The Miracle of the Smiths

omg it is death

anyone recommend a good morrissey bio?

Mein Kampf

lol

Not exactly a bio but Simon Goddard's Songs That Saved Your Life is a great read xp

i keep forgetting morrissey wrote a memoir and somehow convinced penguin to publish it as a "penguin classic"

https://i.imgur.com/ufnBs8a.jpg
wish i knew how to photoshop morrissey's bio onto this

Morrissey's autobio is hilarious tbrr

if you want a bio of the Smiths the one to read is Fletcher's "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" imo

morrissey's autobio is quite funny. there is much more on the court case about the smiths' royalties than there is about the 5 years of the band the smiths existing. lots of stuff about how the smiths singles didn't sell as well because of the incompetence of rough trade - they didn't send enough copies to the shops to meet the demand! - but also about how solo singles of his charted higher than any smiths single, which proves solo moz is better than the smiths!

yeah it is rife with bitchy score-settling, which, I mean, what else would you expect

i also have never forgotten this line from early in the book, when talking about the dilapidated manchester of his youth, which is something like "streets to define you, streets to confine you". very teenage poetry

Anyone get past the first page of his novel?

omg it is death

Iirc, it is "death" one time and "debt" the other.

thanks all

https://www.instagram.com/tv/B-MaNn8BB3N/?utm_source=ig_embed

(Socially isolated Johnny Marr answering questions and taking requests)

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-uV_IQh_OV/

He's turning into Jeff Beck in his old age

lol @ this thread title.

^ came here to post this

the PF is a good guy of old ilx and has started some legendary threads that are still going strong. This one though and it's bloody title! .. it reeks worse than a dead badger that has been decomposing in a septic tank all summer!

Wasn't the title just based on a website of the same name that did a deep dive into every Smiths release?

some people don’t get humor it’s ok

it’s weird that people ever liked the smiths, let alone might possibly still do. actually maybe it’s funny? lol? what could anybody possibly like about this band???

sorry, still lolling over the thread title. I mean, it’s really funny. By the way I have really great taste in music.

If you need to ask, it's the unlikely synthesis between the folk-pop jangly guitar tradition and the Northern English camp tradition.

if you have to keep posting, it’s called American sarcasm

god you’re dumb

Dude.

No Fighting In The Smiths Thread!

(Take That Shit Over To A Moz One)

It's cool, I'm just getting sonned over an American sarcasm beef by someone who hasn't read the first post itt and who leaped to conclusions as to why the thread title made me lol in the first place.

If it hadn't already been done to death, I'd have launched a Smiths website. But too many already. So I decided instead to launch a website around the music of two other great songwriters - Cathal Coughlan and Sean O'Hagan. On https://coughlanohagan.com/, I think I'm building up something worthwhile. Hope you enjoy it.

FFS let it go. you posted this once in a microdisney thread and that's enough?

The Miracle of Cross-spamming

What the fuck is this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MfG80SID6I

that is horrifying

that was the worst two minutes of my life and I have fled from an actual bear

I’m pleased this was made

Morrissey at gunpoint

I know, I know
It’s serious

Been trying to find a Smiths-era quote from either Morrissey or Marr in which one of them says something like "If [famous 60s band/producer/label] had had Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce as their rhythm section they would have been even bigger". Anyway, RIP Andy Rourke, you were great.

Still haven't found the original quote but here's Mike Joyce's recollection of it:

Johnny once said that if Elvis had had me and Andy as his rhythm section he would’ve been an even bigger artist, which is just an incredibly sweet thing for him to have said. Now, from my perspective I don’t know how proud Morrissey and Johnny are of The Smiths, but I know Andy and I are incredibly proud of it.

"Shakespeare's Sister... That has got one of the best rhythm patterns and grooves I have ever heard. If Elvis Presley had had Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke in his band he would have been an even bigger name. I'm sure of it."
- Johnny Marr, Melody Maker, 2 August 1985

It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Andy Rourke after a lengthy illness with pancreatic cancer.
Andy will be remembered as a kind and beautiful soul by those who knew him and as a supremely gifted musician by music fans. 
We request privacy at this sad time pic.twitter.com/KNehQxXoFz

— Johnny Marr (@Johnny_Marr) May 19, 2023

Always think of the incredible bassline on Barbarism Begins at Home, and Morrissey and Marr dancing to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m39bJLMnWxw

RIP Andy, I made of Freebass a million times but The Smiths weren’t The Smiths without you.

Not only the most talented bass player I've ever had the privilege to play with but the sweetest, funniest lad I've ever met. Andy's left the building, but his musical legacy is perpetual. I miss you so much already. Forever in my heart mate.

— Mike Joyce (@mikejoycedrums) May 19, 2023

Marr's full statement is very detailed and touching.

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 with a pick instead, the burpiness replaced with more attack.

The way he keeps the line flowing on Barbarism, with the little scraped ghost notes, it swings but not too much and it jabs the notes out at you, maybe even a throwback to some of the more brittle post-punk bass players.

iirc he and Marr were in a jazz funk outfir prior to The Smiths.

*outfit*

White Dice shoulda been bigger than the Smiths