A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of the Smiths

by Tony Fletcher

  Years into the future, Wilson would talk positively about Morrissey’s literary endeavors, even if the only thing he could recall about the script (before losing it, as he claimed) was that “the characters lived on toast.” And he obviously saw enough potential in Morrissey that he kept the letters (though not, frustratingly, the play). But Morrissey’s barrage of mail, especially the manner in which he appeared to turn from fan to foe in such a short time—that is, over the course of that one final letter—revealed a streak of jealousy, or something very similar. Morrissey, it appeared, wanted in with Factory; Wilson kept him out.

  Morrissey’s frustration was, perhaps, understandable—especially if he had neglected to make a Xerox of his play before entrusting it to Wilson. But his mood should have been buoyed by the fact that—finally!—his New York Dolls book-zine had seen print. Morrissey had offered his services to the publisher of a small local imprint, Babylon Books’ John Muir, who, without the likes of Joy Division or New Order records to keep him busy, had positively leaped at the opportunity of an eager young author unlikely to press for royalty statements and printed it (eventually) in early 1981. That part of the forty-eight-page publication that was in Morrissey’s own words revealed the sense of style, the poetic rhythm, and ready wit that was only two years away from finding its true voice in the Smiths. But as further evidence that literature was less his obvious path than lyrics, the essay did not reveal a solid sense of construction. It began instead as a series of didactic potential opening sentences:

  The New York Dolls were the first real sign that the Sixties were over. Their unmatched vulgarity dichotomised feelings of extravagant devotion or vile detestation. It was impossible to look upon the Dolls as adequately midstream, just as it was impossible to ignore them. Enough was written about the group to fill a library. They were the “cause celebre” of New York’s avant garde.

  And it continued that way for several pages before giving in to exhaustion and quoting the group’s own individual pen files instead. Still, at a point in time when quality music journalism was a relatively novel idea and had yet to extend into quality music biographies, the appearance on local record-shop (and some bookshop) shelves of a small book dedicated to a cult group proved sufficiently popular for reprints and eventual sales of around 3,000 copies. As an act of friendship, Morrissey dedicated the book to James Maker, “Who lives it.”

  His book on the New York Dolls turned out to be more or less Morrissey’s last word on the subject for a number of years. Curiously, once the Smiths garnered the sort of attention that he had once thought the Dolls’ birthright, he disowned his fandom as “just a teenage fascination … I was laughably young at the time,” noting in other interviews that “I hate the Dolls now” and that “I could never possibly listen to one of their records.” Truth was, his “fascination” had lasted a decade and would resume again in years to come; in fact, Morrissey would prove instrumental in the group’s eventual reformation. A possible explanation for his bizarre volte-face was that the image of the New York Dolls contrasted too vividly with that of the Smiths in 1984—and, more important, that he was happy to have become, at last, Morrissey the singer and no longer wanted to be identified as he had long been known around Manchester and throughout the music press, as Morrissey the oddly obsessed New York Dolls fanatic.

  Not surprisingly, Muir asked Morrissey for a follow-up. This time, he indulged his fascination with James Dean, whose photocopied image accompanied any number of Morrissey’s letters to friends and pen pals. Back in 1979, one such correspondent, Lindsay Hutton, had published Morrissey’s poem, “James Dean Is Not Dead” (which reworked the title of a François Truffaut essay), in The Next Big Thing. The poem offered the notion that Dean did not die in 1955 but rather, “horribly maimed” by his car accident, was cast aside by “bigwigs” who had no more use for him. Morrissey’s poem imagined Dean seeing out his years in a “robe worn and grey, well-worn slippers, spirit passed away,” and was, certainly by the standards of much teenage poetry of the era, nothing to be ashamed of. The subsequent book(let), also entitled James Dean Is Not Dead, relied more heavily on the kind of cut-and-paste journalism that would befall the likes of the Smiths in the 1980s. It was not actually published until 1983, by which point the Smiths were up and running, and Morrissey relatively keen to downplay it. Still, though weakly written, there was the occasional flexing of rhythmic humor—and eager discussion of sexual habits such as Morrissey would balk at disclosing about his own life once he became the subject of equally prurient interest:

  In Hollywood, where young actors were picked, plucked and packed away, Dean was determined to make it on his own terms. When cross-examined by tell-all gossips of his bisexuality, he told them: “Well I’m certainly not going through life with one hand tied behind my back!” It was rumoured far too frequently that he had worked his way up trousers down. Had Warners, on signing Dean, bought and destroyed the porn movies which showed their precious protege stripped for action?

  A third book-length essay submitted to Babylon, Exit Smiling, was arguably the most interesting of the three, given that it focused not on a single band or actor but on a genre, “some of the screen’s also-rans.” Morrissey’s fourteen (very) brief chapters, arranged again without apparent coordination or structure, homed in briefly on the talents of the relatively recognizable (future Smiths cover stars Terence Stamp and Rita Tushingham) and, for average British readers at least, the somewhat obscure (Pier Angeli and Mamie Van Doren). Far more than a collection of non–Hollywood Stars, Exit Smiling served also as an exploration of Morrissey’s feminist tendencies, and was clearly influenced in that regard by Molly Haskell’s groundbreaking 1974 book, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies. Though Morrissey’s brief canter around the edges of film criticism was hardly in Haskell’s league, it was genuinely revealing of his lifelong interests and thought processes. If he was upset when Muir declined to publish it at the time, citing a lack of potential audience, he was understandably furious that it should eventually come out in 1998, in a strangely belated bout of obvious profiteering.4

  A “back-bedroom casualty” he may claim to have been, but Morrissey’s communications with the outside world continued at a furious rate; he must at times have felt like he was single-handedly keeping the Royal Mail in business. (He did his best to shun the Royal part of it, refusing to use stamps celebrating the 1981 wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Di, and good-naturedly castigated friends who dared to do so themselves.) Responding to a classified ad in Sounds, he began a pen-pal relationship with a Glaswegian teenager, Robert Mackie, almost unnerving in its combination of wicked wit, childlike enthusiasm, and patent condescension. The professional critic for Record Mirror and author for Babylon Books seemed far removed from the person who opened one of his missives with the sentences: “So pleased that you enjoyed my last letter. Why don’t you just admit that every word I write fascinates you? It would save so much time. The nicest thing I can say about your letter is that it exists.”

  Early in the correspondence, which ran for fourteen months from October 1980, Morrissey set about convincing Mackie that he was American and that his early 1981 trip to the States would result in him living there. (He would, he insisted, miss Coronation Street and Top of the Pops, but that appeared to be all.) When he returned in March nonetheless, it was to enthuse instead about the group he was forming, Angels Are Genderless, for which he had written at least one song of which he was proud, entitled “I’m Departed.” He pestered Mackie for a photograph, then trashed the results when he discovered his pen-pal sported a mustache, comparing it to a dead caterpillar. He nonetheless sought further personal details, teasing about his relationship with a girl he would later bring into the studio to sing backup on his first recordings with Johnny Marr: “I have a girlfriend called Annalisa. We’re both bisexual. Real hip, huh? I hate sex.” When Mackie replied that his sex life was nonexistent (he was eighteen at the time, Morrissey almost twenty-two), Mor
rissey offered a response somewhat at odds with his later proclamations: “Oh yes, celibacy is real hip (sister), but, ‘no man is an island’ so the saying goeth. And haven’t you HEARD about sexual repression? You’ll probably end up strangling your mother or becoming some deranged bisexual psychopatic [sic] child-murderer.”

  At least Morrissey was to remain consistent in his disdain for employment; he appeared disappointed, if not entirely surprised, to discover that Mackie actually worked for a living. When it came to music, he noted that he had seen Bowie in concert some sixteen times and that he had been able to elicit correspondence from Bryan Ferry because “I tugged at his sleeve,” presumably back at the Midland Hotel in 1972. His name-dropping was relentless. “Howard Devoto is staying with my friend Linder this week, so I’m going over tomorrow to chew the fat, as they say. Don’t you think I’m an interesting person?” He (successfully) beseeched Mackie to listen not only to Ludus, but to the wryly intellectual pop group Monochrome Set, and felt compelled to note that he had received a letter from that band’s lead singer, too. To one of the pair’s more mutual musical reference points, the Velvet Underground, he turned the subject around (repeatedly) to that of their debut album’s headline singer, Nico: “She’s living nearby and can often be seen whirling about glamorous Manchester in a black cape humming ‘Le Pattite Chevalie.’ ”

  It was (partly) true: Nico was living in Manchester and, despite a well-known heroin addiction, being managed out of a room in the New Hormones office by local promoter Alan Wyse. Though very much in Factory’s shadow, New Hormones maintained an interesting roster—Dislocation Dance, Diagram Brothers, Eric Random, and, of course, Ludus—and its central location meant that the artists would stop by frequently. Richard Boon and Peter Wright grew familiar with a heavily stoned Nico sharing office space with a persistent Steven Morrissey, who would set himself up with a cup of tea and a desk on the basis that when he sat down to write it would typically be a review or letter in praise of Ludus. (Absent a phone at Mayfield Road through 1980, he availed himself of that utility whenever at New Hormones.) Wright thought of Morrissey at the time as “somebody who had this crush on Linder. He was a smart guy but he was … kind of one of the crowd in Manchester. Didn’t seem like anything was going to happen.”

  Richard Boon had more faith. “He hung around a lot and eavesdropped on conversations with people and picked stuff up. He had talent but hadn’t found an outlet. Informally meeting him was always fascinating because he was aware of his interests and took them really seriously. And he was driven. You just knew this person would break through in some kind of cultural endeavor.” At one point, Boon said, Morrissey handed him a cassette of himself singing what he recalled as an old Bessie Smith number: “Wake Up Johnny,” a choice of title that Boon, at least, subsequently found eerily prophetic.5 Not surprisingly, Boon would prove somewhat dismissive of the notion of Morrissey as a perpetually depressed individual. “Even though he was locked in his bedroom, looking in the mirror, he was actually looking out. And his magpie eyes were on the prize. I think there’s been far too much melodrama attached to the bedroom.”

  In the midst of this period, during which Morrissey went from mere fanzine contributor and pestering letter writer to published author and concert reviewer, he decided to write a book on Howard Devoto. This was a brave endeavor, given that Devoto was Linder’s ex, and Morrissey’s view of him appeared to vacillate according to access. Morrissey had rightly enthused about the Buzzcocks from their earliest days, citing Devoto as a large part of the group’s appeal, but in the summer of 1978, shortly after opening for Devoto’s new band Magazine at the Ritz, he wrote, “I find Howard Devoto’s voice very irritating and his lyrics are often plain bad.” By the start of the new decade, he had changed his mind again (“my recent discovery, Howard makes me proud to be a Mancunian,” he wrote to Hutton of how he was busy listening to “all of Magazine’s records”) and eventually cited The Real Life of Soap as his second favorite album of 1980 (the Monochrome Set’s The Strange Boutique took first prize). The following March, he warned Tony Wilson, “Watch for my book on poor Howard, who we all thought was bald enough to know better.” Yet within the month, he had heard that “Lord Howard” would not consent to an interview, thereby scuppering the project, and Morrissey’s opinion about the man’s music changed once more: “Magazine’s new LP is—scoop!—‘Pepsi-Cola.’ Dull, dull, dull. Thank God for the Associates!”

  It remains uncertain whether Morrissey socialized at all with Devoto during this period: “In 1976 or 1977 I remember Linder telling me about an ‘interesting’ guy she’d met called Steven Morrissey—but that’s about it,” wrote Devoto to the author in response to his own interview request about these days in Manchester. “I met him for the first time in 1985.”

  Morrissey’s correspondence with Robert Mackie continued throughout, the Glaswegian eventually taking up an offer to visit Manchester and stay on Kings Road. Morrissey announced that he could be recognized by his overcoat; his outer garment had become something of a fashion statement among certain northern bands and their followers, and Morrissey would hardly be seen in anything else for the next couple of years. Having assured Mackie that they shouldn’t expect anything of each other, Morrissey then humorously teased his visitor with the warning: “After I’ve tied you to the rack, the bizarre Texan sexual ritual begins. You’ll never believe what my sister can do with cotton wool and a tennis racket!”

  As it turned out, the encounter proved tepid. “Although he immediately made me feel very welcome,” said Mackie, “I never felt as comfortable as I should have.” This was hardly surprising given the culture shock of the occasion for the younger, less-traveled of the pen-pals. After shopping for writing materials and going out for dinner (that was Betty Dwyer’s suggestion, Mackie not being a vegetarian), Morrissey took Mackie to “a bar hosted by a well-known Mancunian transvestite,” most likely Foo Foo’s Palace. There, he grilled Mackie about his willingness to work a menial job, something he had already raised in writing. Back at Kings Road, where artwork for his James Dean book and the “Orgasm Addict” sleeve was on display, Morrissey showed Mackie a collage of Bowie cuttings he had put together for a school art project, for which he was scored poorly due to the teacher’s negative view of Bowie’s “bi-sexuality.” All in all, it was hardly surprising that Mackie felt “out of my depth.”

  It would be several months after their visit before Mackie would dare resume the correspondence—at which Morrissey picked up right where it had left off. “I’m sorry your visit here ended miserably, but that was your own fault. I will say that I did enjoy meeting you, but I often felt that you seemed to wish that you weren’t here.… But I never promised you that you’d have a good time, did I? Accept me for what I am—completely unacceptable.”

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Punk made me hungry and thirsty for experience and knowledge. Where was I going to get it? By working in a clothes shop and hanging out in a record shop.

  —Johnny Marr, March 2011

  The breakup of White Dice was probably the best thing that could have happened to Johnny Marr, in that it finally set him free from his neighborhood mentors. At the age of fifteen, he had wanted to be seventeen; now that he was seventeen, he had no desire to be any older. “I realized the power of my own age, and I was no longer looking upwards to the older guys that their lives were better. I looked around and thought, ‘This is our time.’ ”

  His sense of self-satisfaction was hardly unique; by the age of seventeen, most British working-class youth of Marr’s generation had left school, were earning money (even if in the form of unemployment checks), were old enough to wed and leave home, and were rarely prohibited from drinking or going clubbing, although they were legally not allowed to. In Marr’s case, though, this sense of self-realization was propelled by an almost inordinate amount of personal and professional activity. As with Steven Morrissey at a similar age, relations with his father had reached a nadir�
��but in Marr’s case, it was not the parents’ marriage that was the problem. “I thought he was from a different world to me and he probably was,” said Marr. “And he thought I was this cocky, out-of-control law unto myself, which I probably was. We were both right.” Unable to talk through their differences, Johnny figured of his father “that he wanted to see the back of me,” and packed his bags. (His mother, with whom he was so close, supported the break.) Only many years later, when the distance between them had narrowed again, did John Maher confess that the day his son moved out of Churchstoke Walk was one of the saddest of his life.

  A friend named Oliver May told Marr about an attic room available in the “big funky Victorian house” he lodged at with Shelley Rohde and her four children in Bowdon, an upscale part of Altrincham, just west of Wythenshawe. Rohde was a local icon. Leaving (thirteen successive!) schools at age sixteen, she had become the first female correspondent in Moscow; had covered the Hungarian revolution; and, upon moving to Manchester in the 1960s as a divorcée, had served as a columnist for the Daily Mail, presented news on Granada alongside Tony Wilson, and published an authoritative biography on L. S. Lowry. She managed all this at a time when women were still not considered an equal presence in the newsroom, let alone in foreign war zones. Marr seized on the opportunity for a more bohemian home environment, and in the absence of Rohde herself, who was on a book-writing sabbatical (“It was probably several weeks before Shelley was even aware that some teenage oik hoi polloi was up in her attic”), successfully endeared himself to her three musically inclined sons, one of whom had even soundproofed a room, and the lone daughter, a “ ’60s flower child” just younger than Angie. Marr would maintain the attic apartment at Shelley Rohde’s as his home base for a substantial period of time.