Alternative Rock Music: January 2006 Archives

Forgive me any factual errors in the following tirade, but it must be expected that when charting what may, however embarrassingly, very well be the most dominant single factor of one's life for the better part of a decade, there is bound to be at least a hint of selective mythology, erroneous extensions of truths, and just plain inventions of the imagination. Forgive me further for my trepidation, but it has some grounding—this will certainly be the most difficult entry I have ever cast into the forgotten annuls of The Greatest Band of All Time. For one, because I could never hope to do justice to my very personal relationship to the Smiths in the tossed-off body of a blog entry. For two, because I can whole-heartedly type sentences like "I could never hope to do justice to my very personal relationship to the Smiths" and feel positively sincere doing so. For three, because my affections for the Smiths competes with that of virtually everyone I have ever shared kinship, and is appropriately dwarfed by the continued allegiance of a worldwide army of confused, disaffected, spotty teenagers, as well as every generation that has preceded them since roughly 1983. Nothing I can say here will keep me from sounding anything less than a deluded, mouth-foaming adolescent—and that's the only way, really. Because for most people who care, the Smiths are the closest approximation pop music can muster to honest to god first love—deified, idealized, haunting, and never, ever to be repeated. The Smiths are, in total seriousness, the closest thing I have ever had to a religion—and the fact of the matter is, in most company, this fact sort of embarrasses me. In spite of their near universal acceptance socially, there is very little in this world less dignified than true, unabashed Smiths fanaticism. And while I'd never claim to be the craziest Smiths fan—one of my very best friends, who is tattooed with Morrissey lyrics, once jumped out of a moving car when she saw the man himself standing at a street corner, a friend of a friend reportedly had an affair with one of Morrissey's producers just to get closer to the Mozzer, etc., etc.—the fact remains that I am a grown man of 25 who still can't break free of his teenaged obsessions with a band that lasted merely five years, released only four proper studio albums, and broke up a month before I started the second grade. The Smiths very well may have ruined my life, and yet I've found time nearly every day for roughly ten years to listen to at least one of their songs. Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before: The Smiths are the Greatest Band Of All Time.

Mirroring Steve's now ancient tome to his Greatest Band of All Time, Guided By Voices, I hope to spend a few days reflecting upon the Smiths in what I'm stretching to call their four "periods"—a bit of misnomer, considering that in their brief existence, they have very few hints of major stylistic shift. The "periods" of observation will instead be broken down by records and related singles—also sort of a weird tactic, considering that the Smiths, arguably the last great singles band (or "group," as they preferred), have never really been defined by their albums proper. In fact, the Smiths are in a lot of ways the polar opposites of Steve's GBOAT—their discography carefully contained in a succinct four propers, a couple of compilations, a live album, and a few stray b-sides that amount to roughly 70 total songs, a negligible number of failures among them.

Born famously from the streets of industrial Manchester, the Smiths—Steven Patrick Morrissey, Johnny Maher, Mike Joyce, and Andy Rourke—were all notably descended from recent Irish immigrants, a fact of some ridiculous importance in the casual prejudice of 1960-70s England. Primarily the marriage of two very disparate, yet equally motivated egos, the Smiths officially began in 1982 as a songwriting partnership between 23-year-old pop obsessive Morrissey and 18-year-old jack of all trades Maher, who had both struggled for some years individually with other lesser projects (the Nosebleeds and White Dice respectively and most notably). A fledgling (though rather mediocre) rock journalist, Morrissey had listlessly spent his post-scholastic running a fan club for the New York Dolls, attempting (and failing) to learn a number of different instruments, writing (and occasionally publishing) a handful of pulp-y pop culture tomes of little consequence (James Dean Is Not Dead and The New York Dolls), and doing his best to stay unemployed. Morrissey's once-promising aspirations toward pop fame seemed relatively ripe for the dustbin by the time he was approached by the unlikely Maher, a talented, calculating rock kid with a similarly deep appreciation of Pop in search of a songwriting partner. Distant acquaintances, Maher had some years prior been impressed by some of the lyrics Morrissey had penned with the now-defunct Nosebleeds, and decided to arrange a meeting romantically inspired by the story of songwriting powerhouse Leiber and Stoller's first encounter—arriving on Morrissey's doorstep to insist they start a partnership. Within a few days, they had "Suffer Little Children" and "the Hand that Rocks the Cradle".

Within a year or so, the duo had secured bassist Rourke—an old school friend and former bandmate of Johnny's—and drummer Joyce. The fledgling foursome released their first seven inch on Rough Trade at the crest of the label's many years of brilliance, in the form of "Hand In Glove" b/w "Handsome Devil." The disc was clearly a less than subtle statement of purpose—with two of the most elusive, sexually complicated, and defiant songs Morrissey would ever pen for the group. "Hand In Glove," with its strong suggestions of a forbidden love where the "Sun shines out of our behinds" was a relatively unlikely debut, but a perfect first wrung of the Smiths mythology. The most explicitly carnal of all of the self-professed a-sexual Morrissey's Smiths work, "Handsome Devil" is also one of the most menacing—with casual (possible) allusions to an untamed thirst for sexual violence, as well as some possible hints of pedophilia. "All the streets are crammed with things/eager to be held/I know what hands are for/and I'd like to help myself/you ask me the time/but I sense something more/and I would like to give you what I think you're asking for... I crack the whip and you skip/but you deserve it". Additionally, it's with "Handsome Devil" that Morrissey debuts his now familiar fascination with gender confusions, referencing both a pair of "mammary glands" that he wishes to get his "hands on," which he follows with "A boy in the bush is worth two in the hand/I think I can help you get through your exams," and ultimately inquiring "When we're in your scholarly room/who will swallow whom?" atop one of Maher's (now Marr) rare bludgeoning riffs. The quiet, poetic violence of "Handsome Devil"—though largely abandoned in later work—was a theme repeated regularly throughout the songs produced in the first couple years that Morrissey and Marr were together, but never again would the seem quite so darkly mysterious as with their debut, which quietly underperformed Rough Trade's initial hopes.

A handful of popular BBC sessions followed, soon after which the Manchurians least likely found their first official controversy in a story entitled "Child Sex Song Puts the Beeb In a Spin,"—wherein The Sun questionably cobbled together some of Morrissey's more allusively suggestive lyrics—from "Reel Around the Fountain," "Handsome Devil," and "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle"—and confusingly report that the band were advocates of pedophilia. Certainly the songs weren't entirely free of troubling allusions to youth (It's time that the tale were told/of how you took a child/and you made him old," "there's sadness in your beautiful eyes/you're untouched, unsoiled, wondrous eyes... They'll be blood on the cleaver tonight") nor explorations of the flesh ("Fifteen minutes with you/well, i wouldn't say no/...you can pin and mount me like a butterfly"), but with Morrissey's evasive, intentionally ambiguous lyrical structure at the time, it's impossible throughout to really discern more than just an abstract comprehension of his suggested narrative, despite some arguable connotations. Morrissey of course firmly (though again somewhat aloofly) denied any leering intentions, and the controversy soon quelled.

The band's first serious commercial break came by way of their second single, the instantly and lastingly infectious "This Charming Man," which hit the top forty, and saw them performing on Top Of the Pops for the first time. One of Marr's shiningly melodic guitar achievements, "Charming Man" was backed in various formats by a handful of additional cuts that would prove to further expand the Smiths' thematic mythology via some of Morrissey's many cultural and personal fascinations (an aside: these fascinations are also evident in his hand selection of the "cover stars" of the Smiths' mounting releases—people like Terrance Stamp, Elvis, Joe Dallesandro, James Dean, etc.—each a pin-up from Morrissey's fame-following adolescence): the classically British kitchen sink motif of "Jeane" (Jeane/I'm not sure what happiness means/but I look in your eyes and it isn't there"), the ridiculous dark comedy of "Wonderful Woman" ("I'm starved of mirth/Let's go and trip a dwarf"), and the outsider self-analysis of "Accept Yourself" ("I once had a dream and it never came true/and time is against me now"). Next came "What Difference Does It Make?" the lead-off single from their long-awaited debut album, with a now familiar theme of an unspoken dark secret defiantly threatening a love affair—which happened to fare even better at number 12 on the charts.

A month later, the Smiths' hastily recorded, self-titled debut hit the shelves, and landed with some disappointment. Originally featuring only two of the band's powerful introductory A and B sides ("Hand In Glove" and "What Difference Does It Make?"), The Smiths remains a somewhat muddy affair—setting the pace for a career of seemingly strange ambivalence toward the album format. Still, the record introduces the band as a startling force straight out of the gate, and features, more than anything, some of Morrissey's most memorable lyrical material—even if a lot of it was arguably plagiarized. Another of Morrissey's most effective talents is his ability to devour and appropriate pop and literary sources for lyrical content, and, to appropriately paraphrase the man, claim these words as his own. (For a quick reference, check out this interesting, lengthy, and incomplete Morrissey Sources Guide.) Even where the production might fail (the band largely acknowledges that their BBC sessions are generally superior), there's scarcely a lyrical dud on The Smiths, which is certainly more than can be said for the rest of the band's records. Particularly brilliant is the afore mentioned "Reel Around the Fountain," along with the totally essential "Still Ill", and the chilling finale of "Suffer Little Children," about the serial child killing Moors Murderers that haunted much of Morrissey's Manchurian childhood. More importantly, The Smiths marked the darkest, most dangerous creative period the band would ever undertake—before fatal fame would send Morrissey's (still brilliant) vision to some points of near caricature. It was the time before the Smiths became THE SMITHS, when Moz unleashed the bulk of his most confrontational couplets, hidden behind Marr's most reserved presence.

The band rounded out the year with non-album singles "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" and "William, It Was Really Nothing"—the latter of which featuring a couple of songs written and recorded in the studio over the span of a few days, which would later become two of the band's most memorable songs: "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" and the eternal "How Soon Is Now?" Both singles, as well as all of the remaining non-album tracks and radio sessions, were soon compiled on the bargain-priced Hatful Of Hollow—which, like most of the Smiths' compilations, is arguably more essential than their albums proper. Also that year, Morrissey also persuaded one of his early idols, British pop singer Sandy Shaw, to record a version of "Hand In Glove" of her own with the band—the track finally vindicated when it reached the top 30 the second time around.

At the close of 1984, The Smiths were on an insane creative and commercial roll with scarcely two years under their belts, and were well on their way to becoming the most important British rock group of the '80s. And then after that? The Greatest Band of All Time, of course.