The Story Of The Smiths: Greatness and Controversy (Full Documentary) | Amplified

tonight a group which for the past few years has spoken in its songs for much of the intelligent unblinked youth of this country the smiths [Music] this man said it's gruesome that someone's so handsome [Music] the smiths widely seen as the most important british band of the 80s this mancunian four piece virtually reinvented pop music breathing new life into a stale music scene and featuring the most charismatic front man of their generation i think the smiths shine out of the 1980s like a beacon just at the point where drum machines and synthesizers were killing real music thank heaven the smiths came along it didn't sound like cream or it didn't sound like the rolling stones it didn't sound like the beatles it didn't sound like buzzcocks i just love the spirit of the noise i was hearing i mean the guitar especially good johnny martin guitar a great guitarist with me a melody has always come first and i just thought they had some great melodies this program is a review of the smith's legacy the music they created and the way they created it the smiths formed in manchester in 1983 after guitarist johnny marr famously visited the house of the reclusive stephen patrick morrissey and asked whether he would like to form a songwriting partnership both shared a passionate love of music particularly for the pop culture of the 1960s it was it was an absolutely one of those kind of great mythical moments i think a moment that was meant to happen but could easily have knockouts you know the most had so many personalities and so much uh so many stories to tell and so many ways of telling those stories uh that i sometimes feel if he did find himself with a musician who who was fairly unimaginative and inspiring it wouldn't have given us musical clues as to how kind of vivid and multifaceted what it was he was doing actually was while ma had previously been a member of local group white dice morrissey was expected by many to take on a more literary direction in life having already published a biography of his celluloid hero james dean he announced to me he decided he was going to become a pop star and i looked at this kid and i almost had to stop myself laughing because although i was in love with his genius and he could see in his eyes there was no way on god's earth this strange kid was ever ever going to be a pop star i almost laughed in his face but was very polite said oh stephen very interesting very interesting thank you very much the union between the pair now complete morrissey and ma decided to call themselves the smiths a title they chose due to its deliberately contrary nature the name of the band was i think partly a a reaction to the sort of glossy aspirationalism and glamour of early 80s pop music i've gone to hate all bands now that are called the something because that seems nostalgic and petty and everybody wants to be the kings so for me the smiths was the end of the bands for me that was the end the smiths it's over now you know the bands have finished how did you get the name smith um morrissey the singer thought of the name smiths i wanted to be called the rolling stones but he was much too much of a mouthful so um smith's where are we going we're all going mad i thought we're going to garden it's a great example of how ultimately morris is ahead of all of us really whether he gets it right or wrong you know he's got a he's got a a a a kind of whole artistic world view that he's the the that he's involved in because he is an artist and i think you know the smith was one of his greatest creations just the name alone because it was so disconcerting and ultimately so right the songwriting duo then went on to acquire a drummer and bassist in the shape of mike joyce and andy rock the smiths were now a fully formed four piece i saw andy and mike as as as a very integral kind of members of the band all the best bands sound great on record but they also look great in photos and when you saw pictures of the smiths they looked like a group they didn't look like you know two guys and two guys just in the background you know if you look at all the smith photos from around that time although morrissey obviously you know focuses uh gets a lot of attention you know that you do get the impression that there's a real gang also you know they were good players so mike was pretty quick getting his his drums down and andy is a great bass player great musician you know he is he's a very good player beginning to establish their reputation over a series of live performances the next logical step for the smiths was to get a recording contract one of the first people they spoke to was factory records tony wilson the smiths when you don't sign a band everyone has a different version of why you didn't sign a band there are morris is a mars version which i can't even remember what theirs is but it's a bunch of crap because musicians are always full of crap the truth about me is that i had the demo i hadn't listened to the demo i'd say i've seen the gig i'd seen the fact they were a great band but this was 1982 factory had started in 1979 not promoting and when you're the only person in the world not promoting that's great promotion and we were the hippest thing on god's earth uh come 1982 we'd gone into a cold period my it's my first ever experience of being cold i've learned now you're cold for two years you just keep on plodding on and then you're hot again and factory was hot and cold and hot and cold that was my first cold period and i personally wasn't willing to sacrifice stephen on the altar of a very what i thought was a very poor record label at that time it's i suppose it is easy sitting here now saying why did you sign that band but there's another 20 pounds in town who probably looked like they've got to get further than the smiths you know saying that i don't think that smooth actually did struggle around for a long time it was only about a year from when it started to when they got the deal you know it's um it was very quickly dismissed the buzz on them was very fast it was this ever-growing buzz which went on to secure the smith's a deal with independent label rough trade factory mute 4ad then creation everybody it dominated the 80s and was wonderful but it wouldn't have happened if morrissey hadn't have signed to rough trade so the british independent scene was preserved by morrissey signing with johnny to rough trade it was in may of 1983 that the smiths released their debut single a fresh sounding and characteristic melody entitled hand in glove [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] handing glove is not one of the greatest songs in the smith's canon but it's a crucial track in terms of introducing them to the world because just at the point where a lot of people are saying that synthesizers are making guitars redundant along they come re-establishing traditional four-piece guitar rock with johnny mars jingling sound i mean i don't think it's particularly well sung by morrissey i mean he drones it really rather than sings it um but it it it does put down the marker both for for the sort of return of guitar rock indie guitar rock and also in terms of some of the themes that uh uh he then developed in his songwriting musically i've been pretty well set to stall for the rest of the smith career you know there's the sounds right from the start you know the modded bass the jangly guitar morrissey's kind of um falsettos and croons and and the very kind of meat potatoes drumming keeping out the way but keep quite punchy as well in the background so it doesn't link in from punk you know it's not like we've gone backwards here there's still like a punchiness that you you know you could you could talk about getting a bit of a mosh pit over it even though it wasn't a heavy metal song or a fast hardcore [Music] was an important record in as much as it i think it was probably it served to teach them what it was to put out a record what the excitement of having your own seven inch you know working out the sleeve trying to get an identity for yourself i think it's great i don't think it's a particularly high point of the smith's musical career but it's got a sort of excitement that you can only really get from a first single from a band it's it's vivid it's vibrant it's sort of got to fade in which is completely bizarre um i think it's a great tune hand in glove failed to reach the top 40 yet sold solidly on the independent circuit helping to further establish the band's already promising reputation it was their follow-up single in october however that was to launch the smith's career in truly spectacular fashion [Music] when in this charming cars [Music] this charlie man is just a very beautiful wonderful record and to be honest that's one of the odd things you do expect great bands to write their hit singles for the time of their second album not for their first time out so that to me is quite a shock i always think hey and i'm gonna go i don't hear the hit single i always want to shout they haven't [ __ ] written it yet you idiot so to come up with this charming man that early in their career is really quite special it was just it just flew that single didn't it was just amazing you couldn't you could not fault it it was just i think that was when you suddenly thought johnny ma you're a genius you know you're a complete genius listen to that guitar [Music] should care i think this charming man is probably my favorite smith's track i have never ever tired of hearing that song there's something about it morrissey's voice the story of the song the guitar which is just instant just grabs you right away and i think that was a template for the rest of uh the smith's career really despite the fact that they had other great melodies and songs and lyrics going for them that kind of like set the tone and so i think that was a very important single well i suppose with whatever else this charming man had it was a great pop song so you know the cryptic nature of the words didn't really get in the way of the fact that it had great impact and they didn't sort of dress up in the way that pop groups did they didn't you know kind of looked like they were paying attention to the idea of styling themselves and yet they were they they it instantly looked like an unusual type of puppy it was very exciting because handing glove was a different thing it was a kind of dark strange thing but this charming man was the smiths it was absolutely essential smith after the success of this charming man the smiths began to feature prominently in the pages of the music press yet the distinctly ambiguous nature of the song lyrics as well as those of hand and glove began to fuel speculation as to morrissey's sexuality well he called himself the prophet of the fourth sex and it's you know of course it's insane to think that you can step outside of gender or or sexuality but isn't that what we want pop stars to be don't we want them to be mad or at least making mad gestures and the maddest thing about morris is he got away with it i mean he succeeded he really did seem to reinvent gender he became his own special creation and that applies to sexuality too usually rock frontman it's it's always about it's a very macho thing or it's it's you know a very dominant dominant thing but morrissey was like it was very odd you know because there's a certain femininity what he does but on a campus but but there isn't really either because he's quite a stocky guy he doesn't he doesn't look soft you know so it's not like um your classic kind of uh arc type camp front man like you'd have in romantic mountains it was somebody who'd be pretending to be camp i really believe mamacity is a bit of a one-off and you know the you know the whole sexuality thing obviously put an element into songwriting where people could didn't matter whether a heterosexual or homosexual or boy or girl they could all find a connection lyrically with what he was writing i wouldn't say that i sing from a a staunchly male point of view i think i have enough scope to really imagine how practically almost anybody would feel and for me to sing in an exclusively male point of view is just very standard really riding on the wave of this newfound attention the smith's next single would be their most successful yet what difference does it make would reach number 12 in january 1984 [Music] all men have seen [Applause] [Music] can rely prisoners you and yet you start to recoil heavy words [Music] what difference does it make is one of my favorites certainly um from the moment you hear it you know that it's a slightly darker vibe to this charming man it's it seems to be angrier a more malevolent kind of force at work here this is this is a difference you're hearing and for it's going into the top 20 and that's unique it's like a blues record um crossing over into the mainstream or something it really is a unique achievement i think and i'm sure they must have been as proud as as you can imagine after after this charming man which is to all intents and purposes a more accessible song um for something like this to go higher in the chart so a good 12 places highest and these are the times when the charts actually meant something um that's that's grand it couldn't have happened to a better song [Music] is [Music] this top of the pops appearance to promote the single was one of an infamous series which would transform the band from music paper favorites to much discussed household names i remember seeing him on top of the pops doing that and it was quite extraordinary because it was almost voyeuristic really because here is this guy singing these sort of introverted very kind of almost tortured songs and yet there he is on top of the pot sort of whirling like a dervish flailing his arms around and it's almost as though you're watching somebody through the keyhole doing this in front of their bedroom mirror that was the the reaction i remember i think the smith's image was uh important too because they were anti-pop establishment particularly morrissey being the the focal point of the band and the fact that uh you know later on he'd be sort of affecting a kind of johnny ray hearing aid sort of style the fact that he had uh flowers in his back pocket and the you know all that kind of stuff and and uh he would see be seen on television wearing glasses and uh his hair kind of evoked a kind of almost a a rock and roll sort of 1950s look in february 1984 the smiths released their self-titled debut album having initially recorded with producer troy tate these sessions unfortunately proved to be a failure and the band then went on to re-record the album with john porter a producer they had first encountered during an early radio session jeff travis contacted me and asked me if i would listen to the album that they were making because he didn't think that it sounded as good as it should well i think i asked him how much money he had left to finish the record and which was not very much i mean a matter of a few hundred pounds maybe but i said that i thought that from my point of view it seemed that it would be more difficult to fix it than it would be to do it again the sessions were fun the music was good and the fact that this charming man started to do well was great and i think that at the time it was apparent you know that there was a particular combination of people and and abilities there that was something a little out of the ordinary you know and i think that i think there was an idea that that this this thing did have uh a bit of a longevity to it that that could go further really there were young guys from the north of england and they would they didn't really have much of a clue about how other than you know they had a clue about how to be a band and do what they did but they didn't really know much beyond that and so i having been this in the same position myself only a few years earlier i kind of identified it and felt that they were a bit i felt sort of protective towards them and i liked them and i and johnny was a good player i liked his attitude i liked them all but i particularly thought that he was a you know i was always being a guitar player i like good guitar players and i recognized that he was potentially a really good player morrissey was slightly more problematic to work with and i guess he had an attitude or more of an attitude because that was his thing i mean it was all attitude so and he didn't leave it at home so if i were trying to get a straight answer out of him about something quite often he would be trying to find some scintillating reply rather than just you know giving me an answer i would have to say even even during this charming man right from the beginning uh you know it was very much um the smiths and morrissey or the band of morris here and together the combination was dismissed but um you know the uh the vibe in the studio was always good i mean it was it was always really pleasant guys to work with i mean i you know wouldn't have anything uh to say against him in that school really we we we ended up having certain conventions about how we would work when we when we recorded and um certain musical conventions which um i suggested to them to join early on that we should always have a guitar intro on their single um which records had stopped having but when i was a kid i used to love guitar intros i mean i buy a record in fact i had a good you know like check berry records i always had a great intro and within two bars you knew exactly who it was and what was happening and so i tried to bring that back to a certain extent with them is that within two bars of hearing this guitar thing you would know it was the smith so the process seemed to me as i recall would we would they would come in with a couple of roofs we would make a song we would track it a few times and then i put it together then mike and andy would probably go upstairs and watch tv or whatever and johnny and i would throw guitars at this thing for the rest of the day and then then i would um make a copy of it at the end of the day and go drop it off through morris's letterbox or whatever and then he would come in subsequently with it with his notebook and stand in front of the mic and just sing i mean they were they were quite excitable and and and well you know the world was a younger place back then but but um and i guess it was their first time in a big studio but it wasn't really that you know it was a west end studio but it wasn't you know one of the sort of deep thick shag pile carpet type studios it was a slightly more more down-to-earth affair than that so uh and i think that was beneficial we chose that you know for a reason because we'd had good experiences with people uh you know feeling very at home in that kind of a situation and i think that worked you know so yeah it was um it was a good a good a good first outing between us i think definitely yeah the smith's first album entered the charts at number two proving to be both an immediate critical and commercial success nowadays however it is often regarded as being among the weaker elements of their catalogue yes i think the first smith's album it wasn't still quite focused that we were in the presence of of a kind of genius of a kind of revolution i think everyone was still getting used to it all if you like you know and they were uh so there was a weird kind of level of of no one quite it was almost really staying no more quite paying attention if you like i think it's the kind of student bedsit album par excellence sort of every emotion that is running rampant at that time in one's life morrissey seemed to have a song about it however the album is somewhat derailed by a very muddy production and uh that's the only thing that i think keeps it from being regarded as one of the great debut albums songwise i think it's it's it's pretty much there there was never a feeling of being let down with the smiths it was as if everything was going to plan i can't remember disappointment or moaning you know bands will do that they'll do a record like this happening and that happened and oh i could have done that better and no there wasn't any of that at all there wasn't any of that at all i think some of the some of the embellishments or some of my little ideas were not that well received at the time by their by their fans and i yeah and they may have been right who knows it is what it is certainly in the beginning when they were a forming band i'm absolutely sure that they have a great deal to be thankful for for uh the input that that john porter put into them and and the kind of musical knowledge and depth that he that he imparted there was uh you know maybe i like to think that i had some input into the kind of sound of the thing as well but but i mean musically he was crucial and i think that maybe over the years that he hasn't really had the credit he deserves on that some material on the band's debut album would also go on to attract a wholly different kind of press attention suffer little children one of morrissey and mars earliest compositions had become the subject of much controversy due to its explicit references to myra hindley and ian brady otherwise known as the mura's murderers on these bleak and desolate morelands sixteen hundred feet up in the penins senior police officers believe they'll find two more bodies possibly a third digging began again this afternoon after thick miss made a search impossible this morning 20 detectives and three dogs concentrated on the rocky outcrop just alongside the main manchester barnsley road where the body of ten-year-old leslie ann downey was found on saturday night [Music] i'm not sure he imagined that there was going to be this tabloid ferrari uh which was totally hypocritical because the song is actually a memorial to these children i mean it was a very bold thing for him to do to name check the kids in in the song because obviously that was going to set various hairs running but ultimately of course ann west who was the mother of leslie anne downey one of the the murdered children um said that she found the song touching and and that defused the the tabloid round of course she was very upset when when the media still happened and had to explain to what the song was about and uh and you know it was good that smith actually made sure that she found out what he's about i don't know i think people thought they were trying to stir up trouble and controversy into his sex pistols but i don't think there was any intention at all i think i think he's a very honest bloke morrison i think the songs he sings are coming from the heart and that was something he really felt and he's you know most people walk around at the time even that age was there'd be a little bit of them send a shiver down their spine about moore's murderers and he made it that shiv of the sp that went down the spine he made into a song and got castigated for it i think uh people weren't really listening to what he's singing about perhaps they could have wished for a slightly easier to swallow issue um with which to make their debut in the press but nonetheless if you're getting coverage without releasing a record or certainly without going in a chart you can't complain really and that has been something which has kind of followed them through every album there's at least one or two contentious tracks the distinctive sleeve of the album was also something that would fuel debate having already established a visual style with their previous singles the smith's unique brand of cover artwork and cultural reference points would continue right through their career putting the joe d'alessandro picture on the cover of the first album smith's first album that it's very difficult now 20 years on after you know billboards covered in in naked men uh to realize how shocking that image was at the time and how brave it was as well the album covers and the and the recycling in a way of his of his early infatuations and obsessions for me is the extension of the the lonely kid in the bedroom taking it out to the world so it was almost like every single sleeve that there ever was for a smith sound or indeed a mercy album was originally on his bedroom wall you know so it always surrounded him gave him a kind of comfort as he went out into the world you know somehow you know his bedroom was still with him because every single picture that was used had almost been peeled off his bedroom it first appeared there it's very rare a group actually gets control of his artwork to that extent and also rare that a group gets controversial can make something that good out of it if you've never heard all the records you've got the whole smith story just from the artwork as well morrissey also had a fascination with the writing of playwright sheila delaney in particular her work a taste of honey which would resonate throughout his own material he used kitchen sink images kitchen sink was a phrase devised in the early 60s in britain for a species of black and white english realistic drama setting working classes working class environments in the north west they were called kitchen sink dramas [Music] you're not much good at netball are you joe no i'm bad on purpose are you going dancing tonight i can't you never go anywhere do you i haven't got any clothes to wear for one thing after another we might be moving home again like a couple of gypsies you and your mother so what in the north women run perhaps not everything but uh most things i mean it's it's a matriarchy the world revolves around strong women mothers in in the north women often have to be more manly than the men because the men fail to live up to the expectations i warned you when you first came no gentleman and pay regular you owe me two months rent and if i don't have it by tomorrow you're out i don't want any more of your fancy men coming in here and that's my last word oh sure you'll get your end suppose that means another flip oh she's always glued to television at tea time we can slip out that window that idea of northern realism from the early 60s merged with a certain very hip uh very transatlantic concept if you think the morris's original heroes who we now hear about all the time the new york dolls who've been over here sort of working for him at the royal festival hall in london if you're a kid from stratford your life has these two centers it has the 60s working class north of england look but with a bit of new york there somewhere so it's entirely appropriate i can't really seem to write from a point of view that's completely detached from the solid manchester thing and all those old bonds and all those things that perhaps i never really liked but it's just something like it's like your kidneys they're just there in may of 1984 fresh from the success of their first album the smiths released heaven knows i'm miserable now the recording of this single would mark their first time working with producer stephen street at the time i was working at island studios as one of the in-house engineers and i got a phone call from the manager saying oh there's this new band called the smith's coming in would you be interested in doing the session i literally kind of jumped out the chair having seen them play on top of the pops for this charming man i was absolutely smitten by them i thought they were fantastic so i've i just jumped at the chance and said yes obviously i'd love to do the session they came in with john porter and we recorded um the single heaven knows i'm miserable in the now of a drunken hour but heaven knows i'm miserable now i was looking for a job and then i found a job and heaven knows i'm [Music] why do i give valuable time to people who don't terrify [Music] i mean he got a lot of flack for that song title and of course it was very very easy target for tv comedians to parody him and so it worked to treat really because the the song is uh is again quite an uplifting song i mean the the title it's the it's ironic is you think do i really want to hear that you listen to the songs i feel a lot better for hearing that [Music] [Applause] the single would be their biggest hit to date however for a band so widely credited with producing instantly accessible pop melodies this would be only one of two times that the smiths managed to chart inside the top 10. it's difficult to have loads of hits because we need to have a hit you need to have daytime radio play daytime radio play then like it is now is utterly awful it's it's controlled by major record labels is controlled by people who think they know better than you i really don't understand why radio 1 was so reluctant to play their records i mean perhaps they just weren't as commercial as they first hoped they would be i mean obviously you know this chumming man is is a great you know it is quite commercial it's very catchy it's got a great kind of motel type rhythm to it and it you know bangs along at a fair old pace and i think perhaps subsequent singles uh later on in their career you know weren't they they weren't as commercial as those songs so radio one will just reluctant to kind of give them a lot of daytime play you could hear the smiths on the evening shows on radio one john peel would play them i would play them certainly and in fact when i came to capital i would continue to play the smoothest because i just thought they made great pop records i would say they are among the supreme masters of the three-minute pop single and uh i think that's a view that's widely shared um and yet perhaps it's because they were also the ultimate indie band and so there's uh you know something that's uh a little bit you know the single is a a despised form but um morrissey certainly didn't despise it and were frustrated by the lack of single success the smiths would release their next single in august william it was really nothing was a typically breezy and competent pop record but it was the b side which captured the most attention a six minute wall of sound unlike anything the band had produced before [Music] [Applause] [Music] i am [Music] masterpiece i mean what you've got there is a combination of morrissey at his lyrical best and bleakest you know this is this sort of suicidal theme wanting to die um but it's perhaps the first great coming together of ma and morrissey because it's really johnny ma who who drives that track and gives it this uh it's it's like a sort of bow diddly beat coming out of the stones who of course had stolen it from from bo diddley uh and i think it's the juxtaposition of of this uh crunching rock riff and uh morris's bleak lyrics and and uh you know that combination is seen inix jealous on that track i mean the written record songs before but it's their first kind of rock classic and i don't think the smiths were a band that were meant to be writing rock classics but but it's they sounded great to that kind of format so it's um and it's weird it was only a b-side at first as well like just dusted off as a b-side that's when you know a band is strong when the b-sides are as good as the a-sides the innovative new sound on display would also mark a significant step in the development of johnny mars guitar work he would play these little patterns that were built around chord changes so there would be a lot of chord changes sometimes you know they would change like twice in a bar or whatever he would be playing something and i would i would be putting my finger on the neck and say now i had this note now i had this note oh take that one off and then grab his fingers and he and he'd carry on and say oh yeah and if he dug it he would go for it and if he didn't he'd say no i don't think that's right but we was very much a hands-on thing but quite often we would do this and then i'd say no that's great that was great and he'd say no i can do it better. and i'll say are you sure and he said yeah i'll do it better it's like okay and he quite often or always if he said he could do it better he could do it better and he would do it better my style is influenced by um basically an american and english folk guitar [Music] i just um take it and try a little bit more aggressively and go uh the music had a really weird quality sometimes like it was like really ancient somehow it was a quality it could almost been on 78 rpm but there was also a sense it was being sent back from the future that it was a you know it was a very odd kind of combination of being uh very traditional very conventional but also very strange and very you know filled with a kind of romanticism that i think you know really helped helped you hear that something was going on that was interesting even before you'd really understood that what morrissey was doing and how far he was going with his with his lyrics [Music] who really loves you so you go and you stand on your own and you leave on your own and you go home and you cry [Applause] [Music] i wanted to do something that i thought might be successful in america and and i then i wanted to expand their musical horizons from these two and a half minute rush through a bunch of chords and that was the first time and i and i thought it succeeded and they fired me after that i think that basically the consensus was that i was taking them in the musical direction that was probably not where they wanted to be at least that's the impression i got and i think that came from morrissey and from jeff i don't think it came from johnny i think johnny was really digging it how soon is now was also included on hatful of hollow a collection of b-sides and john peel sessions released in late 1984 for apollo um i think for many people was the album that they wanted the smith to be they'd heard these session tracks they'd probably seen them you know certainly for the manchester audience and been to see them and heard these songs which didn't make it to the to the first album or certainly not in the form that they were hearing them um so a lot of fans took helpful to be the debut proper it's a fresh sounding record it's a big expansive record there's a lot of stuff on there and there isn't really the conceit of it of any of the tracks having to be linked to one another they are just there because they were recorded in x amount of time it's just great really great really invigorating listen the smiths were soon to begin work on their second album however being unhappy with john porter's work on their debut they decided to produce the new material themselves with the help of steven street as engineer the thing that first struck me about the smiths was the the meter of the voice and everything it was completely different to anything else that's out there [Music] i was completely entranced by the sound of his voice and also by the performance as i say on top top of the pops it was just wonderful and the sound of johnny's guitar playing was you know to hear kind of this kind of multi-layered but yet at the same time clear guitar parts kind of going together was you know it was fantastic so you know it was really kind of kind of the kind of thing i wanted to be involved with as a engineer hopeful producer you know in february of 1985 the smiths released meet his murder entering the album charts straight at number one it is seen by many as the moment that the band began to fully realize their potential once they got to a second album uh and and then you realized that that it wasn't a fluke it wasn't a one-off it wasn't a novelty there was something about them that you know with the flowers and with the name it could have been a novelty could have been you know this interesting musician johnny marr had managed to sort of you know drag the the manchester nutcase up uh uh you know this weak fragile peculiar eccentric and give him a moment in the sunshine but by the second album you realize that you're in the presence of kind of greatness it was it was undeniable by then uh uh and you realized that uh you know there were there were vast areas of morrissey's sort of personality that uh were now coming out that were unbelievably fascinating [Music] do you hear me when you sleep [Music] you've got a huge development i think in the sound of the band here i mean number one it's far better produced than the debut album but then also i think johnny marr is emerging as a an absolute guitar genius by this stage and morrissey himself is singing a lot better he's been sent off to a voice coach and his range has expanded and he's started realizing what he can do with that sort of falsetto whoop he was a little bit the first time was a little bit like innocence in a studio and meet his murder is much more people who know what they're doing and uh and they're achieving exactly what they want to achieve the backing tracks came together pretty pretty quickly to be honest with you uh we're getting morris's vocal on pretty quick as well we wouldn't wait till every overdub was done then put his vocal on the idea was get the book on and then see where we had to go with you know where things had to be filled in where we needed more where we needed less um and it was great working with johnny because obviously here was a situation where it was just myself working with johnny and so it'll be a constant thing of me trying to impress him by trying to give him a good guitar sound or you know a good setup or getting a different drum sound for different songs and um you know obviously sound ball johnny would try something and you know it would be a case of is that okay and then you know i was like of course it is johnny it's great it was the title track of the album however that would prove the most controversial a sprawling melodramatic anthem against the perceived evils of being a carnivore [Music] [Applause] [Music] itself the title track is completely over the top is this thing about morrissey whereby um everything is a sort of moral absolute and and so you know he's sung about child murder uh and he's opposed to nuclear weapons and doing benefits for c d and he clearly equates vegetarianism as as you know a moral absolute on the same par as war and and and child abuse there's a lot of anger in that record as well as you know for someone like me who grew up punk it was like a great punk record you know it was it's like the clash again it's like the pistols it's like it's saying something you know in political terms things needed to be said especially in the mid 80s which if you put the context of times it's like this usually selfish time of people making money rar margaret thatcher isn't she great and although all the pop groups are either agreeing with that or keeping the mouse shorts it's great you actually have somebody standing up there right in the middle of pop mainstream going no margaret thatcher's awful she's wrecking the country she's evil this uh you know and you know vegetarianism sticking up for that these are not very fashionable things to say at the time you know the vegetarian thing was like yeah this makes total sense you know we don't want to be involved in uh killing poor innocent animals it was really quite militant i can remember the uh the road crew you know having to sneak off and have burgers and hot dogs and things i'm like don't tell anyone you know i'm just nipping out now it was it was it was a kind of uh it was a real demarcation line between us and everyone else and it it felt really exciting i mean i like the didactic morrissey you know some some people felt that he lost something when he started writing in this more political vein but i was all for it the smith's next single would be a song that had not featured on meet his murder released in march and in contrast to the success of their album shakespeare's sister would be a relative commercial failure for the band [Music] so please don't [Music] i don't know why shakespeare's sister wasn't a success uh i mean it it's another suicide anthem uh uh uh morrissey is deep into this sort of doomy songwriting at this stage but the single bombed but then actually from this point on the smiths go into a period of singles that don't even make the top 20 which is quite extraordinary for me i thought we never quite cracked it to be honest with you i i felt that single wasn't as good as it could have been uh i wasn't happy with the final mix on it and and but it was it was one of those things where it was gone it was out there you know it was in the marketplace and much you could do about it i think there's a slight shift in the sound there they're changing the sound slightly i think people weren't ready for him to change the sound at that point and shakespeare's sister to me is like um it's kind of a hint at what's about to come next it's it's like the next kind of sound but i think all their singles are great in fact the best for me the best way to listen to smith is actually listening to all the singles in a row like in the 60s if you want to listen to kings we did make some great albums but the best was this king's actually this is the a b side compilation album and every single song is amazing and it tells the whole story the sixties and one girl which and the smiths because it weren't going long enough but they did tell the story of the mid-80s with their singles you know each one's a little vignette which one's a little common to what's going on that point of time or a little feeling of what's going on that point i think shakespeare's sister not the best single but nowhere near the worst single one thing highlighted by shakespeare's sister was that no matter how much they continued to evolve their sound the smiths could always rely on the often overlooked musical support of mike joyce and andy rook it's by choice or just by all or accidents might mike joyce was the perfect draw of the smiths it's very very simple drumming and and but andy rorke is a really good bass player very melodic and he's very important part of the sound and johnny rowle will say that all the time you know and a lot of the tunes you'll remember the tracks may well come off the base you know i don't really go along with this argument that they were completely dispensable you know that they were they seemed to interpret part of it to me the smith's next single would also prove to be something of a disappointment that joke isn't funny anymore a celebrated meet his murder album track would only reach number 48 in the charts this was followed up by a newly recorded effort the boy with the thorn in his side [Music] and i think it should have been a much bigger hit i think first and foremost they weren't very keen to embrace the idea of making videos for their singles the smiths so they didn't do themselves any favors in that respect i mean at the time you know mtv was really kind of you know growing uh and all the british bands that were doing well in america at the time were doing well on the strength that they had very good videos to go with their singles so i don't think that helped really at all the smiths for a band that didn't want to make videos they actually made really good videos because that because morrissey obviously is a bloke is completely into films and the group looks very good so um you've already got all you need to make good videos there because you've got somebody's got an idea of a film sensibility somebody understands what looks good in the film and loads of reference points from films [Music] can stop you from saying all the things in life you'd like [Music] the time the video was like you know durant around sitting on the yachts it's rubbish it's awful but instead of complaining about to make your own video you know make you know video walk around the streets of manchester as a riposte duran duran's kind of pathetic uh and flashing their money about kind of video you make a downhill home grown video you know you just did the opposite [Music] and when she shines she really shows you oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] in october 1985 the smiths entered the studio to begin work on their third album this would ultimately prove to be a difficult time for the band andy rock had recently found his heroin addiction spiraling out of control and in february 1986 was sacked from the band he was reinstated a couple of months later during which time the smiths had acquired a second guitarist former aztec camera member craig gannon i think they've been going about three three and a half years before i joined the band and uh i did think they were you know as i got to know this stuff and what they were about i didn't think they were a really different band as i say and one of the best guitar bands you know around really definitely the 80s but i didn't think they were going to be so important as time has gone on they just they just seem to have really taken that really influential you know position really i remember thinking he was a good player but he was just doing a kind of journeyman's thing he was not getting in the way he wasn't trying to he really wasn't he really wasn't putting his personality on the tracks and i don't and i think because he wasn't required to he probably could have done but i think that wasn't the idea you know i think he was there just to provide a bit of roughage craig fitted the mould perfectly you know he was very presentable he looked great you know he was you know another mancunian fitted in as part of the gang i felt i only did one session with him that was the one where we did um half a person and london a good session i really enjoyed the session we were there for about four or five days at mayfair studios in primrose hill london and the session went very very well to me it made total sense it was a johnny was playing four or five different parts on the on the albums and could not replicate what was going on on stage anymore i mean just seeing johnny was you know really in control of everything um you know and still you know still with a lot of leeway to mike and andy about what they do you know they had obviously had their say um but it just seemed like it was johnny calling all the shots and uh i thought this must be the way it works you know johnny had to have that control he was his band you know and they really work well for the smiths having survived such frantic rearrangements the smiths released their next single in may a rolling stone's influence number called big mouth strikes again well they put out um joke isn't funny anymore which had been a sort of attack on uh on his critics um and so i suppose it was quite fitting that they followed that with this piece of self-satire in uh big mouth strikes again you know i love the way that he he sort of this pop martyrdom and uh uh he makes this um comparison to joan of arc and uh this seems a bit portentious but then he throws in this lovely line about uh her walkman going up in flames that kind of defuses it it's one of their classic singles and it's a it's a great title as well what a fantastic title which i think is definitely alluding to that period of like mauricio really shooting his mouth off every single interview is uh i think he's definitely talking about himself though [Music] [Applause] [Music] again [Music] [Applause] [Music] his interviews didn't need editing i mean the point the job description of pop journalists is to make dull people sound interesting basically most people get involved in music because they're not very good talkers or they maybe don't have a great deal to say on a one-to-one basis so that's what we have music papers for to make them sound interesting when they're not morrissey they didn't need to do anything the smith's next album hit the shelves in june 1986 revered by many as their defining moment the queen is dead had arrived [Music] i'm truly sorry [Music] the queen is dead felt like a real leap to me it's a very interesting combo isn't it it's kind of got these deadly serious kind of uh and slightly perhaps rockier tunes coupled with these kind of like little pop delicacies the queen is dead is the album where it all comes together i mean just uh astonishing set of songs um johnny marr who i think he's still only 21 years old which is quite extraordinary uh coming up with these incredible melodies and one of the interesting things that's always struck me about the smiths is morrissey once said that the melancholy in his lyrics was very often inspired by the sadness of johnny mars tunes because more often than not the melody came first and then morrissey added the words and i think that's that's what happens on the queen is dead the two come together the the music and the lyrics uh kind of speaking with one voice really for the queen is dead basically the recordings when it happened over um kind of over a period of time cut up between their touring and so on they were very busy doing touring appearances and so on so it'd be a few weeks here and a few weeks there again the band were very tight very together because they had been doing so much playing and there was a distinct again impression of wanting to try and sonically widen the whole thing [Music] [Applause] [Music] it quite possibly was it was certainly the greatest british rock album of the 1980s um which in my book isn't actually saying a lot so i don't think the competition was that strong uh but i you know it does stand as a masterpiece and i know a new generation is still discovering that record and being astonished by it to this day the real sort of archetypal smith's album to me i think would probably be me's murder i just think that's that's the best album for me i think the queen is dead is a lot more accessible i think and strange ways as well um but the just is just one of those bands that all their albums are different the title track the queen is dead is one of the defining moments of the smith's career and it's not just an attack on royalty it's actually an attack on the whole kind of moral decay of of thatcher's britain [Music] is [Music] is [Music] it's picking off targets all the way through it's picking off really good times the title the title itself is great as well i mean it was again it was great that somebody actually stood up and said the royal family now all for all families what utterly pointless thing is it's not even like the royal family actually interesting or good to look at and it's just like this really ugly german family that gets paid millions of pounds to open supermarkets the original plan was to title the album margaret on guillotine um he started writing the song but the song wasn't finished in time and so it subsequently turned up on a solo album um but yeah i mean had they finished the song you never would have had the queen is dead it would have had a different title to promote the queen is dead the smiths embarked on a grueling tour of the united states despite their best efforts however they would never quite manage to break the american market that american tour was the massive tour it was the huge huge tour where we were just about to become gigantic it was you really felt it felt peculiar because you thought that you know we'd already climbed so many mountains uh the were we gonna climb anymore and there we were just surging the reaction to the smiths was yeah it was pretty pretty intense from the american crowd by this time anyway i knew what the smith's crowd were like because i've done a few gigs in in britain with the smiths a couple of tv shows and i just i thought you know this dismissal so you know a real hero worships really you know and you see that with other bands a little bit but not to the extent of the smiths this american tour would reinforce something that british fans had been aware of right from the beginning that the smiths were a truly phenomenal live experience it was very much meant to be a live experience and the first thing that impressed me wasn't a smith's record it was seeing the four of them live on stage in this basement in manchester so now they were a great live band and again that was my shock because when stephen told me to be a pop star i thought not in a million light years and yet that very first day uh he could move with a mic i mean how this fragile intellectual strange kid could be so at ease moving with his microphone god knows morrissey could do that thing of reaching out to people reaching out and connecting with people and then you have this incredibly brilliant band giving him a platform to be morrissey it was it was very exciting returning to england and signing with emi the smith's next single released in august was a glam rock tinged call to arms named panic [Music] to myself [Music] panic which followed um the queen is dead is the single that restores them to the top 20. i was really proud that panic had been such a big hit and that was the first track i played on with the smiths proud playing on it anyway because you know i was just really into the band by that point but even prouder they you know he got to number 11. [Music] panic is an interesting track um apparently the roots of the song lie in the fact that morrissey was listening to daytime radio one it's a classic story uh you have a news report on the chernobyl disaster mara and morrissey are both listening to that it's radio one prime time um end of news report terrible news next thing you hear wham the panic that he describes he's imagining if we had a nuclear reactor melting down and and how we'd react in britain but then of course being morrissey it becomes something else completely because he then links it to uh this idiotic radio one dj steve wright who um reads this news flash about chernobyl and sort of that lively goes straight into this track by wham [Music] but i know [Music] so from starting out about uh a nuclear reactor melting down it ends up with morrissey going to melt down about the state of british radio and wanting to burn down the disco and shoot the dj [Music] and then it also got tied up in this this sort of controversy about his attitude towards black music he gave an interview at the time in which he said that uh um reggae was crap and ate his soul music was crap and in some quarters this was interpreted as as a sort of racist comment um i don't think it was it doesn't mean if you hate reggae you're racist i don't that's a really weird thing to say and now the press starts to get picky at this point and start to say really strange things but they're trying to find an angle to get because because they've got this perfect music paper pop star and he was perfect for that time they're trying to find things are wrong now let's let's let's not let's make stuff up when i say he doesn't like dj's therefore he's racist i mean but he's talking about white's dj's you know on radio he's not talking about club djs which which it could be as well and could be applauded you know when when about three years after this club djs are getting paid more than bands to play other people's records it's the whole thing's gone absolutely crazy you know a couple of months after the release of panic craig gannon found his temporary status as fifth member of the band coming to an end i said to johnny he's not a bad player is he jones well i've got a feeling his days are numbered and i wasn't too sure whether it was because johnny wanted him out or morrissey i'd more inclined to feel it was more as he wanted him out he was just to the fact really that me and johnny weren't getting on really it was just a personality clash i think every time i saw johnny it was you know i was treated pretty pretty badly um there was he just felt like there was a lot of snide comments going on really i think i think in some respects craig was his own worst enemy he wasn't a [Music] at that time he wasn't a very articulate person he didn't really hold long conversations with craig at that time anyway i was i was quite shy and um you know i might have come across as you know being aloof or whatever but um you know i just couldn't handle being treated like that really so you know i was i never spoke to johnny and said you know come on let's let's chat about this and you know sort it out you know and i i'd probably just go back to my room and just want to be on my own for a while i didn't feel like he'd been hard done by in any way i feel that he'd be given my personal view had been given an amazing chance and hadn't quite grasped it with both hands really the smith's final single of 1986 would be ask followed early in the new year by another new release called shoplifters of the world unite a song which highlighted morrissey's fascination with the more disreputable elements of society [Music] is [Music] over morris has always lyrically be interested in kind of the ruffian types i think he's i don't know i mean people say maybe he fancies people like that you know that's so what you know and then but he'll sing about maybe sing about that because of that maybe that's it it's a fantasy in his his mind maybe likes maybe he isn't maybe like hang around the rough boys he went to rough school you know maybe singing about when he was at school maybe he's fascinated by that because he's something he never was you know because he was more um kind of more feminine guy mother book reader really is a quiet shy book reading types [Music] maybe like to be maybe fancy being the leader of the gang of the rough guys i think in the same way it's like bowie you know bowie as well would always like to be down in the rough that's why we always big to big pop or what the hoop or bands who are genuinely a bit more crazier and gave you some you know bit bit more wilder but he was more of a camper englishman he still had part of him which identified with this but he couldn't do it himself but he's fascinated by it i think that's what missy was i think with shoplifters people expected the smiths or had an idea of what they expected this myth to be um so this weren't stupid they were probably aware of this i think what comes across is that morrissey is taking more of a dominant role in things the vocals seem higher the vocal there are more vocals um there's gaps where it's only morrissey the band i mean it's a stop starting kind of song don't get me wrong but morrissey is all over it like a rash there is morrissey stamped all over the record to me it sounds like the first morrissey solo record and i don't mean it sounds like suedehead i mean it sounds as if that were the beginning of maurice you're saying right now if i'm if i'm a bit clever about this i can make the smiths more my band than mars classic power struggle thing not to say it's a badly written song but i think possibly morrissey was throwing his weight around or morrissey was just subconsciously getting people to to to allow there to be more moths in the record despite the top 10 success of their next single sheila take a bow all was not well within the band in may of 1987 a disastrous final session with producer grant showbiz saw johnny marr announcing his intention to leave the smiths it was weird for me because it was a dream come true you know i finally got them down to my recording studio i had control over what it was gonna sound like and uh and it was it was kind of horrible and i was sort of sitting there thinking what am i doing that's wrong i just thought it's just a little tiff you know within a few weeks they all kind of sorted it out and they would have got back together again and i really really you know didn't believe it was a permanent split it was a silly little thing which had there been a manager that had the faith of the entire band in him or her would have been resolved very very easily by everyone just taking a break by august of 1987 however a press release had been issued and ma had reportedly confirmed everything with the new musical express to all intents and purposes the smiths were no more well i think it was a shame how the whole thing stopped with them because i think that they had quite a lot to offer and i don't really think that they ever fully realized their potential but then i guess i was with a lot of bands you know but i always felt that i always felt that that we were on the edge of something really good and we never quite nailed it about smith's splitting up i can't remember being surprised about it um i wasn't shocked or i think as far as i knew really that maybe morrissey and johnny were maybe drifting apart so they heard a couple of stories about things that had happened in the studio i don't think it was inevitable artistically i think it was inevitable personally i think steven's very difficult and i think i think john put up with it for a very long time i think the other two would have gone with it for as long as they needed to but i think johnny marr didn't need to and i would presume that johnny marr in the end and you know the word in manchester was that not just johnny but angie had just had [ __ ] enough when johnny first left the idea was as far as morrissey was concerned was to keep going i think he thought he could keep going at least for a while until johnny came to his senses perhaps and rejoined the band and we tried this session with a guy called ivor perry he was a guitar player from a band called easter house at the time but it was a nightmare it didn't really work at all i certainly didn't get on very well with the guy mike and andy didn't really kind of click with him it was obvious it wasn't going to work despite the split there still remained a good amount of material yet to be heard by the fans one of these songs was the next single girlfriend in a coma [Music] there were times [Music] girlfriend in a coma is another extraordinary subject for a three minute pop song it's based on the story of this american girl who'd been kept alive on a life support system and then it had all been fought out through the american courts in the way that only america can um and morrissey had always been fascinated by these kind of stories you know i mean he loved all of those old songs by the shangri-la's leader the pack and terry's twinkle which were were all about uh teenage death um but those songs were just narrative songs what he does on this song is you know he opens up the whole kind of moral dilemma and the ethics of the issue and then he puts himself into this scenario [Music] i know [Music] you can't fault it throughout it's it's a great song whether or not it was a smart choice as a single i don't know i don't know if it was particularly significant um but but any any record like that that gets into the charts is all right by me to be honest because that's that's subversion let me absolutely remarkable song um although the b side of that single was um a silly black cover which uh may well have been the final straw as far as johnny marr was concerned and he got on a plane and took himself off to la and hardly spoke to morrissey ever again released posthumously in september 1987 the smith's fourth and final album was called strangeways here we come i mean to me i'd probably stand alone in in smith's fandom by thinking that strangeways is just the best record to me it's just phenomenal it's like the beatles it's it's incredible it's an incredible record to me it it's fraught it's exciting it's short it's concise it's uh it has dismissed at the very peak of their songwriting capabilities i think i i don't think um strangers is quite as good as uh queenie's dead would meet his murder i think it's it's but this is splitting hairs here it's still a really great album it's it's 95 i said 100 and it's it's it's a classic album but not quite the class of the one before was i mean it's you're looking at a very slight difference there aren't you it does seem as though morrissey and mar are pulling in different directions uh morrissey is it's as if morrissey is looking backwards and growing more kind of nostalgic ma he's wanting to push on and and expand the envelope there's definitely a tension there strange strangeways has got this thing where there is um the dreaded synthetic sounds are beginning to arrive you know there's strings that are on the synths and things like that and yet it made total sense it didn't seem to me to spoil anything at all and uh the sessions uh that when it took place were just immense fun i got the impression that perhaps some of the songs weren't as hadn't been worked on as much as they had been on previous albums you know they hadn't been played live or anything like that they hadn't been rehearsed at soundtracks or anything they really were like you know the latest songs that johnny had sent morrissey on the cassette whatever and and they were yet to work out with a particular key or you know tempo or whatever so there it was a little bit of like you know you know how many bars of this to be played oh yeah and then how many bars of that part do we play it was still kind of getting sorted out a little bit but the vibe was good in the studio there certainly was no kind of uh feeling of like this is it this is the last album we'll ever make together no impending doom in any way you know no impending doom whatsoever one of the standout tracks on strangeway's here we come is paint a vulgar picture a savage lyrical attack by morrissey upon the foibles of the record industry [Music] i i'm always uneasy when artists start singing about the industry or about what it's like being a pop star it's it's just dull i mean it's not very interesting to to to ordinary people when you're in a band you are walking on thin ice all the time you can all be over tomorrow you know so the wreck label may care about you a little bit and then drop you the week after it's it's you you yeah i think i had to feel some kind of commitment come to the label so he expects a lot you know all from them but he didn't get it and if he doesn't get it he's his bloke gets very upset when he gets very upset he writes very good songs actually pop stars should avoid whinging about how terrible the music business is and how hard it is being a celebrity and and having to cope with all this fame and success uh and to me that's one of the the signs on the strange ways album that uh the smiths had run their natural course [Music] the smiths had now officially disbanded there would be no more new recordings there was however one last single scheduled for release and in december 1987 it arrived [Music] just [Music] last night i think last night i dreamt somebody loved me is the track where you it's most obvious that they are pulling in different directions morrissey sounds almost sort of dispirited um [Music] ma wants to to to kind of create this sort of epic guitar adventure he's getting into strings you know he he's he's clearly thinking how far can we take this and and he's feeling frustrated by what he sees as as morrissey sort of wallowing in in some sort of backward-looking nostalgia and i think that's very evident on that track i think last night was an app to one song but then i would i think you could put any smith song as a swansong and it would be suitable because the nature of the lyrics is kind of finality um the conclusions being drawn people being slightly unsatisfied with their life all things that you could easily tie in with the the breakup of a band i think the fact that their music is timeless for me and for a new generation of young listeners is the fact that it was so very well produced um i mean the songs just sound terrific the uh i keep harping back to the guitar but i mean we i like guitar bands and uh and johnny marr was excelled i think he was a great songwriter great tunesmith along with morrissey who's relevant now and is still packing stadiums uh around the world and and people love his solo stuff and people will always love the smiths [Music] one of those bands they just don't lose the following they don't lose any funds they're just going to keep gaining interest all the time really looks on the broad scale of rock they're kind of wimpy pale face english bands but because actually they're not really there's there's a lot of bollocks this miss you know there's they stand for something they don't budge what they stand for and this thing about things that people feel but most mostly in rock are too scared to actually admit [Music] [Applause] [Music] i don't think the smiths have dated that badly i mean there's a lot of things that happened in the 80s that you know when you played it in the 90s they really did sound very dated didn't really happen with the smith's catalogue it still sounds fresh and it still sounds fresh now i think the smiths ultimately are going to be remembered as you know one of the three or four you know truly great british bands truly great rock bands because of that distinctive kind of combination of music lyrics atmosphere and sheer presence

Channel: Amplified

Views: 218,255

Keywords: Amplified, amplified channel, music, pop culture, culture channel, documentaries, music documentaries, pop, film, music interviews, film interviews, the smiths documentary bbc, the smiths documentary 2021, inside the smiths documentary, the smiths the queen is dead documentary, morrissey, manchester, the smiths, johnny marr, the, smiths, rare, moz, the smiths (musical group), morrissey the smiths, rough trade, indie

Id: kjLH3hipVsc

Length: 87min 38sec (5258 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 23 2021