Forged in a Stretford attic, dismissed by its own singer and dogged by controversy, The Smiths’ debut still changed British music forever. Forty years on, its northern jangle, bitter poetry and doomed legacy sound sharper than ever.
The Smiths – The Smiths (Rough Trade, 1984):
February ’84, Britain is a pop-synth-addled wasteland. Duran haircuts and eyeliner, the tail end of Blitz Kid New Romantics on every Top of the Pops monitor, guitars in demand as much as ex-miners. Then four lads from Manchester stroll in wearing cardigans and waving gladioli and suddenly the room stinks of damp drizzle, Wildean self-pity and spilt gig lager. They called themselves The Smiths. The most ordinary name in England, which of course made it extraordinary.
The tale begins with Marr knocking on Morrissey’s Stretford door like some northern Mephistopheles. Out comes Moz in a cardigan, already armed with volumes of Shelagh Delaney and a catalogue of wounds both real and imagined. They climb into an attic and start writing about cradle-rocking and murdered children. Out pours a sound that wasn’t punk, wasn’t pop, wasn’t anything except a reminder that Manchester is never finished with you even when you’ve been punched in the face for no reason.
The album should have been straightforward. Instead, chaos. They try it with Troy Tate, guitars slipping out of tune in a sweltering London sweatbox. John Porter later torpedoes the lot, declaring it unlistenable, and drags them through a patchwork of studios. Morrissey despises the finished thing but Geoff Travis waves the Rough Trade chequebook and tells him tough luck. For six grand they’re getting product.
What the world got was imperfect genius. Marr’s Rickenbacker chiming like a church bell under water, Morrissey crooning as if a Victorian consumptive had stumbled into the charts. No-one knew what to call it, so they invented “indie” as shorthand. It carried the stink of derelict Coronation Street terraces, the heft of Wilde’s notebooks, and the leer of Lou Reed after a bad night.
Straight away the tabloids clutched their pearls. “Suffer Little Children” dared to stare down the Moors murders and the moral guardians shrieked. Shops refused to stock it. Morrissey wrote to a victim’s mother and she, astonishingly, saw the sincerity. This was their way: walking the tightrope between vulgar provocation and aching compassion.
The record went to number two. Simple Minds sat smugly at number one, polishing their stadium dreams, while The Smiths lurked beneath with a record half the critics loathed. Don Watson in the NME muttered about “a notion of despair”, while across the Atlantic Creem called it “stunning”. Rolling Stone shrugged that it was “warm”. Robert Christgau, never one to miss a sneer, compared Morrissey to James Taylor. Morrissey, of course, dismissed them all as philistines and declared his record a “signpost in the history of popular music”.
And here’s the kicker: he wasn’t wrong. Every indie kid since has tuned their guitars to Marr’s jangle and borrowed Morrissey’s diary entries for lyrics. Even when the band tore itself apart four years later, the influence stuck. Marr, sick of the circus, walked. Morrissey sulked. Joyce sued for royalties in the nineties and got them, airing the band’s dirty laundry in court. The idea of a reunion was dangled endlessly, only for Marr to bat it away with cool disdain and Morrissey to fume in print.
Then in 2023 Andy Rourke died. The bass anchor, forever underrated, gone to pancreatic cancer. With him went the last flicker of reunion fantasy. Whatever had once been possible was now buried. Morrissey and Marr remain frozen in mutual contempt, the court case scar tissue still itching. The Smiths are history, and history only.
Which is why this debut, flawed and fabulous, stands taller as the years peel away. A record their own singer thought beneath them, recorded in frustration, yet it detonated like a grenade under Britain’s synth-pop arse. From Joe Dallesandro’s torso on the cover to Marr’s crystalline licks and Moz’s operatic whinge, it was a gauntlet.
Forty years on, it still snarls, still aches, still reminds us that four awkward Mancunians briefly wrestled the guitar back into relevance before egos, solicitors and death finished the story.
Ordinary lads. Extraordinary mess. Immortal record.