IF IT'S NOT LOVE THEN IT'S THE POLL THAT WILL BRING US TOGETHER - ILM Artist Poll #72 - THE SMITHS - RESULTS THREAD

Didn't Marr basically break up the band the moment the album was completed? I understand things had been simmering for a while, no doubt helped along by Morrissey's attitude to managers and not bothering to turn up for the 'Sheila Take a Bow' shoot.

The guitar in "Death...." reminds me of Gang of Four.

"death" and "last night" are all about build and atmosphere in a way i think they were aiming for throughout their career, but they kinda perfected it on those songs imo

agreed. Listening to a bunch of their songs the other day with middle-aged person ears and deciding i liked some of the songs I had loved as an adolescent less now because of production-related stuff (e.g. a lot of songs on the self-titled debut), and then listening to those two and liking them more.

"Nowhere Fast" was the last song I cut but maybe I should have kept it. Love Marr's layers on that.

I guess the thing with "Nowhere Fast" - why I ended up cutting it and maybe why people are divided on it - is that it has a great guitar part and lyrics but there is not much to it melodically.

Didn't vote but catching with it now.

Almost always listen to this group - if at all - through its compilations.

The stuff on Strangeaways is a bit out of place and just off, Marr's spiky guitar picking etc.

http://i.imgur.com/X2erEfa.jpg

41. STRETCH OUT AND WAIT (B-side of 'Shakespeare's Sister' 12" | Album track from The World Won't Listen)
361 points | 17 votes | 1 first place vote

oh, I'd hoped this would place higher. did they ever record anything more joyful than this track?

It's so much better than the A-side it isn't even funny.

'Shakespeare's Sister' remains one of those Smiths tracks that has never really grabbed me, in all honesty. See also: 'Shoplifters Of The World Unite'

'Nowhere Fast' was high on my list, I always associate it with 'Still Ill' because they were next to each other on Best II but also I think they're quite similar musically. I really like thee peppy early songs like those two, 'These Things Take Time' and 'You've Got Everything Now'.

"Shakespeare's Sister" and "London" always blur into the same song in my mind. Before checking, "Shakespeare's Sister" is the one that goes "young bones groan and the rocks below moan 'throw your skinny body down, son" and "London" is the one that goes "smoke lingers 'round your fingers"?

"Stretch Out and Wait" is a perfectly pleasant one, just not top 20 for me.

2xp

Shakespeare's Sister is easily their weakest A-side (xposts).

My #1

It's so much better than the A-side it isn't even funny.

I was going to say! but they seemed to make a habit out of releasing singles where the A-side was far superior to the B-side

Before checking, "Shakespeare's Sister" is the one that goes "young bones groan and the rocks below moan 'throw your skinny body down, son" and "London" is the one that goes "smoke lingers 'round your fingers"?

Nailed it! But yeah, obv, not my favourites.

sh. sister/ what she said/ stretch out is an amazing 12".

"Stretch Out and Wait" is pretty! That mandolin line. It's the first time on an early song that Moz's voice accompanies or improvises over a guitar/mandolin line without sound like a cat in a vacuum.

The Smiths have about 65+ good songs and maybe five bad ones, and for me these last three - Barbarism, Disco Dancer, Stretch Out and Wait - are near the bottom of the 65 good ones. They're still good, but I like a lot of less popular ones better. For me, Unhappy Birthday is better than any of them. And Never Had No One Never. And definitely, by miles, Shakespeare's Sister.

^ Pretty much exactly this. Nice time signature on this one though.

Haven't listened in a while but isn't it 12/8?

Seems so. Though any departure from 4/4 in rock is impressive enough for me, tbh.

I can't easily tell the difference between 12/8, 6/4 or 6/8 etc, but I recognise when something is in sixes rather than fours, and The Smiths have an unusually high number of things in sixes for a rock band.

Stretch Out And Wait and You've Got Everything Now were my biggest re-evaluations from going through everything again for this. Neither had left much of an impression on me before but Stretch Out and Wait is really lovely, just missed my ballot. You've Got Everything Now is fantastic, it made my top 10. The verse isn't their best but the chorus is thrilling, one of their very best from that period.

"Shakespeare's Sister" inspired a band with a couple good singles.

Nate, thanks a lot for this! Did you make the images? Thanks if so. They are great so far.

Were they inspired by the smiths or Wolfe?

Woolf, rather.

stretch out and wait is way too low

Were they inspired by the smiths or Wolfe?

― pastoral fantasy (jed_), Thursday, March 3, 2016

Wilde was on Moz's side iirc

Ha!

Shakespeare's Sister rules so fucking hard

yeah I liked "Stay" a lot

Nate, thanks a lot for this! Did you make the images? Thanks if so. They are great so far.

― pastoral fantasy (jed_), Thursday, March 3, 2016 9:50 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Were they inspired by the smiths or Wolfe?

― pastoral fantasy (jed_), Thursday, March 3, 2016 9:51 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Me, actually. 100% inspired by Smiths album/single art.

Thanks!

So far only voted for "Shankly" and "Barbarism," but I like "Nowhere Fast" a lot. The video is like Gay Elvis with young Keith Richards.

happy to out myself as one of the #1 votes for "these things take time" and glad to have made a difference. the guitar line at the end of the chorus still blows my mind.

Death of a Disco Dancer was my #1. Way too low

This is what Simon Goddard has to say about Suffer Little Children in his 'Songs That Saved Your Life' book:

One of the first songs to cement the partnership of Morrissey and Marr, written at their inaugural practice in the summer of 1982, the dreadful yet captivating ‘Suffer Little Children’ was the former’s highly controversial elegy to the victims of the ‘Moors Murderers’, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.

To fully understand and appreciate its intent, we have to place the song and its author into the context of time and location. In 1966, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 17 year-old Edward Evans, ten year-old Lesley Anne Downey and 12 year-old John Kilbride. The latter two victims had been buried in shallow graves on Saddleworth Moor just outside of Manchester, a gory detail that was to christen the couple ‘the Moors Murderers’.

The killings took place between July 1963 and October 1965, in and around Manchester and its surrounding market towns. Born in May 1959, Morrissey would have been a six year-old child living in the city at the time of their arrest when they were still on the lookout for potential prey. ‘I happened to live on the streets where, close by, some of the victims had been picked up,’ he told The Face in 1985. ‘Within that community, news of the crimes totally dominated all attempts at conversation for quite a few years. It was like the worst thing that had ever happened, and I was very, very aware of everything that occurred. Aware as a child who could have been a victim.’

It follows that ‘Suffer Little Children’ is an account of the Moors Murders as written by a potential victim; a personal memorial intended to highlight the diabolical enormity of Brady and Hindley’s actions. At the time of its composition, and release on The Smiths, the couple had only ever been convicted of the Kilbride, Downey and Evans murders while Hindley had continually protested her innocence as a mere love-struck accomplice. In 1987, three years after ‘Suffer Little Children’ first appeared on vinyl, Brady confessed to a journalist interviewing him in prison that, as suspected, they were also responsible for the deaths of 16 year-old Pauline Reade and 12 year-old Keith Bennett who both vanished during the same period. After a cordoned search of the moor, remains of Reade’s body were found. Tragically, those of Bennett have never been located, lending an unbearable weight to the song’s grim refrain — ‘find me, find me’.

In terms of lyrical detail, Morrissey’s main source was Emlyn Williams’ biography Beyond Belief, describing with chilling matter-of-factness the fate of the three victims the couple were originally convicted of. First published in 1967 (barely a year after their imprisonment), Williams’ book tells the murderers’ story in vicarious, narrative prose plumping for fictitious supposition over clinical analysis. ‘Suffer Little Children’ itself is one of Williams’ chapter titles, so too ‘Hindley Wakes’, a pun on Stanley Houghton’s Lancashire drama Hindle Wakes. Williams draws explicit attention to Lesley Ann Downey’s ‘white beads’ and cites Hindley’s confession during police interrogation that ‘wherever he has gone, I have gone.’ It his Williams, too, who is responsible for that harrowing vision of buried bodies upon Saddleworth Moor screaming out ‘find me, find me.’

As had been the case with ‘The Hand That Rocks The Cradle’, Morrissey had already written the lyrics to ‘Suffer Little Children’ before forming The Smiths while Marr had also been tinkering with its innocently tuneful chords many weeks before their first writing session. Originally he’d conceived the track with a separate melancholy piano epilogue tacked onto the end as included on its first demo prototype and the Troy Tate version. Although Marr recorded this coda with Porter, it would be axed from the final edit of The Smiths only to resurface in its own right in more mature form as 1985’s ‘Asleep’.

Whatever their misgivings about the quality of their debut, Marr always expressed contentment that with Porter, ‘Suffer Little Children’ had come out exactly as they’d intended. Beautifully arranged, Morrissey’s delivery is impeccable, accentuating the ‘stolid stench of death’ with thespian gravity over Marr’s tender yet lachrymose score. The Hindley vocal, again courtesy of Morrissey’s mysterious old flame Annalisa Jablonska, was also denser and less vaudevillian than previous attempts.

The song was, perhaps inevitably, to attract controversy when later issued as a B-side to their 1984 summer single ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’, aggravated by its sleeve of a peroxide Viv Nicholson which bore an unsettling resemblance to Hindley herself. The local Manchester press were first to question Morrissey’s motives after the grandfather of John Kilbride expressed his disgust having first heard the song on a pub jukebox. ‘He said he was going to kill us if he ever saw us,’ says Joyce. ‘As far as I’m aware, “Suffer Little Children” was Morrissey saying that he didn’t think such a heinous crime should be put under the carpet. But in the 60s people couldn’t really understand it. That’s what they did.’

It wasn’t long before The Smiths found themselves once again fending off the redtop lynch mob in a depressing repeat of the ‘Handsome Devil’ debacle. High street chains Woolworths and Boots reacted by removing The Smiths from sale. An official press statement from Rough Trade reiterated their innocence. ‘The song was written out of a profound emotion by Morrissey, a Mancunian who feels that the particularly horrendous crime it describes must be borne by the conscience of Manchester and that it must never happen again.’

The scandal was only placated when Morrissey arranged a meeting with Ann West, the mother of Lesley Ann Downey, to express his concerns over the media misunderstanding and explain to her the song’s honest intent. He succeeded, both in mollifying the witch hunt and sustaining a friendship with West for several years: she and her husband, Alan West, would later be thanked on the inner sleeve of Meat Is Murder. After her death in 1999, Morrissey further paid tribute describing West as ‘a remarkable woman’.

And this is the Troy Tate version he refers to:

The Smiths : Suffer Little Children (Troy Tate)

that is an excellent summary. For me Suffer Little Children has always been the most haunting song from the debut record, genuinely chilling but also Morrissey at his compassionate best.

Does Manchester actually have anything to answer for or is just a good line?

Northside?

There's that but I'm not sure why these murders should be "be borne by the conscience of Manchester". Just sayin', like.

no more than Gloucester was responsible for Fred West I suppose, but I think lyrical or artistic responses don't therefore become invalid?

^^ Have you been to Gloucester?

No more than death with no reason is murder.

xp hah yeah it is "that kind of place" isn't it!

no more than Gloucester was responsible for Fred West I suppose, but I think lyrical or artistic responses don't therefore become invalid?

Of course not, it was the validity of the portentous interpretation of them I was calling into question.

http://i.imgur.com/4k67ccG.jpg

40. IS IT REALLY SO STRANGE? (B-side of 'Sheila Take a Bow')
365 points | 19 votes | 1 first place vote

i went through the queen is dead and the s/t in high school/college and thought, "oh I might be done with the smiths now." a few months later I listen to louder than bombs out of curiosity and this song knocks me flat