This is a post I've been meaning to write for some time. I've thought often about writing it, but always felt as if I should leave things longer so that there would be more for me to say.
Over the past 6 months, The Smiths have come to totally monopolise my entire listening schedule. They're one of those bands who are cherished and despised in equal measure and, ever since they first arrived on my radar a few years ago, I didn't feel very inclined either way. I certainly didn't hate them, but kamikaze like devotion given by their fans and the Godlike status that music journalist and publications afforded them totally baffled me. I just didn't get it.
They broke in up in 1987 and, whilst I love older music, they just didn't seem to be relevant to me. I'd see people commenting on the internet that they were "the only band who ever mattered" and my response would just be "...really?" The only way they ever seemed to push themselves into reality nowadays seemed to be, for me, Morrissey's sarcastic jibes directed at whatever he took a dislike to in that particular interview. Whenever I discussed the bloke with anyone else who had a passing knowledge the consensus seemed to be "what a bell end". Indeed, one of my friend likes to joke that his autobiography will be called The Horrible Things I Say. When Morrissey announced his autobiography was complete, I joked to my friend that he'd have to rethink his title. "No" he replied, "mine's not gonna be titled Moaning Vegan C**t".
So, if you'd asked me just under a year ago, I'd have said that it was highly unlikely that I'd ever become even a passing fan of The Smiths or their maverick frontman, the Pope of Mope, the sullen, carrot eating, Mancunian twazzock.
But then one day, roundabout December I guess, I just got it. Something just clicked. I scrolled across The Very Best of The Smiths in my iTunes, which I'd swiped a couple of years ago from my dad. I just thought "hmm, let's have another listen shall we. You never know". I started listening to "Ask", mainly because its title stood out amongst the otherwise verbose song titles.
Still possessing the view that The Smiths were, essentially, a bunch of miserable knobheads, the shimmering, joyous, bouncy riff of "Ask" took me totally by surprise. For 3 minutes, 10 seconds, I sat there utterly entranced. The song was one of the most euphoric, cleverly written, unabashedly free pieces I'd ever heard. My tiny little 18 year old mind was totally unravelled by this romantic, detailed, lush explosion of song writing.
After falling in love with "Ask", I dove head first into the rest of it. I don't know where to begin because all of it just began to open itself up to me. "Panic", "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side", "William, It Was Really Nothing" were the ones that stood out fastest, but it all began to make sense. I got a hold of their studio albums and immersed myself in each of them, especially The Queen is Dead and The Smiths.
I'm in love with them now. Like I've never been with a band before. So what is it? What does it for me, when for so many others they're a repellent band of miserabilists?
The main thing for me is that Morrissey, lyrically, hits it on the head every time. He's not a self pitying, arrogant twat lyrically - certainly not in The Smiths. For me, almost every word that drips off his tongue in The Smiths lyrical catalogue, perfectly captures whatever emotion he's talking about, because he sings about things that I can identify with. There are plenty of songs which I love because I can apply the lyrics to my life, and indeed some artists who, mostly, I embrace lyrically. But so often I've found myself listening to people describing how there's one artist above all others who is just THE ARTIST for them. The life changer. And I'd never really felt like that about anyone. No one quite got it. Until The Smiths. A band from 25 years ago, still as relevant now as when they changed the world back then.
Take, for a example, "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out", regarded by many as the best Smiths song, and not without reason. I could go into detail about the whole song, but the chorus is just one of the best moments in the history of music. For me, it's the perfect description of friendship:
"And if a double decker bus,
Crashes into us,
To die by your side,
Is such a heavenly way to die.
And if a ten tonne truck,
Killed the both of us,
To die by your side,
Well the pleasure, the privilege is mine".
I mean, what more could you ever want to say to someone that you love dearly? People might say that this is a fairly morbid declaration to make, but he pulls it off so elegantly. It's in his vocal delivery, but also in the choices of phrase - "the pleasure, the privilege is mine". He makes it sound like dying alongside the person you hold dearest is like taking one last, grinning bow before the curtain whips you out of sight.
I see nothing but truth here, and elsewhere in Morrissey's lyrics. He said once in an interview with Miracle Maker that The Smiths were formed because it was "...time that the ordinary folk of the world showed their faces". In an age where pop music is full of brainless morons who produce the most banal, emotionally bankrupt dross imaginable, dumbing their audience down and treating them like idiots, and even "indie music" has been bastardized and simplified by years of scroungers like Razorlight, Kaiser Chiefs and The Wombats, The Smiths speak to me and articulate things in a way that I can't imagine any other group could. I'm not a massive social outcast, but as someone whose tastes vary a lot from most people I know, hearing The Smiths is such a comforting thing. Plenty of music is MADE for musical outsiders, but not a lot of it really talks about what it's like to BE a musical outsider. Their song "Panic" sums it up best, and I feature some lyrics from that later.
Something you begin to realise with The Smiths as soon as you give them the attention they deserve is that they are not the miserable gits that some people take them for. When you understand The Smiths, even singing their most tragic sounding songs is a euphoric kind of experience, because they're so true. Morrissey sums it up perfectly in this interview, the date and source of which I can't locate:
Why is it that you never write a song that could be described as happy?
"Do you really think that I don't? Not even with a massive stretch of the imagination? Isn't there a happiness, a certain release in actually saying things? It's like when you turn around to your best friend, and say - 'Well, actually I despise you, and I've despised you since we were in third year' - I mean, that's really a massive relief, don't you find? Turning around to your parents and saying, 'I'm not living in this dump anymore'... come on, connect the two ... get your knitting needle out!"
I wouldn't call that happiness. Smug, maybe.
"But it is! It is! It's like shedding skin! It is a form of happiness. We shouldn't think of happiness as one thing! Happiness is eating an ice cream, happiness can be Bernard Manning... it can be... an old woman falling off a donkey! I don't know, for heaven's sake, I don't know."
The very act of just SAYING something, even if it's expressing sadness or dislike, lifts a weight of your shoulders that equates to happiness - if you're willing to expand your definition of happiness.
More than that however, The Smiths are bloody hilarious. John Peel once said they're the only band who can make him laugh out loud. Too bloody right! Try this from "William, It Was Really Nothing":
"How can you stay with a fat girl who says
'Ohhhh, would you like to marry me?
And if you like you can buy the ring!"
Or "Frankly, Mr Shankly":
"Frankly, Mr. Shankly, this position I've held
It pays my way and it corrodes my soul
Oh, I didn't realise that you wrote poetry
I didn't realise you wrote such bloody awful poetry, Mr. Shankly"
Or "Panic":
"Burn down the disco,
Hang the blessed DJ,
Because the music that they constantly play...
IT SAYS NOTHING TO ME ABOUT MY LIFE!
Hang the blessed DJ"
Or this rather unsettling image of Prince Charles from "The Queen is Dead":
"I said Charles, don't you ever crave
To appear on the front of the Daily Mail
Dressed in your Mother's bridal veil ?"
Morrissey's wit is one of the most captivating things about him, and it's got him into a lot of trouble, but it's one of the best things about his lyrics. Also, his vocal delivery can give lyrics which aren't immediately hilarious a strangely comical air, like "Bigmouth Strikes Again".
The way that The Smiths music combines with the lyrics is stunning as well. There are plenty of Smiths songs which are downbeat and tragic sounding, but there are an equal number which musically are stunningly exuberant and euphoric or thumping and danceable - "The Headmaster Ritual", "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side", "Panic", "Vicar in a Tutu", "Girlfriend in a Coma", "Jeane", the list is endless.
I've gone on far too long here, but whilst we're on the subject of music, Johnny Marr's guitar work, combined with the hugely underrated bass and drum work of Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce, basically formed the template for all indie music ever. The more I listen, the more I appreciate that all of the indie music I love owes nearly everything to The Smiths.
Like I said near the start, I never, ever thought I'd become an ardent lover of The Smiths. But I'm captivated. My love for other bands hasn't diminished, but my perception of what makes a band MATTER is being strongly altered. I mentioned at the start that I once saw on a Smiths fan page, before I started liking them, that one user has simply written "the only band that ever mattered". Part of me hesitates to say it but, for me, that's starting to be more than a little bit true.
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