Heaven knows they're legendary now

Some twenty years after The Smiths’ demise, the group continue to cast a very long shadow over contemporary rock music. Having been a huge influence on the four main players in the Britpop movement – Blur, Oasis, Suede and Pulp – the Mancunian quartet are now cited as a source of inspiration by the leading lights of the current UK indie scene, such as Babyshambles, Bloc Party, Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand. Additionally, the band have also been praised by major US alternative acts like The Killers, Pearl Jam and Nine Inch Nails.

Like all great bands, The Smiths were comprised of strong personalities who – despite the subsequent messy recriminations – complemented each other superbly as musicians. Bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce provided the ideal rhythmic underpinning for the compositions of Morrissey and Johnny Marr, one of the most potent songwriting partnerships in the history of British rock.
In the bleak musical landscape of the mid-’80s, when the charts were largely dominated by bland synth-pop, Marr’s dazzling guitar playing and Morrissey’s mordantly witty lyrics – allied to the band’s understated look – brought a healthy dose of gritty reality back into rock ‘n’ roll.
As luck would have it, two the key figures in The Smiths’ saga – Marr and producer Stephen Street – recently arrived in Dublin within days of each other to attend different events. It provided the ideal opportunity to re-examine The Smiths’ story, a tale that, in the classic rock tradition, encompasses the highs of huge success and amazing music, as well as the lows of inter-band fighting, drug addiction, an acrimonious break-up and, eventually, litigation.
Although The Smiths were in many ways a quintessentially English band, all of the group were of Irish extraction, a background they shared with other Manchester musicians such as the Gallagher brothers and The Stone Roses’ Mani. Remarkably, in the case of Mani and Marr, the connection is even more localised, with both of the musicians’ families hailing from Co. Kildare.
“My family moved from Kildare to Manchester in the early ’60s,” explains Marr. “They came from working the fields and all of this. So all around me was the shamrock, and John F Kennedy – it being the ’60s – and the Pope, and all this sort of stuff. Also, I was in Kildare all the time until I was about eight or nine. I mean, I went to school in Manchester, but there was chunks of school that I missed cause I was in Ireland. I think my family were quite homesick.
“But at the same time, I was fortunate, because my particular family were very pleased to have had the privilege to go to Manchester. They had a bit of money – they didn’t have much – but they had a bit, for the first time. So my parents, quite rightly I think, instilled in me a real love of Manchester.”
Marr’s two main passions as a teenager were football and music, and by the time The Smiths formed in 1982 (when he just 19), he was already a virtuoso guitar player. Deciding they didn’t want to sign with Tony Wilson’s Factory Records (“Factory were the establishment, and they were of the generation who I was kinda kicking against,” says Marr), The Smiths instead chose to pursue a deal with Geoff Travis’ Rough Trade label. Travis was impressed with the group’s demo of ‘Hand In Glove’ and immediately signed them.
Whilst ‘Hand In Glove’ was championed by John Peel and attracted some attention in underground circles, it was The Smiths’ follow-up single, the sublime ‘This Charming Man’, that really heralded the band’s arrival on the national stage. The single’s Top 30 chart placing also resulted in Marr realising his long-cherished ambition of appearing on Top Of The Pops.
“Any musicians of my era will tell you that Top Of The Pops was like… that was the big dream, if you grew up in the ’70s,” he says. “Our performance went out live, and we were just blooming. It’s not like the peak, we had many peaks. We peaked immediately, and then we peaked again, and we peaked again... But when ‘This Charming Man’ went in the charts, it felt like... there’s a lot that could be said about it, and other people would probably be able to talk about it better than I can, cause I was in the middle of it. “But it did feel like a real victory, against Tina Turner and Level 42. And Howard Jones, and Paul Young. But, it was a real triumphant moment, our being on Top Of The Pops. It was an odd record, it was brilliant, and Morrissey was unveiled to the public, which I was totally, and am still in favour of, in case anyone’s wondering.”

Early in 1984, The Smiths released their self-titled debut album, which met with glowing reviews in the music press (a level of acclaim the band would continue to enjoy throughout their career) and reached number two on the UK charts. An incredibly prolific outfit, by the following May the band had already released a brand new single, ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’. It was at this session that they first met Stephen Street.
“They were still working with John Porter at the time, who co-produced the first album,” remembers Street. “I was working at Island Records’ studio in London, and they came in to do that song. I engineered the session, and afterwards Johnny and Morrissey took my number and said, ‘We’d love to do more work with you.’ But then they did the next single, ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’, and I wasn’t on the session at all. Very soon after that, though, I got a call from Geoff Travis, and he said, ‘The guys want to have a go at producing the next album themselves, but would like you to be the engineer?’ I said, ‘I’d love to'.”
Having come on board as engineer for The Smiths’ second album, Meat Is Murder, Street was impressed with the group’s work ethic.
“They never stopped working,” he says. “It was relentless. Apart from perhaps Strangeways, we never really did an album session all in one go. All the other albums were recorded in bits and pieces, because of the demands on the band to play dates in Europe and so forth. I think, though, there’s that period that most great artists go through, usually in their mid-twenties – or early twenties, in The Smiths’ case – where things really click and they’re at the height of their powers.
“And, yeah, it seemed to be very easy for them, in some ways. We never went in to record and came up against a brick wall, where there was no creative flow. Every time we went into the studio, it was like, ‘Tape rolling, let’s go'. It was very inspiring.”
While the band would eventually succumb to internal tensions, Street is keen to emphasise that, at the time, they were a very tight-knit unit.
“People shouldn’t overlook the contribution that Mike and Andy made,” he says. “All of that post-Smiths fall-out, and Morrissey saying they were like spare parts of a lawnmower, that’s rubbish. At the time, they were very close, and Morrissey was very protective of his little gang. They were all essential.”
Meat Is Murder, released in February 1985, would prove to be perhaps The Smiths’ most musically eclectic record, and also their only studio album to top the UK charts. Maintaining their hectic schedule, that autumn the band released another new single, ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’, and also completed tours of America and the UK in between recording the album that many regard as their masterpiece, The Queen Is Dead.
The record saw Morrissey and Marr hit a new peak of creative excellence. Marr’s guitar playing on tunes such as the storming title track and the single ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ was inspired, whilst songs like ‘I Know It’s Over’ and ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ contained some of Morrissey’s most affecting lyrics to date. However, despite the album’s exalted status, both Morrissey and, until recently, Marr have stated their preference for The Smiths’ final album, Strangeways, Here We Come. Street, too, feels Strangeways is the better record.
“The Queen Is Dead was strange, because it was recorded very piecemeal,” he recalls. “They’d do a bit and then they’d be off on tour. We had one final session at a residential studio called Jacobs, where we completed the album and mixed it. At that stage, as I was the only person actually in the studio with the band, obviously I was beginning to make a lot more production decisions. Without even realising it, Johnny and Morrissey were giving me more and more say over the sound, and that’s why I got a production point on that record.”
Marr, having for so long cited Strangeways as his favourite Smiths album, these days thinks The Queen Is Dead is the band’s greatest achievement.
“Three records stand out in my career,” he says. “Being in The The was a very important time for me, and the Dusk album is up there. The Modest Mouse record is too. With The Smiths, I used to say it was Strangeways. But now I say it’s The Queen Is Dead, because it’s so popular and also because it was such a feat to make it, and it’s pretty good.”
The final track, ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’, showcased Morrissey and Marr’s complementary songwriting skills to superb effect.
“That was a song that, instrumentally, I really loved,” says Marr. “It stands up as a instrumental piece, but I’ve got to say, the alchemy, the combination of the two of us, made it more magical for me. I always preferred it with the vocals on. It is a particularly pretty and poignant piece of music, with a particularly flippant lyric. So I can understand people saying that they prefer the music to the lyrics, but I wasn’t really that super-bummed or anything. I loved everything he did.”

The Queen Is Dead was originally supposed to be released in early 1986, but a breakdown in relations with Rough Trade delayed the album’s arrival until June of that year. It was during this time that the band’s exhausting schedule began to take its toll and tensions first started to surface. Marr later commented that, “‘Worse for wear’ wasn’t the half of it; I was extremely ill. By the time the tour finished it was all getting a little bit… dangerous. I was just drinking more than I could handle.”
Also, in early 1986, Andy Rourke was temporarily fired from the band. Supposedly, a dismissal notice was placed under the windscreen wiper of his car, which read, “Andy – you have left The Smiths. Goodbye and good luck, Morrissey.”
Was Street ever exposed to any arguments in the studio?
“Allegedly, Andy had a heroin problem at that time,” he replies, “but in the making of The Queen Is Dead, I never saw anything. I suppose people don’t put it under your nose anyway, but I never saw any problem with Andy in the studio, and in fact his bass playing on that album is fantastic. But there must have been something going on, and obviously Morrissey didn’t like that at all, and that’s been well documented, with the note left on Andy’s car.”
In any event, Rourke was reinstated to the band after a fortnight and, according to Street, by the time The Smiths came to record what turned out to be their final album, Strangeways, Here We Come, things seemed to be harmonious in the camp once more.
“Some people might think that they were falling apart and there were terrible tensions in the studio,” he says, “but there wasn’t at all. It was actually quite a happy time making the record. The only problem on the horizon was the management situation. I think Morrissey had gone through a few years of hiring and firing people, and Johnny'd had enough of that, because it always came back to him to take on all the management pressures.
“At the time, there was this American guy called Ken Friedman who’d been given the job, and he was trying to manage the band while we were in the studio. And then Morrissey just decided that he didn’t want him to be part of The Smiths gang anymore. But Johnny did, ’cos they were due to tour America, and you’ve got to have a manager taking on responsibilities. I think it was that, more than anything else, that led to the final problem, where Johnny said, ‘I can’t handle this anymore, I’ve got to go'.” But certainly, while we were in the studio, everything was absolutely fine.”
Johnny Marr finally announced that he had left the group in August 1987, and by the time Strangeways was released the following month, The Smiths had decided to go their separate ways. Was Street surprised by the split?
“Absolutely,” he responds. “I really thought it was just a little argument and that they were going to be back together in a few months. The only reason I got involved in the songwriting side of things was that, when we finished Strangeways, there was nothing else in the can. Whatever we’d recorded was used on the record.
“Obviously, there were some more singles to come off the album, so I just sent a cassette to Morrissey of some ideas I had, along the lines of, ‘Look, if there’s anything here that could be used as a b-side, let’s do it. If you’re interested, that is'. I actually said, ‘Forgive me if I’m being presumptuous, but I’m just trying to help out'.
“They’d tried a session with Ivor Perry, the guy who was in Easterhouse, and that was terrible, it didn’t work at all. So I decided to put my tuppence worth in, and sent off this cassette to Morrissey, and he got back to me and said, ‘I’m going to do a solo album, would you like to do it with me?’”
Street went on to produce and co-write Morrissey’s 1988 debut solo album, Viva Hate, but the producer still felt there was a chance of The Smiths reforming.
“Even after I’d done Viva Hate with Morrissey, I still expected that the following summer they were going to get back together. If someone had asked during that time to bet on them reforming, I would have said yes, without a doubt. But, as we know, they never did. And there’s been so much legal what-not going on, I don’t think they ever will.”
In 1996, in a famous court case (during which the judge described Morrissey as “devious, truculent and unreliable”), Mike Joyce successfully sued Morrissey and Marr for back payment of Smiths royalties. Street himself had a dispute with Morrissey over the issue of payment.
“To be fair, there was a 50-50 split on the publishing, so that was fine,” he says. “But I made myself pretty ill on that first album, because I was playing bass and rhythm guitar, as well as engineering and producing it. And Morrissey turned around and offered me just one point, which was what I was getting before when I was engineering The Smiths stuff. I said, ‘Well, that’s not really fair'. I was producing other acts as well, and I just wanted to get a proper producer’s fee.
“It wasn’t as if he was sharing the rest of his royalties with a band; it was all going to go to him anyway. So I just said, ‘Look, I think it’s a bit unfair, I know the amount of effort and work I’ve put into this. It should be more than that'. It just went from there, basically. Getting him to agree to sign any contract – as has been quite clear from other people suing him left, right and centre over the years – is very hard.
“But I think because I stood up for myself and said, ‘I’m not going to get pushed aside like that', I stepped over a line as far he was concerned, and that was it.”
Does Street ever see any of the other members of the group these days?
“No, but I spoke to Johnny last year for the first time in ages. I found some out-takes in the studio which I would like to get to him, because I think The Smiths’ back catalogue has been handled very badly. I really do think it’s time they did a proper re-mastered set of all the albums, and I’m hoping there might be some oddities here. There wasn’t much left over from the Strangeways session, but there might be one or two mixes of work in progress and things like that.
“So I spoke to him for the first time in ages, and he said he’d be in touch. I’ve not heard anything more, but I’ve got a feeling something might be happening next year on that, with back catalogue stuff. And I sent Johnny a text recently congratulating him on the Modest Mouse album. Nice to hear him out there playing again.”

Johnny Marr himself admits that a box set of alternate mixes of Smiths material is a possibility.
“It’s just alternate mixes,” he says. “There aren’t any Smiths gems that never came out, because everything we did came out. The label approached me a few years ago with this proposition that I was not into at all. But they sent me some stuff and it sounded pretty valid, and it sounded good. And then I thought it could be a good record.
“What it is, basically, is there’s versions of the songs that are really stripped down as we recorded them as live takes, and you’d be really surprised, we were a pretty good band. And I don’t mean that in the way Paul McCartney says, ‘Oh, a good little band', I mean I was surprised. I’m not joking, cos you think, ‘Jesus man, why did we even put extra stuff on it some of the time?’ Because I wanted to play 15 guitar parts!”
The guitarist says that educating the bass player in his band, Johnny Marr and the Healers, on the history of The Smiths was an eye-opening experience.
“When I was forming the Healers, the bass player in the band, who’s a young guy, he said ‘Johnny, what’s the best Smiths stuff?’ So I thought, ‘Alright Johnny, just drop the shit. Go and put together a playlist of all the best Smiths stuff'. And in the end it was loads of live stuff that fans had given to me on the road and all of that, which for a long time was like kryptonite to me.
“Then I listened to it and it was like ‘Whoa, this is intense!’ Even ‘Frankly, Mr Shankly’ is intense! So I just thought, ‘Right, compared to a lot of this stuff that’s out it’s pretty heavy, and I like heavy music, so I hope it happens'. There are all kinds of bullshit politics that I have to kinda negotiate, but there you go.”
Even if a Smiths box set doesn’t emerge, the band’s music will endure. Theirs is a light that never goes out.