"The Smiths" album turns 40 - various articles (February 20, 2024)

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Backloaded: The Smiths’s Self-Titled Debut Album Turns 40

In hindsight, the band's debut plays like an inverse of their final album.



Why The Smiths' 1984 debut is their most underrated album

Morrissey, Marr and co's first LP lives in the shadow of The Queen Is Dead, but it's a strong statement of intent.



Via @BookishBoy:

This One Is Different Because It’s Us: The Smiths at 40

On this day in 1984, four Manchester boys put out an album that would change the destiny of rock and pop music forever.


Seeing a few of these - will collate them here.
FWD.

 
But was that the intended album cover? I believe he initially didn’t want to crop it.
Hmmm, after some googling, I may be wrong about that. But I did find that ‘Little Joe’ was also used for the cover of The Stones ‘Sticky Fingers’ album. well, just his crotch.

In regards to The Smiths album, it does perfectly reflect the mood of the record.

Agree, about the production. Wish Marr would remix it, just to hear it.


‘We have an album released on 20th February and I really do expect the highest critical praise for it. It's a very, very good album. It is a signal post in music."
- Morrissey, Record Mirror, 11 February 1984

"All the elements of the Smiths are there. There's nothing lost, I'm sure of it. Our producer John Porter was the perfect studio technician for us. He got some amazing subtleties but at the same time we were putting some things down in just a couple of takes."
- Johnny Marr, Sounds, 25 February 1984

"I'm really ready to be burned at the stake in total defence of that record. It means so much to me that I could never explain, however long you gave me. It becomes almost difficult and one is just simply swamped in emotion about the whole thing. It's getting to the point where I almost can't even talk about it, which many people will see as an absolute blessing. It just seems absolutely perfect to me. From my own personal standpoint, it seems to convey exactly what I wanted it to."
- Morrissey, Melody Maker, 3 March 1984

"Looking back on the first album now I can say that I'm not as madly keen on it as I was. I think that a lot of the fire was missing on it and most of our supporters realise that as well. Although having said that, 'Still Ill' and 'Suffer Little Children' and 'Hand That Rocks' are all still great songs."
- Johnny Marr, Melody Maker, 2 August 1985

What was your opinion of the first album?
"I haven't listened to it in ages. I was happy that people were getting a chance to hear us, because we were better than anyone else at the time and I just thought I was happy to make a record. Just that it existed and the songs were there for people to hear was enough for me. It wasn't until people started mentioning the production that I noticed it, really."
How do you feel about the production?
"I think the only way that record could have got made was for John Porter to come in and show us how to make a record properly, which is what he did. He showed me how to make a record."
- Johnny Marr, Record Collector, November/December 1992

"John Porter (producer) suggested getting that bloke Paul Carrack in on keyboards to see what would happen, and I thought it really brought it alive."
- Andy Rourke on 'I Don't Owe You Anything', Select, April 1993

"Even with the sleeve, you know, for 'The Smiths,' Johnny said to me, Uh, I've got the cover of the new album. And it's a picture of a bloke going down on another bloke. So I'm like, Great! Fan-ta-stic! Hey, mam, look what I've been doing the last eight months! And I thought, well, how far do we want to take this? Because of course it's porn but straight away it starts you thinking, and that's what I mean when I say I maybe wasn't that clued in because Johnny and Morrissey were classic music fans for many years, and I'm sure they'd already been in Top Of The Pops in their heads, and they'd already thought about the things that have to be done to be creative, instead of just going blindly ahead and just falling by the wayside."
- Mike Joyce, Select, April 1993

"I didn't think it was the best debut of all time, I just thought it was the best record out at the time. I haven't listened to it for ages. I know it's a great collection of songs. It became the norm to criticise it. People echo what they've heard in the press."
- Johnny Marr, Select, December 1993

"Rolling Stone cite the first album as the hidden gem. That baffles me. I thought it was so badly produced. And that matters if you're stood behind a mike singing your heart out. A great glut of Smiths records were badly produced. I remember a drive from Brixton to Derby where I listened on a Walkman to The Smiths' first album which we'd recorded for the second time and I turned to Geoff Travis on my right and John Porter on my left and said, This is not good enough, and they both squashed me in the seat and said that it cost f60,000, it has to be released, there's no going back. I had two very moist cheeks and there's an anger there that has never subsided, because The Smiths' first album should have been so much better than it was. (Laughs) Oh, how boring!"
- Morrissey, Q, April 1994

"The thing that sticks in my mind is not really liking the sound of the record. It wasn't anybody's fault, particularly - just time and budget limitations. Suffer Little Children has certainly got the atmosphere that I intended, and Pretty Girls Make Graves was probably good as it was ever going to be... whatever that means! ...a lot of the album was actually recorded with a '54 Telecaster belonging to John Porter. I used a Rickenbacker 360 12-string as well, and that was the guitar which subsequently got all the attention, but in fact it was mainly the Tele, and a bit of Les Paul. Overall, what I really didn't like about the records then was the amp, the Roland Jazz Chorus - that's the f***in' prime suspect. Hey man, it was the '80s! They sounded fine to the player, but I think they failed out front. There seemed to be [a] big hole in the sound..."
- Johnny Marr, The Guitar Magazine, January 1997

"What's going on in the rest of that picture is pretty interesting," says The Smiths' drummer today. "You know, with another geezer. Morrissey's going, 'This is the album cover,' and I'm like (tired resignation), Oh great, cool, whatever. After the cover of Hand In Glove, this was like, Wa-a-a-it, hold on a minute. Very cleverly he didn't tell me the picture was going to be cropped. I could imagine my parents going (Mrs Doyle voice): 'Well, that's nice, Michael.' The local priest, all my relatives..."
- Mike Joyce, Mojo, March 2000

"People echo what they've heard in the press (Marr)" ... enough said.
I find it funny how journalists have to preface any mention of Morrissey in some panicked frenzy of "accountability" ... no, just me?
I wish that groovy slab of plastic in my record collection the happiest of birthdays!
Screenshot 2024-02-20 at 8.37.10 pm.png
 
"People echo what they've heard in the press (Marr)" ... enough said.
I find it funny how journalists have to preface any mention of Morrissey in some panicked frenzy of "accountability" ... no, just me?
I wyouish that groovy slab of plastic in my record collection the happiest of birthdays!
View attachment 101796
If you repeat something over and over again - no matter how idiotic it is - people will start to believe it.
 

For what it's worth, this was my take on the album, written in 2010 for an online music blog:

"Everybody Wants To Be Joe Dallesandro"

A Look Back At The Smiths Debut Album:

It's all about sex you know!
No really...it is! Listen:
Early 1984, Interviewer; "It's been said that your songs are not so much 'love songs' as 'sex songs'..."
Morrissey; "Yes....though it sounds almost brutal, but....yes".
See!
Ask anyone what The Smiths greatest album is and more often than not will come the reply 'The Queen Is Dead'. Morrissey and Marr both claim that it's 'Strangeways, Here We Come', but they're both well off the mark. For me, everything that is great about The Smiths, everything that raises them well above any other band or cultural phenomenon that has existed in my lifetime, is their eponymous debut album. Everything that, for me, defines The Smiths can be found within their debut album and the accompanying singles and B-sides....everything, in fact, pre-'Meat Is Murder'. From 'Meat Is Murder' onwards The Smiths became a different(though still magnificent) band, but
'The Smiths' offered something totally anomalous, something totally out of step with the times, something loaded with menace, longing, dread, lust and of course....sex.

But first, a bit of contextualising.

Back in mid 1983, when I was still at school, I saw the movie 'Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush', a swinging 60s romp in which our hero played by Barry Evans(who would later find infamy as the teacher in the gruesome racist sit-com 'Mind Your Language') spent the movie trying to win the girl of his dreams and lose his virginity....though not necessarily at the same time. Through the course of the movie he gives a direct-to-camera running commentary, kind of like Michael Caine in 'Alfie'. A short time after this my folks decided I was old enough to watch mid-70s sex comedy 'Confessions Of A Window Cleaner', in which Robin Askwith as our hero Timmy Lea finds himself waist deep in sexual situations, again all the while delivering his thoughts to camera.
What, you may be asking has all this got to do with 'The Smiths'? Well, because of these films I imagined that my own adolescent fumblings would be accompanied by my giving some kind of running commentary to the waiting public. Obviously it wouldn't, but the reasons I fell in love with The Smiths is that the lyrical content, especially of 'The Smiths' sounded like the commentary I should have been giving.

'The Smiths' is an album full of sex.....straight sex, gay sex, bi-sex, underage sex, sex in cars, sex at the hands of a woman more masculine than the male protagonist, clumsy sex, sex that leads to unwanted pregnancy.....
It's an album that creates it's own world entirely, a perfectly contained world housed in bruise/lovebite coloured sleeve featuring a naked man. A world where Morrissey doesn't have too much of a past to conjure poetry from....you get the feeling that these are lyrics he HAD to write out of necessity rather than as a vocation. He still references school and the clumsiness of youth as though they were still occurring. These are the thoughts and words of a young man bursting to express himself in a way that would be incongruous to anything else happening in pop or rock at that, or indeed any time.
Back in the long cold Winter of 1983 my friends and I used to prowl the streets at night, bored senseless and literally busy doing nothing. We used to congregate at a café called The Fountain, an unglamorous greasy-spoon affair that no longer exists but which has become a fixture of our teenage folklore. Hence, it only seems appropriate that 'The Smiths' should begin with lumbering epic 'Reel Around the Fountain', a song that would take on a different meaning looking back. "It's time the tale were told// Of how you took a child// And you made him old...", not lyrics detailing child abuse as the right-wing press ranted at the time, but a gentle unfurling of the flag of manhood. Is it a kiss, is it sex that has made the child in Morrissey come of age? "15 minutes with you// Well, I wouldn't say no// Though people see no worth in you//....I do" The camaraderie of the outsiders....the love of the weird for the weird....YOU were young once, right? You know how it goes! "Reel around the fountain// Shove me on the patio// I'll take it...slowly" Remind me what this album is about again!
A crash of drums and we pound into 'You've Got Everything Now', Morrissey reflecting back to his school days when he was on top and his downtrodden companion wilted in his shadow. But now it's all change and Morrissey's jealousy and frustration at his former friend's good fortune leads to a perplexing infatuation that he struggles to handle; "But I don't want a lover// I just want to be seen...in the back of your car".
To my musically uneducated ears back in 1983 'Miserable Lie' sounded positively startling; a slow ponderous intro, "So goodbye// Please stay with your own kind// And I'll stay with mine", what is Morrissey's 'own kind' do you reckon? Then the song suddenly bursts into vibrant life, with a whole bizarre collage of clumsy, awkward, typical teenage sex; "Please put your tongue away// A little higher and we're well away" and "I look at yours// You laugh at mine// And love is just a miserable lie" This is followed by an insane coda in which Morrissey shrieks falsetto "I need advice// I need advice// For nobody ever looks at me twice!!" Surely the best use of Janov's primal scream therapy heard in music since John Lennon's scathing 'Mother'! It's often been said that this song along with 'Jeane' and 'Wonderful Woman' document Morrissey's infatuation with Linder Sterling.
And Morrissey's obsession with strong women continues into 'Pretty Girls Make Graves' in which Morrissey finds himself at the hands of a woman who is "...too rough// And I'm too delicate", a brave statement for any rock star to make unless they are fully prepared to dodge the brickbats of lazy, prejudiced opinion. As Morrissey's companion begs "Give in to lust//Give up to lust// Oh heaven knows we'll soon be dust ... " Morrissey refuses and watches as she goes off with another man. When you're 16, clumsy and shy, to hear someone actually put all this into the words of a pop song is incredibly liberating and inspiring. It's songs like these that, on hearing them at the right time, changed my DNA...Songs That Saved Your Life? You bet!
At this point I realise I haven't mentioned Johnny Marr yet, but with the next track it's impossible not to. 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle' is quite unlike anything else from that time, it features no chorus or middle eight to speak of, just a continuous guitar pattern over which Morrissey delivers a stream of consciousness tale of wanted/unwanted pregnancy, childhood and parenthood(what it's certainly NOT about is child abuse....is it, Garry f***ing Bushell??) Morrissey takes on the role of a (possible) parent looking in on the cradle which may contain his baby son and we're suddenly immersed in some of the most beautiful lyrical poetry; "Ceiling shadows shimmy by// And when the wardrobe towers like a beast of prey// There's sadness in your beautiful eyes// Oh, your untouched, unsoiled, wonderous eyes// My life down I shall lie// Should restless spirits try// To play tricks on your sacred mind// To tease, torment or tantalise" Oh frabjous day!! Oh joy!! Some of my friends mock or fail to understand my devotion to Morrissey and/or The Smiths, but I still recall the first time I heard this....it made me cry then, and it makes me cry now.
(If you're expecting 'This Charming Man' next then you obviously don't have the original vinyl version of the album. TCM was only included on the WEA CD reissues)

Side Two then....
How do I begin to write about 'Still Ill'? 'Still Ill' is THE song, the hook that ensnared me and pointed my life in a different direction. Truth be told, 'This Charming Man' is one of two songs that changed my life entirely; the other is 'Dog Eat Dog' by Adam & The Ants but I'd have to write an entire spiel about that song to try to explain why. 'This Charming Man' alerted me to The Smiths, the road to Damascus moment, but it was 'Still Ill' that sowed the seeds of a second heart.....one that would only ever beat or break for The Smiths. I can still recall when I first heard it....the John Peel show, early 1984...he'd just been given a copy of the album and played 'Still Ill' for David 'Kid' Jensen who WAS ill at the time. When Morrissey's voice first comes in, my entire life stopped in it's tracks....the old 'me' was gone, the new 'me' had arrived. That life affirming refrain, "Under the iron bridge we kissed..." OH Yessss!!!! Stirling is full of old bridges, iron or otherwise, and our lives seemed forever cast in their shadows....all teenage life was carried out under those bridges; underage drinking, messy fumblings, swaggering braggadocio, broken hearts and skinned knees.....Sore lips? We could but dream.

Morrissey has often regarded 'Hand in Glove' as the most important song he ever wrote and it's position as The Smiths' debut single(again housed in a twilight purple/grey sleeve with a naked man upon) bears this out. "The sun shines out of our behinds", their arrogance is not misplaced, "Yes we may be hidden by rags// But we've something they'll never have" ....once again, love amongst the outsiders.
Another single, 'What Difference Does It Make?" and another song seething with pent up lust. The way Morrissey growls "Oh, the Devil will find work for idle hands to do" followed shortly by "And now you make me feel so ashamed// Because I've only got two hands" you have to wonder just who Morrissey is attempting the dual-backed beast with....and more to the point, why does he need so many hands? Even though this was released as a single, The Smiths grew weary of the song very quickly and it disappeared from the live set after only a few plays. Still....that coruscating guitar intro gets me very time.
Let's jump a song now(which we'll come back to) and let's look at the closing track, 'Suffer Little Children'. Again, quite remarkable in it's set-up, no verse-chorus-middle-eight-brake-fade here, again Johnny Marr conjures a piece of extraordinary music leaving all peers in his wake. And Morrissey's lyrics? Well, these are the lyrics that convinced Johnny that he had a partner of equal genius here. Aaah, Morrissey and Marr....together as beautiful as a sunrise....apart, occasionally as ropey as an old cardigan. In 'Suffer Little Children' Morrissey exorcises his own personal ghosts by dealing with the Moors Murders, a crime which he was a potential victim of, given that he lived in that area at that time and was only 5 years old. Of course, the right-wing gutter press went apoplectic, again shrieking about child abuse, but Morrissey had pre-empted this and sought the blessings of the families of the victims, which he was granted. A tender, gorgeous ending to a remarkable album.
And there's still one song we've not spoken of....
There was a time that if you asked me my favourite Smiths song I would have replied 'Sweet and Tender Hooligan' but I think I was just trying to be a little clever. Then, for many years, it was 'Well I Wonder' from 'Meat Is Murder', a song that could easily have sat on this album, so beautiful, striking and exquisitely played it is. But, in truth, my favourite Smiths song is 'I Don't Owe You Anything'. No other song EVER captures my youth, my teenage frustration and exhilaration's like this one does. In our teenage years, my friends and I seemed to forever prowling the streets, doing nothing, going nowhere....just being. We'd walk the frozen pavements lit by the orange streetlamps, ill-dressed for the plummeting temperatures but uncaring. What were looking for? Where were we going? Was some great revelation about to be disclosed to us? Who knew? When my musical cohort Griff and I formed ~Sighrens~, one of the first lyrics Griff wrote was called 'The Last Of The Lights' which dealt with this very subject. In 'I Don't Owe You Anything' Morrissey is out on his own streets and his words resonated deep within me. "Bought on stolen wine// A nod was the first step// You knew very well what was coming next"; well maybe not stolen wine, but certainly underage purchased Merrydown Cider! "And did I really walk all this way// Just to hear you say// Oh, I don't want to go out tonight..." This is where it get's me...all those nights, walking to friends or a girl's house just to be casually knocked back...."...Oh but you will// For you must", and it's that tremor in Morrissey's voice on the word 'must' that does it! He knows that this is a time in which EVERY night is important, every night is an adventure, every night will be recalled and spoken of as the dulling grey of adulthood descends. In your mid/late teens EVERY night is SO important....OF COURSE they are going to come out with you....for they must!! "Too freely from your lips// Words prematurely sad"....more tear stained poetry far, far beyond his contemporaries, "You should not go to them// Let them come to you// Just like I do...", sage advice Steven, that way you don't look like an idiot and face constant rejection, I wasn't just listening, I was learning. And then, "Life is never kind// Oh, but I know what will make you smile tonight", and it's the way he quite audibly grins during this line that brings us back to what this album is all about.

'The Smiths' is easily the most played record in my entire collection, and time has been very kind to it. Some people used to argue that 'Hatful Of Hollow' was the better album as they believed it's lighter touch made it more palatable....Poppycock!! 'HOH' is whimsical and slender compared to it's dark, drunken, dangerous, delirious brother; it's leaden pall covering it like that first aching hangover. 'The Smiths' is a bruise that never fades, a keratoid scar upon my soul, a recollection of when my heart was full of hope and my head full of hormones. When I walked the streets with a layer of frost on my jacket and the taste of Revlon lipstick on my tongue. When a pop band could batter you senseless and leave you weeping on the pavement.

The most important album of my lifetime?

You've really have no idea...........
 
'HOH' is whimsical and slender compared to it's dark, drunken, dangerous, delirious brother; it's leaden pall covering it like that first aching hangover. 'The Smiths' is a bruise that never fades, a keratoid scar upon my soul, a recollection of when my heart was full of hope and my head full of hormones. When I walked the streets with a layer of frost on my jacket and the taste of Revlon lipstick on my tongue. When a pop band could batter you senseless and leave you weeping on the pavement.

The most important album of my lifetime?

You've really have no idea...........
I just love this.
 

For what it's worth, this was my take on the album, written in 2010 for an online music blog:

"Everybody Wants To Be Joe Dallesandro"

A Look Back At The Smiths Debut Album:

It's all about sex you know!
No really...it is! Listen:
Early 1984, Interviewer; "It's been said that your songs are not so much 'love songs' as 'sex songs'..."
Morrissey; "Yes....though it sounds almost brutal, but....yes".
See!
Ask anyone what The Smiths greatest album is and more often than not will come the reply 'The Queen Is Dead'. Morrissey and Marr both claim that it's 'Strangeways, Here We Come', but they're both well off the mark. For me, everything that is great about The Smiths, everything that raises them well above any other band or cultural phenomenon that has existed in my lifetime, is their eponymous debut album. Everything that, for me, defines The Smiths can be found within their debut album and the accompanying singles and B-sides....everything, in fact, pre-'Meat Is Murder'. From 'Meat Is Murder' onwards The Smiths became a different(though still magnificent) band, but
'The Smiths' offered something totally anomalous, something totally out of step with the times, something loaded with menace, longing, dread, lust and of course....sex.

But first, a bit of contextualising.

Back in mid 1983, when I was still at school, I saw the movie 'Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush', a swinging 60s romp in which our hero played by Barry Evans(who would later find infamy as the teacher in the gruesome racist sit-com 'Mind Your Language') spent the movie trying to win the girl of his dreams and lose his virginity....though not necessarily at the same time. Through the course of the movie he gives a direct-to-camera running commentary, kind of like Michael Caine in 'Alfie'. A short time after this my folks decided I was old enough to watch mid-70s sex comedy 'Confessions Of A Window Cleaner', in which Robin Askwith as our hero Timmy Lea finds himself waist deep in sexual situations, again all the while delivering his thoughts to camera.
What, you may be asking has all this got to do with 'The Smiths'? Well, because of these films I imagined that my own adolescent fumblings would be accompanied by my giving some kind of running commentary to the waiting public. Obviously it wouldn't, but the reasons I fell in love with The Smiths is that the lyrical content, especially of 'The Smiths' sounded like the commentary I should have been giving.

'The Smiths' is an album full of sex.....straight sex, gay sex, bi-sex, underage sex, sex in cars, sex at the hands of a woman more masculine than the male protagonist, clumsy sex, sex that leads to unwanted pregnancy.....
It's an album that creates it's own world entirely, a perfectly contained world housed in bruise/lovebite coloured sleeve featuring a naked man. A world where Morrissey doesn't have too much of a past to conjure poetry from....you get the feeling that these are lyrics he HAD to write out of necessity rather than as a vocation. He still references school and the clumsiness of youth as though they were still occurring. These are the thoughts and words of a young man bursting to express himself in a way that would be incongruous to anything else happening in pop or rock at that, or indeed any time.
Back in the long cold Winter of 1983 my friends and I used to prowl the streets at night, bored senseless and literally busy doing nothing. We used to congregate at a café called The Fountain, an unglamorous greasy-spoon affair that no longer exists but which has become a fixture of our teenage folklore. Hence, it only seems appropriate that 'The Smiths' should begin with lumbering epic 'Reel Around the Fountain', a song that would take on a different meaning looking back. "It's time the tale were told// Of how you took a child// And you made him old...", not lyrics detailing child abuse as the right-wing press ranted at the time, but a gentle unfurling of the flag of manhood. Is it a kiss, is it sex that has made the child in Morrissey come of age? "15 minutes with you// Well, I wouldn't say no// Though people see no worth in you//....I do" The camaraderie of the outsiders....the love of the weird for the weird....YOU were young once, right? You know how it goes! "Reel around the fountain// Shove me on the patio// I'll take it...slowly" Remind me what this album is about again!
A crash of drums and we pound into 'You've Got Everything Now', Morrissey reflecting back to his school days when he was on top and his downtrodden companion wilted in his shadow. But now it's all change and Morrissey's jealousy and frustration at his former friend's good fortune leads to a perplexing infatuation that he struggles to handle; "But I don't want a lover// I just want to be seen...in the back of your car".
To my musically uneducated ears back in 1983 'Miserable Lie' sounded positively startling; a slow ponderous intro, "So goodbye// Please stay with your own kind// And I'll stay with mine", what is Morrissey's 'own kind' do you reckon? Then the song suddenly bursts into vibrant life, with a whole bizarre collage of clumsy, awkward, typical teenage sex; "Please put your tongue away// A little higher and we're well away" and "I look at yours// You laugh at mine// And love is just a miserable lie" This is followed by an insane coda in which Morrissey shrieks falsetto "I need advice// I need advice// For nobody ever looks at me twice!!" Surely the best use of Janov's primal scream therapy heard in music since John Lennon's scathing 'Mother'! It's often been said that this song along with 'Jeane' and 'Wonderful Woman' document Morrissey's infatuation with Linder Sterling.
And Morrissey's obsession with strong women continues into 'Pretty Girls Make Graves' in which Morrissey finds himself at the hands of a woman who is "...too rough// And I'm too delicate", a brave statement for any rock star to make unless they are fully prepared to dodge the brickbats of lazy, prejudiced opinion. As Morrissey's companion begs "Give in to lust//Give up to lust// Oh heaven knows we'll soon be dust ... " Morrissey refuses and watches as she goes off with another man. When you're 16, clumsy and shy, to hear someone actually put all this into the words of a pop song is incredibly liberating and inspiring. It's songs like these that, on hearing them at the right time, changed my DNA...Songs That Saved Your Life? You bet!
At this point I realise I haven't mentioned Johnny Marr yet, but with the next track it's impossible not to. 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle' is quite unlike anything else from that time, it features no chorus or middle eight to speak of, just a continuous guitar pattern over which Morrissey delivers a stream of consciousness tale of wanted/unwanted pregnancy, childhood and parenthood(what it's certainly NOT about is child abuse....is it, Garry f***ing Bushell??) Morrissey takes on the role of a (possible) parent looking in on the cradle which may contain his baby son and we're suddenly immersed in some of the most beautiful lyrical poetry; "Ceiling shadows shimmy by// And when the wardrobe towers like a beast of prey// There's sadness in your beautiful eyes// Oh, your untouched, unsoiled, wonderous eyes// My life down I shall lie// Should restless spirits try// To play tricks on your sacred mind// To tease, torment or tantalise" Oh frabjous day!! Oh joy!! Some of my friends mock or fail to understand my devotion to Morrissey and/or The Smiths, but I still recall the first time I heard this....it made me cry then, and it makes me cry now.
(If you're expecting 'This Charming Man' next then you obviously don't have the original vinyl version of the album. TCM was only included on the WEA CD reissues)

Side Two then....
How do I begin to write about 'Still Ill'? 'Still Ill' is THE song, the hook that ensnared me and pointed my life in a different direction. Truth be told, 'This Charming Man' is one of two songs that changed my life entirely; the other is 'Dog Eat Dog' by Adam & The Ants but I'd have to write an entire spiel about that song to try to explain why. 'This Charming Man' alerted me to The Smiths, the road to Damascus moment, but it was 'Still Ill' that sowed the seeds of a second heart.....one that would only ever beat or break for The Smiths. I can still recall when I first heard it....the John Peel show, early 1984...he'd just been given a copy of the album and played 'Still Ill' for David 'Kid' Jensen who WAS ill at the time. When Morrissey's voice first comes in, my entire life stopped in it's tracks....the old 'me' was gone, the new 'me' had arrived. That life affirming refrain, "Under the iron bridge we kissed..." OH Yessss!!!! Stirling is full of old bridges, iron or otherwise, and our lives seemed forever cast in their shadows....all teenage life was carried out under those bridges; underage drinking, messy fumblings, swaggering braggadocio, broken hearts and skinned knees.....Sore lips? We could but dream.

Morrissey has often regarded 'Hand in Glove' as the most important song he ever wrote and it's position as The Smiths' debut single(again housed in a twilight purple/grey sleeve with a naked man upon) bears this out. "The sun shines out of our behinds", their arrogance is not misplaced, "Yes we may be hidden by rags// But we've something they'll never have" ....once again, love amongst the outsiders.
Another single, 'What Difference Does It Make?" and another song seething with pent up lust. The way Morrissey growls "Oh, the Devil will find work for idle hands to do" followed shortly by "And now you make me feel so ashamed// Because I've only got two hands" you have to wonder just who Morrissey is attempting the dual-backed beast with....and more to the point, why does he need so many hands? Even though this was released as a single, The Smiths grew weary of the song very quickly and it disappeared from the live set after only a few plays. Still....that coruscating guitar intro gets me very time.
Let's jump a song now(which we'll come back to) and let's look at the closing track, 'Suffer Little Children'. Again, quite remarkable in it's set-up, no verse-chorus-middle-eight-brake-fade here, again Johnny Marr conjures a piece of extraordinary music leaving all peers in his wake. And Morrissey's lyrics? Well, these are the lyrics that convinced Johnny that he had a partner of equal genius here. Aaah, Morrissey and Marr....together as beautiful as a sunrise....apart, occasionally as ropey as an old cardigan. In 'Suffer Little Children' Morrissey exorcises his own personal ghosts by dealing with the Moors Murders, a crime which he was a potential victim of, given that he lived in that area at that time and was only 5 years old. Of course, the right-wing gutter press went apoplectic, again shrieking about child abuse, but Morrissey had pre-empted this and sought the blessings of the families of the victims, which he was granted. A tender, gorgeous ending to a remarkable album.
And there's still one song we've not spoken of....
There was a time that if you asked me my favourite Smiths song I would have replied 'Sweet and Tender Hooligan' but I think I was just trying to be a little clever. Then, for many years, it was 'Well I Wonder' from 'Meat Is Murder', a song that could easily have sat on this album, so beautiful, striking and exquisitely played it is. But, in truth, my favourite Smiths song is 'I Don't Owe You Anything'. No other song EVER captures my youth, my teenage frustration and exhilaration's like this one does. In our teenage years, my friends and I seemed to forever prowling the streets, doing nothing, going nowhere....just being. We'd walk the frozen pavements lit by the orange streetlamps, ill-dressed for the plummeting temperatures but uncaring. What were looking for? Where were we going? Was some great revelation about to be disclosed to us? Who knew? When my musical cohort Griff and I formed ~Sighrens~, one of the first lyrics Griff wrote was called 'The Last Of The Lights' which dealt with this very subject. In 'I Don't Owe You Anything' Morrissey is out on his own streets and his words resonated deep within me. "Bought on stolen wine// A nod was the first step// You knew very well what was coming next"; well maybe not stolen wine, but certainly underage purchased Merrydown Cider! "And did I really walk all this way// Just to hear you say// Oh, I don't want to go out tonight..." This is where it get's me...all those nights, walking to friends or a girl's house just to be casually knocked back...."...Oh but you will// For you must", and it's that tremor in Morrissey's voice on the word 'must' that does it! He knows that this is a time in which EVERY night is important, every night is an adventure, every night will be recalled and spoken of as the dulling grey of adulthood descends. In your mid/late teens EVERY night is SO important....OF COURSE they are going to come out with you....for they must!! "Too freely from your lips// Words prematurely sad"....more tear stained poetry far, far beyond his contemporaries, "You should not go to them// Let them come to you// Just like I do...", sage advice Steven, that way you don't look like an idiot and face constant rejection, I wasn't just listening, I was learning. And then, "Life is never kind// Oh, but I know what will make you smile tonight", and it's the way he quite audibly grins during this line that brings us back to what this album is all about.

'The Smiths' is easily the most played record in my entire collection, and time has been very kind to it. Some people used to argue that 'Hatful Of Hollow' was the better album as they believed it's lighter touch made it more palatable....Poppycock!! 'HOH' is whimsical and slender compared to it's dark, drunken, dangerous, delirious brother; it's leaden pall covering it like that first aching hangover. 'The Smiths' is a bruise that never fades, a keratoid scar upon my soul, a recollection of when my heart was full of hope and my head full of hormones. When I walked the streets with a layer of frost on my jacket and the taste of Revlon lipstick on my tongue. When a pop band could batter you senseless and leave you weeping on the pavement.

The most important album of my lifetime?

You've really have no idea...........
A lovely read!
 
I

It would be interesting to know what was the motivation to crop it. Although, given the cover of Hand in Glove, I can't imagine it was to spare anyone any blushes. But it was a good decision to crop it. Perhaps a happy accident? The pic of both actors together has comical overtones - the cropped pic of Joe on his own, head bowed, is moody and arty. Just right for the album.

Yes, it’s almost abstract at first glance, until one adjusts to see what it is.
 
My first and only Smiths concert 28 Feb 1984 in Anson rooms Bristol. I had a friend Ianto who was in Uni there and head of the Ents committee who got us in on the guest list. They had been booked prior to Xmas to play for £150 buut had to cancel. Prices for gigs had rammed up following the success of the first album but they had to play the gig for the same amount as contracted to do so. We sat in the hall alone for a few hours and saw the Telephone boxes soundcheck, unfortunately never saw the Smiths come out. I had a back stage pass and ran over to their room after the gig but they d gone. It was a wonderful gig and lovely to be able to hear 2 different bootlegs of it. I still have the poster.
 
Can I just say what a bloody amazing album cover that was. Moz took a saucy and salacious still from a Warhol movie, cropped it, and hey presto, it becomes an iconic portrait of teenage angst. Just brilliant.
The songs on the album are of course superb. The production left a lot to be desired. But that's first albums for you.

Each release you bought from The Smiths was like a prize - great to listen to and really interesting to look at also. He has such a gift. Even solo, I like how during the World Of Morrissey/Southpaw Grammar era he was creating album covers again (that didn't have his picture). Using the Duotone method that he loved using during The Smiths. I'd love if he got back to that.

The US release has TCM and Hand In Glove (louder w/o the fade-in). Both of those tracks were very well produced and really stood out in comparison to Side A, sound-wise. Production wasn't uniform on Side B either, I remember there was such a drop in sound after Hand In Glove and into What Difference. Great songs on the LP though. My fave track --- I Don't Owe You Anything.
 
No one else sounds like Moz on that song. Absolutely unique.
I had a conversation with my fiance about it the other day while it was spinning on my record player, kinda went like this:

Him: "...What the heck is up with this part?"
Me: "Isn't it lovely?"
Him: "A bit annoying.."
Me: "In a lovely way?"
Him: "I guess. Its.. uniquely annoying."

I'll take that as a positive thing coming from him.

I personally don't find it annoying, to me it's like a strange bird singing its mating song. I love singing it in the car, in falsetto to match him, of course. So fun. I love this song. It was the most impactful to me out of any Smiths song when I first heard it.
 

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