on the corner. But nobody knows who it is, because it's got all these people from Coronation Street in it. I've walked past it loads of times and never noticed it was me. Like, who's that, you know what I mean?"

The Fall's Mark E Smith is talking in a hotel bar near Manchester's train station, crutches balanced against the wall beside him. "I'm gonna throw these as far as I can," he declares as he settles himself down. After fracturing his hip on an icy pavement in Newcastle in February, Smith was wheelchair-bound through a string of British gigs and for most of a lengthy American tour, which ended abruptly in Texas. "We were going to have to cross the desert and we didn't want to do that," he offers by way of explanation.

With concerts on the West Coast summarily abandoned, some US fans vented their spleen on Fallnet, the band's esteemed website. "I never read it," Smith says, "though I know it's the envy of a lot of groups. When I was in America I had a look at it. Most of it's all right, but this culture where you have to explain everything all the time, what you're doing, puts a clamp on you. It's a bit of a trap."

Mark E Smith has been avoiding the traps and explanations for 27 years. He formed The Fall in 1977 with Martin Bramah and Tony Friel. Some 49 members, 78 albums and 41 singles later, he and his group remain a unique, abrasive and indispensable force in modern music. As John Peel said: "They are always different, they are always the same."

Their gloriously rousing new single, "Sparta FC #2", is a good example of the band's creative dynamic. "The group made this song that was sort of like `Born to Be Wild', with a great feel to it. Elena [Smith's wife] came up with some great words, and I added some words that I thought were like a Greek football fan's attitude. Sort of cobbled it all together, put a Greek motif on the guitar and that was it. "I do know quite a few Greek football fans," he adds, "and their attitude to soccer is completely different to Britain's. It's not about winning. It's just about being within the club. They find British fans very funny. They find them hilarious - you know, when they cry."

When we discuss early influences, the name of William Burroughs crops up. "Have you heard [Burroughs'] Nothing but the Recordings? It's really good. It's something that [the industrial music pioneer] Genesis P Orridge put out. A bit of an influence, I must say."

Burroughsian touches are all over Smith's cutting of lo-fi elements into the mix, from distorted electronica and indecipherable lyrics to recordings of the wind from a hotel window. Yet, however abstract the flavours, the essence of The Fall simmers down to the purity of...