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

by Tony Fletcher

  Yet Joe Moss was absolutely adamant otherwise. “It was agreed that Mike and Andy were going to get ten percent,” he said in 2010. “We agreed it in a room in a recording studio.” As to why the others might have “forgotten,” he offered his shorter period of tenure with the Smiths. “Mine was, say, two years, so I’ve got less to remember.… And these were very specific things that I had to do as manager.” But he never got it written down and signed. Rather, “as soon as Geoff Travis was speaking to me [that day], I knew that that was it for me then,” he said on the BBC documentary. “If Morrissey couldn’t come to me to sort that out—which I would have sorted it out for him, without question, because that was the role—that there was too much of a division then for me to be able to stay. And I realized that if I stayed, that it was going to put a strain on Morrissey’s relationship with Johnny.”

  Marr was no longer living with Joe Moss and his wife, Janet, who were expecting a second baby any day. He had moved into a cottage owned by Janet, in Marple Bridge, outside Manchester’s borders, taking Andrew Berry with him as roommate. (The rural surroundings belied a certain domestic chaos but proved productive, Marr writing several songs there, including “This Charming Man” and “Still Ill”; in fact, he was so busy at the time that he never even realized that Roddy Frame had retreated to the same village to write his own second album.) Marr had always told Joe Moss that he and Morrissey were equals, and the manager had operated on that understanding, determined to support the singer’s wishes as much as those of the guitarist. Morrissey’s decision that day to travel to London, to adopt Geoff Travis as some sort of surrogate manager (despite the apparent aversion to having Travis too closely involved in the publishing), was therefore taken by Joe Moss as a betrayal of trust. Moss would quit before the end of the year, without payment for his services—in fact, without repayment for the PA that he had bought the group—and no subsequent manager ever lasted long enough to properly discuss, let alone secure, a written understanding of the group’s financial arrangements. In the meantime—meaning, over the course of subsequent years—the company Smithdom Ltd, established in May 1983 with Marr and Morrissey as sole, equal directors, wrote out what Rourke recalled as annual checks to the band, of equal amounts. But the company’s principal activities were listed only as “that of live musical performances.” There was no reference to, and neither did the annual accounts reflect, the considerable income from recordings.

  In hindsight, Johnny Marr tried to see the early group dynamic as more of a creative imbalance than anything else. “It was one of those examples of actions speaking very much louder than words. The actions were that Morrissey went on the train to EMI, I found the other band members, I found Joe. I went and picked Mike’s drum kit up: I went to this derelict house and got his kit from Victim and got the money together for rehearsals. Joe, who was my guy, got the PA. Morrissey went to see Tony Wilson. These are just the bits that come to mind. The others might argue at the time, ‘Well you’re doing that because you can. What can we do?’ But unfortunately there’s nothing I can say or do about that. If I have the dedication and the work ethic and the nous to do it, I will do it. Now what can you do? OK, you will turn up on time. Well, make sure you do. You will be great, fantastic, you will be a good vibe, you will be what is needed to be. I understand them saying, ‘Well, we want to help.’ So OK, then, do it. Let me see you do it. So, we didn’t have a meeting and say, ‘You guys now have to sit on your hands and do nothing,’ we just did more.”

  The bottom line, therefore, became whether “doing more” justified more of the recording royalties. An experienced manager, knowing the importance of having a unified and contented band, and feeling equal responsibility to all four members, might have suggested that it did not, especially given the potentially lucrative proceeds from publishing that were already guaranteed the two songwriters. But Morrissey obviously thought that it did. And Moss, representing only the two founding members, had gone along with him.

  Speaking about that evening at Pluto on television, Mike Joyce raised a highly valid hypothesis: “If Johnny Marr would have come in and said ‘I’m going to leave the band because Morrissey wants some more money, [but] I’m going to stay if we all get equal amounts,’ it’s a very important but slightly different way of looking at it.…” One might well have thought that Marr could have called Morrissey’s bluff; he had rescued the singer from “dying,” after all. But Marr stated otherwise. “I wasn’t in the position to say it should be anything other than the way it was laid out,” he said in 2011. “I wasn’t in the position.”

  The end result turned out to be much the same anyway, except that the Smiths’ names and reputations were to be dragged through the courts, and—with the exception of Andy Rourke, who didn’t have the stomach or resources for the fight—they would each be saddled with hefty legal bills that cut significantly into the ultimately more egalitarian division of recording royalties. And so, with the benefit of hindsight, and allowing that “publishing is a different matter,” Marr eventually came to this conclusion: “When bands form, they should agree right from the off to split everything equally. That’s what should happen. Absolutely.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  We set off to take the world and we were winning. And we weren’t bringing animosity and aggression to people: we were bringing joy.

  —Joe Moss, March 2010

  On Friday, November 4, 1983, the Smiths appeared on British television for the first time. Launched the previous year by Tyne Tees Television, the regional independent station in the far northeast of England, The Tube was an attempt to replicate the excitement of the seminal 1960s show Ready Steady Go! and its famous tagline, “The Weekend Starts Here.” Broadcasting entirely live across the new Channel 4 network, at 5:30 p.m., earlier than many adults were home from work but, in theory, perfect for teenagers, the ninety-minute show usually included three ten-minute live performances direct from the studio, along with interviews, comedy sketches, and previously filmed magazine pieces. In a British market limited to four television channels, where rock music was typically confined to late-night slots or patronizing “youth” shows, The Tube’s gleefully addictive chaos represented a major breakthrough.

  To partly rectify a perception that its first season had nonetheless been in thrall to the major labels, the second show of the second season included a lengthy focus on two independent labels. One of them was Rough Trade, busy publicizing its long-term deal with the Smiths and touting “This Charming Man” as a possible hit. The other, which went by the name of Kitchenware, had emerged from Tyne Tees’ home base of Newcastle, and was in the process of unapologetically licensing its hottest acts to major labels. The Kitchenware roster of four bands were each shown performing a partial song, captured in a variety of locations, including the windswept—but sunny—Tyne & Wear coastline, a nightclub, and a terraced street. But despite the presence of genuine talent, including the Daintees and Prefab Sprout, the nature of their appearances and performances only confirmed for many viewers an impression of the independent music scene in general: that it was gray, insular, and depressing. By comparison, the Smiths (significantly, for the Rough Trade segment, it was only the Smiths) were filmed lip-syncing to “This Charming Man” at their Portland Street headquarters in Manchester—an environment that they could and most certainly did control. The floors were laden ankle-deep with brightly colored flowers, which were additionally strewn over the drums and wedged into Marr’s Rickenbacker; and the group dressed accordingly in their finest semi-psychedelic foppery, Morrissey wearing a shirt unbuttoned almost to the waist, exposing several rows of love beads, and waving a bouquet of gladioli like a trophy. Curiously, although his Keith Richards mop-top was seen from a distance and his Rickenbacker from close-up, Johnny Marr’s face was never shown: the director was convinced that Marr was on drugs at the time and refused to give him the exposure. (It was likely that he misinterpreted Marr’s carefully cultivated “wasted” image
as the real thing.)

  But no matter: it was Marr who had the honor of introducing the Smiths via his joyous guitar riff at the start of “This Charming Man.” It was an electric moment, quite literally; by comparison with everything that Kitchenware had offered, the Smiths may as well have hailed from another planet. “This Charming Man”—the London version, that being the only one completed at the point of The Tube’s commission—celebrated its pop sensibilities without apology, and what with the flowers, Morrissey’s mild histrionics, and the pervasive sense of color, there was no attempt by the Smiths to pay homage to their “independence” as anything other than a state of mind.

  This lengthy Tube segment, the manner in which the two record company heads talked openly about “the inverted snobbery of independent labels” (Kitchenware) and “competing with the charts” (Rough Trade), proved to be a watershed moment, a declaration not of countercultural ideals but a desire to share in mainstream spoils.1 And it was a massively significant moment in the Smiths’ rapidly advancing success story: a number of those who watched The Tube that night were sufficiently captivated by what they saw of the Smiths as to rush out and buy “This Charming Man” the next day (a Saturday, the British shopping day), helping send it into the lower reaches of the charts. Another filmed performance of the song on the BBC2 TV show Riverside, just four days later—this one additionally shrouding the group in dry ice and including Morrissey lying on the stage floor, singing from behind a bouquet of flowers—was none so artful and less influential, but it maintained the single’s upward momentum through the following chart week.

  Rough Trade had ensured that there would be no failure to capitalize on these major promotional opportunities, hiring the sales force of major label London Records to push the single into the key record stores. After all, the telephone sales staff at Rough Trade could only achieve so much in this regard, whereas the London sales force had people on the ground, and the tools to aid them—which typically included free and bonus stock for chart stores, precisely the kind of chart-hyping process that the independent labels had long decried as unfair (and unethical if not often illegal) competition. As an added incentive, Rough Trade released “This Charming Man” as a 7″ and 12″ single, each featuring different B-sides, ensuring that any determined new Smiths fan would have to buy both formats. A year earlier, Rough Trade’s actions would have been considered, in the eyes of most independent observers, an act of treason. But the sands had shifted, and multiple formats and major-label sales forces represented the difference between, as a good example, Aztec Camera’s “Oblivious” stalling outside the top 40 on Rough Trade and crashing into the top 10 on WEA. With “This Charming Man” sweeping up music press accolades alongside its early TV exposure, and given its immediate entry into the chart’s lower reaches, Scott Piering was able to secure all-important daytime airplay on Radio 1. Within three weeks of release, Rough Trade had finally scored its first ever top 30 single, which in turn generated an equally major milestone: the Smiths became the label’s first act invited to appear on Top of the Pops.2

  Even those who despised Top of the Pops for its inane DJs, its lip-synced performances, its unstated but clearly noted musical prejudices, and its incessant celebration of pop music as nothing but a happy-go-lucky form of mindless entertainment couldn’t help but tune in for the Thursday evening ritual anyway, couldn’t help hoping that the occasional act of note would sell enough records to justify an appearance or that a genuinely exciting new act might somehow slip into a slot typically reserved for those who played safe. For that particular audience, the appearance of the Smiths on Thursday, November 24, proved nothing short of a revelation; in fact, it has frequently been cited as one of Britain’s most influential moments of music television. It is one that has to be (re)viewed in context. The Smiths were introduced by the blandest of daytime radio DJs, on a week when the top three chart positions were held by Billy Joel, Paul McCartney with Michael Jackson, and Shakin’ Stevens; they were sandwiched in between Marilyn (a Boy George clone making the most of his brief patronage by the Culture Club star) and the Thompson Twins (who represented everything that the post-punk independent scene had ever sold out); and they performed on a stage lit in multiple hues from underneath and strewn on top with the show’s endless barrage of balloons that reduced pop performance to the level of a child’s birthday party, with a disco ball rotating above them. Yet the Smiths were somehow able to transcend this environment and present themselves as precisely what they were: a young four-piece guitar band steeped in musical tradition (Marr’s rhythmic swaying to his red Rickenbacker recalling any number of 1960s acts on the same show), hip to their own sense of fashion (the three playing members mixed Crazy Face’s exclusive black denim jeans with Marks & Spencer’s high-street polo necks), unadorned of pretention and yet with a front man who instantly stood at odds to everyone else on Top of the Pops that night (or that month, or indeed that year). Morrissey’s outfit, his movements, his flowers … all were essentially the same as on The Tube and Riverside—as was his unwillingness to stand before a microphone and pretend that this was anything but a lip-sync performance—but now it was all being viewed, quite literally, under the searing heat of the national spotlight. The Smiths appeared entirely comfortable, as if that stage had always been destined for them.

  By one of those coincidences that help create a rock band’s legend, the Smiths had a show booked for the same night as their appearance on Top of the Pops—at the Haçienda, no less. The Smiths had not performed live in Manchester since July (they’d played London eleven times in between), and so much had happened for them in the interim that they could have expected to pack the venue even without the TV exposure. But the excitement for Manchester music fans of having a hometown band in the top 30 and appearing on Top of the Pops just a couple of hours before playing a local gig turned what was already a triumphant homecoming into an event. Thousands showed up.

  For the Smiths, excitement about performing that night was compounded by nervousness as to whether they would actually get there. They were still at the BBC studios well into the afternoon. Rough Trade, in an act of largesse quite out of character with the company’s pre-hit history, booked a helicopter to ferry them the two hundred miles north, but no one had bothered to check whether the band would actually approve. Morrissey, whose abject fear of flying had not stopped him from visiting America so many times already, refused the transportation. The Smiths took a train to Manchester instead, arriving at the venue hours late, trusting that their crew, such as it was, would have everything set up for them and ready to go. The group James, who despite their head start on the Smiths had only just released their first single on Factory and were now playing the role of support act, had finished their set a long time ago. “We had to be carried through the streets,” recalled Marr. “And … there were people trying to touch you, and a couple of them are guys you went to school with. And suddenly they’re your fans. That was surreal. Really surreal.” Adding to the madness, the Haçienda had a live camera feed, showing the group’s eventual arrival in the dressing room as assurance to those on the inside that the band had made it north in time. For that night, it was like the mid-’60s—when Manchester had hosted Top of the Pops and put its bands on top of the American charts thrice in a row—all over again.

  Inside, the Smiths were duly treated as the all-conquering heroes, enduring a series of stage invasions that trampled underfoot the flowers they had strewn across the place like those in Oscar Wilde’s “The Nightingale and the Rose,” returning for several encores to play their two singles a second time each, stretching the concert well past the British public’s officially sanctioned bedtimes. Joe Moss was paid out on 2,400 people; the official capacity was 1,650. It was the biggest night in the eighteen-month-old club’s history.

  Six months earlier, when he had first sat down with Mike Hinc to draw up some kind of game plan, Joe Moss had been clear about his vision for the band. “He didn’t want them growing
up in public,” recalled Hinc, “he wanted them to play the ‘toilets’ as much as possible.” Given that All Trade Booking, laden as it was with independent acts at the start of their careers, “had plenty [of] toilets,” Hinc readily set about booking the Smiths into them. Through the summer and early autumn of 1983, the group played its share of obscure venues in minor markets that were intended to allow the Smiths to develop their live show at a normal pace.

  The problem—to the limited extent that it turned out to be one—was that the Smiths did not develop at a normal pace. They exploded at breakneck speed. The first true “fans” were seen at the group’s return to the Rock Garden in July: a couple named Josh and Anna “stood there holding flowers,” as Marr recalled. They were quickly adopted to lead the stage invasions (which were “as much a part of the plan as the flowers,” said Joe Moss) and rewarded with crash pads on the band’s hotel-room floors when the budget extended to them. When it did not, the group would return to Manchester in the Renault “splitter” van that Joe Moss had bought and paid for, its back seats removed to allow for the group’s equipment and a couple of sleeping bags. On the way to and from their increasingly rambunctious shows, the group, along with Moss as manager and Ollie May and Phil Powell as roadies, and perhaps Angie Brown and Andrew Berry and some other friends if they didn’t make the journey in another vehicle, would joke and smoke their way into oblivion.

  “It was never just run-of-the-mill,” stressed Marr. “Even if we were just in a car, driving down the motorway, it was always a big deal. Because it was a big deal: 99.5% of the time it was a big deal in an upward direction. It was incredible.” The almost ecstatic sense of cameraderie during 1983 was evident, said Marr, in the photographs by Paul Slattery that accompanied their first interview in Sounds, in May of that year. “You can see the relationship in those photographs, not just because we’re hugging each other, but because we’re so happy to be next to each other. There’s confidence growing there, there’s a cockiness and an exuberance and there’s so much affection.”