1993 11 20 Smiths NME

FROM RUSHOLME WITH LOVE

• “I'm working with Morrissey again,” says JOHNNY MARR to his old friends ANDY ROURKE and MIKE JOYCE, thus astonishing the world and adding a new frenzy to the upcoming nostalgia-fest of SMITHS CD reissues. Could it ever be so wonderful again? Will we see the return of the creative team that thrilled our bones and gave Britain its last truly great, guitar-slashing, flower-flouting youthquake? Or has the partnership been renewed for another, more mercenary reason?
The NME investigation begins here - firstly with a fan's-eye account of how amazing it felt when The Smiths blossomed through the mid-’80s. JOHN HARRIS
and TED KESSLER remember the highs and poll the inspired thoughts of the band’s many indie descendants - from Lush to the Manic Street Preachers.
Over the page, JOHNNY ROGAN, author of The Severed Alliance and the world’s premier Smiths-watcher, talks to ex-Smiths Rourke and Joyce, reveals the bizarre machinations that have reunited Marr and Morrissey, and gives us an exclusive preview of the latter’s forthcoming solo album.
The paper that first crowned the young Morrissey and then pre-empted the band’s decline now brings you the inside story from indie’s most idolised camp...

“I don’t think I’ll wilt quickly. We’ll never be a flavour of the month - I think we’re just a little bit too clever for that.”
- Morrissey, NME, 1984

Where were you when you heard them for the first time?

Were you lying on your bed with Peel on, not really listening at all, when ‘Hand In Glove’ faded in and, yes, this deadpan voice really did sing, “The sun shines out of our behinds”?

Or was 'This Charming Man’ sandwiched between ABC and Heaven 17 at the youth club disco and, for no apparent reason, kids in the year above you at school started to dance on one foot and you thought the whole thing looked and sounded immeasurably cool?

Maybe you missed the initial rush. Maybe word filtered down from generation to generation and you felt compelled to get one of those shoddy ‘Best Of...’ compilations, but now it seems impossible that you could have had any interest in music without them. After all, they were teenage agony and electric guitars; their songs make you laugh and cry and everything in between; they make Ned’s Atomic Dustbin look like talentless, deaf dwarves. The Smiths, for five years, over seven albums and 17 singles, were the epitome of what pop music should be.

And now, six years after their demise; after the Roses and the Mondays; after techno; after their legend has been sullied by countless damp farts from Morrissey and his development of The Smiths' romantic Englishness to alarming extremes; after Johnny Marr’s transformation into a freelance axe-hack; after the ascendance of thousands upon thousands of young people who think The Smiths are that family from down the street and centre their lives around Mortal Kombat and 2 Unlimited...

...The Smiths are, for legions of us, as salient a talking point as they ever were; something to be championed, to be tearfully eulogised, to thrust in the face of everyone who’d have you believe that rock music last convincingly shot its bolt in about 1977. F— it... they were our Beatles. Really.

“I write strongly, and I write very openly from the heart... which is something people aren’t really used to. They’re used to a very strict, regimented style - and if you dare to get too personal, then it’s, ‘What a strange person, let’s get him on the guillotine’.”
- Morrissey, NME, 1983

"THE FIRST time I heard them was on the John Peel show and I remember thinking, here’s a group who speak to me about everything I feel; here's a group who understand everything I’m going through; here's a group who understand about being a virgin, and total teenage loneliness." 

That was Richey from the Manic Street Preachers; once a pallid, quaking member of the box-bedroom constituency that formed The Smiths; core crowd. They'd been short-changed by pop music in the early ’80s; drenched in cold, pseudo-intellectual bands (goths, new romantics, Joy Division, the Bunnymen) who - as a response to the austere misery of the early Thatcher years - had couched themselves in art-house cooI. These were times, don’t forget, when a group could call itself Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark and be welcomed with open arms. Pah.

What did this mean to people festering in Halifax, Blackwood, Macclesfield, Wrexham, Uxbridge, Retford, Fort William, Walthamstow, failing to throw themselves in with the sexual revolution that their parents were always going on about, well aware that life was quite likely to stick them in a crumbling school, offer them a dull job and condemn them to another 60 years of tedium?

NOWT.

Which is why The Smiths found a ready constituency, giving themselves the rare aura of a band who acted as a kind of generational glue.

“Being a teenager, being 16 or 17, was the worst time of my life, easily,” remembers Emma Anderson from Lush, “and they were the first group who spoke to me about being lonely, about people not fancying me. Joy Division had spoken about being depressed, and it was always extreme, very arty - but The Smiths seemed to be from the same world as me.

“There was something very intelligent about them, instead of all the usual goth rubbish that was around at the time, stuff that I was into for want of something else. The first time I saw them play was supporting the Sisters Of Mercy at the Ace in Brixton, and it was goth central - but they still shone through, and I was hooked; a confirmed fan.” 

The same evangelical feeling was shared by legions of people; lost adolescents who saw themselves reflected in ‘William It Was Really Nothing’ (“The rain falls down on a humdrum town/This town has dragged you down”), in ‘You’ve Got Everything Now’ (“No. I’ve never had a job, because I’m too shy... What a terrible mess I’ve made of my life”), and in ‘How Soon Is Now’, in which Morrissey described the hopeless lot of the gawky youth to perfection. “There’s a club if you’d like to go,” he reckoned. “You could meet somebody who really loves you/So you go and you stand on your own/And you leave on your own/And you go home and you cry and you want to die... ”

“It’s a good thing when you sing about inadequacy,” says Jarvis Cocker from Pulp. “People identify with it, because they’re not being given anything idealised. The one thing that’s terrible about pop music is the fact that it tends to be made by people who look better than anyone else, who sing about love in a way that has nothing to do with the rest of us. It was good that Morrissey sang about things from that skewed, underdog perspective.”

“On the face of it, we wanted to ditch everything that people superficially think is rock’n’roll: leather trousers, long hair and drugs. But the most important aspects of rock’n’roll - the gang mentality, having something exclusive to say, arrogance - were our forte. And still are.” 
- Johnny Marr, The South Bank Show, 1987

THE SMITHS’ detractors had a term for Morrissey’s fondness for lost love and hard luck. ‘Bedsit miserablism’ they called it; claiming that he wallowed in desperation, made self-pity somehow cool, glorified nothing other than the boring lives of people sitting in decrepit flats drinking milky tea - and was gaily ridding rock music of ail the things that made it great in the first place.

This was arse. The Smiths were a classic rock band.

‘‘I was always into ’60s music when I was young,” says Gerry Love of Teenage Fanclub, ‘‘and The Smiths were the first band that looked like a group I could like. I mean, Johnny Marr looked like he was in The Beatles or something, and he played a Rickenbacker - only he was playing something I’d never heard before. For me, they were a gateway into contemporary music; they forced me into the present when I’d spent a lot of time in the past.”

“They were a group,” says Richey Manic, “who looked really good in the way that all rock groups should look good: they were full of visual contradictions - Marr with his Brian Jones cut, Morrissey with his hearing aid - but they still really complimented each other’s style. They were the perfect double act.”

It was Johnny Marr who consistently aligned The Smiths with classic rock: throwing up reference points as steeped in historical glitter as primal rock’n’roll ('Shakespeare’s Sister’, ‘Vicar In A Tutu’), The Rolling Stones (around the time of ‘Meat Is Murder’ he became 1966-period Keith Richards) and The Byrds (chiming Rickenbackers), and visualising he and Morrissey as heirs to the great songwriting partnerships: Leiber and Stoller, Goffin and King, Lennon and McCartney. Mozz, of course, had his own corner of the rock myth to glorify: Elvis, Billy Fury, Cilia Black, Sandie Shaw...

Such was one aspect of the argument against the half-wits who wanted The Smiths marked down as drab, one-dimensional wimpos. Another centred around the fact that, far from revelling in kitchen-sink drama that had no more allure than the average episode of Albion Market, Morrissey kept wandering into territory that was perverse, disturbing, horrific, cheeky, rib-tickling, insurrectionary, irreverent, and frequently downright bizarre.

It was obvious from the start. ‘Hand In Glove’ (whose cover sported a pair of male buttocks) was supported by a frayed, frantic song called ‘Handsome Devil’, whose lyrics were a ribald minefield. “Let me get my hands on your mammary glands... I crack the whip and you skip but you deserve it... A boy in the bush is worth two in the hand...” and, most teasingly, “When we re in your scholarly room, who will swallow whom?”

“‘Handsome Devil’ was the first song of its kind that was done really well,” enthuses The Auteurs’ Luke Haines.

“It just embodied a totally new lyrical stance that never failed to amaze me. ‘Reel Around The Fountain’ is another good example: I played it the other day, and I was still astonished at what great, great lyrics it had; it still had this strange, very intimate feel about it.”

‘...Fountain’ was about child abuse; ‘Suffer Little Children’ told the tale of the Moors Murders, and got the debut album banned from WH Smith; and This Night Has Opened My Eyes’ dealt with infanticide. Given time, the songs became even more startling.

Arbitrary highlights of The Smiths’ lyrical progress take in ‘Nowhere Fast’, which peaks with Morrissey hollering “I’d like to drop my trousers to The Queen”; ‘Meat Is Murder’, the first vegetarian anthem (the right word, undoubtedly); The Queen Is Dead’, a sardonic, semi-surreal description of England’s decline that spreads itself over six glorious minutes; and the tragically forgotten ‘Is It Really So Strange?’, in which Morrissey loses his bag in Newport Pagnell, goes back up North and gets so confused that he ends up killing a horse.

Oh, and in ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’, Morrissey sings: “As Anthony said to Cleopatra, as he opened a crate of ale, 'Oh, I say... Some girls are bigger than others’”.

That, and about 76 other slices of genius ended up written all over exercise books, screamed out by crowds whose fervour was truly frightening, and scrawled all over Oscar Wilde’s grave in Paris.

The result of all the acerbic wit, the delightful absurdism, and the knowing provocation - only heightened by Morrissey’s interviews - was The Smiths’ rapid elevation to the status of a treasured cause; something you pinned to your chest, flashed in the face of the cynical opposition and felt deeply proud of.

“They meant everything to me,” recalls Sice, lead singer of The Boo Radleys. “Seeing them on Top Of The Pops was brilliant. The fact that people like Midge Ure hated Morrissey was fantastic, and I loved the fact that The Smiths weren’t one of those bands who only got covered in fanzines - they were in Smash Hits. With big pictures.

"And Jesus, I used to talk about them all the time. Like, I had this tape with There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ on it, and I was at the kind of age where your dad has to run you everywhere in the car. My sister used to come along for the ride. She was 12, and really into teenybop bands, but she loved that song, she played it incessantly.

“And it was the only song that me, my dad and her ever had an argument about. He hated it, thought it was pretentious rubbish, and we’d always end up yelling at each other. And that meant a lot; the fact that they always inspired real passion...”

“I don’t want to get too emotional over this, but I really am massively proud of all the things The Smiths have done and achieved - and so from that point of view, it’s all really sad, especially for the group’s fans. But in the final analysis, the thing that used to make me happy was making me miserable, and so I decided to get out.”
- Johnny Marr, NME, 1987

WHEN THE end came, it was uncomfortably messy: for their disciples as well as themselves. ‘Strangeways Here We Come’ was released as an unintended epilogue, and there were persistent whispers about them carrying on without Johnny. Thankfully, nothing happened.

Eventually, it all settled.

People looked back and remembered first hearing them, running down to record shops in pursuit of singles that felt like events, scanning NME every week for more traces of superlative wisdom.

Which is why, when you speak to people in bands now, you get all those glowing tributes. The Smiths set standards; standards that are recognised by almost anyone who thinks about picking up a guitar or filling notebooks full of lyrics, and thousands of people who are still buying the records.

"What’s important about The Smiths,” says Emma Anderson, “is the fact that you’ll be able to listen to their records in ten years: none of what they recorded will age. They were all made with guitar bass and drums, and the songs are so strong that they just end up sounding timeless.”

If you own a copy of ‘Meat Is Murder’ or ‘Hatful Of Hollow’ or The Queen Is Dead’ or any one of their records, you’ll know that already.

Our Beatles, undoubtedly: their majesty lingers on.

IT IS BIG AND IT'S NOT SEVERED

• Are they speaking? Will they get back together? Who’s got the money? Six years after the split, THE SMITHS holy legend lies in a scattered confusion of litigation, bitterness and speculation. Over the next four pages, Smiths biographer JOHNNY ROGAN pieces together the complex story of indie’s royal family exclusively for NME, talking to Manchester’s Pete Bests ANDY ROURKE and MIKE JOYCE, and lending an ear to MORRISSEY’S forthcoming solo album...

Back in 1991, the story seemed well and truly over. The Smiths were a distant memory for Morrissey and Marr, a part of their lives consigned to the history books.

For the first couple of years after the group’s demise, Morrissey appeared to be imprisoned in a dangerous fantasy, which always ended with dear Johnny returning to the fold. He was once asked by Nick Kent what he’d do if Marr even hinted at a reconciliation. “It’s no secret that I’d be on the next bus to his house,” Morrissey replied unhesitatingly.

Of course, it was not to be. The guitarist was still bitter about the events surrounding The Smiths’ break-up and by the time the wounds had healed there seemed nothing worth returning for.

“It was very intense and we are obviously different people, so it was inevitable that the friendship should end,” he told me two years ago. “All we’ve got uniting us now is memories of the old days. We don’t want to work together.”

Morrissey had also moved on. After a long absence from live performance, he returned to the spotlight, found a rockabilly touring group and even threatened to conquer the USA. As for The Smiths, they became the great unmentionable... He even took to describing them heretically as “a dead cat that must be buried in a shoebox at the bottom of the garden.” He stopped signing Smiths memorabilia and, of course, studiously avoided singing any of their songs live or even listening to the old records in private. While refraining from slagging off Marr, he rejoiced in having a go at Bernard Sumner whenever the dreaded Electronic word was mentioned.

Marr responded by playing the diplomat in interviews but when caught off-guard he could be very cutting about his ex-partner. In one NME piece he was overheard using the words ‘Dorrissey’ and ‘Alf Wank’ (‘Our Frank’). Among friends, he was known to be far more irreverent.

Remarkably, five years passed in which Morrissey and Marr somehow managed not to see each other, despite being near neighbours. All talk of a happy reconciliation was by now dismissed as laughable. Even Morrissey had despaired of a happy ending and spoke of Marr with a curious air of detached regret. “I know we will never see each other again,” he concluded. This was maudlin fatalism worthy of Mills & Boon.

The romantic saga should have ended there but the memory of The Smiths just would not go away. The collapse of Rough Trade and the sale of the group’s back catalogue to Warner Brothers meant that Morrissey and Marr were again in communication, albeit primarily through lawyers. Then, suddenly, they made even more money than ever. The Warners deal was a lucrative windfall and the current reissue programme will swell the coffers of the songwriting pair to bursting point. Earlier in the year, we learned that Morrissey was not only back in contact with Marr, but they were good friends. There was even a tantalising suggestion that they might record together in the future...

SO WHAT really prompted this magical burying of the hatchet? Well, call me cynical, but if I was asked to guess what brought these two greats back into communication I’d sum it up in two words: Mike Joyce.

Since 1987, Joyce has been pursuing a veritable Holy Grail to the High Court in an attempt to secure what he feels is his rightful share of The Smiths’ mechanical royalties. It is a claim that cannot easily be sniffed at. There is a hell of a lot of money at stake, swelled by compound interest over many, many years. Morrissey and Marr have been in sore need of a unified front for some time, a lesson which was learned in microcosm when Craig Gannon won a belated settlement against them several years ago.

At that point, Marr admitted to me that his lack of communication with Morrissey had hindered matters. This time round, there will be no such mistake. The pair are again a team. If this sounds like a marriage of convenience and expediency, let me add that I’ve no doubt Morrissey and Marr have since reconciled their old differences and are obviously on regular speaking terms. “We’re friends,” they’ve both cried in recent interviews. It’s surely not the old intense relationship that brought glory and finally bitterness to The Smiths’ story, but it’s a start. So could they ever work together again? I mean a serious collaboration. Well, maybe...

LAST SUMMER, The Fall’s drummer Simon Wolstencroft returned from America to arrange a wedding reception in Manchester. He has a special place in The Smiths’ story; he played with Marr and Rourke in a pre-Smiths group (The Freak Party), drummed on Morrissey and Marr’s first demos and turned down an offer to join the group before they found Mike Joyce. It was fitting therefore that Si’s wedding reception should find Marr, Joyce and Rourke all in the same room. Some of the guests expected a scenario akin to High Noon but the atmosphere was friendly, with Marr and Joyce sharing brandies and pleasant banter.

Johnny was in fine spirits and with good reason. “I’m working with Morrissey again,” he told friends. The revelation was worthy of an NME headline but never reached the press. Even I’ve remained silent till now. Joyce and Rourke were clearly surprised by this latest turn of events but didn’t bother to quiz Marr on the matter. "He spoke to me about this the last time I saw him,” Joyce recalls. “I just thought it’d make him a phenomenal amount of money. I didn’t think, ‘Wow. Fantastic. You and Morrissey are getting back together. I can live my life again’. It sounds boring if you ask me.”

And so the questions multiply. Will Morrissey drive over to Johnny’s home studio to mull over a tune or two? Have they yet committed anything to tape? Will Marr make an uncredited guest appearance on Morrissey’s next album? Or is it all just fanciful talk to wind up Joyce and Rourke? Nobody can say for sure and neither party has elaborated on the matter. At the time of writing there’s still no official announcement from either Morrissey or Marr’s camp, and nor do I expect there to be.

It’s still too early to say whether this premature talk will end with a surprise recording. A lot of people would die to see Morrissey and Marr together again, but the weight of expectation could easily prove crippling. Maybe it is simply too late. If they do record together, they will probably keep it low-key, but the inevitable Smiths reunion rumours will continue to haunt them.

The songwriting duo insist that The Smiths’ name will never be used again, which seems a sensible decision. Even Andy Rourke sees the obvious dangers of attempting to turn back the clock.

“If we all did agree to get back together, it’d probably be a bad move," he stresses. “It could be a real letdown. We’ve all changed. We’ve all moved on. Musically, we couldn’t really sound like that anymore. Maybe we could, you never know until you’ve tried it. But in the press it would always look like a money-making thing. Like that’s the whole reason we’d reform - to do a massive tour, a reunion album, make a lot of money and split up again.”

Mike Joyce was even more contemptuous of the idea.

“No, I wouldn’t do it if they asked me,” he insists. “It’d be so cheesy. I don’t want to get all those old Smiths-heads out of the closet and coming down to the concerts. Johnny would be thrashing away on his guitar and Morrissey doing his dance. No thanks! It’s dated. That’s the way we were.”

WHILE MARR and Morrissey reunion rumours abound, the pair continue to push ahead in their post-Smiths ventures. Johnny has recently worked with Ian McCulloch and is about to commence work on the next stage of the Electronic experiment. Morrissey, meanwhile, is buying property like it’s going out of fashion, plotting a multi-million record deal in the US and holding back his new album for a grand launch in the new year. He also appears to be playing a funny game of weird denials.

Two months ago, I did a book signing in Hollywood which caused minor pandemonium when Morrissey was spotted on the street outside in his car. He has recently denied that he was there, despite having been seen by such disinterested parties as the book shop manager, not to mention a number of fans, some of whom spoke to him and even secured his autograph. Judging from other conversations, I’m not the only person who has recently inspired Morrissey’s amnesiacal tendencies. Is he really that strange?

Looking back over the past year-and-a-half, you can’t blame Morrissey for feeling sensitive and defensive. It’s been a very tough time. First there was the shock of The Severed Alliance, then the Madstock debacle, followed by some hard questioning in NME about his fascination with right wing themes and imagery. To top it all, the Grim Reaper appeared to be waiting in the wings, with Morrissey watching helplessly as several of his associates, Tim Broad, Nigel Thomas and Mick Ronson, all died in the space of a few months.

The singer’s response to these untimely deaths will soon be heard in the songs on his new album, ‘Vauxhall And I’. It is a particularly revealing work, permeated with touching reflections on his current state of mind. As a whole, the album is his most subdued to date, in stark contrast to the generally upbeat ‘Your Arsenal’. The dominant theme appears to be lost friendship.

“All my friends, I don't have too many," he laments in the opening 'Now My Heart Is Full’, before taking up the issue again in ‘Hold On To Your Friends’. Feelings of vulnerability and downright persecution dominate the mid-section of the album, with Morrissey railing against the world in a combination of bitterness and defeated resignation. In ‘Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself, he points the finger at those with special interests in his career who apparently want “to siphon off your dough". Who can he be thinking of?

There’s even a plea to those among us who dare to write about the golden-shirted deity: “Don’t rake up my mistakes/l know exactly what they are." Poison pen-pushers, back-stabbers, skin-peelers and brick-throwers - they’re all there again in the cast of ‘I Am Hated For Loving’, with Morrissey crooning, “I still don’t belong to anyone. ” Maybe he should have titled the album ‘Viva Hate 2’ or ‘My Persecution Complex’.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however. Steve Lillywhite’s upfront production greatly enhances The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get’ which, unlike recent Morrissey singles, at least features some decent lines (“I bear more grudges than lonely High Court judges”). It deserves to be a big hit.

Elsewhere on the album, some familiar Morrissey themes are dusted down. ‘Springheeled Jack’ is the tale of an ageing Cockney wide-boy, possibly inspired by one of the singer’s gangster heroes. Maybe all that talk about Charles Richardson wasn’t so far fetched.

‘Billy Budd’ is the key gay song on the album, which will no doubt prompt Morrissey’s followers to rush out and read Herman Melville’s short story. In all probability, however, the singer took his inspiration from the film of the same name, which starred his old idol Terence Stamp. When this record is issued in 1994, there will no doubt be spurious speculation about the figure referred to in these lines from the song: “Things have been bad and now it’s 12 years since I took up with you.” The fact that these words are followed by a lead guitar break very similar to Johnny Marr’s pyrotechnic work on The Queen Is Dead’ will only serve to raise eyebrows still further.

While much of the album sounds like a thinly-veiled public exorcism of recent traumas in his life, the very root of Morrissey’s childhood neuroses is tentatively touched upon in ‘Used To Be A Sweet Boy’. Here, for the first time on record, he addresses his uneasy and still unresolved relationship with his father in a song that is as poignant as it is disconcerting.

Musically, the album is not particularly radical, but then you hardly expect that from Morrissey. With Ronson’s demise, the glam effects are no more and the rockabilly elements are noticeably absent. Johnny Bridgwood plays electric bass on several cuts and there’s a string quartet on hand to supply some atmosphere. One of the highlights is a seven-year-old lyric, ‘Lifeguard Sleeping, Girl Drowning’ which features an excellent clarinet arrangement from Boz Boorer and arguably the most seductive vocal ever heard on a Morrissey record.

Overall, this album will confirm the long-held belief that when Morrissey is most down he is at his best lyrically. There’s a quiet desperation here that lingers in the memory. If it lacks the melancholic urgency of The Smiths’ best work, then at least it’s worlds removed from the bland artifice of ‘Kill Uncle’. Whether Morrissey’s career will finally all go wrong in a whirlwind of Beverly Hills parties and anodyne American stardom is, for the moment, merely a frightening consideration.

HIS MASTER’S VICES

THE NEW SMITHS’ 1984-’93 BY MOZ'S ROYAL APPOINTMENT

1984 James

1985 The Woodentops

1986 The Shop Assistants

1987 Easterhouse

1988 Raymonde

1989 Bradford

1990 The Sundays

1991 Phranc (erm...)

1992 Suede

1993 Gallon Drunk

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VISA HATE

A GUIDE TO SMITHS RARITIES

SO YOU want to pretend you were there first. Those cynical reissues aren’t for you then, but it’s going to cost a few bob to catch up. According to trainspotters’ bible Record Collector, the rarest Smiths discs (current mint value) are:

1 ‘Reel Around The Fountain’ (seven-inch test pressing. Rough Trade RT 136) £120

2 ‘The Smiths’ (German promo LP, Rough Trade RTD 25, numbered, multi-coloured vinyl) £100

3 ‘Hand In Glove’ (seven-inch Rough Trade RT 131, with misprinted, predominantly blue sleeve) £80

4 ‘You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet Baby’ (12" test pressing, Rough Trade RTT 195) £65

5 ‘Meat Is Murder’ (US promo LP, Warner Bros/Sire WBMS 130, includes interview) £60

6 ‘Meat Is Murder’ (Japanese promo LP. Tokuma Japan Corp 25 RTL 3001, with flexi) £55

7 ‘This Charming Man’ (seven-inch test pressing. Rough Trade RT 136) £50

8 ‘This Charming Man’ (Japanese 12", Tokuma Japan Corp 15 RTL 3. p/s) £50

9 ‘This Charming Man’ (12" test pressing, Rough Trade RTT 136 NY) £50

10 ‘Meat Is Murder’ (12" test pressing of live EP, Rough Trade RTT 186) £50

The more financially challenged can still buy ‘This Charming Man' (12" New York remix) for £25-35, depending on country of origin, or a six-inch Brazilian flexi picture disc of ‘Still Ill’ for £20-25.

If vinyl isn’t enough, and you want to impress your friends further, then here’s a sample of the rarer items on sale over the last 12 months: Expect to pay around £350 for a gold disc, or up to £600 if issued to one of The Smiths themselves; concert posters now fetch upwards of £100 (double if signed by all four band members); signed records are valued in excess of £50, depending on the signature - a Craig Gannon will, of course, be worth less than a Moz or Marr, but if all four are represented, then expect at least £100. As Morrissey is reluctant to sign any Smiths-related ephemera these days, anything bearing his distinctive scrawl is bound to increase in value.

The most unusual item on offer recently was a cheque issued to HM Customs & Excise for £48,000 - a VAT payment signed by Morrissey and Marr - which sold for £230. But I certainly won’t be accepting any offers for my signed Japanese CD, so don’t even think about it...

Kevin Cummins

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And this is where we first came in. On May 14, 1983, CATH CARROLL unveiled a slightly hesitant but very recognisable new band from Manchester. The headline was ‘Crisp Songs And Salted Lyrics’ - but maybe we’d better forget about that!

Why choose a name like The Smiths?

“It’s a very stray kind of name, very timeless,” explained the colourful Mancunian, Morrissey, who gives words and voice to this four-piece group. Morrissey teamed up with guitarist Johnny - who writes the music - last summer. They are simply a rock 'n' roll band. They have appeared ail over Manchester in venues as diverse as petit bourgeois hotel bars to the hi-tech Hacienda. It was at the Hacienda that we, the public, goose-pimpled to the spectacle of Morrissey mercilessly flailing a bunch of daffodils against the matt black stage.

Last month, The Smiths swapped handshakes with Rough Trade, becoming labelmates with locals The Blue Orchids and Dislocation Dance. Their first 45 for the label is to be ‘Handsome Devil’.

Smithsville could be anywhere, a timeless zone where high school and low-life collide. They’re the young generation an’ they’ve got something to say. Hey, hey, it’s The Smiths: Morrissey (‘voice’), Johnny Marr (guitar), Andy Rourke (bass) and Mike Joyce (drums).

Your music is fairly basic, isn’t it?

Morrissey: “Intentionally. We’re out to prove you don’t need dazzling technology to produce music. There’s a horrendous myth in modem music that you need the most complex equipment and the most far-reaching ideas otherwise you don’t rate. We’ve got back to a very basic traditionalist structure with the four-piece set-up which has been severely underrated in the past couple of years.” 

Johnny: “It only works for us because we can all play our instruments really well. Limited musicians cover up by using synthesisers. This has held us in good stead for being a live band. Also we rely very much on ‘songs’, our songs sound the same on an acoustic guitar with Morrissey singing.”

Morrissey: “Songwriting just isn’t there any more, that’s why we’re important.”

Is communicating with a live audience important to you?

Morrissey: “Of course. One of the reasons why people don’t succeed goes back to the punk thing, the complete myth of ‘the audience and the group are the same’. Communication with an audience is not a thing you can buy. If you try and it’s not there, an audience can spot fakes really easily.”

Your sound is ’60s-oriented. Do you get pangs of nostalgia?

Morrissey: “Groups have to be pigeon-holed. We can’t help it. Anyway, the ’60s are still with us in spirit. To me, nostalgia is the turn of the century. I’m not nostalgic for anything.”

Johnny: “I think we’ll see the return of the Goffin/King and Leiber/Stoller-type outfits...”

Let’s talk about A-sides and the deep meaningfulness of ‘Handsome Devil’.

Morrissey: “The lyrics I write are specifically genderless. I don’t want to leave anybody out. Handsome is a word that people think is applied to males... But I know lots of handsome women. After all, there is such a thing as a pretty male.”

Would you describe yourselves as, er, visual? 

Morrissey: “If someone described us as ugly, we’d be terribly offended. Or if they said we dressed laughably.”

What about the rest of your packaging, like artwork?

Morrissey: “Control of artwork, etc, is of maximum importance! This is our product, we haven’t come this far for some stranger to step in. We’re not hollow musicians.”

Mike: “That’s another good reason for staying with Rough Trade...”

Morrissey: “In doing that we wouldn’t be staying in our own backyard as some people have suggested. Being on EMI doesn’t constitute any degree of power over the public.”

How did The Smiths assemble?

Morrissey: “Before I joined the group I was in a serious medical condition..

Oh no, the Mancunian Musician’s Syndrome. What was your ailment?

Morrissey: “Oh, it’s not even interesting. The Smiths are like a life-support machine to me, I’m not embarrassed about it. For years I tried to form groups then one day I just sat back, I was in the garden or something...”

Johnny: “It was like the old rock fable routine. I knew who Morrissey was, went up to him and said, ‘Hi, I’m Johnny. Want to form a band?”’

But what we all wanna know is where can you see them. Their single is out soon and a modest tour to follow. Don’t forget. The Smiths extend a gracious hello to even the squarest squares.

================================

THE OTHER 'OTHER TWO"

It’s a strange thing being labelled an “ex-Smith”. Between them, Rourke and Joyce have played with a variety of musicians including Sinead O’Connor, Julian Cope, Buzzcocks, Suede, PiL, The Pretenders and Happy Mondays offshoots. Yet, no matter how long the CVs become, it always seems to somehow come back to The Smiths.

This month’s re-release of the entire Smiths CD catalogue sees the old rhythm section back in the news, recalling the trials and triumphs of long gone days.

Andy Rourke assumed this was all behind him years ago. Towards the end of the ’80s he made his peace with Morrissey and Marr after signing away his legal claims against them. In the circumstances, he assumed that in return he might work with both of them on further projects, but the net result was a handful of Morrissey B-sides: “Johnny made out, ‘Now that you’ve settled, we’ll sort you out’. And Morrissey did the same. With Morrissey, I did a bit of recording, but Johnny never did f— all for me. I spent a day down in his studio, an afternoon.”

Understandably, Rourke has mixed feelings about the lucrative Smiths reissue programme.

“If it reaches some new people, then great,” he reflects. “That’s the only good that it’ll do us. What can you say? It’s pretty dull really. All the people who bought it years ago aren’t necessarily going to rush out. They might buy the limited edition ten-inch version. I’m going to be on the phone Monday to try and get one from the record company!”

If nothing else, the CD reissues should serve to remind the world of Rourke’s oft-neglected contribution to the group. As one former Marr associate provocatively suggested: “Andy was as underrated in The Smiths as Johnny was overrated.”

Whether you accept that viewpoint, there’s little doubt that the quiet bassist seldom received the attention that his musical contributions deserved.

“The beauty of Andy’s playing was the way he could adapt,” enthuses Mike Joyce. “He could play with a heavy metal or funk band. That showed up right through The Smiths’ career. Andy could play a song within a song. If you took out Andy’s bass line from every Smiths track it’s a song in itself, not just a contribution to the track.”

If The Smiths continue to haunt Rourke, then the reverse is also true. In the wake of The Severed Alliance and Joyce’s ongoing legal action, he has decided to re-engage his former colleagues in legal combat.

“I couldn’t ever see us in a courtroom together,” he stresses. “But more and more I’ve grown up and thought about it, and it’s out of order. It’s just something as I get older I can’t live with. It needs sorting out.”

In the beginning it was a far more innocent venture. Rourke had played with Marr for over a year in the funk-influenced Freak Party then, in late 1982, he was summoned to join The Smiths. Although an early line-up of the group had already played one local gig, Rourke had no idea of their potential.

“I hadn’t heard anything or seen the Ritz gig,” he stresses. “I didn’t have a clue what it would be like. We started running through some songs, ‘Handsome Devil’ and ‘Miserable Lie’. I thought ‘Miserable Lie’ was a bit erratic but we got into it eventually. From that day on I became a member.”

Alas, the membership was never equal.

“We were all led to believe it was a group,” Rourke recalls. “If they’d said, ‘You’re the backing or session players’, then perhaps we’d have thought twice about it... From the outset, they didn’t really realise how big it was going to get, so they thought, ‘There’s going to be a bit of money around, so me and Moz are going to grab it while we can’... That’s my assumption anyway. I know Johnny did feel guilty about it.”

Although Joyce and Rourke later attempted to push for a more equitable partnership, their demands for written agreements were strenuously resisted.

“They came across all hurt that they thought we were accusing them of ripping us off,” Rourke recalls. “It was the same old ‘Don’t you trust us?’ syndrome, which was always the answer we’d get. They always used to say, ‘If you don’t like it, get out!’ I think they knew me and Mike really loved what we were doing, so they knew we never would. They called our bluff in that respect.”

THE BUSINESS hassles were only one part of The Smiths’ story. Most of the time they were a unified team. The group clearly enjoyed their reputation as one of pop’s great gangs and were noted for their camaraderie on the road, although Morrissey always managed to keep his distance.

“When we were rehearsing at Crazy Face I used to get the bus home with him every night,” Rourke remembers. “It was always quite strained. I used to think, ‘God, what am I going to talk to him about?’ I didn’t have much in common with him, even

================================

TRACKS TO THE OLD HOUSE

1 ‘How Soon Is Now'

2 ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’

3 ‘The Queen Is Dead’

4 ‘This Charming Man’

5 ‘Sweet And Tender Hooligan’

6 ‘Death Of A Disco Dancer’

7 ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’ 

8 ‘What Difference Does It Make’

9 ‘Hand In Glove’

10 ‘Reel Around The Fountain’

Smiths Top Ten as voted by NME’s Smiths-onian Institute

================================

musically. I never really got close to him. We were just civil to each other. It wasn’t like we’d ever sat down and had a serious conversation. Johnny’s a better conversationalist than me. I’m not very good at talking to people. I dry up a lot whereas Johnny can really keep a conversation going and find common ground. I can’t. I find it difficult talking to people I don’t know very well.”

The personality differences, if anything, enhanced the quality of The Smiths’ music as each player brought something original to the recording sessions. The group actually had two attempts at their debut album, the first under the supervision of Troy Tate.

“It was really hard work,” Rourke remembers. “He’d make us do 30 takes on one song, so whatever sparkle there was, we’d lost after the fifth take. We all had blisters on our fingers. Basically, we weren’t enjoying it and that came out in the final recording. We just sounded like we were going through the motions.”

The second version, with John Porter at the controls, was a more professional recording but many felt it lacked the expected sparkle.

“It had its moments,” Rourke reflects. “Some of the songs were a bit weak. ‘Pretty Girls Make Graves’ I never really got into, although it had a good atmosphere. ‘Reel Around The Fountain’ was good. Paul Carrack turned up and that brought the song up... I suppose overall it was a good first LP. It’s very varied.”

It was during the mid-’80s that The Smiths really hit their stride, cementing their reputation with the twin peaks of ‘Meat Is Murder’ and ‘The Queen Is Dead’. The former saw Morrissey at his proselytising best as the group and their entourage were swept along on a wave of vegetarian propaganda.

“We all became vegetarians,” Rourke laughs. “Obviously we couldn’t tour and be seen eating meat with an album called ‘Meat Is Murder’. I stuck with it for about two years and used to sneak out for a burger and stuff. At that time there wasn’t the variety of food, unless you liked egg and chips. It was motorway services where we used to eat most of the time. If you were a vegetarian they looked at you as if you had two heads. So virtually all your food was egg and chips. Morrissey liked eggs, but I didn’t!”

The next two years passed in a whirl for Rourke. He was sacked from The Smiths, busted for drugs, then dramatically reinstated.

“I’m not sure how it turned out,” he reflects on the various upheavals. “I think they found me hard to replace because I was quite an integral part of the band. I had my own sound. At one point they got Guy Pratt and I had to teach him all the basslines, which was really difficult. They were all there rehearsing for the US tour and there was me having to play with them and show Guy the basslines knowing that I wasn’t going.”

As it turned out, Rourke was allowed to accompany the group on what became their most ambitious tour to date.

“That’s when we got on a superstar trip and started drinking a lot and taking a lot of drugs," Rourke explains. "We all went a bit mad basically and by the end of the tour all our heads were in bits, Johnny’s more than anybody’s.”

And how did Steven Patrick respond to all this rock star excess?

“I suppose he was a bit alienated,” Rourke remarks. “We’d be staying up ail night and partying whereas he’d be in his room. But that was always the case anyway. Still, I think it got to him a bit.”

There’s a school of thought that says The Smiths never fully recovered from that arduous US tour of 1986. Nevertheless, they continued for another year before Marr brought proceedings to a close.

“It was a shame," Rourke reckons. “I think we had a couple of albums left in us but for whatever personal reasons, Johnny had to get out.”

REELING FROM the shock of Marr’s departure, The Smiths briefly attempted to struggle on, even going as far as auditioning another guitarist, Easterhouse’s Ivor Perry.

“That was a strange one,” Rourke smiles. “It was pretty unreal. Again, it didn’t gel musically. I thought we played terribly. It didn’t feel right Johnny not being there. It was a bit like betraying Johnny.”

Following the dissolution of the group, Rourke played alongside Sin6ad O’Connor, but his future was still inextricably bound up with The Smiths. The old financial disputes continued to fester and with various assets frozen, Rourke became desperate for money.

“I even had a period on the dole when Rough Trade collapsed,” he remembers. “I wasn’t paid for, like, two years and I had no form of income.”

After getting married, the bassist sought a fresh start, with a more stable lifestyle and a determination to put the errors of the past behind him. He was over-scrupulous in attempting to find the perfect group for a post-Smiths venture and was never entirely satisfied with the results. Now he’s working with The Pretenders, who are currently completing an album. There’s also an ongoing project with various ex-members of Happy Mondays.

“We’ve just done a demo and we’re touting it around at the moment,” he promises. “We’ve got some interest from various labels, but we’ve not heard anything definite yet. It sounds really good though.”

DRUMMER MIKE Joyce is sanguine about The Smiths and surprisingly philosophical about his relationship with Morrissey and Marr. It can’t be easy confronting your former mates across a witness box, but Joyce is happy to go the distance in his lengthy legal action against the songwriting duo. “Business is business and pleasure is pleasure,” he says of the disagreement.

On the few occasions when he has met Morrissey and Marr in recent times, the vibes have been convivial. Like at that recent wedding, he and Johnny got happily sloshed and had a great chat.

Some months before that, Joyce had accidentally bumped into Morrissey in Altrincham and did the sensible thing: he took Mozzer to the pub for a beer. It must have been a little disconcerting for Morrissey who, not long before, had made a disparaging quip about the drummer in a Sunday magazine. Joyce jokingly pulled him up on the matter and the quick-witted bard expertly wriggled his way out of the allegation with the stand-by rejoinder: “I didn’t say that. It was a misquote.”

Mike had even less luck pinning his former colleague down on the thorny matter of the court case. Morrissey merely feigned ignorance, suggesting that he thought it had all been cleared up years ago. “You don’t want to talk about it, do you?” Joyce concluded, so they agreed to change the subject. Morrissey enquired about Mike’s reaction to The Severed Alliance and the drummer enthused about the book and testified to its accuracy. The singer retorted, “Well, I thought it was rubbish,” but admitted he’d never read it all. The two parted amicably.

“It was great to see him,” Joyce enthuses. “We’ve all had our differences, but we did have a lot together.”

Indeed, they did. Joyce had his greatest moments as a player with The Smiths and looks back at almost every aspect of their career with fondness. It’s only the unfortunate financial arrangements that spoil the story from his point of view. When pushed on some of the more controversial actions of the Morrissey/Marr partnership, he bristles with indignation, but displays few signs of bitterness. He has already spoken at length about the complex inter-relationships in the group and offered insights into the pressures - business and personal - that finally tore The Smiths apart. The release of the back catalogue gave me the opportunity to steer our conversation away from pop politics and legal arguments to the music that made them famous.

Joyce could probably talk all day if you took him track-by-track through The Smiths’ back pages. I know from experience. Conscious of space restrictions, I tried the old psychologist’s trick of instant association. Let’s thrust an album into his mind’s eye and ask him what comes into his head.

‘The Smiths’ debut.

“Those songs were so precious. It was the only album that we did with The Smiths that was finished beforehand. We had all the songs ready to be recorded. It’s the only time that happened. Some of the best stuff was written on that first LP, but it just didn’t sound like the best stuff.”

‘Hatful Of Hollow’

“Well, it’s a compilation. The only thing I think about instantly is, ‘What a great photo’. I hope it comes out as a gatefold on Warners. It’s another photograph where I’m smoking a cigarette, like Marlboro Man. In so many photos I’ve got a ciggy in my hand, it’s terrible!” 

‘Meat Is Murder’

“I’d just got a new drum kit. The backing tracks were done in about three days. We knew we were sounding so good. We were doing several tracks a day. A lot of the lyrical content is relevant. It affected my life and my eating habits. I’m still a vegetarian. It shows you how strong the material was lyrically. Anything that can change the way I eat must be pretty powerful!”

‘The Queen Is Dead’

“That was the album I enjoyed doing the most. Johnny had really come into his own in knowing how he wanted The Smiths to sound. We’d really slotted into our roles at that point. We’d got a couple of good albums under our belts and the only way to go was up. The whole thing is the four of us saying, ‘Listen to this. Please!’ I think it’s my favourite album. We were as powerful as we could get.”

‘Strangeways, Here We Come’

“That was the swansong and it sounds like it. The Smiths had become very serious at that time, although we were all getting on really well. We could manipulate what we wanted to do. With ‘The Queen Is Dead’ we were riding on the crest of a wave and with ‘Strangeways..’ it was very much sitting down and creating an album, thinking in terms of album tracks. It was more of a studio album because those tracks were never played live.”

‘Rank’

"I was glad when that came out. I’d heard so many dodgy live tapes. When I was in London I’d get them at Camden Market. I used to get them for nought, obviously, but some of them were so over-priced for what they were. ‘Rank’ shows you the depth of sound that we had. Obviously, the tempos shoot up in live performance, but I’ve no qualms about that at all. I used to enjoy pepping the tracks up. We had a big wall of sound and that’s why Johnny got Craig in. ‘Rank’ catalogued what we were as a live band.”

Experiment over, I take Joyce off the psychiatrist’s couch and we return to normal conversation - christenings, football, the state of modem pop. So what’s he doing now?

Having worked with a number of groups since the end of The Smiths, the drummer is currently engaged on a new project, featuring the soulful PP Arnold. He hopes to complete more home recordings and organise a tour.

“It’s uptempo club tracks that we’re concentrating on,” he notes. “Definitely dance-oriented. It’s different because it can be played live and feels live.”

It certainly sounds a long way from The Smiths, which is to be expected. The contrast prompts Joyce to cast a cold eye over his former partners’ cosy little get together: “Good luck to Johnny if he wants to get on a stage with Mozzer again and a drummer and a bass player. I’ve got no qualms with that. He can do it if he fancies. People will be there expecting The Smiths and they’ll be happy just to see it, like they were when Morrissey did the Wolverhampton gig. It’d be worse.

“That was the most ridiculous reaction I’d ever seen at any gig in my whole life and Johnny wasn’t even there. Johnny and Morrissey could go onstage and play crap songs that no-one wants to hear but because of who they are they’d still be classed as ‘great’... For a while after we split up, I thought we might get back together one day and it’d be wild. But now the idea of us getting together. I’d rather do anything other than that. It’d be just so sad.”

Drawing breath, Joyce concludes: “When Johnny recently said, ‘It’s gonna be me and Morrissey’, I felt, ‘You can have it, pal.’ I wouldn’t go near the bloody stage. I wouldn’t even go and see it. Not interested. The Smiths were The Smiths and ever more shall be so.”