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

by Tony Fletcher

  “At the time,” said Marr, who was to find himself in a public spat with Gannon that ought to have been avoidable, “I viewed his behavior as not … taking the opportunity that we were oh-so-kindly offering. I wasn’t able to see what a difficult position he was in. He was on a real hiding to nothing and looking back on it, he handled it really well. What was he going to do, sit down in between me and Morrissey and say, ‘I think you should do things differently’? He played great, and he played appropriately—which is another way of saying that he played great.” Six months after Gannon left, Marr was, in fact, able to take greater responsibility for his own (in)actions: “I began to get very complacent in my own guitar playing,” he admitted as justification for trimming back the lineup.

  Gannon had no contractual claims on the Smiths. But he did have a right to expect payment for his work thus far: £30,000 was the amount he believed to have been agreed, a decent annual salary in the UK in 1986 but not an overwhelming sum of money for a few months in the music business, considering the level of the tours he had undertaken and the successful, hit-producing studio work for which he had been offered no other compensation. As Gannon settled back down in Salford, praying that his next musical project would be less stressful, he began to wonder when he would get the check.

  Just before the rescheduled anti-Apartheid benefit at Brixton Academy, in early December, the Smiths recorded a fourth Radio 1 session for John Peel. They were able to finagle John Porter as their producer once again; despite the possibility that Porter may have been frustrated by the band’s treatment of him, he liked them too much to ever refuse to work with them. The session featured the two new B-sides, “London” and “Half a Person,” and the two songs that had been left unfinished earlier in the year, “Sweet and Tender Hooligan” and “Is It Really So Strange?” All four versions were tribute to both Porter and the group’s ability to record successfully in haste when circumstances demanded. They were, in fact, so good that they led to suggestions that the band might have brought in their own master tracks for the latter two songs in a deliberate attempt to secure finished versions; it appears to have been no coincidence that they ended up purchasing both “Sweet and Tender Hooligan” and “Is It Really So Strange?” from the BBC and using them for a future B-side. In addition, Craig Gannon was certain that he recognized his guitar work on “Is It Really So Strange?”1 In the meantime, the Smiths’ enduring popularity with Peel listeners, three years after they broke into the big-time, was confirmed when “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” topped his 1986 Festive Fifty. If ever a Smiths song appealed to all comers, this would appear to have been the one.

  It was a much rejuvenated Smiths that took to the stage for the rescheduled anti-Apartheid benefit at the Brixton Academy on Friday, December 12. The reasons were many, including Marr’s renewed sense of clarity, the enforced rest after the heavy touring schedule, the invigorating recent recording sessions, a considerably changed-up set list and, it had to be said, the return of the group to its original four-piece lineup; minus Gannon to play rhythm guitar, Marr was forced to reassume that role himself and all but abandon the solo work, and he—and the band—were all the better for it. The set list unveiled “Shoplifters of the World Unite” as the “new single,” and made a point of similarly including “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others,” the only song from The Queen Is Dead not to have been previously performed in concert. “This Night Has Opened My Eyes” and “William, It Was Really Nothing” were recalled to the set after a long absence; so too was “Miserable Lie,” forming a medley with “London.” During “Still Ill,” Johnny Marr, having abandoned the Yamamoto suits for more casual wear, broke with his traditional stage position (from which he would interact with Morrissey and exchange musical cues with Mike Joyce), and came over to stand by his old friend Andy Rourke. Morrissey joined them, and for the next minute or two, the three front members of the Smiths, performing on one of London’s larger stages, were huddled tightly together like a support band at the Rock Garden. They never looked happier. For “The Queen Is Dead,” Morrissey’s placard was changed to read TWO LIGHT ALES PLEASE. The possibilities for future slogans appeared endless.

  The final encore recalled back to the set the group’s first single, “Hand in Glove,” which had been absent from the last British tour. Morrissey, wearing a Smiths T-shirt as had become his rite during the past year, bounced about the stage as if he were one of the fans who had, as ever, earlier clambered on board for their fifteen seconds of fame and camaraderie. Marr, cigarette hanging from his lips as had become his own prop throughout 1986, reenacted that familiar dance of mutual appreciation with his partner as the song reached its climax, while Joyce and Rourke hammered out the beat with an intensity that demonstrated that for them, at least, the tribulations of the year’s difficult touring had proven to be something of a musical asset. The sense of collective euphoria might explain why Morrissey extended the finale with an additional twenty seconds of purely guttural excitement—all of which made it only that much more poignant that the last lines he would ever sing in concert as a member of the Smiths were “I’ll probably never see you again.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Within the Smiths the reason it worked so well was that everybody knew their place and their capabilities and each other’s position. It was such a tight unit and nobody it seemed could penetrate the Smiths’ little secret private world. On the occasion that somebody did break through the mould everything fell in 25 different directions.

  —Morrissey, New Musical Express, February 1988

  There was no need to rush, and yet there was no attempt to slow down. If anything, Johnny Marr’s car crash appeared to have increased his work rate, or at least his determination to get things done now, as if time might run out. The very day after the Brixton Academy show, he assembled the band and John Porter at Paul Weller’s Solid Bond Studios in Marble Arch to record yet another new song, “Sheila Take a Bow.” Morrissey did not show—and one could understand as much; a front man is entitled to a day off after putting in as much energy as he had the previous night. Then again, Morrissey had invited Sandie Shaw along to sing backing vocals, and for that reason alone he might have either made the effort to attend or called his heroine to offer his apologies. He did neither, and Shaw was left to deal with Marr, who, she recalled, “now wore the haggard look of a man tired of making excuses for his ill-mannered play friend.” The session was abandoned.

  Johnny and Angie hosted Guy Pratt and his girlfriend, Caroline, for New Year’s, after which they treated Pratt to a whistle-stop twenty-four-hour jaunt to Rome for his twenty-fifth birthday; there they got so sufficiently wrecked on grappa that they took apart a hotel room, behavior Marr had frowned upon in Craig Gannon. Almost immediately upon return, the band was back with John Porter at Matrix Studios, where they had recorded much of The Smiths and their initial collaboration with Sandie Shaw, in another attempt at the new song. This time, Morrissey showed up. As did Shaw, only to find that “Sheila Take a Bow” had been pitched so high that the only harmony she could supply was lower than the lead. She likened the outcome to Nancy and Frank Sinatra’s “Something Stupid,” which was not, perhaps, the negative connotation for fans that it appeared to be for her.1 Either way, the group scrapped almost the entire session and booked in with Stephen Street, instead, at yet another London studio, Good Earth, owned by Bowie’s producer Tony Visconti. This was apt inasmuch as “Sheila Take a Bow” revived the glam beat that had been such a success with “Panic” and lifted almost the exact words of a Bowie song for the key line “throw your homework onto the fire.”2

  That was not all that the final version lifted. From the original session with John Porter, Johnny Marr took a high-pitched sliding guitar effect that sounded something like an air horn, placed under the down beat of the chorus—but without his friend’s permission or acknowledgment. Porter had himself “flown” parts in to the BBC sessions from his private recordings with th
e Smiths, and even stolen parts outright, as with the tom-tom sounds on “How Soon Is Now?” As such, he had no real grounds for complaint—except that, he claimed (and it was “just to save time, there was no ego involved”), it was he who had played the original slide part. Porter’s unhappiness upon hearing the final Stephen Street version therefore joined his growing list of grievances addressed at the Smiths: “You don’t even credit me with playing these things in the first place. You’ve used the arrangement I’ve cobbled together. Then you add insult to injury by using my guitar part—and not even mentioning it to me, asking me if I’d like a session fee or anything.” The opportunity to work with the band again never arose. “It was a sad ending,” he admitted.

  Such incidents could be put down to the exuberance of young musicians who didn’t fully understand the protocol involved in the recording process. As with so much else surrounding the Smiths, it would have been the responsibility of a manager to ensure that if dual producers were employed, their feathers weren’t ruffled in the process. As the New Year dawned, it appeared that the Smiths—or at least Morrissey and Marr doing business as the Smiths—had finally settled that long-standing problem. They appointed Ken Friedman as their manager.

  Though Friedman had missed the band’s California dates, he had been over for the final Brixton Academy show, by which time his employment had just about been confirmed. A crucial incentive for the band was his willingness to move to London to open an office, in the Nomis Building, a music-business office-rehearsal complex behind Olympia in West London, from where he would manage both the Smiths and UB40. (The Birmingham reggae group lacked the Smiths’ credibility, perhaps, but sold more records around the world—and were equally difficult clients, being an eight-piece group that included siblings and insisted on unanimity for decision making.) Nonetheless, “it took a long time for them to say I was the manager,” said Friedman. “I had to come over a couple of times. I remember having meetings at Morrissey’s flat in Cadogan Square. I remember leaving, saying to Johnny, ‘I’ve got to get back, am I hired or not hired?’ And Johnny saying, ‘I think you are.’ ” Once the decision was finally made, Morrissey appeared to be fully on board: “It did seem for once in our lives,” the singer said a few months later, “that everything was going to be ironed out and the future was quite solid.”

  However, Friedman immediately fell into the trap that snared almost anyone who came into close contact with the Smiths. As Andy Rourke noted, “People always warmed to Johnny first and then me and Mike, and I think Morrissey always saw that as ‘This isn’t working because this guy isn’t communicating with me.’ ” Sure enough, said Freidman, “Johnny and I became mates very quickly.… So Morrissey would speak to me through Johnny and vice versa. So I never had a communication with Morrissey until later, because Johnny would pass it on and it was effortless.”

  Friedman’s first act was to make the rounds of the Smiths’ business partners. Geoff Travis warned him that the Smiths were “unmanageable” and that he was “wasting his time,” which, said Freidman, only “made me want to do it more.” As far as the new manager could read the band’s relations with Travis, “Johnny hated him, and Morrissey had a real love-hate relationship with him. Geoff would perhaps paint a picture of how close they were. But Geoff could never get Morrissey on the phone.” (Then again, could anyone?) Travis, who said that Friedman “turned out to be nice” but “fell into the either/or camp too quickly,” agreed with part of this: “I wish I had had more access to Johnny during those years. But it wasn’t the nature of the relationship. I think with the wisdom of hindsight, I would probably make an effort to put more time into Johnny. But I thought he was pretty happy to be playing the role that he was playing.” (Marr confirmed as much: “I never felt neglected. Or disrespected, in any way.”) Travis also noted that by the time Friedman came on board “the relationship had definitely changed. It had cooled.” The group’s fourth—and final—studio album for the label “was pretty much made without us.”

  One thing, however, remained clear: it would be coming out on Rough Trade. As if to rub EMI’s face in this fact, Rough Trade solicited the Smiths’ permission to release another compilation, The World Won’t Listen, comprising A- and B-sides all the way back to “Shakespeare’s Sister.” Given that many of these tracks had appeared on albums (including, as if recognition of the single that should have been, “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out”), the compilation was not as altruistic as its predecessor Hatful of Hollow; in fact, of the sixteen tracks squeezed onto one piece of vinyl, only “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby” was otherwise unavailable, and in the era before digital copying, this didn’t sit well with Smiths fans who felt compelled to buy the album just for that one song. Regardless, the compilation became another bestseller for the band, again peaking at number 2 in the UK. The sleeve used two early 1960s photographs by the Hamburg photographer and former Beatles stylist Jürgen Vollmer. The one on the front depicted four older teenage boys looking off to the side and the back, all the better to showcase their greased “DA” haircuts; the one on the reverse showed four unknown teenage girls at a fairground, in equally uniform bobs and bangs, staring detachedly out and down almost as if at the boys on the other side. It was an artful juxtaposition of images very true to the group’s own, and perhaps because it veered away from the traditional solo cult figure, served as many people’s favorite Smiths cover of them all.

  The success of the recent singles, and then of The World Won’t Listen, certainly reinforced the popularity of the Smiths for EMI, who were otherwise required to wait to claim their prize. Friedman sat down with Nick Gatfield (“I knew and liked him”) and David Munns (“quite a scary guy”), and quickly realized his limitations. Munns, said Friedman, “just wanted me to deliver this one thing—a meeting—and I couldn’t deliver it. They didn’t want to meet him at all.” In the States, Friedman talked with both Seymour Stein and Steven Baker, each of whom he already knew, and they quickly informed him, as they had Munns, that they still had a claim to future Smiths albums. They asked Friedman to clear up this issue.

  Morrissey and Marr were equally confused on this front, and even more frustrated that they had not yet received the monies they had expected from the first—and, until they were fully free from Rough Trade, the only—EMI advance, which appeared to have been eaten up by the lawyer’s bills. (“Neither Morrissey nor myself has yet seen a penny,” said Marr in an interview with NME’s Danny Kelly in February, six months after signing.) All of which necessitated that Friedman sit down with Alexis Grower to get some answers. But the Smiths were no longer using Grower’s services, which might explain why, when they met, “he was very unapologetic,” said Friedman. “He didn’t care that he’d fallen out with the band; he was very kind of arrogant. He literally sat there in a tracksuit with his feet up on the desk, not making eye contact, and then whisking me out of there after eight minutes and ending the meeting. I guess he felt disrespected by the band and was taking it out on me, but it really was one of the more awkward meetings of my life.”

  There was little, then, that Friedman could do to change anything with any of the three key record companies (or to earn himself commissions)—though it did not go unnoticed that, shortly after he assumed the management role, Pat Bellis handed in her notice at Rough Trade following what was reported as an “altercation” with Friedman. The new manager considered both Bellis and Jo Slee—who “was always at Morrissey’s house, cutting things out, doing artwork”—as “fag hags, in love with him, enamored with him, whatever he did they loved.” (Johnny Marr had his own issues with Jo Slee, especially at this juncture: “It was quite evident to me, Mike, and Andy that she was besotted with Morrissey, and missing what the Smiths was. It was all about Morrissey for her.”) With regard to the press office, Friedman felt that “they were biased, never objective. They were on Morrissey’s side, not Johnny’s. Or the record company’s side, not the Smiths’.” Bellis’s comments regarding the EMI deal a
nd Gannon’s firing were evidence of this. Friedman’s intent in changing this scenario, he explained to Morrissey, was to get someone who “will do the best thing for the group. Not fall in love with you, not work for Geoff Travis, not get in the middle of an EMI versus Rough Trade thing. So Morrissey agreed. We did interviews and he liked Mariella Frostrup the best.” Frostrup was an independent publicist who later became a major TV presenter. “I’m not sure how long that lasted,” noted Friedman.

  With regard to the publishing, there was no desire for change—Warner Bros. Music was the top British publisher through the 1980s and beyond, officious and effective—other than for Friedman to increase the advances, something that nobody had sought to do until this point. “I don’t recall being asked for additional monies,” said managing director Peter Reichert, who had viewed Scott Piering only as the band’s plugger (albeit a “great” one). “That’s unusual. That’s why you need a manager. A manager will say ‘Hang on, I know Warner Brothers are holding quarter of a million quid for you boys, let me go and get it.’ And they could have had it earlier, it made no difference to me. Maybe they didn’t need it.”

  As the situation with the EMI advances, the lack of pressure on Warner Bros. Music, the confusion over tour profits, and the distribution of band income all made clear, the Smiths’ finances were a mess. It was in the hope of clearing all this up that Friedman switched the Smiths’ accountancy firm, hiring U2’s accountants, O. J. (Oz) Kilkenny, located in Soho Square. This was more than a minor reassignment: good music business accountants not only take care of the day-to-day business of banking checks and paying bills but also put money aside for taxes, which they keep to a minimum thanks to long-term investment planning and short-term loopholes. Marr would prove grateful for the change, staying with Kilkenny in perpetuity. But Friedman would find that he had still not solved the problem of getting the Smiths to pay their bills. “I had to run after them to sign checks all the time. I’d get Johnny to sign something, then I’d run after Morrissey and he’d just weasel out. I’d be sitting with him and I’d turn ’round and he’d be gone. It wasn’t fun at all.” The account from which these bills were paid, he said, “was not Smithdom.”