First time with Morrissey

[No1uno]

I am curious to if people can remember the first time they were exposed Morrissey or The Smiths. I remember mine vividly. Would like to read others.

The first time I heard The Smiths. It was mid 1986, I was at a friends house with a girl I fancied. Since he lived on the border of high school districts, he had friends that went to a neighboring high school. At the time I was listening to what was referred to as new wave and punk music. Goth and a new wave look was prevalent at the time. One of his friends was a girl from the other high school and she had a heavy goth look to her. We were sitting in chairs in the front of his house under the shade of a giant weeping willow tree. It was a wonderful afternoon with nothing to do as teenagers but hangout. We were talking and smoking cigarettes. The girl had a little portable radio and she put in a cassette to play. It was The Smiths album Meat Is Murder. The first song that plays is The Headmaster Ritual. I am enthralled with what I am hearing. I am curious and ask her who it is. So begins the adventure, the collecting, and the discovery of feelings with finding something that is intensely personal to how you feel. So many wonderful stories of those times in the eighties.

 

[Anonymous]

It was actually last August. I had heard of the Smiths, but I was a baby when they were popular. I knew a couple of the big songs, and Suedehead, but I was bored one late night I stumbled upon the Rockpalast show and I was blown away. That was it! I saw him on this tour and I'm so grateful.

 

[VivaHollandia]

Nice stories

My parents had the Viva Hate cd, which they sometimes played when we went with the car on holiday to France. I remember I was impressed by the music of Alsatian Cousin and Everyday Is Like Sunday, but I always thought the singer was not that great. I even felt sorry for the musicians that they did such a good job making such good music, which was kind of ruined by this weird voice. However, a couple of years later I was going on a trip down memory lane, and I stumbled upon Everyday Is Like Sunday again. From then on I was hooked. This got even stronger when I found out that he was a vegetarian, just like I had become when I was 14. Imagine playing Morrissey songs and liking it, and then after a year or so find out that he also was in a group called The Smiths, now THAT'S a nice surprise!

 

[Hod]

Brilliant thread idea!

My first encounter was at the start of high school in the UK. It was the turn of my form to put on an assembly, and, though I can't remember what the theme of it was, I remember being sat on the school stage as other kids starting filling the hall just prior to the start and listening to the song which my teacher had chosen to go with our assembly. The song was amazing, and it was Irish Blood, English Heart (it was around September 2004) - I never found this out until 2009! My teacher continued to drop Morrissey references, but my silly young self ignored them; she used the 'M' background from the inside of the Ringleaders CD for a wall presentation in 2006, and, while I knew it had something to do with Morrissey by then, I never looked into it. She was one of the best teachers I ever had.

 

[Charlie Cheswick]

Would have been that first appearance on Top Of The Pops. The seeds were sewn but I was hooked when the hearing aid appeared so that must have been Heaven Knows. They obviously sounded fantastic but I remember more that everyone else was calling Morrissey all manner of shite and it continued the next day at school and has ever since.

Edit, I've not remembered this right because I remember getting hooked with the What Difference Does It Make? appearance which was earlier. It was the best thing I'd ever heard up to that point.

 

[Harsh Truth]

I must have been about 13 or 14, so 1986/1987. My older brother returned from a semester studying in the UK and brought back a bunch of cassettes from the Smiths, the Cult, the Housemartins, and (yes) Raymonde. It was so refreshing to hear this fantastic, interesting music, as compared to the junk most kids my age were listening to. I remember hearing "Panic" and being hooked from there.

 

[fredkocherpepsi]

I love reading these!

I’d been “aware” of The Smiths/Morrissey since I was probably 11 or 12 (around the time of “Your Arsenal”) and I can remember when “The More You Ignore Me...” was on MTV pretty regularly but I wasn’t really a fan. Then, in the latter half of my junior year of h.s. (1998) I ordered a bunch of CD’s from Columbia House and got “Louder Than Bombs”, “Singles” and maybe “The Queen Is Dead” on a total lark, after reading about how so many of the hardcore/punk bands I loved were big fans. After spending a bit of time with those songs, I was hooked. Ended up (very quickly) buying the rest of the Smiths stuff on CD. Took me a couple years after that to really get into Moz solo, but once I did....that was it!

 

[Anonymous]

I fell in love with "The boy with the thorn in his side" in 2004 the same year YATQ was release, my first Smiths album was "Best...2", and my first Morrissey album "You are the quarry"

 

[Mozza220559]

I first got into the smiths about 2 days ago. I've never looked back

 

[wastelandofyourhead]

The sycophantic slags all say :
"I knew him first, and I knew him well"

haha no I'm not trolling. Just a lyrical irony in relation to the topic.

I didn't know him first, but I've since known him well. Growing up in SoCal and listening to KROQ, I was exposed to him but I was 12 at the end of The Smiths reign, and not quite prepared for the heady material. As that tweener, I had started off with Depeche Mode, New Order, moved into The Cure a bit, and by the time I was 16, between Kill Uncle and the release of Your Arsenal, was when the love-affair took off.

Despite being behind the curve, I really started off with The Smiths at that age, by ordering the entire catalog from one of those BMG - 12 CDs for a penny mail-orders. Those songs have left the most indelible impression for the remainder of my life, as I'm sure they have for many here. I stayed current from then on with the solo career and have had the pleasure of seeing him 3 times, most notably for me was a small venue in nowhere Idaho that I drove up to see him in a crowd of less than 300. It was before the new band and they played a lot of The Smiths backlog. Absolutely magical.

As a side-note, i've eked out a few for-fun covers over the years as a backwards closet musician:
http://directionless.mynoisebleeds.com/host/music/JohnDietzel_IKnowItsGonnaHappenSomeday.mp3

 

[Anonymous]

I remember early '88 the "Playboy" video coming up on Super Channel (only Europeans get what I mean) from time to time. It was so strange, so different, out of place, this funny-looking guy singing he is the last of the famous international playboy. I felt the irony, but as i wrote, it was so out of any box - it was Morrissey the persona, his weird dancing, the quiffs that got me. Then we i tried to get the song, all I could purchase were "Interesting Drug" and Viva Hate. And it started there.

 

[CrystalGeezer]

Freshman year High School, El Modena on Chapman in Orange. Fall 1989. Zero period Marching Band practice in the music room just off the cafeteria. I was third chair clarinet. The first chair clarinetist, Wendy Wood, (I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried) was listening to her Walkman. She randomly put the headphones on my head and said "Listen to this." It was Panic, towards the end with all the Hang the DJs part over and over. It was like the skies parted and God spoke to my brain, that voice. I needed more. I went to The Werehouse like a junkie every chance I could get and bought every Smiths tape and Viva Hate and was hooked for life. Then he toured for the first time solo in America and I saw all the shows within driving distance though I wasn't old enough to drive yet and once I saw him live I felt in love. It's indescribable.

 

[Deleted member 1074]

Freshman year High School, El Modena on Chapman in Orange. Fall 1989. Zero period Marching Band practice in the music room just off the cafeteria. I was third chair clarinet. The first chair clarinetist, Wendy Wood, (I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried) was listening to her Walkman. She randomly put the headphones on my head and said "Listen to this." It was Panic, towards the end with all the Hang the DJs part over and over. It was like the skies parted and God spoke to my brain, that voice. I needed more. I went to The Werehouse like a junkie every chance I could get and bought every Smiths tape and Viva Hate and was hooked for life. Then he toured for the first time solo in America and I saw all the shows within driving distance though I wasn't old enough to drive yet and once I saw him live I felt in love. It's indescribable.

I bet you really just jumped on the Quarry bandwagon like most of the people here these days...

 

[Adeptly_Inept]

November last year. I was going through a phase where I was obsessed with folk music from the 60s and 70s. I was very interested in Tim Buckley's work which eventually lead me to Jeff Buckley who did a cover of 'I Know It's Over' which I fell in love with. Someone on YouTube mentioned that it was a Smiths' song so I had a listen and almost cried at the lyrical and musical magnificence.

I really fell in love when I heard the opening line of 'How Soon Is Now' ("I am the sun and the heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar"). Soon I began listening to Smiths quite obsessively, and it was the first time I gaffawed at the words of a lyricist because they described situations/feelings that were VERY close to home - and frighteningly so!

If I had discovered Morrissey/the Smiths during my early teens, the years to follow would have been much easier to cope with.

 

[northernleech]

1985 ... second last year of high school in north east england. Saw a tv performance (live in oxford ?) On whistle test or the tube , they did headmaster ritual ... knew of them from TCM and WDDIM but they didnt grab me then . Loved the more aggressive sound and a girl in my class did me a tape of meat is murder ( sarah bowyers was her name ) ... first purchase was shakespears sister vinyl . Never saw them live , first solo moz was 91 in doncaster, on about 30 moz gigs now ... and now the end is near , love the new songs but if he is not careful he is gonna end his days like some of the idols he mentions in autobiography ... shuffling around alone in a dark room , bitter n twisted and blaming everyone but himself .... kenneth williams understudy never seemed more apt

 

[CrystalGeezer]

I bet you really just jumped on the Quarry bandwagon like most of the people here these days...

Some other a-hole came out and sang that night. I don't recall his name as his performance wasn't particularly noteworthy.

 

[CrystalGeezer]

I first got into the smiths about 2 days ago. I've never looked back

Lol..

 

[Deleted member 1074]

Some other a-hole came out and sang that night. I don't recall his name as his performance wasn't particularly noteworthy.

eBay ships really fast these days.

 

[CrystalGeezer]

eBay ships really fast these days.

Srsly? You think I'd buy a ticket stub to fake prove I was at a concert over twenty years ago? Who do you think I am... Kristeen?

 

[Deleted member 1074]

Srsly? You think I'd buy a ticket stub to fake prove I was at a concert over twenty years ago? Who do you think I am... Kristeen?

No, I do not think you're Kristeen. Kristeen actually has a relationship with Morrissey...