This Monday it was announced that the guitar genius that is
Johnny Marr will be given the
Godlike Genius award at the 2013 NME Awards.
Whilst this filled me with a simple joy of seeing someone deserving getting
recognition on such a high level it did remind me of the number of perfectly
sane and rational people that are into alternative music but that don’t like
The Smiths. This confuses me as The Smiths were one of the key bands of the 80’s
who managed to bring to the world, in a body of work that covered five years
and four albums, a collection of some of the finest tunes and lyrics that have
ever hailed from this fair land.
After a bit of thinking I came to the conclusion that this
is not because The Smiths are not as brilliant as myself, along with a number
of other commentators, consider them to be but because they are one of the most
misunderstood bands that there have been. Whilst it’s clear that a lot of people
‘got them’ at the time (each album went gold in the UK, the last two in the US
as well, and a brace of over 20 singles getting ranked in the UK charts) these
days they are seen by a number of folk as something that 80’s hipsters got
miserable to whilst waiting for the invention of Starbucks (something that is
not helped by their cardigans, fixie-bikes and NHS glasses). This includes
people who were listening to music in the 80’s, as somehow a mystic force (Morrissey)
has managed to rewrite the history of the band into some new and ugly
misrepresentation of the past.
So in honour of Mr Marr’s ascension to Godlike status, and
so as I have an excuse to listen to the classics in the name of ‘research’ here
are the top five things you should know about The Smiths.
They were not
miserable, they were incredibly sarcastic.
It’s true that The Smiths were around whilst a lot of people
were being very, very miserable. Goth had just kicked off, the New Romantics
had brought a lot of people making Very Serious Pop Songs, and the country was
trying to recover from the economic clusterfuck that had been the 70’s. However
Morrisey, despite being from Manchester, was not miserable during this period.
Instead he very clearly took the mickey with a very straight face.
‘
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now’ is about people who have what they want moaning about it, sung
in a beautify observed ‘crooner’ style, ‘
Girlfriend in a coma’ is a tale of
someone trying to break off a relationship with a coma victim without looking
like a dick, and ‘
Shoplifters of the world unite’ is a direct strike at people
confusing petty larceny with political stand point. When you throw in Morrissey’s
affected annunciation you end up with the kind of tune Oscar Wilde would have
written (should he have been in a bed-site at the time). Whilst never laugh-out
loud it is clear that a bulk of their work is not meant to be taken seriously
on face-value and that is aimed at uplifting the soul, even if it is in a
round-about manner.
They are the link
between rock and pop, for the generation that followed.
It’s true that The Smiths did everything they could to avoid
any connection to what was happening in Pop or Rock at the time the amount of impact
the band had on the next wave of both genres. Their slow, almost 50’s crooner,
style mimicking of tea-dance musics built up a non-blues / non-synth sound that
could wash over you with the greatest of ease, managing the trick of having
both a wall-of-sound and a lot of space to it. It was catchy enough and, on the
surface, simple enough to be pop but carried with it just enough punch (and
lyrical complicity) to be rock as well.
Their uniqueness, inevitably, spawned copiers and from that
you ended up with ‘second wave’ acts like James, The Stone Roses, and even
Oasis (You can even blame them for The Libertines, if you want to be a heartless
git). To imagine a world with ‘Park Life’ but without The Smiths is pure folly;
anything that has been touched by either Madchester or Brit-Pop owes a debt to this
band and as that covers mostly every UK guitar band (outside of metal) in the
years ’85 to ’96 you can see the impact that they caused.
They were not
miserable, they were real life.
Whilst other bands of the time were singing about dragons,
rioting in the streets, living in space capsules, or promoting the consumerist
nightmare of the Thatcher/Reagan era The Smiths were busy with bedsits, petty
differences in relationships, not having a lot of cash, and the general indignity
of having to be a generic citizen of the working class whilst everyone else was
busy having such an excellent time of it. ‘
Panic’, AKA Hang The DJ, is their testament
to this: it is a timeless rant about not assuming that your life is actually
involved in the interesting things in the news or felling a part of the latest political
fashion trend, all delivered in the mildest of fashion.
If you throw in a series of black & white record covers
from 50’s and 60’s working class life, a selection of cloths that make the
Tesco’s essentials range look bold and outgoing, and a determination to never
try and be more interesting you have one of the most reality based acts ever.
This is the dull 70’s ‘fly-on-the-wall’ kitchen sink dramas given a back-beat,
Alan Bennett poetry if he ever decided to take speed. It’s neither ugly nor
pretty, horrific nor fantastic: its dull, easily recognised every-man story.
Johnny Marr is a
brilliant guitarist and The Smiths sounded great.
The first 20 seconds of ‘
How soon is now’ is a mandatory
inclusion in any ‘how to make a spine-shivering song intro’ lesson. That Johnny
Marr managed to do similar glory throughout his time with The Smiths is testament
to his skills as an arranger, producer and player of the guitar. Compositions
like the 15 track ‘
This Charming Man’ or the almost flamenco guitar wash in ‘
LastNight I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’ show both a hidden complexity that few
will ever touch mixed in with an initial simplicity that makes anyone think ‘I
could do that’. This ‘less is more’ approach is a trick that Eric Clapton and
Mark Knopfler have also played upon (to very different ends) and that will
continue to mesmerise and inspire. And it is that musicality that he brought to
all of The Smiths
Away from my opinions there is the more easily verified list
of guitarists that have cited him as an influence (John Squire, Noel Gallagher,
Bernard Butler), , the number of people that have ripped his style off with no
regret (Looking at you, James), the number of outstanding acts that he has
guested in (The The, The Pretenders, Crowded House) and the series of
venerations he has had from assorted music magazines and award ceremonies.
Oh yeah, and his first gig after The Smiths was doing
session work for Paul McCartney
They were not
miserable, Morrisey was after the split.
Before The Smiths he annoyed people by being pedantic to
Melody Maker, setting up more band fan clubs than is strictly healthy, and
generally being precocious. After The Smiths he did tracks about being
depressed, asked for the head of Elton John on a platter (to be fair this is
understandable), ripped into Band Aid, did more songs about being upset, slated
all reggae ever, moaned about every politician or political thinker ever, toyed
with far-right politics and imagery in a manner even David Bowie would consider
reckless, and generally whined at anything he could. However whilst he was in
The Smiths he had a sense of humour and, as hopefully explained above, wasn't a
miserable git.
Passing off the whole of The Smiths work as miserable
because Morrissey went off the deep-end once they broke up is like rejecting
all of The Beatles because of what Lennon did with Yoko Ono. Please, look at
the work as a whole and not based on what that arsehole did next.
View it for the ground-breaking work that it was, for the lyrical intelligence
and musical creativity that it brought into the charts, and for the fact that
it is some frankly great tunes.
