This is a year of milestones for fans of Manchester-based miserablism. For a start, it’s exactly 40 years since the release of The Smiths’ self-titled debut album, which heralded the arrival of the definitive Manchester band. For a group steeped in musical and cultural nostalgia (something that would become increasingly problematic for singer/lyricist Morrissey) they managed to look and sound like nothing else. With their wry, introspective lyrics and mad, jangly melodies, The Smiths were advocates for the awkward, the band for the bookish.
It’s a strange, imperfect album, the production slightly anaemic, the pacing a little off. But my god there are some bangers on there. The first three tracks on the flipside – Still Ill, Hand in Glove and What Difference Does it Make – define the band for me, even if they took things up several notches over the five years they were together.
The album veers from Hand in Glove’s navel-gazing romance (“No it’s not like any other love. This one is different because it’s us”) to the quasi-horror story of The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, to the haunting reaction to the Moors Murders of Suffer Little Children.
I grew up a 10 minute drive from the unremarkable semi-detached house in Stretford where Morrissey lived as an introverted teenager but it wasn’t until I left Manchester that The Smiths really got their hooks into me. An ex-girlfriend played me that debut album, and from the opening strains of Reel Around the Fountain, the most beautiful song ever written about fellatio, I was lost. (The same ex would later smash that record against my bedroom wall).
The Smiths weren’t my first love – I grew up listening to Britpop and punk rock – but they’re the most enduring. I doubt there’s been a year in the last two decades when they haven’t featured in my top 10 most played bands (confirmed of late by Spotify Wrapped).
I’ve taken the inevitable trip to the Salford Lads Club to recreate the photo on the inside sleeve of The Queen is Dead; I’ve even had a snog under what’s assumed to be the iron bridge that Morrissey got sore lips kissing beneath in Still Ill (it passes over what’s now the Metrolink track not far from his old house). There’s something about The Smiths: when you fall for them, you fall deep.
It’s also exactly 20 years since Morrissey’s “comeback” album You Are the Quarry, released after a seven-year hiatus, dragging him back into the musical zeitgeist after he’d long since been written off. I’m a huge apologist for Morrissey’s early solo career (Everyday Is Like Sunday! Suedehead! The Last of the Famous International Playboys!) – but You Are the Quarry nailed a coherent, kinetic indie pop that had been missing since Morrissey parted ways with Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr.
Unlike The Smiths, who were always “from the past” for me (I was three when they broke up), I vividly remember buying You Are the Quarry from HMV and playing it on repeat until my flatmate forcibly ejected it from my CD player.
Over the decades Morrissey has become impossible to defend. Accusations of racism have dogged him for years and every new interview seems to bring some fresh, depressing scandal. Bigmouth strikes again and again and again. His latest album is genuinely embarrassing.
But those songs from 20, 40 years ago still make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Morrissey may have gone off the rails but his lyrics are forever etched into the folds of my brain.
He sums it up pretty well himself in Rubber Ring, my favourite Smiths song of them all: “Don’t forget the songs that made you cry and the songs that saved your life. Yes, you’re older now and you’re a clever swine but they were the only ones who ever stood by you…”