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

by Tony Fletcher

  Even when the Smiths found their man—Mike Joyce, of course—it was not without initial trepidation on the drummer’s part. Joyce recalled that when he showed up for an audition at Spirit, “Morrissey said very little. He just kind of prowled round the room. Had a long tweed coat on. And just walked up and down. A couple of furtive glances over at me. I felt as though he just thought I was stupid. I just felt a bit intimidated by him.”

  This could have been because, of the four people in the room, the drummer and the singer were the only ones who didn’t already know each other. Joyce was acquainted with Marr from both X-Clothes and Legends; he lived in Chorlton with Pete Hunt’s closest friend, which is how he’d been told about the vacant drum stool. And in his previous groups, Joyce had frequently shared the Manchester Musicians Collective stage(s) with Dale Hibbert. Any paranoia on Joyce’s part might also have been due to digesting some magic mushrooms on the way to the studio; when he compensated for oncoming hallucinations by hammering the hell out of the drums to a new Morrissey-Marr song, written in the attic room in Bowdon, called “What Difference Does It Make?” that was fortuitously heavy on a Keith Richards riff, the others were taken by his energy—as well as his “balls” for daring to show up high. Over coming weeks, as it was ascertained that Joyce’s parents were working-class Irish Catholic immigrants just like theirs; that he had attended St. Gregory’s Grammar School with Andrew Berry; that he was roughly their age; and that in addition to being an outgoing, effusive, enthusiastic sort of person, he was genuinely handsome and photographed well, Morrissey and Marr had every reason to believe they had found their man. History would, at least until Joyce sued them in high court in 1996, prove them right.

  Born in Fallowfield, South Manchester, on June 1, 1963, the youngest of four boys and a girl, Michael Adrian Joyce’s path to joining the Smiths reflected the sense of stolid workmanship combined with irrepressible joie de vivre that he subsequently brought to the band. At a young age, he had convinced his mother (who, like Marr’s parents, hailed from County Kildare; his father came from Galway) to invest in a drum kit after endlessly banging out rhythms on the school desk and the living-room couch. As a child of punk, he was subsequently taken by Manchester’s own Buzzcocks (something else he had in common with his future Smiths), whose drummer, John Maher, was far ahead of his contemporaries in terms of ideas and the ability to realize them. Joyce was not yet in Maher’s league, however. Shortly before his sixteenth birthday, he joined a local punk group, the Hoax, who, even in a scene that made cult heroes of Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds, struggled to be taken seriously. Whether by design or an inability to progress, the three-piece stayed resolutely true to their punk roots—as demonstrated by spiky haircuts, leather jackets, and song titles like “Storm Trooper” and “Rich Folk” across three EPs—before Joyce left the sinking ship in the summer of 1981, right around the time he received, according to Rogan’s biography, “substantial compensation for injuries sustained in a car accident some years before.”

  Joyce took drumming lessons to improve his abilities, then joined another punk band, Victim, who had moved from Belfast to Manchester in 1979 when offered a deal by TJM, the label offshoot of the TJ Davidson’s studios, where White Dice had occasionally rehearsed around that same time. Rootless as a result of their move, Victim never enjoyed the same popularity in Manchester as they had back in Belfast, and Joyce did not get to make a record with them.2

  Given the limitations of these groups, it was no surprise that Joyce should have felt so enthused by his audition with the Smiths. “Musicality was something that had passed me by in the other groups,” he said. “Johnny’s subtlety and his texture and playing guitar was radically different than any of the other players I’d worked with up to that point.” For their part, Morrissey and Marr were thrilled to have come to the end of their quest—except that for the next couple of months it wasn’t entirely certain whether Joyce was on board; they could only assume that any ambivalence was a result of his loyalty to Victim—unless it was an attempt to confirm whether the Smiths were actually going somewhere.

  The Smiths’ first gig took place on October 4, 1982, at the Ritz on Whitworth Street. If it was perhaps inevitable that it should be part of a John Kennedy/Andrew Berry promotion, it was advantageous, too. By appearing alongside a headlining act, DJs, a fashion show, a dance troupe, and more, all as part of “An Evening of Pure Pleasure,” the Smiths placed themselves instantly at the very center of the city scene without making themselves the only focus of the evening’s attention.

  A month before the gig, The Face ran a story by Robert Elms entitled “Hard Times,” about the current look and sound in the underground London clubs. When Johnny Marr read it, he was furious. “Robert Elms killed off my scene,” he said. “He brought it overground and he spelled it out in a way that put us off.” Marr felt that the rambling analysis, which talked up specific warehouse parties and the currently hot electro-rap track from New York, “Money’s Too Tight to Mention,” ignored a large part of what Marr had been attracted to. “There was no mention of all these little enclaves of people digging out vintage denim, Eddie Cochran original singles, listening to Vince Taylor, Gene Vincent, all these real specialists, kids my own age who got up early in the morning and were on a mission to look amazing.” It provoked a rethink in Marr’s own vision for the band, and he no longer demanded that the Smiths try to outdo the London trendsetters at their own game. The decision to relax the group’s image requirements proved a wise one when confronted with the headliners for their debut at the Ritz: Blue Rondo A La Turk, a perfectly tailored, jazz-influenced ten-piece who epitomized the London style bibles’ sense of high fashion and who would go on to enjoy a couple of hit singles before shifting fashion rendered them yesterday’s men.

  The newly casual approach was also reflected in Morrissey’s invitation to James Maker to come to Manchester and join the band for the evening—literally, by introducing them onstage (in French) to the music of (recently deceased, New York–based countertenor performance artist and gay icon) Klaus Nomi, and then dancing alongside the singer while playing maracas. For Morrissey, an inexperienced front man but intelligent music fan who knew all about the Velvet Underground’s first shows as part of an “Exploding Plastic Inevitable,” complete with projected films and dancers, the inclusion of Maker made perfect sense and needed no justification, and neither was he asked for one by a nonetheless bemused Johnny Marr.

  The gig came up against unexpected competition when the Haçienda announced it was hosting the great American writers William Burroughs and John Giorno the very same night. Under normal circumstances, Steven Morrissey would certainly have attended that event, but circumstances were suddenly most abnormal. As it happened, the fact that the Factory crowd was otherwise engaged turned out to be a blessing, relieving him of any pressure to prove himself to those who considered themselves his betters.

  Kennedy and Berry’s promotion capabilities were hardly lacking, though, and the Ritz, a fine old theater complete with sprung dance floor and balcony, was well attended. That the Smiths played only four numbers—and one of those the Cookies cover—represented a careful calculation, a belief that it was better to offer a short, sharp, sweet set than conform to convention and include a half-dozen substantially unrehearsed songs just to make up the numbers. It also played into the style culture of the time; many of the New Romantic acts had signed deals based on equally brief showcases.

  Alongside “Suffer Little Children” and “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” the one other Morrissey-Marr composition unveiled at the Ritz was “Handsome Devil.” Imbued with something of a rockabilly riff, a natural reflection of the pair’s mutual interest in the genre, it was notably more exuberant than its antecedents. The lyrics, too, were more charged—and loaded with delightfully risqué couplets of both gay and straight connotations. The one that jumped out most readily from the microphone, “Let me get my hands on your mammary glands,” was Morrissey’s first act of
popular lyrical (as opposed to poetic) genius, and also his first in a series of classic one-liners. A year later, he explained his intent. “I felt there were so many long-winded songs in the history of popular music, and all that people wanted to say, all that New Order wanted to say, was ‘Let me get my hands on your mammary glands.’ And so I thought, Let’s be very blunt.” It was therefore somewhat cruel that the song would become better known for another line, “A boy in the bush is worth two in the hand,” which would stand accused of promoting pedophilia. A response to that argument might have been that the word “boy” was the standard feminine term for the male sex in pop lyrics, as proven by the Ritz gig’s finale, “I Want a Boy for My Birthday.”

  Marr hadn’t played a gig since the White Dice fiasco at the Squat almost two years earlier; he compensated for his nerves by coming across “really threatening,” with “heaps and heaps of attitude.” Morrissey, onstage for the first time in fully four years, was no doubt greatly relieved to have James Maker distract—or at least share in—some of the audience attention. But reactions to their live debut together were positive, especially from those that mattered. Joe Moss regarded it as “a showcase for Johnny, [whose] guitar playing just soared over everything,” but similarly felt that “Morrissey was just ten-foot-tall … you realized it was someone who was totally unique there in front of you.”

  Mike Joyce, all agreed, also acquitted himself admirably. Dale Hibbert, apparently, did not. He danced onstage as was his habit, and perhaps more than usual to compensate for what he considered a “rigid” Morrissey, and he sensed afterward that in doing so he had crossed a line. He had already become keenly aware that the Smiths were never going to be a band of equals. The way he saw things, “It was totally irrelevant who played the bass and drums as long as (a) they were willing to be manipulated to some extent and (b) stayed in the background and did as they were told.” For someone used to leading his own band, “the lack of control … wouldn’t have worked out.”

  His complaint, despite containing an important kernel of future dispute, was essentially irrelevant. Hibbert already had a baby daughter, which would have inhibited his ability to tour; and he was devoted to his prospects as a partner at Spirit Studios, where he found that, as an engineer, “sitting there with a pile of tape was more fulfilling than playing bass.” When Marr gave him his marching orders on the stairs at Spirit Studios a few weeks after the Ritz show, there were initially no hard feelings.

  The need to finalize the lineup nonetheless proved paramount because, as a result of that single, carefully planned, and expertly orchestrated show, the Smiths had found themselves in the spotlight. The Face ran a paragraph about the Ritz gig that, though it didn’t refer to them more than by name, observed that this was “the kind of live music fashion show that the British don’t attempt often enough.” Someone at i-D magazine proved sufficiently intrigued to arrange an interview. And Marr’s friend from the West Wythenshawe student union, Tony O’Connor, having just landed a role as an A&R scout for EMI, took Morrissey—curiously, not Marr—to the major label’s London headquarters to play the Decibelle demo to Hugh Stanley-Clarke, the head of A&R. To their surprise and delight, they came away with a budget to make another and, it was to be presumed all around, a much better recording.

  (This was a considerably more positive reaction than Morrissey had received from Tony Wilson. The Factory front man later excused his rejection by saying that he’d passed the Decibelle tape on to New Order manager (and now Factory/Haçienda partner) Rob Gretton who, with customary bluntness, had come back with the opinion that it was “shit.” Wilson presumably found a more polite turn of phrase to reject his relentless business suitor Morrissey.)3

  EMI was the major British record company, home to the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Queen, to name but three of the world’s biggest UK-raised acts. In 1982, however, among those who considered themselves politically attuned in their musical tastes, it was reviled as much as it was admired; EMI, after all, was the label that had infamously dropped the Sex Pistols under pressure, and despite having signed its share of punk bands in the wake of that monstrous error, was making most of its money in the current marketplace from Duran Duran—for whom talk of “the new Beatles” was accurate only insofar as it applied to their popularity with hysterical pubescent girls. As such, and as a matter of (re)course, EMI was commissioning inexpensive demo recordings by new bands at a furious rate, working on the familiar major-label theory that if it cast its net wide enough, it would surely reel in a few big fish alongside the many minnows. The common understanding with such demo sessions was that if a major “passed” on the band, to use the terminology of record-company rejection, that group was then free to shop the recording to other labels.

  Morrissey and Marr felt that they were ready for the challenge. Songs had been flowing freely from their guitars and pens ever since that first productive writing session back in May, and the fact that Dale Hibbert would only recall rehearsing the same three or four songs over and over, disappointed that he wasn’t being invited to help compose new material by jamming together, was a clear indication of Morrissey and Marr’s cautious approach to the band format. As it transpired, they already had several more compositions just about ready to go. In addition to the three that they had played at the Ritz and “What Difference Does It Make?,” they were especially excited by “Miserable Lie.” The lyrics reflected Morrissey’s jaundiced view on romance but also exhibited the humor that lay not so far beneath the surface. And though the reference to his “rented room in Whalley Range,” where he had lived briefly in 1980, would become the song’s most recognizable line, there were additionally treasurable couplets that suggested an approach to sex not far removed from the more coy characters in the Carry On movies (e.g. “I look at yours, you laugh at mine”). Marr approached the song musically with the familiar touch of the ambitious young songwriter—especially during that post-punk era—starting out in ballad form before increasing both speed and volume in the chorus. If played appropriately, it offered enormous potential as a set closer.

  Among those songs that were not yet considered suitable for recording, the decidedly uptempo “These Things Take Time” wore the influence of northern icons Echo & the Bunnymen, both in Morrissey’s strained vocal at the end of each section and in the dramatic slash of chords that Marr followed it with; the line “the hills are alive with celibate cries” would come to have a lasting impact on the Smiths’ audience, given that it was the only time Morrissey mentioned his oft-stated sexual preference in lyrics. “What Do You See In Him?” (later to be re-titled “Wonderful Woman”) was slower and more methodical, darker all around, though Morrissey’s subject matter was much the same: a female object of dubious merit but evident desire, the singer’s lust unrequited. As an example of how the songs developed during the Smiths’ early period, the only line to survive from the original composition into the song’s eventual title was that of “ice water for blood.”

  Perhaps not surprisingly, Marr would look back on these songs and suggest that both the music and the words were coming “from just before we met,” that they represented the still tentative marriage of Morrissey’s existent poetry with riffs that Marr, likewise, had been carrying around with him. This might explain why neither “These Things Take Time” nor “Wonderful Woman” would end up on an album. Nor would “Jeane,” which Marr had originally envisaged in the style of the Drifters until Morrissey implored him to speed it up and the duo found themselves with an outright rocker to compliment “What Difference Does It Make?”—and arguably to succeed it as a fans’ favorite. Though those Smiths fans would inevitably embark on a quest to unearth the source of Morrissey’s muse in this song, it would be fair to assume that he fashioned it after the plays of Shelagh Delaney and co: it was beyond coincidence that the line “cash on the nail” was also used in Delaney’s The Lion in Love. Ultimately, it was the refrain “we tried and we failed” that would resonate most strongly with the Smiths audie
nce, currently waiting in the wings for someone like Morrissey to echo their own history of romantic disappointments.

  According to Marr’s recollection of these early compositions, he and Morrissey had already set about another lengthy ballad but this one more stark, more focused than the others. Supposedly influenced by listening to 1950s R&B vocal hits at Crazy Face (not that one could tell as much from the result), it had room to breathe, allowing Morrissey to pen his most intriguing and challenging sexual lyrics to date, and it would help define the Smiths once it was introduced on stage. Indeed, it would eventually be chosen to open their debut album and considered (and even pressed) as a single until external forces necessitated a rethink. That song was called “Reel Around The Fountain.”

  Clearly, it was time to finalize a bassist. Dale Hibbert had previously found himself giving Johnny Marr a ride on his motorbike to the lumberyard in Trafford Park, where Andy Rourke was now working. At the time, given that he often ferried Marr around town, Hibbert thought nothing of it. Nor was he chagrined when Rourke replaced him in the Smiths—“Technically, he was a far better bass player than I was”—and even stopped into the subsequent session for EMI to see how the band was getting along. His complaint—and it was a major one—was the long-term implication that he had only ever been recruited to the Smiths because he could offer free studio time at Decibelle. As far as Hibbert was concerned, he had been busy touting himself as an engineer for free overnight sessions at the time; Marr, being a friend, only had to ask to receive. Besides, Hibbert was in the band for approximately four months, rehearsing way before and beyond the demo session, before and beyond the Ritz gig too. “I can accept Johnny wanted me in the band as a bass player and then thought, ‘He’s really shit’ or, ‘He’s not what we want and now we have to figure out a reason to get rid of him,’ ” he reflected. “I would prefer that to the idea that I was completely manipulated to give him the studio time.… I can’t understand why Johnny would betray himself as treating a friend like that.”