The Smiths were an English
rock band formed in Manchester
in 1982. Based on the songwriting
partnership of
Morrissey (vocals) and
Johnny Marr (guitar), the band also
included
Andy Rourke (bass) and
Mike Joyce (drums). Critics have
called them the most important
alternative rock band to emerge from the
British
independent music scene of
the 1980s, and the group has had a major influence on subsequent
artists. Morrissey's lovelorn tales of alienation found an audience
amongst youth culture bored by the ubiquitous
synthesizer-pop bands of the early 1980s, while
Marr's complex melodies helped return guitar-based music to
popularity in Britain.
The group were signed to the independent record label
Rough Trade Records, for whom they
released four studio albums and several compilations, as well as
numerous non-LP singles. Although they had limited commercial
success outside the UK while they were still together, and never
released a single that charted higher than number 10 in their home
country, The Smiths won a growing following, and remain cult and
commercial favourites. The band broke up in 1987 amid disagreements
between Morrissey and Marr and have turned down several offers to
reform since then.
History
Formation and early singles
The Smiths were formed in early 1982 by Steven Patrick Morrissey,
an unemployed writer who was a big fan of the
New York Dolls and briefly fronted
punk rock band
The
Nosebleeds; and John Maher, a guitarist and songwriter. Maher
changed his name to Johnny Marr to avoid confusion with
Buzzcocks drummer
John Maher, and Morrissey
performed solely under his surname. Marr had previously been in the
band
Freak Party along with former
Patrol drummer
Simon Wolstencroft and bassist
Andy Rourke, and Marr and Rourke had previously
worked together in The Paris Valentinos along with actor
Kevin Kennedy.. After recording
several demo tapes with Wolstencroft (later of
The Fall) on drums, Morrissey and Marr
recruited drummer Mike Joyce in the autumn of 1982. Joyce had
formerly been a member of punk bands The Hoax and Victim. As well,
they added bass player
Dale Hibbert,
who also provided the group with
demo
recording facilities at the studio where he worked as a
factotum. However, after two gigs, Marr's friend
Andy Rourke replaced Hibbert on bass, because Marr felt that
neither Hibbert's bass playing nor his personality fit in with the
group.
The band picked their name in part as a reaction against names used
by popular
synthpop bands of the early
1980s, such as
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the
Dark and
Spandau Ballet, because
they considered these names fancy and pompous. In a 1984 interview
Morrissey stated that he chose the name The Smiths "...because it
was the most ordinary name" and because he thought that it was
"...time that the ordinary folk of the world showed their faces."
Signing to indie label
Rough Trade
Records, they released their first single, "
Hand in Glove", in May 1983. The record was
championed by DJ
John Peel, as were all of
their later singles, but failed to chart. The follow-up singles
"
This Charming Man" and "
What Difference Does It Make?"
fared better when they reached numbers 25 and 12 respectively on
the
UK Singles Chart. Aided by
praise from the music press and a series of studio sessions for
John Peel and
David Jensen at
BBC
Radio 1, The Smiths began to acquire a dedicated fan
base.
The Smiths
In February 1984, the group released their debut album
The Smiths, which reached number two
on the
UK Albums Chart. Both "Reel
Around the Fountain" and "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" met with
controversy, with some tabloid newspapers alleging that the songs
were suggestive of
paedophilia, a claim
strongly denied by the group.
More controversy followed when the band released several singles
not taken from the album: "
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable
Now" (the band's first UK top-ten hit) had as
B-side "
Suffer
Little Children" on the subject of the
Moors murders, which caused an uproar after
the grandfather of one of the murdered children heard it on a
pub jukebox and
felt the band was trying to commercialise the murders. After
meeting with Morrissey, he accepted that the song was a sincere
exploration of the impact of the murders. Morrissey subsequently
established a friendship with Ann West, the mother of victim Lesley
Ann Downey, who is mentioned by name in the song.
In August 1984 the band released their fifth single "
William, It Was Really
Nothing" - which featured "
How Soon
Is Now?" as a B-side - and the year ended with the compilation
album
Hatful of Hollow.
This collected singles, B-sides and the versions of songs that had
been recorded throughout the previous year for the Peel and Jensen
shows.
Meat Is Murder
Early in 1985 the band released their second album,
Meat Is Murder. This album was more
strident and political than its predecessor, including the
pro-vegetarian title track (Morrissey forbade the rest of the group
from being photographed eating meat), the light-hearted
republicanism of "Nowhere Fast", and the anti-
corporal punishment "The Headmaster
Ritual" and "Barbarism Begins at Home".
The band had also
grown more adventurous musically, with Marr adding rockabilly riffs
to "Rusholme
Ruffians"
and Rourke playing a funk bass solo on "Barbarism Begins at
Home". The album was preceded by the re-release of the
B-side "How Soon is Now?" as a single, and although that song was
not on the original
LP, it has been
added to subsequent releases.
Meat Is Murder was the
band's only album (barring compilations) to reach number one in the
UK charts.
Morrissey brought a political stance to many of his interviews,
courting further controversy. Among his targets were the
Thatcher government, the monarchy and the
famine relief project
Band Aid.
Morrissey
famously quipped of the latter, "One can have great concern for the
people of Ethiopia
, but it's
another thing to inflict daily torture on the people of
England." The subsequent single-only release "Shakespeare's
Sister" reached number 26 on the UK Singles Chart, although the
only single taken from the album, "
That Joke Isn't Funny
Anymore", was less successful, barely making the top 50.
The Queen Is Dead
During 1985 the band completed lengthy tours of the UK and the US
while recording the next studio record,
The Queen Is Dead. The album was
released in June 1986, shortly after the single "
Bigmouth Strikes Again". The single
again featured Marr's strident acoustic guitar rhythms and lead
melody guitar lines with wide leaps.
The Queen Is Dead
reached number two in the UK charts, and consisted of a mixture of
mordant bleakness (e.g. "Never Had No One Ever", which seemed to
play up to stereotypes of the band), dry humour (e.g. "Frankly, Mr.
Shankly", allegedly a message to Rough Trade boss
Geoff Travis disguised as a letter of
resignation from a worker to his superior), and synthesis of both,
such as in "
There
Is a Light That Never Goes Out" and "
Cemetry Gates".
However, all was not well within the group. A legal dispute with
Rough Trade had delayed the album by almost seven months (it had
been completed in November 1985), and Marr was beginning to feel
the stress of the band's exhausting touring and recording schedule.
He later told
NME, "'Worse for wear' wasn't the half of
it: I was extremely ill. By the time the tour actually finished it
was all getting a little bit... dangerous. I was just drinking more
than I could handle." Meanwhile, Rourke was fired from the band in
early 1986 due to his use of
heroin. He
allegedly received notice of his dismissal via a
Post-it note stuck to the windshield of his
car. It read, "Andy – you have left The Smiths. Goodbye and
good luck, Morrissey." Morrissey himself, however, denies this.
Rourke was replaced on bass by
Craig
Gannon (formerly a member of Scottish
New Wave band
Aztec
Camera), but was reinstated after only a fortnight. Gannon
stayed in the band, switching to
rhythm
guitar. This five-piece recorded the singles "
Panic" and "
Ask" (the
latter with
Kirsty MacColl on backing
vocals) which reached numbers 11 and 14 respectively on the UK
Singles Chart, and toured the UK. After the tour ended in October
1986, Gannon left the band.
The group had become frustrated with Rough Trade and sought a
record deal with a major label. Marr told
NME in early
1987, ""Every single label came to see us. It was small-talk,
bribes, the whole number. I really enjoyed it." The band ultimately
signed with
EMI, which drew criticism from their
fanbase and from elements of the music press.
Strangeways, Here We Come and breakup
In early 1987 the single "
Shoplifters of the World
Unite" was released and reached number 12 on the UK Singles
Chart. It was followed by a second compilation,
The World Won't Listen –
the title was Morrissey's comment on his frustration with the
band's lack of mainstream recognition, although the album reached
number two in the charts – and the single "
Sheila Take a Bow", the band's second (and
last during the band's lifetime) UK top-10 hit. Another
compilation,
Louder Than
Bombs, was intended for the overseas market and covered
much the same material as
The World Won't Listen, with the
addition of "Sheila Take a Bow" and material from
Hatful of
Hollow, as that compilation was yet to be released in the
U.S.
Despite their continued success, personal differences within the
band – including the increasingly strained relationship
between Morrissey and Marr – saw them on the verge of
splitting. In July 1987, Marr left the group, and auditions to find
a replacement for him proved fruitless. By the time the group's
fourth album
Strangeways,
Here We Come was released in September, the band had split
up. The breakdown in the relationship has been primarily attributed
to Morrissey becoming annoyed by Marr's work with other artists and
Marr growing frustrated by Morrissey's musical inflexibility. Marr
particularly hated Morrissey's obsession with covering 1960s pop
artists such as
Twinkle and
Cilla Black. Marr recalled in 1992,
"That was the last straw, really. I didn't form a group to perform
Cilla Black songs." In a 1989 interview, Morrissey cited the lack
of a managerial figure and business problems as reasons for the
band's eventual split.
Strangeways, Here We Come peaked at number two in the UK
and was their most successful album in the US, reaching #55 on the
Billboard charts. It received a
lukewarm reception from critics, but both Morrissey and Marr name
it as their favourite Smiths album. A couple of further singles
from
Strangeways were released with earlier live, session
and demo tracks as B-sides, and the following year the live
recording
Rank (recorded in
1986 while Gannon was in the band) repeated the UK chart success of
previous albums.
Post-Smiths careers
Shortly after the release of
Strangeways, the band were
the subject of a documentary in
LWT's arts
strand
The South Bank
Show, broadcast on
ITV on 18 October
1987.
Following the group's demise, Morrissey began work on a solo
recording, collaborating with
Strangeways producer
Stephen Street and fellow Mancunian
Vini Reilly, guitarist for
The Durutti Column. The resulting album,
Viva Hate (a reference to the end
of the Smiths), was released six months later, reaching number one
in the UK charts. Morrissey continues to perform and record as a
solo artist.
Johnny Marr returned to the music scene in 1989 with
New Order's
Bernard
Sumner and
Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant in the
supergroup Electronic. Electronic released three
albums over the next decade. Marr was also a member of
The The, recording two albums with the group between
1989 and 1993. He has also worked as a session musician and writing
collaborator for artists including
The
Pretenders,
Bryan Ferry, Pet Shop
Boys,
Billy Bragg,
Black Grape,
Talking
Heads,
Crowded House and
Beck. In 2000 he started another band, Johnny Marr and
the Healers, with a moderate degree of success, and later worked as
a guest musician on the
Oasis album
Heathen Chemistry.
In addition to his work as a recording artist, Marr has worked as a
record producer on Haven's debut album
Between the senses.
In 2006 he began work with
Modest
Mouse's
Isaac Brock on
songs that eventually featured on the band's 2007 release,
We Were Dead
Before the Ship Even Sank. The band subsequently announced
that Marr was a fully fledged member, and the reformed line-up
toured extensively throughout 2006-07. Marr has also been recording
with
Liam Gallagher of Oasis. In
January 2008, it was reported that Marr had been adding his skill
and experience to a secret songwriting session with Wakefield indie
group
The Cribs. Sources revealed that
they worked together for a week at Moolah Rouge recording studio in
Stockport, and had penned a number of new songs. Marr has now
become a full member of The Cribs.
Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce have continued working together,
including doing session work for Morrissey (1988–89) and
Sinéad O'Connor, as well as working
separately. Rourke has recorded and toured with
Proud Mary and is currently forming a group
called
Freebass with fellow bassists
Peter Hook (of
New
Order and
Joy Division) and
Mani (of
The Stone Roses and
Primal Scream). He has recently started a
radio career, hosting a show on Saturday evenings on
XFM Manchester.
Court case
In 1996, Joyce took Morrissey and Marr to court, claiming that he
had not received his fair share of recording and performance
royalties. Morrissey and Marr had claimed the lion's share of The
Smiths' recording and performance royalties and allowed ten percent
each to Joyce and Rourke. Composition royalties were not an issue,
as Rourke and Joyce had never been credited as composers for the
band. Morrissey and Marr claimed that the other two members of the
band had always agreed to that split of the royalties, but the
court found in favour of Joyce and ordered that he be paid over £1
million in back pay and receive twenty-five percent henceforth. As
Smiths' royalties had been frozen for two years, Rourke settled for
a smaller lump sum to pay off his debts and continued to receive
ten percent. While the judge in the case described Morrissey as
"devious, truculent and unreliable", he did not state that the
singer had been dishonest. Morrissey claimed that he was "...under
the scorching spotlight in the dock, being drilled..." with
questions such as " 'How dare you be successful?' 'How dare you
move on?'". He stated that "The Smiths were a beautiful thing and
Johnny [Marr] left it, and Mike [Joyce] has destroyed it."
Morrissey appealed against the verdict, but was not
successful.
In late November 2005, while appearing on radio station BBC 6
Music, Mike Joyce claimed to be having financial problems and said
that he had resorted to selling rare band recordings on eBay. As a
teaser, a few minutes of an unfinished instrumental track known as
"The Click Track" was premiered on the show. Morrissey hit back at
Joyce with a public statement shortly after, on the website
true-to-you.net. Relations between Joyce and Rourke cooled
significantly as a result of Morrissey's statement which claimed
that Joyce had misled the courts. Morrissey claimed that Joyce had
not declared that Rourke was entitled to some of the assets seized
by Joyce's lawyers from Morrissey.
2000s
Both Johnny Marr and Morrissey have repeatedly said in interviews
that they will not reunite the band. In 2005,
VH1 attempted to get the band back together for a
reunion on its
Bands
Reunited show. The programme abandoned its attempt after
host
Aamer Haleem was unsuccessful in
his attempt to corner Morrissey before a show. In December 2005 it
was announced that Johnny Marr and The Healers would play at
Manchester v Cancer, a benefit
show for cancer research being organised by Andy Rourke and his
production company, Great Northern Productions. Rumours suggested
that a Smiths reunion would occur at this concert but were
dispelled by Johnny Marr on his website. However, Rourke did join
Marr onstage for the first time since The Smiths broke up,
performing "How Soon Is Now?".
To this day Morrissey refuses to reunite his old band, going as far
as to say that he would "rather eat [his] own testicles than
re-form The Smiths, and that’s saying something for a
vegetarian."
In March 2006, Morrissey revealed that The
Smiths had been offered $5 million to reunite for a performance at
the Coachella Valley Music and Arts
Festival
, which he turned down, saying, "No, because money
doesn't come into it." He further explained, "It was a
fantastic journey. And then it ended. I didn't feel we should have
ended. I wanted to continue. [Marr] wanted to end it. And that was
that."When asked why he would not reform with The Smiths, Morrissey
responded "I feel as if I’ve worked very hard since the demise of
The Smiths and the others haven’t, so why hand them attention that
they haven’t earned? We are not friends, we don’t see each other.
Why on earth would we be on a stage together?"
In August 2007, the
NME reported that Morrissey had turned
down a near £40 million offer to reunite with Marr for a 50-date
world tour in 2008 and 2009. The condition would only be that
Morrissey would have to play the dates with Marr, meaning the deal
could have gone ahead without Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke. According
to an anonymous press release on true-to-you.net, an unofficial fan
site tacitly supported by Morrissey, Morrissey was approached in
summer 2007 by a "consortium of promoters" with a $75 million offer
to tour during the next two years. The offer required Morrissey to
make a minimum of fifty worldwide performances with Johnny Marr,
under the Smiths' name. true-to-you.net reported that the offer had
been refused. Other reports say that the whole $75 million tour was
a hoax.
In an October 2007 interview on
BBC
Radio 5 Live, Johnny Marr hinted at a potential reformation in
the future, saying that "stranger things have happened so, you
know, who knows?" Marr went on to say that "It's no biggy. Maybe we
will in 10 or 15 years' time when we all need to for whatever
reasons, but right now Morrissey is doing his thing and I'm doing
mine, so that's the answer really." This is the first potential
indication of a Smiths reunion from Marr, who previously has stated
that reforming the band would be a bad idea.
In October
and December 2008, The
Sun reported that the Smiths would be reforming to play at
the Coachella Festival in 2009. However, Johnny Marr later stated
through his management that the rumours were "rubbish".
A Smiths compilation called
The Sound of The Smiths was
released on 10 November 2008. Johnny Marr supervised the
remastering of all the tracks and Morrissey named the record. The
album is available as either a one-disc or two-disc version.
In February 2009, following further suggestions of an imminent
reunion, Morrissey once again denied the rumours. In an interview
with
BBC Radio 2, he stated that "People
always ask me about reunions and I can't imagine why... the past
seems like a distant place, and I'm pleased with that."
Musical style
Throughout the group's existence, Morrissey and Johnny Marr
dictated the musical direction of The Smiths. Marr said in 1990,
"[I]t was a 50/50 thing between Morrissey and me. We were
completely in sync about which way we should go for each record".
Encyclopedia Britannica comments that the band's
"non-rhythm-and-blues, whiter-than-white fusion of 1960s rock and
post-punk was a repudiation of
contemporary dance pop" which was popular in the early 1980s. The
band's music purposefully rejected synthesizers and
dance music.
Marr's jangly
Rickenbacker
guitar-playing was influenced by
The
Byrds,
Neil Young's work with
Crazy Horse,
George Harrison and
James Honeyman-Scott of
The Pretenders. Marr often tuned his guitar
up a full step to F# to accommodate Morrissey's vocal range, and
also utilised open tunings. The guitarist devoted his focus to the
production of the group's music. Citing producer
Phil Spector as an influence, Marr said, "I
like the idea of records, even those with plenty of space, that
sound 'symphonic'. I like the idea of all the players merging into
one atmosphere".
Musically, Morrissey's role in the band was to create vocal
melodies and lyrics. Morrissey's songwriting would be influenced by
punk rock and post-punk bands such as the
New York Dolls,
The
Cramps and
The Cult, along with 1960's
girl groups, and female singers such as
Dusty Springfield,
Sandie Shaw,
Marianne Faithfull and
Timi Yuro. Morrissey's lyrics, while superficially
depressing, were often full of mordant humour; John Peel remarked
that The Smiths were one of the few bands capable of making him
laugh out loud. Influenced by his childhood interest in the
working-class
social realism of 1960s
"kitchen sink" television
plays, Morrissey wrote about ordinary people and their experiences
with despair, rejection and death. While gloomy "...songs such as
'Still Ill' sealed his role as spokesman for disaffected youth",
Morrissey's "manic-depressive rants" and his "'woe-is-me' posture
inspired some hostile critics to dismiss the Smiths as
'miserabilists.'"
Imagery
The group had a distinctive visual style on their album and single
covers, which often featured colourful images of film and pop
stars, usually in
duotone, designed by
Morrissey and Rough Trade art coordinator Jo Slee. Single covers
rarely featured any text other than the band name, and the band
themselves did not appear on the outer cover of their UK releases.
(Morrissey did, however, appear on an alternative cover for "What
Difference Does It Make?", mimicking the pose of the original
subject, UK film actor
Terence Stamp,
after the latter objected to his image being used.) The "cover
stars" were an indication of Morrissey's personal interests in
obscure or cult film stars, featuring Stamp,
Alain Delon,
Jean
Marais,
Warhol protégé
Joe Dallesandro,
James
Dean, figures from 1960s British culture (
Viv Nicholson,
Pat
Phoenix,
Yootha Joyce,
Shelagh Delaney), or images of unknown
models taken from old films or magazines.
The Smiths dressed mainly in ordinary clothes – jeans and
plain shirts – which reflected the "back to basics"
guitar-and-drums style of the music. This contrasted with the
exotic high-fashion image cultivated by
New
Romantic pop groups such as
Spandau
Ballet and
Duran Duran and
highlighted in magazines such as
The Face and
i-D. In 1986, when The Smiths performed on the
British music program
The
Old Grey Whistle Test, Morrissey wore a fake hearing aid
to support a hearing-impaired female fan who was ashamed of using
one, and also frequently wore thick-rimmed
National Health Service-style
glasses.
Legacy
The Smiths have influenced a number of alternative rock bands
through their career. Even as early as 1985, the "band had spawned
a rash of soundalike bands, including
James, who opened for the group on their spring
1985 tour".
The Cranberries combined
"the melodic jangle of post-Smiths indie-guitar pop with the
lilting, trance-inducing sonic textures of late-'80s dream pop,
creating their sound with "trebly, chiming guitars and spare,
certain melodies". As well, the band used
Stephen Street as producer, who was known for
"maximizing the moodiness of the Smiths". The Cranberries fused
this sound with lyrics that echoed the lovesick, literary style of
Morrissey. "The Smiths singer's bookish, fiercely intelligent
lyrics also provided a blueprint for the quiet, literate Scottish
band
Belle & Sebastian."
Marr's guitar playing "was a huge building block for more Manchester legends that followed The Smiths - The Stone Roses"; their guitarist John Squire has stated that Marr was a major influence. Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher has called The Smiths an influence, especially Marr; Gallagher stated that "when The Jam split, The Smiths started, and I totally went for them."
The "Britpop movement preempted by The Stone Roses and spearheaded
by groups like Oasis,
Suede and Blur,
drew heavily from Morrissey's portrayal of and nostalgia for a
bleak urban England of the past." Britpop band
Blur formed as a result of seeing The Smiths on
The South Bank Show in 1987. However, even though leading
bands from the Britpop movement claimed to be influenced by The
Smiths, the Britpop bands were at odds with the "basic
anti-establishment philosophies of Morrissey and The Smiths", since
Britpop "was an entirely commercial construct." In the book
Saint Morrissey, the author claims that Britpop
"airbrush[ed] Morrissey out of the picture...so that the Nineties
and its centrally-planned and coordinated pop economy could
happen."
Journalist Chloe Veltman argues that "the fanatical adoration
surrounding Morrissey today is founded on nostalgia, specifically a
yearning for the Morrissey of the 1980s – the
superstar-outsider frontman of The Smiths." She argues that The
"Smiths have had a much more profound influence on subsequent
culture than Morrissey has had on his own over the entire 17 year
history of his solo career." She also points out that the
"extensive catalogue of pop bands, plays, novels, films and other
cultural artifacts that have been influenced by Morrissey's ideas
and aesthetics draw their inspiration from The Smiths rather than
Morrissey solo."
Discography
- Studio albums
Notes
References
- David Bret. Morrissey: Scandal
and Passion (Robson 2004; ISBN 1-86105-787-3; covers both
Smiths and Morrissey's solo career)
- Simon Goddard. The Smiths: Songs That
Saved Your Life (Reynolds and Hearn 2002, 2004²; ISBN
1-903111-47-1, ISBN 1-905287-14-3)
- Mick Middles. The Smiths: The Complete Story (Omnibus
1985, 1988²)
- Johnny Rogan. Morrissey and
Marr: The Severed Alliance (Omnibus 1992, 1993²; ISBN
0-7119-3000-7)
- Mark Simpson. Saint
Morrissey (SAF, 2003, 2006, 978-0946719754)
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