The Miracle of the Smiths

um, "wore"

'Cosmic Dancer' is a good example of a T. Rex song that just cycles through the same chords for verse after verse with an occasional short break/'B' section - there's no real chorus! Likewise, 'The Queen Is Dead' is just verse after verse with the same chord progression with the occasional short break/'B' section and against there's no real chorus.

*against=again

I always thought the Byrds jangle was in there plus big 60s pop.
Morrissey was famously vocal about the New York Dolls when they were around which is prety well known tghough not sure it can be heard in the sound of the band 10 years later.

The William of William It Was Really Nothing was probably Mckenzie wasn't it. Not sure if the actual sound owed much to the band though.

No, but it's not hard to imagine Mackenzie being an influence on Morrissey vocally. Mackenzie being the superior singer, of course.

The question of what combination of influences produced The Smiths was the original, specific subject of this thread. The first 100 or so posts from 2001-2002 contain a lot of interesting old-school ILX discussion of this.

does johnny marr really call morrissey morrissey? that's kind of strange

It would be stranger and quite rude to deliberately call a friend by his birth name rather than the name he chooses to go by.

Re the mention of Postcard bands and Orange Juice upthread: the final OJ album came out late-1984 so after the Smiths first album. The song The Artisans is about the Smiths being flavour of the month (which OJ had been some years previously).

I used to spend each afternoon
Just locked in the confines of my room
'Cause my mother told me that I never should
Play with the gypsies down in the wood
Then I fell in with a bunch of hoods
Who go by the name of the 'Artisans'

Gonna trade in my snakeskin boots
Gonna trade in my rhinestone suit
'Cause I'm in cahoots with the 'Artisans'
Who just happen to be my favourite band
At the best all the rest are just also-rans
When compared to the fabulous 'Artisans'

The bedroom dwelling Moz fan of the first two lines is archetypal. The snakeskin boots/rhinestone suits stuff were fashionable before the black levis and cardigan look of the Smiths fan. On the lyric sheet provided with the record "Artisans" is put in quotation marks as if it is intended to be euphemistic.

And most obviously, "Artisan" & "Smith" are synonyms.

xp

i just always assumed it was his artist name

I should have said first name, they're both his birth name of course.

afaict everyone calls him that, maybe not his family though, right enough.

was reading the wire magazine invisible jukebox book from the 90's - woooo boy a lot of drum & bass action in that book - and was REALLY surprised that mark e. smith was a smiths fan. he thought it was too bad that they broke up right when they were getting interesting.

also, it was either him or someone else who mentioned that you couldn't tell who the influences were with the smiths. or maybe john peel said that.

xpost calling people by their last name was/is completely normal. At least half my friends growing up (in the UK) were known by their last names. The rest had nicknames. Can't actually recall anyone who was known by their first name as a teenager.

Peel's exact quote in the south bank show documentary was that you couldn't tell the influences and used he the phrase "it was like they had sprung full armed from the ground"

And I have a vague memory of m-e-s praising the smiths last album but laughing at morrisey's adoration of skinheads saying something along the lines of "I put one on crutches last week!"

xp

i understand that. except he calls mike joyce mike and i'm sure he calls andy rourke andy

I thought he still called Mike Joyce 'Arsehole'...

hey since we're calling people by their nicknames

Oddly enough in that Invisible Jukebox Scott mentions Mark E. Smith calls Morrissey "Steven", but he's presumably being a dick.

mark e. smith was a smiths fan

Whoa!

If so, he hid it pretty well behind a clever screen of general dismissal.

In the early days he used to insist on being called Steven as he hated Steve so not sure Mark E Smith is being a dick although apparently (according to Marr) there was an official directive issued by Rough Trade around 1983 forbidding the use of his forenames.

Or Johnny Marr, or Mike Joyce, or....

Can't believe a drummer found an old tape of some songs he co-wrote and recorded, in a drum case, and personally paid for a producer to restore them, personally paid for the pressing and distribution of a sure-to-make-him-millions 500 copies, arranged publicity, hired a singer to sing on it, and then DIDN'T hire an unrelated session drummer, who famously charges well beyond his ability, to wipe the drum tracks of his, the original drummer / writer / tape discoverer / project coordinator / investor / record label, own and replace them. What was he thinking???!

Morrissey is an asshole. So sad to read Johnny would have reformed in 08 if not for Moz being a flake and and weirdo.

There doesn't seem to be anything especially assholey or flakey about getting drunk and sentimental, knocking around the idea of doing something, then rethinking it later on.

I mean, Morrissey is self-evidently a massive arsehole and flake, but not for this. Doing a Three Quarters Of The Smiths reunion would be a bad idea, and almost certainly have fallen apart long before the end.

Trying to unpick part one of that, but failed. My orig post was about how daft the "We decided not to ask Morrissey" bit like it was up to them if they'd let him do it. For what its worth, it doesn't seem to be anything like The Smiths..

Part two and three are completely OTM, btw.

I think there are many reasons why it would be a bad thing.

I don't think it would 'piss on the legacy', I don't think it would be bad per se.

I just think there are better things to do.

Re a couple of points upthread: I think the only time you can hear the influence of the NY Dolls in the Smiths is "Lonely Planet Boy" in "There Is a Light".
And Edwyn Collins said in interviews at the time that "The Artisans" was about Orange Juice.

Maybe he meant that it was "about Orange Juice" being replaced as critical darlings by the Smiths.

Yep, there's no way OJ would have actually said "this is about The Smiths".

"It's Too Late" is a New York Dolls song that has a lyric that is a bit Morrisey-like. Even mentions Diana Dors!

"No Reply" is basically a Smiths song. tell me you can't hear Morrisey singing "i nearly diiiiied"

This happened once before
When I came to your door
No reply
They said it wasn't you
But I saw you peep through your window
I saw the lie, I saw the lie
I know that you saw me
As I looked up to see your face
I tried to telephone
They said you were not home
That's a lie
'Cause I know where you've been
I saw you walk in your door
I nearly died, I nearly died
'Cause you walked hand in hand
With another man in my place

Nah, that's more The Wedding Present.

I always saw no reason for Morrissey & Marr to not reform under that handle and not The Smiths - there would be no need to involve Bruce & Rick, plus the emphasis could be on a fresh beginning w/ new material rather than a straight reunion, plus it sounds better than something like 'The Tears'.

Well, no real reason other than Morrissey in general

a *new* Smiths release!

http://true-to-you.net/sites/default/files/screenshot_20161129_180942.jpg

weird time to put it out. seems more like your 'record store day' thing. maybe the beginning of some 'proper' reissues? deluxe jobs and what have you? i know Moz was keen for a TQID anniversary edition that never materialized. who can say?

http://www.nme.com/news/music/smiths-release-new-single-featuring-two-unheard-tracks-1882407

Tie in with recent Johnny Marr book?

see the Morrissey Solo site for plenty of scuttlebutt

Morrissey likes to reissue his solo songs for no particular reason as 7"s so nice to see he's still keen on The Smiths

I don't really see the point in reissuing deluxe versions of their output since Marr has remastered everything recently and apparently they released everything they produced at the time so there's no unreleased stuff left...

complete Peel/BBC sessions would be nice, can't believe they've never been issued on CD/vinyl in full. supposedly either Marr or Moz wanted the Troy Tate version of the album released at some point, maybe that'll see the light.

xpost -- and then it turns out there's two albums worth of unreleased funk sex jams. (Okay maybe not.)

ah ! I would by that !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_T1NE4Q2BI

am i mistaken in thinking that marr recorded instrumental demos for morrissey to write to? have any of those ever surfaced?

hum. that would be cool indeed. but I guess the demos were just basic recordings on cassette or something. I doubt they even kept these...

but if they existed that would be interesting since Marr has said often that Moz kept turning things around, making verses with choruses and vice versa.

yeah, i guess i remember marr saying he'd give morrissey like a really complex set of chord changes and morrissey would pick out sections and simplify? maybe I'm making that up...

might not be worthy of release, but would be cool to hear anyway.

does moz bark in that video?

there's this of course which is pretty much an instrumental demo that Moz never got round to singing over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8sBAvfM4sY

ha, yeah, i'd listen to an hour of that kind of thing!

That's wonderful, thanks for posting it piscesx

Would've been fascinated by things like that "Fast One" clip in the 90s. Now not so much. It sounds like 2-bar segments of actual Smiths songs edited together to make an imaginary one. I don't mean it's fake, but they probably did the right thing not taking stuff like this further.

I didn't know this Smiths demo. it's pretty good and reminded me of this thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa5sQuU2YjM&list=PLpAH3kPpftqrrufLr5Ei_EM_Z-i0qwAEI&index=7