“David Cameron, stop saying that you like The Smiths, no you don’t. I forbid you to like it.”
That was The Smiths’ guitarist, Johnny Marr in 2010, responding to the former PM’s declaration of fandom. These days, you wish Marr would deliver a similar edict to Morrissey, his old bandmate, now firmly established as a supporter of the neo-fascist For Britain movement.
Much of the world, no doubt, struggles to understand the attention the the British press devotes to Morrissey’s ever more bilious public interventions, from sharing racial conspiracy theories about Stormzy to ejecting an anti-racist protester from his gig. But for a certain subsection of a certain generation, The Smiths meant something — a something increasingly besmirched by the devolution of their former frontman into a belligerent contrarian dressed in a too-tight “Fuck the Guardian” t-shirt.
In their brief ’80s heyday, The Smiths stood out from the blandness of corporate pop, with a quite odd combination of rockist simplicity and an unfiltered, wordy earnestness.
Morrissey, in particular, appealed to bookish adolescents, not least because of his own ostentatious awkwardness. He spent his own teens as an introverted music obsessive in working-class Manchester, composing solemn letters to NME and dreaming about Oscar Wilde. Every Smiths fan knew the story of how Marr, a much more credible rock star, arrived at the then-Stephen Patrick Morrissey’s home and asked him to collaborate.
Morrissey’s vocal range extended to about six notes, supplemented by an invariably out-of-tune falsetto. He wore NHS-prescription glasses, and, on stage, waved about a bunch of gladioli while asking, “Will nature make a man of me yet?” As one journalist wrote about their First Top of the Pops appearance, it was “almost as if you’re watching someone through a keyhole, doing this in front of their bedroom mirror”.
Somehow, though, it worked.
The Smiths were never overtly political, except in respect of Morrissey’s commitment to animal rights. Yet they sounded radical, not least because of their association with a deindustrialising working class town. “It’s that feeling where you’ve got your head leaning against the bus window on a November Wednesday morning with the rain coming down, driving through Manchester,” explained Marr at one point.
The ambiguous gendering of Morrissey’s lyrics and persona accentuated that sense of personal and social alienation. Which, of course, makes it harder to bear his more recent enthusiasm for the For Britain group, an outfit popular among people who’d give a good kicking to the misfits and weirdos upon whom Morrissey made his career.
“He’s become,” says Billy Bragg, “the Oswald Mosley of pop” — and it’s hard to disagree.
The “you have ruined my childhood” trope is a particularly tiresome one — the original Ghostbusters remains, one imagines, as good or as bad as ever, irrespective of the subsequent remakes. Yet that’s perhaps not the best analogy.
Think instead of Rolf Harris, who, in the course of a long career, painted a portrait of the Queen, and was awarded both an MBE and OBE. After those child sexual assault convictions, how many erstwhile fans can listen to Rolf croon “Jake the Pegg” or, God help us, “Two Little Boys”?
Morrissey might not have ruined “How Soon is Now?” as comprehensively as Gary Glitter destroyed “Rock n Roll Part 2”. Yet his embrace of the far right makes you go back to the old records wondering what you missed.
Back in the day, for instance, the early ’60s iconography of The Smiths’ album covers seemed like a statement of authenticity. Today, its nostalgia seems depressingly in keeping with the yearning of Britain First for pre-multicultural Britain.
When Morrissey dismissed contemporary dance culture, he did so ostensibly as a post-punk rejection of commercialism. Yet that hostility now sounds a lot less like an opposition to corporate pop and a lot more like a prejudice against black music. He even said as much back in the late ’80s, at one point claiming that only black groups got on TV and denouncing a “conspiracy” to keep white indie groups down.
The irony of that, of course, was that Morrissey’s attack on DJs for playing music that “says nothing to me about my life” appeared just as music created by DJs began to say far more about life to a broader array of people than indie groups ever did.
Last year, the comedian Stewart Lee repeated an old Sean Hughes gag: “Everyone grows out of their Morrissey phase. Except Morrissey.”
Perhaps it’s as simple as that. The world has changed and he hasn’t, to paraphrase an old tune.
At the same time, there is something in Johnny Marr’s refusal to allow a Tory PM to claim the mantle of his old band. Despite everything, The Smiths were far more than what Morrissey’s become — and that’s worth remembering.
For me The Smiths were always about Marr’s exceptional guitar work and how did he get those sounds ? Nobody in my memory has ever produced similar tones.
Morrissey in contrast was a tedious bore from Shoe Gazer central. His singing voice was worthy of a tv talent show at best. I’ve always wondered how much further Marr could have gone at that time in a band with a singer worthy of such a guitarist.
Agree totes on Marr, MES, but come on, what other voice on the planet is going to sell lines like ‘sweetness I was only joking when I said I’d like to smash every tooth in your head’ as a fondly arch ballad?
Got to play fair here, Mr Sparrow. More’s the point: must be kind and loyal to your youthful self. As one had to be…he was there at the time, mate. Lovely piece, chrs.
Every now and again I break out the Epiphone Casino and play a few Smith’s songs within my ability as a guitarist. Marr was a genius musician, and the backbone of that band. Morrissey was a poser, some lucky dweeb who found the right people at the right time. It’s a horrible business, watching a former frontman dissolve into a Right Wing nutbag, but that’s rock. Eric Clapton and Cilla Black aren’t entirely innocent, either. For the record, I read somewhere in the NME site that Marr killed off a Smiths reunion once he heard of Morrissey’s support for UKIP.
The issue for me is that we’ve for so long treated the soapboxing of popular musicians as newsworthy, so can hardly complain when 1 in 20 (or whatever) turn out to be fascists. Why did we ever listen to any of their unqualified rants in the first place? For every Morrissey there are another 10 equally annoying blowhards with the “right” politics, or who are tedious centrist conformists, or whatever. Morrissey’s always been an insufferable jerk. So what?
Pretty much by behavioural definition all celebrities are self-important, narcissistic reactionaries, anyway. Fame being just a passive-aggressive form of bullying autocracy.
Know very little about the guy, other than the bio movie England is Mine, and his great music in The Smiths, and a bit more recently.
He’s bang on with his views about that lying rag The Guardian.
He seems just an ordinary flawed human who inhabits the limelight, nothing really unusual except when noticed by the pure. Better to get over him than waste time nitpicking incidents from his matured and colourful life.
Don’t forget he wrote the songs that made you cry, he wrote the songs that saved your life…
Who really cares who Morrissey supports politically anyway? RememberJohnny Ramone of the legendary Ramones, was a hardcore Republican! (Much much worse than for Britain) Like everybody else, Morrissey has flaws and is entitled to believe in what he wants to believe. For Britain has no real sway anyways and is a tiny percent of the English public. These days, Morrissey is hardly a threat to the status quo. He has always been an uncompromising personality. So why get so bent out of shape? Who cares?? We too must learn to disagree and not jump to conclusions. Morrissey the artist has contributed a lot to this world. The destruction of a rich musical legacy is a mistake & an overreaction in this day of cancel culture run amok.
What was the ealiest warning sign from Morrissey? I remember a joint interview he did with Franz Ferdinand in NME c. 2004 where he said that FF were going to be succesful because they were all the same height. Mildly fash statement imo.