THE GREATEST BIT OF PLASTIC EVER?
Picture the scene. Student Flat, August 1984.
It was back in the days of student grants and not loans, and the months of July and August could be as laid-back as you wanted them to be (assuming you had no re-sits). One flat mate comes in late one night with a 7" copy of the new single by The Smiths - the band whose debut LP and first four singles had been the sound of the summer. The rest of us scream at him to hurry up and shove it on the turntable....
It turns out to be astonishing for a number of reasons. The music and singing are every bit as joyous as the uptempo stuff the band have previously released, but its all over far too quickly for our liking. We play it again, and there's a consensus that while it's not as good as This Charming Man, its an improvement on Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now, the band's previous 45. On third playing, there's a view that it is in fact a classic that we will soon be throwing shapes to over at the student union disco within days.
Time for the b-side. Oh, its a slow one with Johnny Marr on acoustic guitar - I'm looking forward to this. Morrissey is singing like an angel. Fucking hell. This could be just about the best thing they've done so far. And is that a mandolin?
The song ends, again all too quickly. I applaud. Seven other people join in. Why didn't the band make this a double A sided single so that it would have got twice the plays on Radio 1 and appealed to a bigger audience? This has got Top 10 written all over it....
The next day I'm in Glasgow city centre on the look out for the 12" single. I take it home. There's only two other flatmates in. We see from the label that the two songs on the 7" single will have identical versions on the 12". But the other track seems to be almost 7 minutes long....which we all reckon must be a misprint. After all, this is the band that more or less wants to get back to the short sharp perfect pop songs. The needle is put into the groove.
What emerges from the speakers shocks and stuns us. This is unlike anything any of us have in any of our modest record collections. It is completely unexpected. It is also, as far as I'm concerned, the most stunning song I've heard in years. This time there is no applause at the end....just a huge cry of 'FUCKING BRILLIANT' at the top of my voice. It is immediately played again, This time, instead of just sitting listening, someone (not me I'm sorry to say) gets up and starts doing the Morrissey dance around the living room....before running out into his own room from where he brings back a handful of blank cassettes and demands it be taped there are then as this is a song that demands to be blasting out of every room in the flat.
So as every other member of the household comes home over the next few hours they are greeted with a cacophony of noise which is the same song being played in six different locations with six different starting times....and in the main living room with the big speakers, it is being sung along to with gusto now that we've written down and learned all the words.
Well, that's how I would love it to have happened. It's how I would ask for it to be filmed in the story of my life. In reality, I brought the 12" back to an empty flat and played the three songs to myself. Over and over again. It was about three or four hours before someone else came home - I simply passed the 12" single to him and said he should listen to this while I nip out to the shops for a packet of biscuits and a carton of milk. I come back ten minutes later and he looks at me and says 'Best thing they've ever done mate. No question.'
mp3 : The Smiths - William, It Was Really Nothing
mp3 : The Smiths - Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want
mp3 : The Smiths - How Soon Is Now?
I'm not going to sit here and claim that any of these are the best or most important songs the band ever released. But c'mon, has there ever been a more perfect 12" single?
It was a shock to the system that it only reached #17 in the UK charts. And as I mentioned above, if the 7" had been a double-A side, then it surely would have been massive as the melody and lyrics of 'Please...' would surely have appealed beyond the band's immediate fanbase. And I'll repeat what others have said over the years....it's amazing that something as ground-breaking as How Soon Is Now? could initially be placed only as the extra track on the 12".
And what about the fantastic appearance on TOTP to promote the song......a shirtless Morrissey and Johnny strumming away on a guitar given to him by Elvis Costello....
Wishing I was still that skinny.
12 comments:
Again, a stunning piece of work, mate! I have to disagree though about Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now: I always thought it was better than William IWRN. Still do, in fact.
I think How Soon is Now is the one smiths song that touched people the most. i can remember when it was released as a single talking to a schoolfriend of mine at the time. she was genuinely upset as now it was an a side rather than a 12" track she felt that somehow the song had been stolen from her as it was now in the charts and being played on wonderful radio 1
wow - best post for a while and really cheered me up out of my nearly 40 blues - thanks mate!
The Smiths tucked away some their best stuff on b-sides. The Draize train for instance I only discovered in the last year and it's truly amazing
"OH SHUT YOUR MOUTH, HOW CAN YOU SAAAY..."
ah basterd...you've got me
(Louder now)
"I AM HUMAN AND I NEED TO BE LOOVED..."
Genius.
You really are a soul brother to me! I could have wrote the same words (only in Italian...). I bought the small bit of plastic in my first visit to London (June '85) and I treasure it as one of my best music memories. Thank you for this great, passionate, touching reading. Andrea
I made myself go to bed last night (morning) without making some awfully gooey comment about how you wrote just what had happened to me, if only a year later. But I thought of it all day and decided that I might as well have. You're so lovely, JC because you keenly know just how it is/was to be one of us - the ones who never said what we wished we had when we wanted to xoxo
My wife to be and I found the 7" on a jukebox in a very towny pub in Hull. We put each track on at least 5 times cos we loved them so much - but equally cos of the gradual effect it had on the locals. They were not happy and we scarpered!
Rich C
I'm reading this at the moment and today, spookily, I read the bit about these songs.
Johnny Marr wrote all three of them in four straight days alone in his flat - recorded them, dropped them into Morrissey's letterbox; Moz turned up next day with all the lyrics, sang on them, job done.
!!!
Another great post. I missed the experience of discovering these as the were released (and indeed, on the whole vinyl thing), but I can very much relate to everything else you've written.
I wish I'd discovered them in the same way you did. Like perhaps no other band, each Smiths release was a work of art. Not just the music, but the care that went into crafting the sleeve, and the collectability factor of multiple versions.
When you see the sleeve of a Smiths single, there's no doubt what band it is. Morrissey did an outstanding job crafting a "brand" for the band which complemented the music so well. There's a book on the subject of the sleeve art but it's been out of print for quite awhile. Do you have it?
Although How Soon is Now was snuck onto the b-side, what an incredible half-life that song has had.
Has there ever been a band to put such riches on the b-side as The Smiths?
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