The Miracle of the Smiths

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.

If you look at that ticket price it cost $18 to see The Smiths in Los Angeles in 1985, unbelievable but all shows were around that price.

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

Nope. It was the last US show for the Meat Is Murder tour. (set list)

If you look at that ticket price it cost $18 to see The Smiths in Los Angeles in 1985, unbelievable but all shows were around that price

Technically, The Smiths was free for me because a couple of friends had an extra ticket and needed someone with a car.

I'm seeing The Cure on Sunday and when I first saw them in 1984 at my college gym (UC Irvine's Crawford Hall), tickets were $11.

The other great unique bass player i think of is Graham Maby, another phenomenon. I agree with the post abt the song being required to follow Andy. Foxton and Maby both incredible players though

Graham Maby is a great addition, thanks!

Feel like maybe if Johnny had been a lesser, less charming man he might have simplified, erased or buried those bass lines in the mix à la Lou Reed and Bob Quine or Paul Westerberg and Bob Stinson, instead of cheering and egging on his pal.

Derek Forbes comes to mind as a unique, bass phenom too

Many xps but MaresNest has brought great insight into , thank you.

I love Maby as well, especially on Night and Day.

Another potential comparison is to Peter Hook but maybe now is not the time for that conversation.

I was thinking of Hooky too for comparison, but he is much more of a lead bass player than a busy player who is still functioning as a bassist.

Redd otm. Oh and Tarfumes also bringing good insight into the artistry of different bass players - shaping the song vs. responding to it and giving it exactly what it needs.

I don't really have a detailed ranking for these dudes; i just think we are fortunate to live in a world that has had such musicians in it.

There may be another point to be made about how it is kind of tricky to play bass busily so as to add to the song and not ruin it by being sloppy, unfocused, out of step with everyone else or committing various other offenses.

Les Pattison from the Bunnymen was an underrated bassist of the era. Thinking of stuff like "The Back of Love" or "The Cutter".

having played bass for a long time I think it's an easy instrument to be good at and a hard instrument to be great at. you have to listen.

^this

I sometimes think that the Boy with the Thorn in his Side 12", with this segueing into Asleep on the b-side was the perfect Smiths artefact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3baT8twPM9s

Who else ever sounded like this? Like the swamp blues being invented by the Brontës in 1828. Andy's bass and cello take it to another dimension.

that extended version of Barbarism gave me full body chills -- thank you for sharing. i could listen to Smiths instrumentals all day.

which is to say that Moz can't befoul the music even if he befouls everything else he touches

If you look at that ticket price it cost $18 to see The Smiths in Los Angeles in 1985, unbelievable but all shows were around that price.

― Bee OK, Friday, May 19, 2023 5:12 PM (yesterday)

100% untrue. The show the night before (in, like, actual Los Angeles) was $13.50.

https://i.imgur.com/HAfIbKs.jpg

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

Last Of The Famous International Playboys and Interesting Drug both have an all-Smiths lineup (Morrissey, Rourke, Joyce and Gannon)

during the lifetime of the Smiths, I strongly disliked all post-Police, post Clash English acts of the 80s; by the 2000s, I could get over this enough to pick up Hatful of Hollow at the FMU record fair, and man was that a revelation. by 2013, I was looking to expand the remit of the punk-metal karaoke act that I had been running since 1999 in NYC, and so we did a new wave night: like UMS, I was flummoxed like a motherfucker trying to ace "This Charming Man."

I would add that above all, the quality that all bass players, even modestly skilled players, should keep in mind, should they be feeling unappreciated and inferior to the guitarist, relegated to root fifth, root fifth, root fifth like a drone, is that the song or composition or groove at its most fundamental level is located in what YOU are doing the overwhelming majority of the time.

You disliked the Beat?!

I used to try to play along to “This Charming Man” although I never performed it with anyone else. Don’t know what exactly I was doing, must have been some simplified version, since last night I tried it for the first time in decades and couldn’t quite figure it out.

But why pamper life’s complexity?

If you look at that ticket price it cost $18 to see The Smiths in Los Angeles in 1985, unbelievable but all shows were around that price.
― Bee OK, Friday, May 19, 2023 5:12 PM (yesterday)

100% untrue. The show the night before (in, like, actual Los Angeles) was $13.50.

― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Saturday, May 20, 2023 7:49 AM

Why are you saying untrue? I was making a general point. Yes, I'm technically from Orange County and not Los Angeles but it's the Los Angeles TV and Radio market. I listened to KROQ at that time as OC didn't have like a similar radio station and ironically I did see that Palladium Smiths show too. That show cost $14.25, as you need to add the service fee.

Or I should have said $15.25, so yeah my point stands.

I thought it was a good-humoured "actually it was even cheaper than that!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn9ihX4SBeA

https://i.imgur.com/uU5JsyD.jpg

My actual ticket stubs with some bonus shows I saw. This was the third and last time I saw them and this would be The Queen Is Dead tour. This one cost me $19.50, inflation lol.

There's part of me that regrets missing these shows massively (though granted I was in San Diego rather than the LA area). At the same time, I kinda appreciate how this *wasn't* my high school listening -- college, sure, but it's nice not to have those bands/music tangled up with said high school times. Probably explains why they last for me.

I wish I still had my ticket stubs. I saw them in 1986 at what we affectionately called the "Cement Center" on the University of Colorado campus.

The Smiths
September 3, 1986
CU Events Center, Boulder, CO

Still Ill
I Want the One I Can't Have
There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
How Soon Is Now?
Frankly, Mr. Shankly
Panic
Stretch Out and Wait
The Boy With the Thorn in His Side
Is It Really So Strange?
Cemetery Gates
Never Had No One Ever
What She Said
(with Rubber Ring intro and outro)
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
Meat Is Murder
Rusholme Ruffians
(with (Marie's The Name) His Latest Flame intro)
The Queen Is Dead

Our seats were pretty far back, so it was hard to get a solid impression of the band. I did get to see Mike and Andy playing with Sinead on her first US tour a couple years later, we were right up front. I had no idea they were touring with her until I saw them. What a magic moment that was.

Meanwhile their music is almost entirely tied into my miserable high school experience to a profound degree. I don’t think I listened to this band for 15 years after hs until it seemed like distant history bc my life had changed sufficiently.

I can find almost no evidence online of that Sinead show, other than these photos from her press conference of the same day. Odd.

https://fairangels.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/sinead-oconnor-in-denver-1988/

xp I can relate, LL. For me, it was the middle of my college career, a time when I felt lonely, isolated and exhausted. I found the Smiths affirming as well as depressing.

Bee OK forgot to mention that the $17.50 Nov 1986 New Order show at Irvine Meadows also included The Fall and The Durutti Column as openers

Bee OK forgot to mention that the $17.50 Nov 1986 New Order show at Irvine Meadows also included The Fall and The Durutti Column as openers

I texted some friends that went to this show with me to see if we were on time. We were and The Durutti Column opened the whole damn thing. My mind is sort of blown right now as I realize that I saw the Fall live.

Thanks ET for taking me down that road for some early memories.

Ah, yes, the "Pumped Full of Drugs Tour."