Smiths South Bank Show

RADAR TELLY

THE SOUTH BANK SHOW
THE SMITHS 

Sunday October 18, 10.30pm (LWT) 

"ULTIMATELY, POPULAR music will end... the ashes are already about us." 

Don’t stop me if you’ve heard that before. Pop figureheads are fond of saying it. It can usually be interpreted as meaning 'I've been at a successful stage of my career for a while but I'm running out of ideas'. With Morrissey who dates back to 1959, however, it’s different. He doubtless believes it. 

Where most people decorate their environment with favourite furniture and a pleasing shade of wallpaper, Steven (spell it with a 'ph’ and watch him turn nasty) Patrick, native of Stretford, litters his environment with notions like that. Like all his notions, it's sweeping and emphatic. Interviewed largely at a desk by a window, he claims that people from 'working class backgrounds have to be overtly expressive to 'get on’. The documentary - about ’The Smiths’ but really a chronicle of their product, post-punk Manchester and Morrissey’s personality - finds him calm, impressively so, Manchester conscious and quotable as ever. A man out of place. Destined to be a Literary Lion, someone up there made him successful in the wrong department. 

The interviews are filmed in colour giving the performance footage (which has been converted to black and white) the grainy, dated feel of '60s TOTP screenings - most apt. The performances are variously live, TV and include the three awesome Jarman vids. 

The film is a very well-balanced, accurate summing up of Morrissey and his inspirations since 1982 and their "sudden, casual success". 

Director Tony Knox avoids the biog cliche of childhood snapshots and the only references to pre-1982 Morrissey are when he announces he bought his first record in 1965 and the reminiscences of his friend, guru and confidante, Linder (former vocalist with Ludus) who tells it just as it was/is. 

Marr talks about Morrissey, Morrissey doesn’t talk about individual band members. Marr’s manner is increasingly like that of an ex-Beatle, a formal kind of groovy, like. Also appearing are brief words from Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce, Viv Nicholson interviewed by Morrissey, a wild-eyed Nick Kent, and a compulsory Jon Savage, one time Manchester resident. Oh, and some gladioli. 

Myrna Minkoff