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

by Tony Fletcher

  Not that he always showed up for a proposed rendezvous. On one such occasion when they felt they had been stood up, the Crones decided to visit him on Kings Road to find out why. “We were sure that he was in,” said Carroll, “but he just didn’t open the door. I wrote to him to say, ‘Where were you?’ and he wrote back to say ‘I wasn’t there. Give me proof that you were.’ ” It was that sort of relationship. “His truculence manifested itself [in that] if you sort of said the wrong thing, he would not communicate,” said Naylor. “But communication was very slow in those days, so it was hard to tell if he was sulking or the post was late.”

  The arrival of unemployment checks would result in some pronounced attempt at upward mobility, “ending up in these wine bars with hairdressers from Vidal Sassoon,” according to Naylor, an interesting if unintentional statement, given that Johnny Marr’s best friend was a hairdresser and his girlfriend a Vidal Sassoon model. They might also celebrate the appearance of cash with tea at the historic Kendal Milne department store on Deansgate, where Linder, recalled Carroll, “would produce something ridiculous from her handbag, some absurd sex toy, and she would put it on the table next to these tiny little chocolate cakes,” successfully frightening the aging blue-rinse brigade on their genteel shopping trips.

  It was, admitted Naylor, “pretentious crap.” But “they were pretentious times. We were all pretentious because we thought the world had ended. The world we knew had ended, in terms of technology, and cities, and the way we lived. It was unknown, the future.”

  Pretentiousness, then, was matched by intellectual curiosity. The quartet would frequent the Equal Opportunities Library on Albert Square and study books on gynecology and feminism. The issue of sexual politics, certainly, was always central to the relationship. “As women, we had a lot more freedom because you could pretty much do whatever you wanted, because nothing much was expected of you,” said Carroll. “Whereas for men, I think their role had been pretty well defined. So I think it was probably a lot harder for [Steven Morrissey] to find where he belonged. And there was also the possibility that he was someone who could not fit in with anything.… He was someone who could not cope with an everyday existence. That part of his angst was absolutely genuine.”

  Naylor, who wore her lesbianism as a badge of pride, believed that “Steven was a lot more of an active gay man than he ever let on.” But she accepted that “being gay in Manchester at that particular point was not really an option.” She saw Morrissey in much the same way as she saw herself and Carroll at the time: “confused, frightened, unsure, lost between the modernist world and the postmodernist world we all inhabit now [in the twenty-first century], where we play with irony and identity. And at that point identity felt very serious.”

  “There was a part of Steven that we never saw, a part of him that had personal relationships with people,” confirmed Carroll. “He was never really interested in talking about that with us. He would make camp remarks or he would make remarks about things, but we never really knew what was going on with him when it came to his personal life.… I think we got the sense that behind that wall was some stuff that wouldn’t be quite so easy to deal with.”

  It was noticeable that until the success of the Smiths—in which she would play an important promotional role—Carroll “never had any doubt” that Morrissey’s path to success in life would be literary. Ironically, at City Fun, she and Naylor had cast aside some of his contributions under the pen name Sheridan Whiteside (a character in The Man Who Came to Dinner) because they almost always promoted the New York Dolls, a band for whom the Crones had little time. Once they befriended him, they were more supportive of his literary endeavors, publishing a glowing retrospective of his on Sandie Shaw.

  In the meantime, Naylor, Carroll, and Morrissey alike remained unyielding in their support for Linder’s musical career. On paper, things appeared to be going well for Ludus, who released three albums in 1982 and recorded a John Peel session replete with the wonderfully titled “Vagina Gratitude.” (The title of a compilation released that year, Riding the Rag, a slang term for a woman’s period, was equally inspired.) But New Hormones could not do much more for a band that was determined to operate in the margins. In stepping up as Linder’s unofficial PR person, Steven Morrissey acknowledged as much. “Being the only sensible recipe for the culturally damaged,” he wrote in a press release for New Hormones that summer, “Ludus are out to at least stretch their patience with the world to the very elastic limit.”

  Of that he was not exaggerating. On November 5, 1982, Ludus headlined the Haçienda. Prior to the show, the Crones laid a red-stained tampon on every table. Linder then took to the stage wearing a dress made of meat, removing it for the last song to reveal a lengthy dildo strapped around her waist.2 As the members of the audience recoiled—even in the experimental world of post-punk England, Linder’s act was extreme—Naylor and Carroll wandered among them, distributing meat entrails wrapped in pornography.

  The act infuriated the Haçienda’s owners—and that was largely its intent. During its first six months, the club had been showing pornography, “and they thought it was really cool,” recalled Linder. (It would have to have been “soft” porn, given Britain’s draconian indecency laws of the time.) By reducing herself to an object of meat, said Linder, “I took my revenge.” But with such a confrontational act of performance art, she also brought herself to a crossroads. “I thought, ‘That’s it. Where do you go from here?’ ” That Haçienda show turned out to be her last in Manchester. She broke up Ludus the following year and moved to Belgium, gradually abandoning music entirely for visual art. Her feminist influence would live on in the rock world, not only in the many women musicians who took up her fight over subsequent years, but in Steven Patrick Morrissey—who, by the time of that last Ludus concert, had already played his first gig with the Smiths.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  Because the years previous to the Smiths were quite dank for me, I could see this perhaps as my absolutely, perhaps sole key opportunity to do something constructive and something worthwhile, so therefore when the time came to actually mount the stage, it was almost as if this strange forceful character completely took over. I actually stayed in the wings almost.

  —Morrissey, The South Bank Show, October 1987

  Early on in the process, Morrissey suggested, and Marr agreed, on the name for their band. The Smiths. Fans and critics alike have searched high and low over the years for explanations, and they are easy to come by, given that Smith is the most common last name in England. But that, really, is the only explanation that was ever needed. By calling themselves the Smiths, Morrissey and Marr asserted themselves as commoners, everyday working people. In doing so, they additionally disassociated themselves from the outlandish names that were so pervasive at the time—be it in their own musical world (Echo & the Bunnymen as the big northern rock band, Quando Quango as the latest Factory act, et cetera), or that of the New Romantic/Blitz Kids hit-makers (for example, Haircut 100, Duran Duran). And in the process of choosing a single-syllable, definitive-article name, they were subscribing to the lineage of British rock legends: the Who, the Stones (by common abbreviation), the Kinks, the Clash, the Jam, and so on, and the possibility that they might eventually be considered part of that rich tapestry. It was, in short, a pronounced return to basics at a time when pompousness was dominant.

  Having settled on a moniker, begun writing songs, and drawn up something of a game plan, the next step was to solidify the lineup. Stephen Pomfret, as acknowledged matchmaker between Morrissey and Marr, was invited to early Smiths rehearsals in Bowdon, but his presence, he felt, was requested more out of duty than desire. “Johnny never wanted another guitarist,” he quickly concluded. “If I’d been the greatest guitarist in the world I wouldn’t have been in the band.” He stepped back without any evident bitterness, accepting his minor role in history with grace.

  That still left the need for a rhythm section. For a ba
ssist, Marr returned to Decibelle and recruited twenty-one-year old Dale Hibbert, who had engineered the Freak Party session. Hibbert had never been in a band of which he wasn’t the leader, and he had one going at the time, the Adorables. It speaks volumes for Johnny Marr’s powers of persuasion that Hibbert nonetheless allowed himself to be talked into quitting this band before he had even met Steven Morrissey. Hibbert considered Marr a good friend, knew him also as “a really great musician,” and knew even more so that Marr seemed to have the connections to make a band happen, and when you’d been in as many bands as Hibbert had, where nothing happened, that was a strong selling point. When he came over to Bowdon to meet Morrissey for the first time, Hibbert was pleased to find that as vegetarians and Velvet Underground fans, they shared common ground; over coming weeks and months, Hibbert would frequently give Morrissey a ride home to Stretford on the back of his motorbike. The relationship was pleasant but, as so often the case with Morrissey and people who didn’t fully subscribe to his worldview, distant. “I thought he was a reasonable guy,” said Hibbert, but “there was nothing that stood out about him.” If there was a surprise, it was that the first song Hibbert was presented with—recorded, with just vocals and guitar, to Marr’s TEAC 3-track Portastudio—was a cover version, a long-forgotten single by early 1960s New York girl group the Cookies, “I Want a Boy for My Birthday.”

  Ostensibly, this was no more risqué than Ringo Starr singing the Shirelles’ “Boys” with a straight face on the Beatles’ first album, a record that had also included their version of the Cookies’ biggest hit, “Chains.” (In their own choice of a cover, therefore, deliberately or otherwise, Morrissey and Marr were paying double homage to the early Beatles.) And certainly, it was intended in part as a nod to the New York Dolls, who had incorporated the Shangri-Las into their own live set. The recording itself was none so upbeat as those reference points, however. Morrissey faithfully replicated the lead melody as he sang such traditionally romantic couplets as “I want a boy to comfort me, and treat me tenderly,” but his voice was no match for the Cookies’ Earl-Jean McCrea. And though Marr laid out his template for the Smiths across his two guitar tracks—one softly playing the chords, the other offering a carefully picked arpeggio, and both of them drenched in reverb—neither was he on the level of Gerry Goffin, the original song’s producer, nor Goffin’s wife, Carole King, its arranger. At best, the Morrissey-Marr version of “I Want a Boy for My Birthday” was a purposefully camp presentation of a classic piece of (very) early ’60s sexual stereotyping, which is why it would have made some sense to Hibbert when he was duly informed that the Smiths “were going to be a gay band.”

  Interestingly, Marr claimed this idea as his own—a result of his, Andrew Berry’s, and John Kennedy’s nocturnal habits. As Berry, who was straight, noted of Manchester’s dire early ’80s nightlife, “We worked in the center of town and the only bars that were open would be gay bars.” The notion of the Smiths as a gay band, then, said Marr, “was just because a lot of my mates were gay guys who liked rock music. I liked the idea of us being a band that were … saying things for the gay community.” Gay imagery was becoming more prevalent in popular music for those who were searching for it—in the front men of the chart-topping acts Soft Cell and Culture Club, for example—and yet the social climate was still sufficiently repressive that no pop act (including those two) was ready to risk its career by unequivocally coming out. Within the Smiths, Dale Hibbert already had a daughter by his girlfriend, and Marr was in a long-term relationship with Angie Brown; there was no way they could position themselves as a “gay band” without putting the entire onus on Steven Morrissey—and in hindsight, Marr recognized that dilemma. “I wasn’t fronting the band, so it wasn’t on my toes.” The idea was dropped.

  The quest for an image, though, remained paramount. With the new monthly style magazines proving so influential that the weekly music papers were now following their lead, a new band needed to have some sort of (inherently contrived) look to stand even the smallest chance of media attention. Hibbert was sent to the Army surplus store on London Road to acquire himself some bowling shirts (which were popular in the current rockabilly revival) and then to see Andrew Berry on Palatine Road for a flat-top haircut (ditto); the harder acquisition was a specific type of secondhand denim jeans, with a belt loop for a work tool. At some point over the next couple of months, the three-piece spent a day being photographed around Manchester in these clothes; the session never surfaced.

  The decision to now record a demo tape before settling on a drummer was not a difficult one; it was part of their Brill Building–like plan that they should be seen as songsmiths, and besides, with Hibbert working at Decibelle, the session would cost them nothing. Si Wolstencroft, despite instant reservations about the name the Smiths, and Marr’s warning that the band was “totally different” from Freak Party (which Wolstencroft had loved), agreed to fill in and showed up at the beginning of August to record “Suffer Little Children” and “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” without having previously heard the songs or met the singer.

  The act as it existed was short on experience and practice all around. Morrissey, in particular, had not seen the inside of a studio in four years, and his natural singing style, at this point, was considerably lower in timbre, tone, and especially pitch than it would need to be for the Smiths to become a success: both Smiths songs recorded that day would eventually be tuned up a full step to accommodate Morrissey’s limited range. Similarly, Marr’s guitar playing and arrangements reflected the windswept moors of the post-punk indie scene more than they did any form of elegiac pop for which he would become famous. And of course the production was inherently limited by time (an eight-hour overnight session) and space (Decibelle offered a mere eight tracks). This did not prevent Marr from singing backing vocals (on “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle”), a contribution he would soon abandon, and neither did it prevent Morrissey from exercising a vibrato effect on his own vocals, clearly trying his best to demonstrate his capabilities as a fully fledged singer.

  In addition, they engaged in some intriguing experimentation on “Suffer Little Children.” As the song drew to a conclusion on a repeated minor chord, Morrissey’s friend Annalisa Jablonska provided Hindley-like cackles while someone else whistled along casually (playing the Ian Brady role?). A cassette recording of Marr playing piano in waltz rhythm at Bowdon (sounding much like a music box with his lilting time-keeping) was spliced in, along with a separate recording of local primary-school children at play, which Marr had recorded through his open window at home. The overall effect was deliberately and understandably sinister, and showed an innate understanding of how found sound and small effects could contribute to musical atmosphere.1

  The recordings showed definite signs of promise, but they were no more than an introductory statement, a mere hint at the band that the Smiths would soon become, with a different rhythm section. Yet as with almost any new, young band and its first demo, there were no such reservations from within. Marr took to playing it in X-Clothes as often as he could get away with. Morrissey lined up an appointment to play it for Tony Wilson. Wolstencroft, however, felt that his inherent fears about Marr’s new group had been confirmed upon meeting and working with the singer: quite simply, he said of Morrissey, “I didn’t like the cut of his jib.” The vocal mumblings and evident shyness, as far as the drummer was concerned, went hand-in-hand with his choice of long overcoat. “There was a term for that kind of music at the time—the ‘raincoat brigade.’ Looking at your shoes. Ordinary. Not very flash.” Wolstencroft wanted no part of it. “It wasn’t jazz funk. I was Funky Si.”

  Wolstencroft’s objections were echoed throughout the subsequent long and arduous search for a permanent drummer. (It had become apparent by now that the songwriting partnership needed a band and that a “conventional set-up,” as Marr described it to Sounds in late 1983, was now the right way to go.) Bill Anstee, who had been in bands alongside both Marr and Hibbert, ca
me over to Bowdon, played along to some songs, and was asked his opinion. Upon comparing them to the Velvet Underground, he heard an exasperated Morrissey respond, “Oh no, not another one.” Older than the others, the former Sister Ray drummer was losing the hunger for the various hassles that came with being in a gigging band at the bottom of the ladder, and he told Marr as much as he packed up his kit. Marr, clearly, was at the opposite end of the exuberance spectrum: “He was just in love with the entertainment game and the people in it and oozed optimism for his new band.” Marr even showed Anstee the phone book belonging to Shelley Rohde, “full of almost everybody you’ve ever heard of in the TV/record industry,” and the drummer was left thinking that “to Johnny this was all he believed he needed to get where he was going.” But still Anstee refused to join the group. “I would have had a total personality clash with Morrissey if I’d stayed around,” he said. “I didn’t like the music they were playing, especially the lyrics.”

  Morrissey now suggested as drummer one of his neighbors and former St. Mary’s sufferers, Gary Farrell, who had just left a band with fellow Kings Road boys Ivor and Andy Perry; he had Marr call Farrell and ask him over for a meeting. If Farrell thought that process odd, given that he’d often walked home over the iron bridge from school with Steven Morrissey, he found the demo tape he was subsequently handed even more so. Unable to “get anything out of it,” he declined further involvement. Despite living on the same road, he and Morrissey never talked again. “I think he felt I’d insulted him.”

  Hibbert brought in the drummer from the Adorables, but that didn’t work out either. Through mutual friends in Altrincham, a drummer named Guy Ainsworth was invited along to the trio’s new rehearsal space, at Spirit Studios on Tariff Street, just behind Piccadilly. (Hibbert had been promised an equal partnership in the setup and was busy bringing his clients over from Decibelle.) Ainsworth walked in to what he called “a tense atmosphere.” Though he recognized Marr’s talents immediately, he otherwise allowed himself to be scared off. “There was a strange dynamic in the room. I couldn’t put my finger on it.”