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

by Tony Fletcher

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  1 Though it’s often been stated that Morrissey chose the hotel based on its bygone popularity with his idol James Dean, the Iroquois was in fact the rock ’n’ roll hotel of choice by promoters in a city that lacked for affordable rooms. Its nonpaying guests, the cockroaches, were a familiar aspect of New York domesticity at the time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  1 Time failed to heal Morrissey’s perception of Porter’s production. The Sound of the Smiths, a 2008 compilation of the band’s singles with a few more classics thrown in to fill out the CD, swapped out the 7″ release for the Peel version, supposedly at Morrissey’s insistence.

  2 The interview at the Haçienda was conducted by the author, and You-Tube clips confirm the perils of a television show conducting an outside broadcast from a nightclub in real time. The front-of-house volume was meant to be muted on the Factory All-Stars, who were performing onstage at the time, once our interview got under way on the balcony. For some reason it didn’t happen, resulting in Morrissey and I shouting at each other over the noise in an attempt to hear each other. TV viewers at home had no such problems, given the position of our microphones, except perhaps to wonder why the interviewer had stalled for ten seconds before starting the interview. Now they might know. Unfortunately, I can offer no similar excuses for the equally frazzled interview with Tony Wilson, Peter Hook, and Paul Morley, except to suggest that as a nineteen-year-old fanzine editor dropped into the world of live television, I was evidently out of my depth. It was fun while it lasted, however.

  3 Jackie Morrissey had married in the spring of 1983; Steven’s departure for London left his mother, Betty, living on her own.

  4 When the Smiths were coaxed back to Europe, for a major German TV show, the three playing members and Sandie Shaw turned in a wonderful lip-sync performance of “Hand in Glove” for the show Formal Eins, which replicated the 1960s sets of shows like Ready Steady Go! and Germany’s own Beat Club.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  1 Marr claimed it had been written by him and Morrissey in the summer of 1983. Rourke did not receive a writing credit for what was widely considered his finest bass line.

  2 In interviews for this book, Geoff Travis said it was the first he had ever heard of it.

  3 John Porter, whose ability to conjure up subtle studio tricks was seemingly endless, recalled that one of these AMS-derived tracks may have added a harmonized note on both a major third and an octave above, the other on a major third below as well as an octave above.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  1 A year later, Morrissey was still smarting over Henke’s apparent error. It was “news to me,” he told Dave DiMartino of Creem, going on immediately to say that “it had an absolutely adverse effect on our chances in America.… And obviously Sire backed away immediately.” None of this was borne out by the evidence, and of all American labels that might have had an issue with gay artists, one would have hoped that Sire would have been the least concerned.

  2 Contrary to accounts published elsewhere, no American Smiths tour was announced or advertised in 1984. Certainly the band did not abandon an American tour at the London airport, which would have had high-profile repercussions; that only happened with the European tour-in-progress earlier in 1984.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  1 As one of the many indicators of how irregular was the Smiths’ business setup, various employees from Rough Trade and All Trade pitched in at Campden Hill Road to help Morrissey pack and move.

  2 Without a producer earning one or two percentage “points,” as John Porter had done, there would also be more profit for Rough Trade to split with the band.

  3 Though he was employed strictly as an engineer, Street brought to the studio a musical reference point: Lloyd Cole & the Commotions’ debut album, Rattlesnakes, produced by Paul Hardiman, which hit the stores just as the Smiths hit the studio. “I saw that as the standard that had to be achieved,” said Street. “From a sound point of view. And also because it was in the same kind of terrain: really good, delicate guitar playing.”

  4. Contrary to other accounts, “Rusholme Ruffians” and “Nowhere Fast” were not recorded in the same session at Jam as the “William, It Was Really Nothing” single. As for the Peel session, which would be Porter’s last session with the Smiths for the time being, the group also performed “William” and “How Soon Is Now?” To successfully replicate the latter in the confines of an eight-hour BBC session, Porter cheated, bringing in the multitracks and transferring the tremolo guitar part (and maybe some others) onto the BBC tapes. The Smiths were fortunate to have a producer who also worked for the BBC and could get away with this.

  5 Simon Goddard traced this line, as with many others in the song, to lyrics by the British comedienne/​singer/​actress Victoria Wood, namely her songs “Fourteen Again” and “Funny How Things Turn Out.”

  6 In 1984, Rough Trade distributed an album by Flux of Pink Indians entitled The Fucking Cunts Treat Us Like Pricks. It made number 2 on the independent charts. By comparison, distributing and promoting Meat Is Murder was a cakewalk.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  1 These were scheduled to rise from 0.5 to 2 percent, to the point where if the album sold 250,000 copies in the UK, Piering would be in for a £22,600 bonus.

  2 As readers might have surmised, I count myself among these people. While I can’t credit Meat Is Murder as the sole reason for my becoming a vegetarian, or even as the final impetus (that one involved a fireman on a skiing holiday), it was arguably the most significant influence on a lifestyle change that, in my case, proved permanent. Let me put it this way: I would certainly not have turned vegetarian (and subsequently vegan) at that point in time had the Smiths not made Meat Is Murder. I know that I am but one of thousands of people whose lives were changed similarly and, quite apart from the music, I thank the Smiths for taking that stand, helping instigate the debate, and for positively impacting upon my life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  1 The version released in the States later that year carried different lyrics from the British one—replacing the opening line “on the high-rise estates” with “all the lies that you make up”

  2 I say this in some part from experience. I attended the show at the Oxford Apollo—one of the most thrilling concerts I’ve ever witnessed. I knew many of the younger A&R people around this time, and one of them had brought her boss to see James; memory recalls that it was the label that almost signed the group. The A&R head took us aside after their set and, in all seriousness, asked us to explain the appeal of the two bands, because he could not understand it for himself.

  3 “Well I Wonder” was in fact the only song from the Smiths’ first three albums never to be performed live.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  1 Piering did, however, film the group in Super 8 in Ireland in November 1984, right at the point that Sire was putting together this video. It can’t be discounted that his footage didn’t make the cut and he ended up sending over Showbiz’s footage instead.

  2 Marr has been careful never to name Grower in the same sentence as the lawyer whom he has described as a “shark.” He has also not been able to explain how Grower came to represent the Smiths in the first place: “Alexis Grower didn’t come in from my side of things,” he told me in 2011. “I’d never heard of him before.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  1 Morrissey additionally tried to use this interview to gain revenge on Jim Henke of Rolling Stone by outing Henke in turn. “The journalist who wrote it … is himself very steeped, he’s a very strong voice in the gay movement in New York, I think it was just wishful thinking on his part,” said Morrissey, perhaps not knowing that music journalists at rival magazines might actually be friends. DiMartino felt compelled to come to Henke’s defense, closing out his article by noting, “You should be told that the Rolling Stone writer who wrote that statement is not very steeped, not a strong voice in the gay movement in New York, and it
wasn’t just wishful thinking on his part.”

  2 On return from the States, Gosling’s role continued. “With Andy and Mike it started to get a bit more serious. They were trying to see me, catch up with me, to keep on sorting stuff out for them.” And then, suddenly, all contact stopped. “There are forces within any band. Who knows what Moz thought of it all? Who knows whether Johnny might have decided at the end that it was all a bit too much?” Gosling was not hired for their next tour. “It’s one of those lessons you learn in life and the next time someone tries to put you in that role you say, ‘No thanks.’ ”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  1 The live “Meat Is Murder” became the B-side to the 7″, marking this as the first Smiths single to use the generally rare 3/4 (or 6/8) ballad tempo for both sides. “Nowhere Fast,” “Stretch Out and Wait,” and “Shakespeare’s Sister” were included in its place on the 12″. Original 12″ test pressings that included “Miserable Lie,” which had changed significantly in concert over the years, and “William, It Was Really Nothing” became some of the more valuable pieces of Smiths memorabilia.

  2 The single sleeve noted that the record was “Recorded in Manchester.” There was no mention of RAK.

  3 It was not the only reference point. In Patti Smith’s “Kimberly,” the song that had influenced “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” the singer referenced a “flame” and compared herself to Joan of Arc.

  4 “Rubber Ring” was Morrissey’s specific term for the Smiths’ music, as it applied to their fans.

  5 When a Smiths compilation DVD was released in 1992, it was the Top of the Pops performance of “The Boy with the Thorn in His Side” that was included, not the promotional video.

  6 “Asleep” was played in Inverness, but only because the small venue had been unable to remove a piano from the stage and Marr decided to take advantage of it; Rourke and Joyce provided rudimentary bass and drums.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  1 “Margaret on the Guillotine” was later resurrected by Morrissey as a song title for his debut solo LP.

  2 Asked if the song “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” was “written about your relationship” with Johnny Marr, by Adrian Deevoy in GQ magazine in 2005, Morrissey explicitly replied, “It wasn’t and it isn’t.” In his own interview with the author, Marr nonetheless sang the lyic “driving in your car” when explaining that, despite his lack of a license, “I used to drive me and Morrissey around.”

  3 As with “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” “Cemetry Gates” used nonstandard tuning to help achieve its particular resonance.

  4 Among respected British critics, Simon Goddard called it their “greatest singular recording” in his book The Smiths: Songs That Saved Your Life; John Harris referred to it as their “single greatest achievement” in Mojo in April 2011; and Jon Savage labeled it “The Smiths’ mature masterpiece” in the Guardian in December 2010.

  5 The movie segment and the song itself were segued by the sampling of a Mike Joyce tom-tom roll on a primitive sampler of the era (the Window).

  6 On July 9, 1982, in a highly embarrassing breach of security, thirty-one-year-old Michael Fagan broke into Buckingham Palace and entered the queen’s bedroom, where she was sleeping alone. He subsequently spent six months in a mental institution.

  7 The emergence of a rudimentary recording of this song, complete with the trumpet but few other overdubs, should not be taken as an untruth on Street’s account, merely as evidence that the song certainly existed at some point in unbroken form.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  1 I attended this show. I’m not sure what I was doing in Newcastle, other than that I had ties with many of the people involved in Red Wedge and an affinity for that city based on my previous work for The Tube. As such, I was well aware that the Smiths were to be playing (unannounced); whether that factored into my decision to make the journey, or only became evident once I was in the venue, I cannot say.

  2 Derek Hatton was expelled from the Labour Party later in 1986 for his membership in the Marxist-Trotskyite Militant Tendency, which the Party had outlawed in 1982, in a visible attempt to move further toward the center.

  3 Aztec Camera was no longer any sort of musical threat to the Smiths. After leaving Rough Trade for WEA, Frame recorded the overly produced album Knife with Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler at the helm, and embarked on a British tour of seated venues; the American support slot with Elvis Costello was equally indicative of attempts to market Frame as “adult-oriented rock.” His was a textbook case of the dangers of leaving a credible independent label for the lure of major-label waters.

  4 Gannon had not auditioned for anyone since joining Aztec Camera at age sixteen. That said, it was still surprising that he was hired with so little discussion.

  5 Morrissey has denied writing the note that was left on Rourke’s car. Rourke remains absolutely insistent that he received it.

  6 It is fascinating, even reassuring, to note that Hughes originally intended for Duckie to win Andie’s heart at the prom, but test audiences—perhaps evincing mainstream Hollywood expectations—recoiled at the idea. A different ending was subsequently filmed, against Hughes’s wishes. Actor Andrew McCarthy, having shaved his head in the interim to appear in a play, was forced to don a wig for the scene.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  1 The notion that the Smiths did not see “any money” from their record sales is, frankly, preposterous. Had that been the case, they would have been able to walk from Rough Trade after the first album for nonpayment of royalties. Geoff Travis, noting the “houses and cars” acquired by various Smiths, said of the royalty checks that went out from Rough Trade, “I don’t think they were seven figures but they were significant.” Even Sandie Shaw noted in her autobiography “the big dollop of royalties I received from Rough Trade”—and that for merely singing on one minor hit single, “Hand In Glove.”

  2 The Face feature opened with “manager” Scott Piering asking to see the story before it went to press, disturbed that Kent had interviewed several former Morrissey associates, including “at least one sworn enemy.” Though the galleys were indeed sent to Piering, the story was still littered with inexcusable inaccuracies: the singer’s name was misspelled throughout as Morrisey. Still, the piece was best remembered for Johnny Marr’s final quote about his friend: “I think he needs a good humping.”

  3 Thanks to the arrival of Leslie Holmes, who hailed from Yorkshire and had a more open attitude, the Lads Club has gone on to host many concerts by famous groups, and been used as a venue for talks and seminars and radio shows. A major fund-raising campaign in the twenty-first century saw Morrissey lead the way with a generous donation. Though Coronation Street is mostly boarded up and the surrounding area, with its new estates, bears little relation to that of late Victorian, industrial Salford, from the upper rooms of the Lads Club one can still see the gasworks of Ewan MacColl’s “Dirty Old Town.”

  4 While recording “Panic” at Livingston Studios in North London, John Porter had recruited the local primary-school choir to give the single some juvenile authenticity to match its rebellious nature; this also served as a nostalgic throwback to the days of T. Rex–era glam, when primary-age schoolchildren, like Marr, Rourke, and Joyce, formed a significant part of the audience.

  5 Despite his harsh posthumous comments, the 1987 single “Shoplifters of the World Unite” was “dedicated to Ruth Polsky.”

  6 Tony Wilson’s dedication to the cause of Manchester music above all else was apparent in a letter he wrote to the G-Mex coordinators in advance of the Tenth Summer concert complaining about their minimal contribution toward better acoustics for the event. “I know now that the sound on Sat July 19th will not be as good as it should be; just how disastrous, remains to be seen. Manchester, a city with great pop music, SHOULD have a fine large scale, pop venue. Your insistence, at this, the first pop concert in the dear old station, to pocket all but one thousand pounds of your full fee, and not to invest in the fu
ture of the building by supporting our efforts at acoustic treatment, does a disservice to the space, and does a disservice to Manchester.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  1 Jarman did not meet with the band about the film other than to be introduced to them backstage at the G-Mex concert, where Marr was busy vomiting at the time due to pre-show nerves.

  2 Pratt recalled his astonishment that the Smiths drank champagne cocktails—and that Rourke, despite coming off heroin, was “doling out a lot of prescription drugs.”

  3 His case had been put off until November, and so he had not yet been found guilty of a drug offense. He was ultimately given a two-year suspended sentence for possession of heroin.

  4 The Dream Academy had initially released their version of the Smiths song as a B-side on Blanco y Negro, Geoff Travis’s other label.

  5 Simon Goddard deserves the credit for positing the idea of using the Jarman films as touring backdrops.

  6 Recordings of the Irvine Meadows concert of August 28, at which the Smiths played to 15,000 fans, have him screaming at security, “Jesus Christ, don’t be so stupid!” while Johnny Marr calls them “Neanderthal fucking idiots.” Other reports of that night have suggested that kids in the audience were high on angel dust and thereby charged security without fear. At the Greek Theatre in San Francisco, meanwhile, the audience hysteria saw fans clambering over the tour bus and helicopters called in.