The Miracle of the Smiths

The Smiths would not have been the band they were without Andy Roarke and Mike Joyce. RIP Andy, I will play “Barbarism Begins At Home” a few times on repeat today

it really is an amazing track

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVGadF6WE3k

*Rourke

of all the things to typo, ugh

a long time ago, the band I was in did a Smiths set for the First Avenue cover band contest. It was really instructive having to sit down and work out Rourke's basslines, very tricky, very melodic, very clever. Came away with an even greater appreciation of this talent. Obviously, Morrissey has soured things but musically they were such an amazing unit. We had a blast figuring it all out.

I always admired the fact that Rourke used a pick and employed a fairly hard Fender Precision sound (Similar to JJ Burnell or early Simon Gallup) I feel made a big difference to the individuality of Smiths early overall sound, his lines were (melodically) the kind that a lot of those bubbling, fingerstyle players might play but he did it

“The bass sound in The Smiths came about from me trying to overcompensate. Because there was only me and Johnny, in the early days, we both played overtime to make the biggest sound possible.”

i'm now realising i'd always way underrated "barbarism begins at home"

rourke really had such perfect chemistry with marr, somehow matching each other in inventiveness

Well, they’d been playing together since they were 11…

DJP and Josh on the money here

I didn't always like every bit of their output but the music was never anything short of awesome.

Meat is Murder is Rourke's peak imo.

The Headmaster Ritual is the one for me, the little slides sitting at the most perfect spots that mirror the double snare hits. The boxed-in economy of movement in the left hand, that slightly unusual and very groovy downward-facing melody in the verse, and the overall bounce. It must have been so much fucking fun to dig in and play a line like that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0UhVax_hmw

This is so sad, RIP. I saw them a few times and it was insanely good.

Per points above, thought Rob Sheffield called it right here:

Andy brought the crucial elements of disco, funk, dub, and hip-hop — in addition to everything else they were, they were a brilliant dance band, ironic as that might seem to Smiths-phobes.

Yep! I wrote in my piece that the Smiths always lit up -- bear with me -- every small indie club I danced at in the late '90s and early '00s.

Not really sure I hear any dub in his playing, at least not with the Smiths, but disco (Marr's not so secret secret weapon; he named his son Nile) and funk, sure, and I guess by loose extension hip-hop.

Agreed

Was he really underrated?

Didn’t quite know that he and Johnny Marr went back that far, maybe I should (re)read the Smiths books I own.

Thinking about his place in the pantheon of busy bass players. He sort of was like Jamerson with a pick, as MaresNest was kind of hinting at. Nice that he and Johnny were such good lifelong friends and didn’t get into that kind of Bruce Thomas vs Elvis Costello stalemate situation.

Never really saw them as a dance band either, but hey, as per Dead Milkmen, "you'll dance to anything...by The Smiths..."

They have a ton of super danceable stuffy, largely due to Mike and Andy; just going through Louder Than Bombs brings out a ton of options (I was just bopping around the kitchen to “Is It Really So Strange?”)

Hadn’t realized he had played on Morrissey solo material, now I am curious about which recordings exactly.

Wiki!

"November Spawned a Monster," and he co-wrote "Yes, I Am Blind" and "Girl Least Likely To."

That explains why “November Spawned A Monster” swings like that

And "Girl..." is one of his best songs.

Never really saw them as a dance band either, but hey, as per Dead Milkmen, "you'll dance to anything...by The Smiths..."

― henry s, Friday, May 19, 2023 2:19 PM (fifty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

vile, homophobic song

And "Girl..." is one of his best songs.

Sure would be nice if the lyricist had turned out all right instead of alt-right.

"And she lives for the written word/People come second, or possibly third..."

vile, homophobic song

I agree with this assessment and yet just reading the words “you’ll dance to anything” made me want to get up and dance

I spent a good amount of my time in eighth grade doing the cabbage patch to this song in jjjusten’s basement

awww I'd love to see video of you and jjj

but it's nasty, I had fond memories of it until it popped up on Spotify and I didn't remember it being that bad

Has Rick Astley weighed in yet?

The Jam

Oh god I wish.

It was really instructive having to sit down and work out Rourke's basslines, very tricky, very melodic, very clever.

As a novice I tried to figure out "This Charming Man." It was hopeless.

Phew

#Morrissey on Andy Rourke "His distinction was so terrific and unconventional and he proved it could be done. He was also very, very funny and very happy... At the end of it all, we hope to feel that we were valued. Andy need not worry about that." MORE https://t.co/5pt025xu9T pic.twitter.com/Dsresip9Qr

— Dave Haslam (@Mr_Dave_Haslam) May 19, 2023

Phew is right.

I guess he valued Andy at about . . . 10 percent.

Apropos The Jam: I really like Bruce Foxton and feel like he is kind of a comparable bass player, but maybe his style was more what one expected from a guy playing with a pick than Andy’s was. Have to think about this, may walk it back and retract it if people give me static for saying it.

Heh, never knew that originally Bruce was the lead guitarist and Paul Weller played bass.

I am shockingly old to have learned this. I may have read it in Paolo's book years ago, but if so I had forgotten it.

he co-wrote "Yes, I Am Blind" and "Girl Least Likely To."

Never really understood the co-writing credit for Girl Least Likely To given that it is note-for-note identical to the Cookies' Only To Other People. And since you'd have to assume that ripping the Cookies off was Morrissey's idea, I guess it was a rare example of Moz being charitable to a former bandmate? Or maybe connected to Rourke settling his claim against M&M? I don't know.

Foxton wasn’t an arranger or orchestrator the way Rourke was (with a few exceptions, particularly “In The City”). I love both bassists, but as a novice bass guitarist when I first heard both the Smiths and the Jam in 1985, Bruce’s lines were a helluva lot easier to figure out. Whatever Rourke played, that’s where the song had to go; whatever Foxton played was what the song required. Foxton played probably my all-time favorite Rickenbacker bass moment — that glissando stab in the bridge of “When You’re Young” — and had an incisive melodic sense, but he wasn’t baffling like Rourke was.

I feel like they aren't that similar aside from being busy, Rourke was way more funk/R&B

Yes, these are both good posts.

Andy brought crucial elements of dub and hip-hop to The Smiths?

Bruce Foxton is a decent call but I feel that he's often busy for busy's sake, possibly borne from being a guitarist too, Bruce Thomas was mentioned, and if you had handed BT a pick and a chorus pedal in 1978 and told him to punk it up a bit, you may have gotten similar results.

Rourke was a very contained player, vividly contrapuntal but not flashy, aware of the framework of 'the song' but just preferring to build a lovely little motor inside it that could be removed intact and analyzed/appreciated in its own right.

String me up, but the best analog I can think of is Alex James, who was no doubt influenced as much by ABBA and disco as he was by Rourke himself.

Oh and 'Barbarism', plays the same four-bar line for six minutes, then during the breakdown at the end, he makes one absolutely exquisite little deviation then stops, total fucking genius.

I was super-lucky to be at the 1985 Irvine Meadows show with the 16 minute version of "Barbarism" as the final (x3) encore. I wasn't familiar with them at all (outside of "How Soon..."), but my takeaway was that Rourke was the real hero - as essential as Entwistle, but not sounding like a herd of elephants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-KTvKP1KVU

Elvis Telecom, I was at that show too.

I knew them though as it was the Queen is Dead show, if I remember correctly.

So lucky! What's amazing about that version is there's no dropout section, JM plays throughout. I must dig out the Royal Albert Hall '85 boot with Pete Burns duetting on Barbarism and re-listen.