Special Feature: Day Two--I Need To Cling To Something—The Smiths

If the undertaking of this four part series hasn't made it abundantly clear from the onset, I'm currently on what you might call a serious Smiths kick at present. For the last decade or so this has become sort of a quarterly tradition, wherein which my moderate Smiths consumption elevates to something of a mania, until eventually I can hardly listen to anything else. And though the escalation of these jags typically reaches an absurd and irrational level on little more than their own self-consuming fuel, the Smiths kick is always inspired by something close to what one might call tangible: a previously unheard bootleg or demo; a new appreciation for a lesser song; a lyric circumstantially shone in a new light, or that had somehow escaped my ears altogether for these many years. Obsession festers best in the smallest spaces.

Case in point: this particular period of consumption was spurred by something as simple as a lyrical incongruity previously overlooked between two versions of a relatively obscure B-side. Because of the Smiths' penchant for anthologizing their works while the band was still active, there's a tremendous amount of overlap between their three pre-break-up collections. This is especially true between the latter two, Louder Than Bombs and The World Won't Listen, as they were designed to serve the same purpose, just on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Besides the inclusion of one of Marr's well titled, but otherwise forgettable instrumentals ("Money Changes Everything"), the later record appears to offer nothing not otherwise available on the considerable longer Louder Than Bombs, and as such I've never found much reason to pursue it. But the devil, of course, is in the details: as it turns out, World actually features an alternate, lyrically superior version of "Stretch Out and Wait," a customarily strong b-side for which I hold particular reverence. Only two lines differ (On the high rise estate/what's at the back of your mind?/Oh, the three day debate on a high rise estate/what's at the back of your mind?" becomes "All the Lies that you make up/what's at the back of your mind/your face i can see, and it's desperately kind/but what's at the back of your mind?"), but that was enough—obsession is hardly a logical mistress. It's this sort of minutia that has kept me returning endlessly to Morrissey over the years as numerous other heroes of my adolescence have taken their place in the annuls of my history: the effortless density of Morrissey's lyrical work—self-absorbed, plagaristic, romantic, and ridiculous as it usually is (telling?)—offers me a seemingly inexhaustible well upon which to percolate... through new angles, new interpretations, new perspectives. Yes, I'm being sincere about this. No, I'm not entirely proud of it.

Now that I've throughly alienated everyone, let me quickly redirect your attention to the topic of episode two: the Meat Is Murder era. As the band grew less and less enchanted with the promotional abilities of Rough Trade, the label decided to make their big American single push by promoting "How Soon Is Now?" to A-side status, to surprisingly little fanfare. In retrospect, it seems sort of unfathomable that such a clearly classic song—as evidenced by its continued rotation on American "modern rock" stations—barely pushed it's way into the top 200, even with the backing of their American major, Sire. With one of the most instantly recognizable intros of all time, "How Soon Is Now?" is probably the clearest single example of Morrissey/Marr's sheer force at that or any period of their working relationship—and despite it's near 7-minute running time, captures the Smiths at the height of their commercial potential. The "How Soon Is Now?" single was backed by the restrained beauty of "Well I Wonder"—only Morrissey could make lines like "Gasping, dying, but somehow still alive/this is the fierce last stand of all I am" and "Do you see me when we pass?/I half-die" sound understated.

That same month, the band released Meat Is Murder—an album that represented a somewhat startling shift in tone from their first record—which promptly shot to number one on the albums chart. The self-defined singles band that somehow couldn't manage a runaway hit song was now in the uncomfortable position of being an album band. Ironically, Meat Is Murder is the Smiths at their least effective in album format. Though Marr's studio technique had clearly made vast improvements over the self-titled debut, Morrissey's heavy-handed politicking ages sourly—and despite the anger and conviction in tone, his words undermine the music here in a way that's not really seen anywhere in the Smiths catalog. By this point, Morrissey had become an outspoken media manipulator—casually supporting violent extremists in both the IRA and Animal Liberation, and openly calling for the immediate death of Margaret Thatcher. An album awash in strong societal violence, Meat Is Murder kicks off appropriately with "The Headmaster Ritual," a memorable addition to the long history of pop indictments of corporeal punishment in the British school system (see also: Pink Floyd, Radiohead, etc), and ends with "Barbarism Begins At Home" and "Meat Is Murder," two needlessly long, terribly heavy-handed attacks on child abuse and carnivorism, respectively. "Meat Is Murder" is the particularly disappointing—with its ridiculously ham-fisted (pardon the pun) slaughterhouse samples, and flawed assessment that "death for no reason is MURDER," "Meat..." failed move even those sympathetic to the cause. The Smiths got political on wax for the first time, and the results left much to be desired.

There are, however, considerable joys to be found on Meat Is Murder, primarily in the records more understated songs. Inspired by the riff to Elvis' "Marie's the Name (of His Latest Flame)," "Rusholme Ruffians" is a particularly perfect Smiths moment, a brutal, superbly visceral retelling of Morrissey's adolescence at spent being "educated" at the yearly local Boxing Day fairgrounds. (For a period, Marr took to introing the song live with a brief cover of "Marie...," as documented on the live album Rank.) Also totally brilliant is the painfully brief "What She Said"—one of the band's most aggressive songs, and following a familiarly suicidal theme, Moz again struggles with the importance of mind over body and vice versa—and despite all of the "Heady books" the titular character read, concludes that it "took a tattooed by from Birkenhead/to really really open her eyes."

The other glory of Meat Is Murder is proof that even in lesser songs, Morrissey is miraculously equipped to save sinking ships with the power of one well-placed line. A prime example is the relatively unremarkable "Nowhere Fast," another of Morrissey's cheekily (pun intended) ridiculous songs saved from drowning with the perfect "And when I'm lying in my bed/I think about life and I think about death/and neither one particularly appeals to me". (incidentally, "Nowhere Fast" is from whence the Slender Means Society finds its namesake.)

In spite of the hit record they had in Meat, the Smiths chose to immediately release a non-album track as their next single—the solid, if somewhat underwhelming suicide script, "Shakespeare's Sister." Backed by the aforementioned "Stretch Out and Wait," "Shakespeare's Sister" did surprisingly poor business—reaching a lowly number 26 on the pop charts, and further straining their relationship with Rough Trade. It was also roughly about this time that bassist Andy Rourke was handed his first ultimatum regarding his increasing dependancy on heroin.

Some four months later, the Smiths would release their first proper single from Meat Is Murder, making the bizarre decision to go with the powerfully uncommercial "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore." It's fate was unsurprisingly similar to that of "Shakespeare's Sister." The band was quick to add the singles' plight to the laundry list of complaints they already harbored against Rough Trade (not to mention Morrissey's paranoid theory about a radio conspiracy against the Smiths), but just two months later released another single on the label, "The Boy With the Thorn In His Side." "Thorn" was standard early Smiths fair which could have fit comfortably on either Hatful Of Hollow or their debut, but what was particularly notable about the single was its flipside, again featuring a pair of the Smiths' greatest compositions: "Rubber Ring" and "Asleep."

Brilliantly played, "Rubber Ring" is Morrissey at his most powerfully self-referential—a song that begins by mourning the death of personal reverence for pop songs "that saved your life" as you grow older, "Rubber Ring" twists into Morrissey's own clever plea for pop immortality: "I'm here with the cause/I'm holding the torch/In the corner of your room/can you hear me/and when you dancing, and laughing, and finally living/Hear my voice in your head and think of me kindly". There is scarcely a more perfectly Morrissey moment.

In spite of minor flirtations with other songs now and again, "Asleep" will forever remain my very favorite Smiths song, and quite probably my second favorite song ever. It's suicidal resignation is perhaps the bleakest of Morrissey's songs—humorless, whispering, desolate, and utterly miserable, but free of the absurd melodrama that often weighs down his more heavy-handed sentiments. Asleep is, quite simply, a perfect song—and as such, understandably difficult for me to do justice in blog form.

Following another belly up single ("The Boy With the Thorn In His Side" stalled at 26), the Smiths were openly frustrated about their relationship with Rough Trade, and suggested that they planned to part ways with the label. Rough Trade secured a high court injunction to block the group from recording for another label under the stipulations of their contract, with the red tape momentarily suspending the release of the band's just completed masterpiece, The Queen Is Dead.