Earliest Smiths Memory

m_jraj

Junior Member
Mine was as freshman bartender at a university bar in Nashville in 1982. A co-worker put in a casette of the The Smiths and I was instantly and permanently hooked.

I never played my Haircut 100 casette in that bar again. Later that year, another bartender also played an REM demo of their first EP in that same bar.

I miss those days.

Edit - Must have been 1984 as mentioned below.
 
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Mine was in 1985 - I was 16. I was doing homework at a friend's house and she said she had a cassette of this brilliant british band. She played it: it was Hatful of Hollow - William, it was really nothing. It just blew me away.
Aaaah... that voice ...addicted for life...
 
In 1982?:confused:
I'm sorry if it sounds pedantic, but according to passions just like mine, The Smiths played first live supporting slot in October 1982 and there seems no bootleg recordings. Smiths' first radio session was broadcasted 31st May 1983 and the first album was released in 1984. If you meant that you first heard "The Smiths" you hadn't heard it before 1984.
 
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Standing on and cracking the case of a CD version of Louder Than Bombs this time last year...

"hmm, might as well have a listen while i get a new case.."
 
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Mine in the summer of 2004 - I was 16 and had be listening on Morrissey for about eight months (embarrasing..). Downloaded "Meat Is Murder" at afriends computer and then listened on it on my way home. Since then, Meat Is Murder=summer. All the vitamines you'll need.
 
Autumn 1983, flicking through an eagerly anticipated brand new edition of "Smash Hits" magazine.

There, amongst the glossy pictures of Duran Duran and Wham! was an incongruous monochrome advert for a new single by a band I'd never heard of before called The Smiths. My 13 year-old self was intringued and I made it my mission to find out more about this band. That weekend, I took my pocket money (two English pounds!) to Probe records in Liverpool and bought This Charming Man.

The rest, as they say, is history. It was another 18 months before I got to see them live (at the Liverpool Royal Court Theatre, on the Meat Is Murder tour), but it was worth the wait. I even bunked off school on the day of the gig and waited outside the stage door all afternoon so that I could get my record sleeves signed when they arrived for the soundcheck. As it happens, I took the afternoon off work some 19 years later so that I could wait outside the very same stage door in the hope of getting my copy of YATQ signed. Unfortunately, thanks to some very effective security, that didn't happen!

I may be a 36 year old solicitor now, but I still feel exactly the same way now whenever I attend a Morrissey gig as I did when I was a 14 year schoolboy seeing The Smiths for the very first time. Forget Botox, it's Morrissey that keeps me young!!
 
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I may be a 36 year old solicitor now, but I still feel exactly the same way now whenever I attend a Morrissey gig as I did when I was a 14 year schoolboy seeing The Smiths for the very first time. Forget Botox, its Morrissey that keeps me young!!

That's so sweet!

For me it's 1996, I was 17 and a friend said I'd probably like the Smiths because I was really into Suede (ironic, huh? :) ). She played Bigmouth for me and I thought, "that's the most beautiful voice I've ever heard". Then I had a look at the lyric sheet for the album and, well...you can guess the rest. :)
 
Mine was in 2002, I was 12 and my brother was listening to Unhappy Birthday, Girlfriend In a Coma and Rush and a Push...I thought to myself, "Those lyrics are great and the music is pretty darn good", and since that day I have been a self confessed Smiths addict.

This wasn't my first memory but I got to know an waiter in Rome earlier this summer who saw me in my smiths shirt and we immediately struck conversation. He said that his first memory was him being on a train opposite a real nice looking girl, he said that he had to get someway of chatting her up and so asked what she was listening to, she gave him an earpiece. It was The Smiths, he said "at that point when hearing The Smiths...I lost all interest in the girl".
 
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1983 watching The Tube - as I did each Friday religiously.
I had moved back to Manchester one week before (my parents relocated to the HIDEOUS Coventry a few years before and I was now 20 and able to move back.)
The Smiths came on with the film clip of This Charming Man. It was just like nothing I'd heard before (or since.) i didn't even know they were from Manchester. They just came from nowhere.
The first album came out and the Manchester gig was sold out very quickly but I managed to see them live in the HIDEOUS Coventry in March 84.
My mum washed my jeans before I got up in the morning, with the ticket inside the back pocket.....

The Goat
 
1985 - Nashville, my best friend at the time was home with her family for the summer. (They lived the rest of the year in Kuwait). I was 12 and she was 11, and she had bought a Smiths tape the first day she came back to the US b/c she couldn't buy it in Kuwait. She played How Soon is Now? for me and explained to me what the word "celibate" meant.

I sadly didn't get much farther than HSIN & maybe 6 other songs until 2004 when Quarry came out. :(
 
The first time I heard "There is a Light..." I was desperatly trying to find something decent in my sister's music collection, I found The Smiths by accident went down to the bottom and there was "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" I put it on and got this feeling like everything inside me was rushing into my head.... the only other time i've ever felt anything like that was when i first saw Morrissey walk on stage.

:) :)
 
I was probably about ten years old, playing Sensible Soccer on my Amiga 500, when I came across the name Morrissey on a custom team called The Smiths, which was otherwise made up of famous people with the last name Smith.

But the first time I actually heard The Smiths, it was Hand In Glove. I downloaded it and thought it was okay, but nothing spectacular. If I recall correctly, it was Reel Around The Fountain that convinced me. Probably the most boring first experience with The Smiths you'll read here.
 
I think mine was a performance on Old Grey Whistle test or something like that in 1983/4 when I was 14 - cant remember exactly but I do remember seeing a stage invasion with flowers all over the place and a small child dancing on the stage aged about 12.

I listened to virtually nothing else for the next 4 years.
 
I think it was August 2004, I was 14 and depressed.. I had heard one or two solo-songs, and was really impressed.. then I bought The Very Best of The Smiths.. (The only smiths/mozalbum they sold here..) And it was a huge shock. I'd never expected THAT to happen, but I was addicted.. for life
 
2003. 16 and one of my friends said we should use a song called Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now on our media project about an unemployed actor. Forgot about it for a year until i was looking for music and stumbled across a best of the band that sang that funny song...
 
Early 1991, I was madly in love with a Smiths/Morrissey fan who introduced me to the line 'and if a double decker bus ...' I thought it was very romantic.

Saw him for the first time that year too, and he's been part of the soundtrack of my life ever since.
 
First I saw Morrissey on the front page of Smash Hits with a kitten in a frying pan, as he was advocating vegetarianism. I read the article and despite not knowing who he was his argument was part of the reason I gave up meat and fish. Then I saw a 7'' single in WHSMITH with James Dean (I was a huge fan) on the front, it happened to be The boy with the thorn in his side.

Listened to, fell in love with The Smiths and became a moody black clad teen, all in the name of Moz!
 
my earliest smiths memory is watching them on TOTP2 when i was a little kid ("heaven knows im miserable now"... i remember very well that moz had plants in his pockets!), although it was years before i started getting their records...
 
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