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

by Tony Fletcher

  Thank you for your time and your memories and your perception and perspective: Amanda Malone, Andrew Berry, Andy Rourke, Barry Finnegan, Bill Anstee, Billy Bragg, Bobby Durkin, Cath Carroll, Chris Nagle, Craig Gannon, Dale Hibbert, Dave Harper, Dave Haslam, David Jensen, David Munns, David Pringle, Frank Owen, Geoff Travis, Grant Showbiz, Guy Ainsworth, Guy Pratt, Hugh Stanley-Clarke, Ivor Perry, James Maker, Joe Moss, John Featherstone, John Porter, Johnny Marr, Ken Friedman, Kevin Kennedy, Liz Naylor, Marc Wallis, Mark Gosling, Matt Johnson, Matt Pinfield, Mayo Thompson, Mike Hinc, Mike Pickering, Mike Williams, Nick Gatfield, Nick Hobbs, Paul Whiting, Paul Whittall, Peter Reichert, Peter Wright, Phil Fletcher, Phil Gatenby, Richard Boon, Richard Scott, Seymour Stein, Simon Edwards, Simon Wolstencroft, Stephen Adshead, Stephen Duffy, Stephen Street, Stephen Wright, Steve Diggle, Steve Ferguson, Steve Lillywhite, Steven Baker, Stuart James, Tamra Davis, Tim Booth, Wayne Barrett.

  As noted in the introduction, the names of Morrissey and Mike Joyce are missing from the above list. For a multitude of reasons, I did not especially expect Morrissey’s cooperation, although I certainly requested it several times; I would like to thank those of his assistants and managers who ensured that my correspondence reached him. Mike Joyce’s refusal to participate came as more of a surprise, given that he was the only member of the Smiths, coming into this book, with whom I thought I had an ongoing friendship. I had perhaps relied on this too much, and apologize if he felt that I took his cooperation for granted. We did have the opportunity to talk, and I respect his reasons for not participating. I’d like to offer both him and Morrissey my gratitude for their contribution to popular culture; I trust that comes across in the text.

  I am grateful to Howard Devoto, Jo Slee, Martha DeFoe, James Henke, Gordon Charlton, Alexis Grower, Martin Haxby, Phil Cowie, Ian Chambers, Brian Grantham, and Damian Morgan for engaging in correspondence and/or returning phone calls.

  Thanks to Jo Murray, Lindsay Hutton, Moz Murray, Oliver Wilson, Hilary Piering, John Cooper, Michael Knowles, David Whitehead, Robin Hurley, Eric Zohn, Tom Ferrie, Michael Pagnotta, and Robert Cochrane for various degrees of research assistance. There are dozens more I could add to this list, including various professional artist managers, assistants, and publicists. To start down that line would be to risk offending those I would inevitably leave out. I appreciate all your work.

  I am eternally grateful to Jeni de Haart for providing me with an open-ended residential base in South London as well as for being such a great friend. A massive thanks to Tom Hingley and Kelly Wood-Hingley for hosting me in Manchester—and to Tom for the additional hours of stimulating political conversation late at night and at the local swimming pool at seven in the morning! Thanks to John and Jamie for doing so on an earlier visit. Thanks to my mother, Ruth Fletcher, for letting me use her house in Beverley as an office when I might have arrived professing to a family visit instead, and for dropping and/or picking me up many a time at the local train station for my commutes to London and Manchester.

  Help and assistance, warmth and friendship, was extended by Matthew Norman at Manchester District Music Archive (mdmarchive.​co.​uk), Leslie Holmes at Salford Lads Club, and Simon Parker at various locations and at various times over the years in Manchester and beyond. Additional thanks to David Groves for use of his London premises and resources. An extra credit to Andrew Berry for providing me with a Central London “office” underneath his hair salon, Viva, while I was running around town on my typically frazzled trips back home—and this without any previous contact between us. He remains, to the end, the hairdresser on fire.

  Thank you to the Zen Mountain Monastery in my home hamlet of Mount Tremper for providing a compassionate environment, and to the various Smiths fans among the monastics and other residents for their encouraging and enthusiastic conversations.

  Though nobody should be surprised by the number of Smiths websites, we ought to be extraordinarily impressed by the depth of some of them. This book would have been that much harder to complete accurately without having these resources at my fingertips: vulgarpicture.​com,​ plunderingdesire.​com,​ morrissey-​scans.​tumblr.​com,​ smiths​recycle.​blogspot.​com,​ motor​cycle​aupair​boy.​com,​ for​everill.​com,​ and the late passions​just​like​mine.​com. My thanks to Jason from Plundering Desire, Stephane from Passions Just Like Mine, and Flavio from Vulgar Picture for their unconditional help in additional research via e-mail.

  I would be lost without the existence of bricks-and-mortar libraries. As Morrissey would presumably agree, there is nothing to match the sensation of picking up a hundred-year-old, limited-edition, hand-printed biography of Oscar Wilde by André Gide from the local library (Woodstock, in this case), free of charge despite the fact that such a book has a high resale value. Likewise I spent several glorious days at the Manchester City Library on Deansgate, lost in old political pamphlets and case studies from industrial-era Manchester. As always, I made frequent visits to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center in Manhattan; while it is possible to find most published Smiths articles online these days, there is no better way to attain context than by reading through the actual music papers of the time. I again made full use of my local Mid-Hudson Libraries, and am specifically grateful to everyone at the Phoenicia Library for being such a damn cool group of people. Unfortunately, in the midst of researching this book, the Phoenicia Library was destroyed by a fire; happily, the library found new rental space immediately, and a series of community benefits have helped raise money to add to the insurance payments and ensure proper rebuilding (and restocking) in the near future. Our public libraries engage in so much more than merely the loaning of books: they are an essential part of our commitment to educate and inform and leave a legacy to future generations. Please support them however you can.

  I am especially grateful to my agent, Mike Harriot, at Folio Literary Agency for his calm and professional consideration throughout this process; it helped that he is such a Smiths fan. With this book, I have developed new professional and personal relationships with my editors, Jason Arthur and Tom Avery at William Heinemann in London and Suzanne O’Neill at Crown in New York. I’d like to thank them for their encouragement and patience, and I trust that these relationships will grow and prosper, as with other staff at both publishing houses with whom I am just becoming acquainted.

  A special acknowledgment to Chris Charlesworth and Johnny Rogan for their understanding and their support. And friendship.

  Finally, family. My deadlines have never made it easy on my wife and kids; I would like to believe that this one proved somewhat less fraught. The passing of time means that I no longer pull all-nighters—although I do occasionally get out of bed in the middle of the night, when the idea on how to open a new chapter suddenly seizes me and won’t let go. So, my love to Posie for putting up with me as always (and for transcribing some of the early interviews); we’ve come a long way since the Melody dancefloor. Props to Campbell for being a real live emotional teenager. And as for little Noel, the process of researching and writing this book was made so much more enjoyable by having a budding guitarist in the family. Watching a six-year-old learn his way around multiple tunings, capo positionings, picking styles, and passing chords made writing about the Smiths’ music that much more fun. And to that point, Johnny Marr’s fear—that by the end of this process, I would never want to listen to a Smiths song again—has been proven ill founded. If anything, I have gained fresh and additional appreciation for the multiple layers of complexities and subtleties that went into their words and music. Thanks to everyone who helped make it happen.

 

 

 
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