5. The SmithsThe Queen Is Dead
Everything collided at the same point in this record. It was as though Johnny Marr had been listening to all the music I loved, then warped it. The looped Burundi drumming on the title track that begins with ‘Take me back to dear old Blighty,’ clipped from The L-shaped Room. If Nile Rodgers had the life of Marr yet had to put up with the misery of living in northern England, stuck in the pouring rain every day, his guitar would probably have sounded like this. I’ve never been to Salford Lads’ Club, I didn’t even really think of it as a real place. I avoid any kind of fandom.
The only place where it existed for me was in that gatefold sleeve. I didn’t think of them going there or coming from there, even though I knew it was a real place. Morrissey, well the politest way I can look at it is that he’s just another one of those fascinating conundrums and contradictions. A contrarian. He’s always been destined for Hollywood. He’s always wanted to be, essentially, Norma Desmond. And like Norma Desmond, he’s ill.
I didn’t have any context. I didn’t really read the music press, there were no biographies, no internet, so you didn’t know anything about the material that went into it. Their covers and song titles were bang on, as were the lyrics. With the imagery, literary references, cover stars, and the films, and with his own personal charisma, The Smiths were a grooming exercise, because Morrissey almost seemed to know about at all the things I had on the wall in my bedroom. How did he know that? You’ve got that curious, aspirational, working class flirt, but flirty middle class aesthetic. There’s a weird patriotism that existed before all the furore years, his interest in Englishness was once celebrated by the left. And then you’ve got the sexuality thing, which is slightly Boy George, ‘I’d rather have a cup of tea …’
What Morrissey then does through this persona, he’s casting himself in a play of his own making. I found that intriguing, but then the lyrics and posture of The Queen Is Dead’s opening track doesn’t get any better. It combines introspection with social commentary, the acknowledgement of social and financial injustices, and he has a go at Prince Charles too. You had neighbours on our estate putting out all the Union Jacks and doing the Silver Jubilee, which we weren’t allowed to join in with. Dad took us all out for the day instead. He didn’t drive so we had to go for a walk for six hours to avoid the street party. When we came back, it looked like the Marie Celeste. A load of tables down the middle of the street and old napkins flapping in the wind. He said, ‘I told you it wouldn’t last.’
