“In truth I really, really did want to go,” said Moss. “Oh God, there was nothing I ever wanted to do more, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t do it.” That late December morning, the Smiths got on a plane to spend New Year’s in New York. And Joe Moss got back in his car to spend it with his wife and two infants in Manchester.
Marr’s anguish was compounded by the fact that he and Angie Brown had just broken up. Marr subsequently described it as “one of those kids’ bust-ups … that you have to have for ten days,” but it was unquestionably tied into the speed of the Smiths’ ascendance. Marr and Brown had been together five years already, since they were schoolkids, had lived in each other’s pockets almost that entire time, but now one of them had become a pop star. And something more than that: even at this early stage, Johnny Marr was being viewed by the record-buying public as a boy wonder, the first British antihero guitar hero in a generation, and a potential pinup in the process. It was his commitment to the Smiths that had gotten the group so far so quickly, but the same workaholic tendencies, his (lack of) diet and (lack of) sleep habits, and his sheer bloody-mindedness when it came to the group did not always make for easy companionship. And so, after an argument just before Christmas, Angie had decided to cool off and stay at home with her family for New Year’s, when by rights she should have been enjoying a glamorous reward for her own support and devotion to the cause.
As a result, said Grant Showbiz of the guitarist during their stay in New York, “Johnny was lost,” citing it as the lowest he saw Marr sink emotionally through the entire career of the Smiths (including the band’s eventual breakup). But when Showbiz said of Marr that “he was really down about Angie,” what he didn’t realize, because the guitarist didn’t yet want to admit it to himself, let alone to the others, was that he was more distraught about the breakup with Moss. Marr was on the phone every day with Brown, after all; he was certain that it was just “some stupid kids’ tiff,” as he put it. But the relationship with Moss was over.
“I understood Joe,” said Marr, ultimately, of his manager’s decision. “I was never angry with Joe, I was just frustrated by it. Because we were so close, and I trusted him. And it was a little like I’d already decided that I was going to be able to swim from Great Britain across the Atlantic and that was some kind of task, but then it felt like I was being asked to swim the Atlantic without Joe, without his help.… I was really pretty devastated.”
The Smiths were met at JFK (after the first transatlantic flight for all of the group except Morrissey) in style, Danceteria promoter Ruth Polsky having hired a limousine. Polsky was a devoted Anglophile with the powerful presence of personality necessary to succeed in New York’s high-risk nightclub stakes. Much like Seymour Stein, she specialized in acquiring the latest British buzz bands, crossing the Atlantic to witness and befriend them, then paying to bring them into the four-story Danceteria (which had a restaurant and dance floor as well as a live performance space) as one-off promotions, the exorbitant cost of such occasional promotions justified by how they maintained the club’s reputation as market leader. For the Smiths’ first night in New York, Polsky hosted a customary welcome dinner at her apartment, to which she invited Amanda Malone, her eighteen-year-old assistant. Malone had a British accent (she had been raised in Brighton before moving to New York to live with her gay, divorced father), shared a birthday with Morrissey, and had what she called an “affectation” for all things 1960s and British, not just musical but cinematic as well. At Polsky’s apartment, the two readily clicked.
“He had a great sense of humor,” Malone noted of Morrissey, as did so many. “He made me laugh and I’d make him laugh.” In addition, they both “had a very irreverent, naughty, smart-ass way” about them, she said, “and I think he enjoyed that.” Over the course of the week in New York, the pair increasingly hung out together, Morrissey even coming over to Malone’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights to watch old movies. Malone, extremely overweight at the time, harbored dreams of a musical career, and Morrissey, she was thrilled to discover, “liked the sound of my voice” and did not consider her appearance a hindrance. By the end of the visit, the pair had developed such “a really great complicity and connection,” as Malone described it, that Morrissey had invited her to England with the promise of singing on a Smiths record—or even recording one of her own.
Rough Trade had hired Peter Wright, the former New Hormones partner who had recently relocated to New York to set up his own publicity firm, to independently promote “This Charming Man” to the New York press, and Wright, who failed to initially recognize the confident pop star Morrissey as the same retiring personality who had hung out at the Newton Street offices, additionally brought Morrissey over to see John Giorno, the poet and former Warhol lover. There was considerable business to be conducted as well, staff to meet from Warner Bros. and opportunities to be wined and dined. Johnny Marr convinced Seymour Stein to live up to his earlier promise and was duly chaperoned to Forty-Eighth Street, home to the city’s best instrument stores, and treated to a hollow-body Gibson 355. So enamored was Marr by the acquisition that by the end of the visit, he had just about completed the complex composition of the Smiths’ first post-album single.
Such examples of corporate largesse aside, the overall mood of the trip was not positive. As Grant Showbiz described it, “On every level it should have been just the most fantastic thing, and on every level, it wasn’t. It was a fucking nightmare.” The group and crew alike were shocked by the presence of cockroaches at their hotel, the Iroquois, where Showbiz also watched Rourke disappear on a mission with some people he met there and suspected that it was to score something other than pot.1 The sub-freezing cold and deep snow of a New York New Year came as an additional shock to a group raised on damp but temperate British winters. And the attendant madness of performing on the biggest night of the year in the hottest nightclub of arguably the greatest city on earth got the best of them. At a pre-gig Indian meal, Morrissey was seen throwing back the wine to calm his nerves, while in the dressing room, the group’s introduction to one of their “support acts,” Lovebug Starski—the DJ and producer who had been credited with inventing the term “hip-hop” and was something of a hero to Johnny Marr—entailed the New York native introducing the crew in turn to the addictive, adrenaline-inducing, and ego-enhancing powers of cocaine. For his part, Morrissey stayed solely on the wine, which might have explained why, shortly after taking the stage, he promptly fell off of it. Though the distance was relatively benign, and the humbled new British sensation soon clambered back up to complete the show, Geoff Travis, who was in New York with the group, recalled that Morrissey’s mother “called me the next day complaining about Rough Trade’s lack of security and ambulance men and proper medical care for her son.”
That turned out to be the least of concerns. That same day, as his roommate Andy Rourke put it, Mike Joyce “woke up a strange shade of green with red spots.” Joyce was diagnosed with chickenpox (though it may well have been shingles) and remained bedridden in the cockroach-infested Iroquois; an apparently planned introductory concert in Boston was canceled, adding to the sense of general disorder. (Indeed, while the Smiths were received with predictable enthusiasm at Danceteria, few people appeared to be in a sufficiently sober state as to probably recollect the concert.) If ever the calming presence of Joe Moss had been required, then surely this was the occasion. In the meantime, the absence of a managerial figure was duly noted by Ruth Polsky.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
I get terribly embarrassed when I meet Smiths apostles—I hate the word fan. They seem to expect so much of me. Many of them see me as some kind of religious character who can solve all their problems with a wave of a syllable. It’s daunting.
—Morrissey, Melody Maker, November 1984
The release of The Smiths, as the debut album was re-titled with direct simplicity, was preceded in January 1984 by the single “What Difference Does It Make?” Led by Marr’
s guitar riff rooted in those blues chord progressions clearly indebted to the Rolling Stones, its sense of orthodoxy was amplified by Joyce’s drums, which were transposed in the studio by John Porter from their tribal shuffle to a more direct two-four pounding, and Rourke’s bass, which was simplified in the process. In terms of solidifying the Smiths’ early success, these were proven correct decisions by the pace at which it rapidly rose up the charts, quickly achieving further multiple milestones that fed into one another: the band’s (and Rough Trade’s) first ever single sold by the high-street chains Woolworth’s and WH Smith; their first top 20 hit; their second and third Top of the Pops appearance. Under these circumstances, Morrissey’s subsequent denouncement of the single as “absolutely awful” seems somewhat churlish, though it could be fairly noted that such an old composition revealed his voice at its most limited in range and among the lowest in register (even though it had been tuned up a tone to accommodate him along the way). Morrissey’s criticisms of “What Difference Does It Make?” were best expressed, perhaps, by a more nuanced remark he made later in 1984: “I regret the production on that now.”1
Generally speaking, Morrissey had proclaimed the Smiths’ virtues from the moment of their formation. The live show, for the most part, and the singles—most definitely “This Charming Man”—had borne out his boasts, and he therefore started hyping up the John Porter–produced debut LP, just as he had already done with the now abandoned Troy Tate album. The New Year found Morrissey embarking on a new round of major publicity, loaded with bold assurances. “I believe it’s a signal post in music,” he said of the album on his first-ever television interview—a live outside broadcast by The Tube, from the Haçienda—on January 27, not twenty-four hours after he had been seen on Top of the Pops sporting a hearing aid.2
By the time of the album’s release a month later, the Smiths’ profile was so pervasive, and the album so keenly anticipated, that The Smiths entered the British album charts at number 2—a spectacular achievement given the lack of TV, radio, (most) print advertising, and fly-postering, all of which Morrissey was proud to proclaim in the media as signifiers of Rough Trade’s acumen and the Smiths’ integrity. (Neither Mute nor Factory, let alone Rough Trade, had yet charted an album quite so high.) But as it made the journey from record shop to turntable, a percentage of fans and critics alike couldn’t help but express some disappointment.
As Morrissey would later note, the album’s primary fault, and that word had to be used, lay in its production. For those who had been paying attention (and collecting) the Radio 1 sessions, better—or, at least, more emotive—versions of most of the songs had already been recorded and aired; for those who had not, there was still something frustratingly restrained about the overall presentation. It didn’t excite the fans that the LP’s first two songs (a solid “Reel Around the Fountain” followed by a weak “You’ve Got Everything Now”) featured a guest keyboard player, as if the original arrangements (and band members) were somehow insufficient, and it definitely didn’t aid those fans’ enjoyment of the package that of the ten songs (and only ten?), it was the first four that paled most evidently in comparison to their BBC renditions. Hearing the album come into its own on side two was scant consolation for those who had expected a religious experience from track one. John Porter’s insistence that Mike Joyce restrict himself to metronomic twos and fours, combined with the decision to base every song around electric guitar arpeggios whether they were part of a song’s original arrangement or not, served to create a homogenous atmosphere at the expense of the Smiths’ naturally wide-ranging musical moods.
Not that Porter himself was the problem. By the time he was hired, most of the songs that would end up on The Smiths had been demoed, recorded for the BBC, and additionally recorded by Troy Tate, some of them twice over. The fifth go-round of any given song was rarely going to be the best. Porter had been additionally constrained by a limited studio budget, and especially hampered by the group’s restricted availability. The sessions at Pluto, and a subsequent opportunity for overdubs at Eden in London (without which, he insisted, the album would have sounded no more polished than the Troy Tate version), had been in blocks of days, not weeks, the group forever packing up their equipment to play a gig here or a TV show there. Such a process might have worked for bands in the ’60s; it quickly lost its charm for a producer who was given to making hit records, not quick ones.
John Porter had already proven with “This Charming Man” (which, in classic British punk-ethical tradition, was left off the UK album) that he was capable of bringing the very best out of the band—in fact, with bringing something out of them that had otherwise remained latent and unexposed. He proved it again with another song from the most recent Peel session, “Still Ill” (even though he removed the endearing harmonica riff). “I Don’t Owe You Anything,” which he had previously produced at the Jensen session, came properly alive in his hands this second time around. And his production of “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” and, especially, “Suffer Little Children,” were surely the LP’s most thrilling surprises for their emotional sincerity and musical clarity. (That they were also the ones that had been least recorded and performed onstage certainly helped Porter stamp his authority on them.) And throughout the album, he showcased Johnny Marr’s natural guitar abilities in the most vivid light possible. If he hadn’t achieved perfection with The Smiths, he could insist that it was not for lack of trying.
Other than sonic concerns, it may not have helped that The Smiths came packaged in a duotone sleeve that featured Joe Dallesandro’s muscular torso in the Warhol movie Flesh at the expense of the Smiths’ own colorful image; that the inner sleeve thumbnail pictures of the individual band members did nothing to display their collective camaraderie; or that the lyrics were laid out on the inner sleeve in minuscule type, masking their mirth and warmth beneath song titles like “Still Ill.” Finally, the choice of material itself raised eyebrows: why, for example, did only one of the four spectacular songs unveiled on the second John Peel session—post–Troy Tate, and therefore not burdened by previous studio renditions—make it onto the album? Any group that could leave off its debut album the likes of “Jeane,” “Handsome Devil,” “Accept Yourself,” “Back to the Old House,” “These Things Take Time,” and “This Charming Man” was either impossibly spoiled for choice or clinically insane when it came to commercial decisions. Or, quite possibly, both.
In November 1983, Morrissey had been asked by Melody Maker, for its cover story on the Smiths, whether he’d “ever thought about moving down to London.” He admitted, “We did toy with the idea a while ago—but only for a second,” before confirming that, “actually there’s just no question of it. It’s such an impersonal place.” By January 1984, he was showing NME (for its cover story coinciding with the annual readers poll, in which the Smiths were voted Best New Act) around his new rented flat in Kensington.
At the age of twenty-four, then, Morrissey had finally left home—possibly for good, and certainly in style: his new abode, on Campden Hill Road, was nestled comfortably between Notting Hill Gate to the north and Kensington High Street to the east, and his mansion-block neighbors included the actor Robert Powell and the newscaster Alistair Burnet.3 Previous assurances to the contrary notwithstanding, he had some justification for the sudden move south. Increased demands on his time from all manner of media and business interests in the capital had been turning him into a long-distance commuter, and the attractions of being driven back and forth to Manchester by Rough Trade’s Dave Harper in a rented Mercedes diesel undertakers’ limousine (that needed a screwdriver to start the engine) receded rapidly. Equally to the point, Joe Moss was out of the picture, nobody had yet replaced him, and with the apparent miscommunication over the New York mixes all too fresh in his mind, Morrissey felt the need to live close by Rough Trade to “keep an eye on” them. Happy to accommodate this request, it was Geoff Travis who found Morrissey the flat; Richard Jobson, the former singer wit
h the Skids, had just vacated it, and it was but a brief taxi ride away from Blenheim Crescent. Soon enough, albeit in significantly more stylish surroundings, Morrissey had it looking much like his room in Stretford, complete with the library of feminist and cinema literature, the framed James Dean photo, and with Morrissey as genial host, brewing cups of tea for visiting journalists and friends as he reflected on his apparent fortune.
Any concerns that Morrissey’s relocation would create an (additional?) emotional distance from other band members were immediately squelched by the work schedule: the very week that “What Difference Does It Make?” hit the charts, the Smiths undertook their first major headlining tour of the UK. They were but three shows in when Ollie May quit, for good, telling tour manager Phil Cowie that he was “disillusioned and disappointed with both the band and the direction that their career has been and is going.” (This was much to Johnny Marr’s disappointment, the guitarist having hoped that if you gave your friends a job with a rock ’n’ roll band, they’d stay with you for life.) The next night, the PA showed up to Loughborough University—but the band did not. Morrissey had apparently been taken ill, and as Cowie and Hinc struggled to ascertain the cause and the seriousness of his ailment, they were forced to cancel a whole string of shows. Morrissey was nonetheless roused from his sickbed for another Top of the Pops appearance, performing unshaven and without his usual élan, having lain horizontal in the green room all day. The rigors of rock ’n’ roll—not so much the hedonistic lifestyle (Morrissey desired little more than some red wine) but simply the pressures of time, the demands for attention, the lack of proper meals (all the more so for a vegetarian who existed largely on chocolate and chips and cheese)—were already taking their toll. “I never worried about him psychologically,” said his partner and protector Marr. “There were times that I worried about him physically when he was burned out, and you could see that, and he was going to be ill. And I think that happened because all of us had unhealthy lifestyles. But he had more on his plate, psychologically, in dealing with that pop world thing, and being that focal point. Us three lived off nicotine, amongst other things, and Morrissey needed to eat right, and none of us did. And I think it particularly affected him.” The lack of a manager to take control of the situation, to protect Morrissey’s health and calm the agents and promoters, was again all too apparent. That made it somewhat understandable—if quite farcical—that when the tour resumed with a headlining show at the London Lyceum, Ruth Polsky showed up at the soundcheck, fresh from Manhattan, to announce that she had received Morrissey’s personal blessing to assume the managerial reins.
A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of the Smiths Page 32