FFS I sent this article to this website on the day the paper went live, as it wasn't displayed I posted it on the forums too

http://www.morrissey-solo.com/discuss/index.cgi?read=141684

*sighs*

aheadofthegame@workingclassproduction.co.uk
http://www.workingclassproduction.co.uk

I didn't pinch any bits of brick when I went there. That would be disrespectful. Besides it was raining.

"the spoart of 5's" in the SMITH'SROOM!!!!!!!!????

They got the year wrong!

Scouting's first manual was both written and illustrated by Baden-Powell in 1908.

Therefore, it could be argued, that the club was actually opened founded four years before the “official” founding of the Boy Scouts, rather than three as stated.

Do I win a sixpence?

well, i guess technically, andy rourke was a 'guitarist' for the smiths. a BASS guitarist. The real 'glaringly obvious' mistake was the date of '1987' for when they arrived to shoot the photo. As it appeared on the gatefold of TQID in 1986, the photo had to be taken in at least 1985.

Another article on the Salford's Lad club can be found on the Guardian site.

Bryce

See:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/stor y/0,12102,1146452,00.html

This charming shrine

When an iconic photograph turned Salford Lads Club into a magnet for Smith fans, the venue was furious. Now it's opened a room in their honour. Will Woodward goes on a personal odyssey

Friday February 13, 2004
The Guardian

Strike a pose: Will Woodward and friends in Smiths mode
   
When we later compared the snap of me and my mates pretending to be the Smiths standing outside the Salford Lads Club with the original picture, we realised we were about three yards too far to the left - too much St Ignatius Walk, not enough Coronation Street.

Still, the poses were pleasingly accurate. Hector - playing Andy Rourke - looked ambivalently into the distance. I crossed my arms, Morrissey-style. Paul poked his head uncertainly over my shoulder just like Johnny Marr, and the other Paul stood upright, arms clamped straight, in the school of Mike Joyce.

Hector bought cigarettes when it was his turn to be the drummer, and let one burn halfway - to get Joyce just so. We stopped swapping places after a while. The younger Paul, idolatrously, said there was just no way he was going to pretend to be Morrissey. Some pre-teens from the Ordsall estate cycled round us in a swirl, asked us for fags and gave us the finger. "Everyone in the street had a club foot and a vicious dog," complained Morrissey of the time when he stood in the same spot. We laughed knowingly and kept an eye on our hubcaps. Though we were only 32, we weren't that scared.

Stephen Wright's original photograph, used for the inside gatefold of The Queen is Dead, clinches the prize - despite many strong contenders from Kevin Cummins and Paul Slattery - for the most famous image of the Smiths. And ever since the album was released in 1986, fans have dribbled into off the Regent Road to stand in its doorway, write on the walls and steal the bricks. The club held the grand final to find the most obsessive Smiths fan last year and now, as part of its centenary celebration - From Baden-Powell to Morrissey, backed by £25,000 in lottery cash - it is establishing a dedicated Smiths room: our very own Smithsonian.

"It used to be a fives court and then it was a weightlifting room, just off the main gym," says Leslie Holmes, a local artist. "People can leave photographs and comments about the Smiths. We would like Smiths fans to contribute to it."

The Hollies used to rehearse at the club, Albert Finney was a former member and New Order bassist Peter Hook a regular visitor, but none of the Smiths had much to do with it before the picture. For a long time the club's committee bitterly resented its appropriation. Jo Slee's book Into the Art of Morrissey includes an angry letter from solicitors acting for the club complaining that "inclusion of the photograph may generally cause any person reading the [album] or listening to the record to attribute the material to the club, its committee or its members ... we would cite for example the reference in the song Vicar in a Tutu to the singer being engaged in stealing lead from a church roof, or indeed the very title to the album itself and the tenor of the title song."

But over the past two years or so, the club, a grade II listed building that was originally opened by Baden-Powell, has begun to embrace its more recent legacy. When it opened its doors for architecture week and heritage week, a respectful group of Smiths fans were ushered through the doors. "We've had people in from Latvia, Mexico and Guatemala," says Leslie Holmes. "You ask them what else they are going to see in Manchester and they say nothing. That's all they've come to see. The people who used to run the club were a bit bemused. The Smiths fans used to chip bits off the buildings. Now most of the people coming are too young to have known the Smiths."

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