Steven Patrick Morrissey is 50 today. Does that make you feel old? He’s no longer the wispy young lad in unbuttoned floral shirt and NHS specs, hearing aid in one ear, and gladioli in his back pocket. He’s a much ‘sturdier’ figure now, greying quiff, Italian styling, LA tan, but still unmistakably Morrissey, still Britain’s most fascinating pop star.
I remember clearly the day I first discovered The Smiths. I was about 12 years old, and in a music lesson at school. Music lessons back then consisted of a lazy teacher sticking a tape of classical music into a cassette deck and making us sit still for 45 minutes listening to it.
Fed up with this arrangement, one of the lads in my class secretly swapped the teacher’s classical tape for the Smiths album The Queen Is Dead. The lesson began, the teacher played the tape, and a curious sound emerged…
A sample of music hall song Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty is drowned out by feedback, then a driving drum beat, guitar and bassline kick in, and then – that voice. Farewell to this land’s cheerless marshes / Hemmed in like a boar between arches / Her very lowness with a head in a sling / I’m truly sorry, but it sounds like a wonderful thing. What a fantastic and compelling racket. (Hear the track The Queen is Dead on Spotify.)
The teacher, furious, sat red-faced and grimacing, but let the tape play to its conclusion. (If I remember rightly, the entire class was put into detention at the end of the lesson.) Within a week I’d spent my pocket money on a vinyl copy of the album, and I subsequently made regular trips to Oldhitz in Newcastle, eventually collecting second hand copies of every Smiths LP and single. It’s fair to say that Morrissey and The Smiths have played a massive part in soundtracking my life ever since.
Highlights are many, but second single This Charming Man (I would go out tonight / But I haven’t got a stitch to wear / This man said, “It’s gruesome / That someone so handsome should care.”) remains one of my top-ten all-time favourite pop singles. It also features one of the most curiously memorable lyrics in pop history: Why pamper life’s complexities / When the leather runs smooth in the passenger seat?
But my favourite Smiths song has to be the glorious There Is A Light That Never Goes Out. And if a double-decker bus / Crashes into us / To die by your side / Is such a heavenly way to die. It’s gorgeous and funny and heartbreaking and anthemic and a load of other things that great pop music should be. There can be few songs I’ve listened to so many times, yet it still sounds fresh, still stops me in my tracks when it comes on the radio, still delights when it pops up on Last.fm. Wonderful.
Mozzer has been solo for 21 years, and it’s fair to say he has never singly recorded anything quite on a par with his output as part of The Smiths. The lyrics remain sharp, but musically he has never had a band to come anywhere near matching Marr, Joyce and Rourke. But, despite jumping ship for Los Angeles, Moz has remained Blighty’s most valuable pop star – clever, funny, outspoken, sometimes infuriating, a compelling live performer, and occasionally putting out decent records.
I’ve not bought his last few albums, but I’m glad he’s still releasing them. There’s something comforting about hearing Morrissey pop up on daytime radio, inbetween the latest teen pop or indie jangle wannabes, to holler: Something is squeezing my SKULL!
At a time when words like ‘icon’ are used to describe anyone but the most flash-in-the-pan pop chancer, it feels good to celebrate a true rock icon. Happy 50th, Morrissey. Don’t overdo it on the jelly and ice cream, will you?
Listen to The Smiths and Morrissey on Spotify.
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