Andy Rourke RC interview - April, 2022

Text reproduction of his interview in "Record Collector presents: The Smiths" special (April 21, 2022).

"ACE OF BASS

It all began with a Neil Young badge pinned to his school blazer. In this brand new interview, Andy Rourke tells Lois Wilson about the call from an old mate that would change his life forever...


I met Johnny at school when I was 11. I was really into Neil Young at the time and he was wearing a Neil Young Tonight's The Night lapel badge. This was when everyone else seemed to be into Jethro Tull and heavy metal, so Neil Young was a conversation opener and pretty soon we were spending all our spare time together, either playing music or listening to music or talking about music. We formed a band together, Freak Party. It was me on bass, Johnny on guitar and funky Si Wolstenscroft on drums, and the music did get funky. The Clash's Sandinista! had just come out and we were jumping on that vibe. We rehearsed every night until kicking out time, we got stoned a lot and jammed a lot. They were good days, but we auditioned countless frontmen to no avail and eventually Johnny quit out of frustration as it became clear we weren't going anywhere.

Not long after he quit he called me up. He had a new band called The Smiths. Did I want to join. They'd already played their first gig at the Ritz in Manchester with Dale Hibbert on bass. Some mates of mine had gone along but I hadn't. I met up with Johnny, he said it didn't work out with Dale and he gave me a demo tape which had two songs on it - Suffer Little Children and The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. It wasn't what I was expecting but I could hear something great in there, something different and I really liked what Johnny was doing, The first recordings I did with The Smiths were the demos for Handsome Devil and Miserable Lie and these were done in the downstairs of a studio in Chorlton called Drone. That's when I first met Morrissey and Mike. When I got there, Mike was saring up his drums. He was chatty, easy to get on with. Then, as I was setting up Morrissey arrived, he introduced himself as Stephen, shook my hand then shuffled into the corner and started going through his bag of lyrics and sandwiches and stuff. People often called him aloof at that time, but I think he was painfully shy, he just wasn't used to meeting new people. Our first gig was at Manhattan Sound in Manchester (on 25 January 1983) and it was utter chaos. There was no stage, the sound was terrible, the audience were right in your face, virtually touching you and I was so nervous I really didn't enjoy it at all. But we played OK. James Maker introduced us. He was our go-go dancer. I wasn't comfortable with his role and I am pretty sure Mike and Johnny felt the same. It was an unnecessary distraction and I think it cramped Morrissey's style. There wasn't much scope for him when James was jumping around.

Johnny and I used to go to The Hacienda pretty much every night. In those days it was really quiet and it was freezing cold. People sat in their own corner. There was the drug dealing corner, the gay corner, the extrovert corner and when we got a gig there [on 4 February 1983] it felt like a big deal, and in many ways our first proper gig. We had monitors and a stage and a set list and Morrissey ordered a shit load of gladioli and he threw half out to the audience, and half he stuck in his back pocket and that became a thing and the boxes got bigger and bigger and his back pockets got bigger and bigger and eventually he had half a tree in there.

After that Hacienda gig, we really took off, there was no stopping us. We were a had total belief and we had a real "us versus them" attitude. Not being on Factory, there was a sense we stood apart from the other Manchester bands like A Certain Ratio, New Order, Durutti Column. We were our own separate thing.

I don't remember the exact point Steven became Morrissey but I know he first broke the news to Johnny and Johnny gave us the heads up we weren't to call him Steven or, worse still, Steve, which he hated. At first it was really awkward calling him Morrissey, and he'd get embarrassed and then he'd call me Rourke and I wouldn't be sure if we were to revert back to calling him Steven but eventually it became normal and we even got down to just Moz and Mozza.

Going on Top Of The Pops with This Charming Man was another big deal. I'd grown up listening to the Top 20 on the radio with my mum and it had been everything to me so I was overjoyed, we all were, but we were all nervous too. We went down to the studio. It was very surreal and we weren't prepared for the total fakeness of it - the miming, the fake audience dancing (and if they didn't dance they got thrown out). We went into the make-up room and we'd bought Marks & Spencer sweaters for the occasion and they said, "What are you going to be wearing for the show?" and we were like, "This is it." We went on in our black jeans and sweaters. We definitely stood out.

Ironically, Strangeways, Here We Come is my favourite album. It's the one on which we completely gelled. We had come of age and we were in our element and ready to take on the world and then of course we split up. There was no inkling Johnny was going to leave but in hindsight I can see the frustrations, but I was too busy getting on with my own thing to realise the gravity
of the situation. When he left the impact was huge and I think we were all traumatised and probably still are. No one knew how to react. I didn't know whether to call him or leave him alone. It was a really awful time, horrible. for everyone concerned.

Almost immediately after he left, Morrissey asked me and Mike to play on his solo stuff-a big kick in the eye for Johnny and it made me feel even more awkward about speaking to him. I felt like I had betrayed him so it was a long while before we spoke again. We had been best friends and then we weren't talking. I hadn't fallen out with him, but I felt guilty. It's not a time I fondly recall.

In The Smiths when we were getting songs together, Johnny already knew how the music would sound and he would play his guitar part. I would write the bass part and that was as far as my writing went. Morrissey brought out the songwriter in me. He believed I could do it and he made me believe I could do it and we ended up writing together. We started off with a blank page and a blank cassette and from that we wrote Yes, I Am Blind and Girl Least Likely To.

After Morrissey, there was Freebass (with Mani and Peter Hook) and D.A.R.K. I also wrote the music for Anthony Bourdain's Raw Craft TV series and worked with James Franco putting his poems inspired by The Smiths to music. I am currently playing in Blitz Vega with KAV from the Happy Mondays. We've got a single coming out this year called Strong Forever to be followed by an EP."



Regards,
FWD.
 
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As far as copyright is concerned a song is vocal melody, lyrics and chords. So no, Morrissey did not write the songs. They’re Morrissey/Marr and maybe add Joyce & / or Rourke depending on a band agreement or not.

Yes, of course the songs are legally by Morrissey/Marr. That doesn't mean that they were actually created by Morrissey/Marr. They weren't. Just as Marr is overstating his case by being legally the co-creator of The Smiths' songs, so Rourke is being wronged by not being legally co-creator of The Smiths' music. Just because something has legal status doesn't mean it's true or right.
 
As far as copyright is concerned a song is vocal melody, lyrics and chords. So no, Morrissey did not write the songs. They’re Morrissey/Marr and maybe add Joyce & / or Rourke depending on a band agreement or not. Yes I’ve read Marr taught AR the pre-Rourke baselines then AR wrote his own. They are indeed very melodic. Whether it constitutes a songwriting credit is debatable.
I would say Marr is technically the writer because he is giving Rourke the blueprint/foundation to build upon. Which I believe is how they The Smiths were looking at it.
Though a guitar chord pattern without bass is still a song, a bassline without chords really is not.
Not unless the bass player came in with a composition of her/his own that the band will add to it. Then you can say the bass player is the writer of the song, or co-writer if a lyricist writes with her/him.
 
Yes, of course the songs are legally by Morrissey/Marr. That doesn't mean that they were actually created by Morrissey/Marr. They weren't. Just as Marr is overstating his case by being legally the co-creator of The Smiths' songs, so Rourke is being wronged by not being legally co-creator of The Smiths' music. Just because something has legal status doesn't mean it's true or right.
:bowing:

WTF? is this you FH?
in the odd case its not please read:
:handpointright::guardsman::handpointleft: used to say back in the day, that he taught them both what and how to play🖖
that he had to slave for many many hours in the studio teaching them
every nuance👀
thats why he only gave them 10 percent.🤛

:hammer:
 
I would say Marr is technically the writer because he is giving Rourke the blueprint/foundation to build upon.

Then you'd be wrong. Marr created the chord sequence and guitar lines - or 'wrote' as you put it (he didn't actually write anything, he doesn't read or write music, unless you count scribbling down the names of the chords): the fact that these chord sequences and guitar lines inspired Rourke's bass lines doesn't mean that Marr wrote the bass lines. And we can clearly hear that the bass lines are an essential and in some cases definitive aspect of most Smiths tracks. Therefore, having created the bass lines, Rourke co-created the music of The Smiths.
 
Yes I’ve read Marr taught AR the pre-Rourke baselines then AR wrote his own. They are indeed very melodic. Whether it constitutes a songwriting credit is debatable. Though a guitar chord pattern without bass is still a song, a bassline without chords really is not.

No, Andy's basslines shouldn't constitute a songwriting credit, and nor should a guitar chord pattern. Both however should be a claim towards a co-credit for the backing music.

Why do you think a guitar chord pattern is a song? Why isn't it just a guitar chord pattern? And if it's a song, which song is it?

Was 'Money Changes Everything' actually 'The Right Stuff' already, before Marr collaborated with Ferry? No. It was an instrumental that hadn't yet become a song.
 
No, Andy's basslines shouldn't constitute a songwriting credit, and nor should a guitar chord pattern. Both however should be a claim towards a co-credit for the backing music.

Why do you think a guitar chord pattern is a song? Why isn't it just a guitar chord pattern? And if it's a song, which song is it?

Was 'Money Changes Everything' actually 'The Right Stuff' already, before Marr collaborated with Ferry? No. It was an instrumental that hadn't yet become a song.
:crazy:

it was copyrighted as MCE so its a song ‼️

:hammer:
 
Andy deserves praise for his musicianship on the group's songs, but it's only right that Johnny is credited with writing the music.

Andy came up with his basslines to accompany the music that Johnny had written, but I've yet to hear anyone say that Andy was the primary instigator of any song. Johnny came up with the original ideas for every track, with Andy and Mike then fulfilling the roles of a rhythm section. Bass players had been doing that for decades with getting or expecting a writing credit.
 
Andy deserves praise for his musicianship on the group's songs, but it's only right that Johnny is credited with writing the music.

Andy came up with his basslines to accompany the music that Johnny had written

Why does the music (chord sequences/guitar lines) that Johnny came up with constitute music 'writing' whilst the music that Rourke came up with (bass lines), doesn't? Johnny didn't 'write' his music any more than Rourke did. They both created their respective parts of the music. So what's the difference? Simply that Johnny's came first? Just because the music he created inspired Andy's bass lines, it doesn't mean that Johnny created Andy's bass lines. And some of Andy's bass lines may very well have inspired Johnny's guitar harmony overdubs. So where is the line drawn?


I've yet to hear anyone say that Andy was the primary instigator of any song.

Because he wasn't. But nor was Johnny. Johnny was the instigator of the creative process that led to the creation of the songs - but the songs themselves were created by Morrissey. Johnny instigated the creation of the music. Rourke then added his own significant creative input to that music. The music was then used by Morrissey to create his song - the song being his words and vocal melody because, as pointed out before, those are the only things that are essential to the song. Once the words and melody are created, you can take away the backing music and you still have the song. Before the word and melody are created, all you have is an instrumental track that could form the basis for any number of songs. Therefore it was Morrissey who created (and therefore instigated) the song by creating the words and melody that are the song. Marr instigated the music, Rourke added to it significantly.

Johnny came up with the original ideas for every track, with Andy and Mike then fulfilling the roles of a rhythm section. Bass players had been doing that for decades with getting or expecting a writing credit.

Andy did a lot more than simply fulfil the role of a bass player - his bass lines are so much more than that. Which is why he deserves a co-credit - not for the songs, but for the music.

Of course, were the credits to be divided in that way, in all cases - by crediting the creator of the words and vocal melody as the songwriter, and crediting the musical composition separately - then the credit due for the music might become a grey area in some cases. But as a long as a musician could demonstrate that the part he/she played was both his own composition and either melodic in its own right or evidently a key component of the music (e.g. a bass riff), then I don't see why he/she shouldn't get a co-credit for the music. Just because musicians have been doing it for decades without getting a writing credit doesn't mean it's right.
 
Anyone pondering this topic needs only to listen to the two versions of Back to the Old House. They illustrate the colossal difference in contributions made by Johnny and Andy. I guess according to some flawed logic, some people think that the writing credits on the BBC version should be Morrissey/Marr and on the studio version they should be Morrissey/Marr/Rourke. That would be utterly bonkers, obviously.

The contributions made by Andy, Mike, Craig and the producers in the studio are all fine, but they don't alter the fact that Morrissey and Johnny were the songwriters.
 
Anyone pondering this topic needs only to listen to the two versions of Back to the Old House. They illustrate the colossal difference in contributions made by Johnny and Andy.
I would agree with you on this song - and indeed, most of the Smiths work - but there are a handful where the bass seems to be the most dominant and essential part of the musical backing, which everything else is built around. For example 'Barbarism Begins at Home' and 'Death of a Disco Dancer' - take away the bassline, and what have you got? Not much.
 
I would agree with you on this song - and indeed, most of the Smiths work - but there are a handful where the bass seems to be the most dominant and essential part of the musical backing, which everything else is built around. For example 'Barbarism Begins at Home' and 'Death of a Disco Dancer' - take away the bassline, and what have you got? Not much.
Yeah, a song like Barbarism Begins at Home I can understand people debating. I would say, though, that hearing Johnny play it solo shows that his contribution to the song was still huge:

 
Anyone pondering this topic needs only to listen to the two versions of Back to the Old House. They illustrate the colossal difference in contributions made by Johnny and Andy. I guess according to some flawed logic, some people think that the writing credits on the BBC version should be Morrissey/Marr and on the studio version they should be Morrissey/Marr/Rourke. That would be utterly bonkers, obviously.

No, it wouldn't. Because it's different music on each version. Same song, different music. So naturally the credits would be different. Both versions would have the credit 'Song by Morrissey'. One version would have the credit 'Music by Marr', the other version 'Music by Marr/Rourke'.



The contributions made by Andy, Mike, Craig and the producers in the studio are all fine, but they don't alter my opinion that Morrissey and Johnny were the songwriters.

You're opinion's wrong though. For the reasons outlined above. Morrissey created the songs. Marr and Rourke created the music - along with, in some cases, John Porter and perhaps very occasionally Craig Gannon.
 
Yeah, a song like Barbarism Begins at Home I can understand people debating. I would say, though, that hearing Johnny play it solo shows that his contribution to the song was still huge:



His contribution to the music was huge - of course it was. He didn't contribute to the song, because he didn't write the lyrics or create the vocal melody. And Rourke's contribution to the music was equally, if not more, significant in this case. I'd also say in this case that the the music is better than the song - Morrissey's vocal and lyrics aren't great for this one.
 
Unlike Morrissey, I've nothing against Mike Joyce, but I think giving him a songwriting co-credit would be a bit much. Totally agree about Rourke though. My argument, as I've posted on this forum a few times, is that the credits should have read: "Songs by Morrissey" (as he coined the vocal melodies and lyrics); "Music by Marr/Rourke" and sometimes "Music by Marr/Rourke/Porter". Not that the music on The Smiths records is separate from the song, of course, but each could be a separate entity in its own right - the songs can be sung a cappella, and most of the backing tracks would work fine as instrumentals in their own right.

This is the first time I've ever seen Rourke state that he 'wrote' the bass parts - although it has always been obvious that he did.
It's interesting that Morrissey Inc is suddenly validating black cultural iconography but I'm not entirely clear why.

The surest signifier of a 'musical racist' is somebody who thinks The Drummer and The Bassist are just 'lawnmower parts'. When one listens to Alice Coltrane's take on Stravinskij's immortal 'Firebird', one can only gasp in awe at how Africa has uplifted humanity through rhythm and blues, by the beat and by The Blue Note from Mali and Mauritania transposed to the Mississippi Delta Blues: Robert Johnson as Mephistotheles at the midnight Crossroads, exchanging guitar riffs for immortal damnation in Hell.

Music is haram, generally...

Morrissey FcUK'd about with a Ouija board and conjured up various 3rd division Daemons but his silly whining also disturbed me from aeons of sleep...

So, there we go. Now ye know...


...John Bonham was just a lawnmower part?....Rhythm Is A Dancer on the banks of the Liffey...

Boots Collins is me,
Jaco Pastorius I shall be...

Morrissey is 'just The Singer'.

No really he is just the singer.

And if you talked to him outside his concocted persona, trust me, he agrees with me...

BrummieBoy
Bells Golf and Country Club
Coleford
Gloucestershire
Mercia
England

⛳😎

World Is Africa- Black Uhuru

🌍







 
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It's interesting that Morrissey Inc is suddenly validating black cultural iconography but I'm not entirely clear why.

The surest signifier of a 'musical racist' is somebody who thinks The Drummer and The Bassist are just 'lawnmower parts'. When one listens to Alice Coltrane's take on Stravinskij's immortal 'Firebird', one can only gasp in awe at how Africa has uplifted humanity through rhythm and blues, by the beat and by The Blue Note from Mali and Mauritania transposed to the Mississippi Delta Blues: Robert Johnson as Mephistotheles at the midnight Crossroads, exchanging guitar riffs for immortal damnation in Hell.

Music is haram, generally...

Morrissey FcUK'd about with a Ouija board and conjured up various 3rd division Daemons but his silly whining also disturbed me from aeons of sleep...

So, there we go. Now ye know...


...John Bonham was just a lawnmower part?....Rhythm Is A Dancer on the banks of the Liffey...

Boots Collins is me,
Jaco Pastorius I shall be...

Morrissey is 'just The Singer'.

No really he is just the singer.

And if you talked to him outside his concocted persona, trust me, he agrees with me...

BrummieBoy
Bells Golf and Country Club
Coleford
Gloucestershire
Mercia
England

⛳😎

World Is Africa- Black Uhuru

🌍









:crazy:
the lawnmowers are now black dudes from
mali and mauritania that were transposed to the mississippi delta?
and from there to alice coltrane in california‼️❓:bowing:

:crazy:

:hammer:
 
It's interesting that Morrissey Inc is suddenly validating black cultural iconography but I'm not entirely clear why.

The surest signifier of a 'musical racist' is somebody who thinks The Drummer and The Bassist are just 'lawnmower parts'.

Actually…..

‘Joyce’s barrister argued that Marr and Morrissey treated the drummer and bassist as “mere session musicians, as readily replaceable as the parts in a lawnmower”.’



When one listens to Alice Coltrane's take on Stravinskij's immortal 'Firebird', one can only gasp in awe at how Africa has uplifted humanity through rhythm and blues, by the beat and by The Blue Note from Mali and Mauritania transposed to the Mississippi Delta Blues: Robert Johnson as Mephistotheles at the midnight Crossroads, exchanging guitar riffs for immortal damnation in Hell.

Music is haram, generally...

Morrissey FcUK'd about with a Ouija board and conjured up various 3rd division Daemons but his silly whining also disturbed me from aeons of sleep...

So, there we go. Now ye know...


...John Bonham was just a lawnmower part?....Rhythm Is A Dancer on the banks of the Liffey...

Boots Collins is me,
Jaco Pastorius I shall be...

Morrissey is 'just The Singer'.

No really he is just the singer.

And if you talked to him outside his concocted persona, trust me, he agrees with me...

BrummieBoy
Bells Golf and Country Club
Coleford
Gloucestershire
Mercia
England

⛳😎

World Is Africa- Black Uhuru

🌍









Interesting that you should bring up Alice Coltrane. This below, has been one of my favorite live albums, thought I share it with you ….. enjoy! 🤗




Great songs on this !
 
:)

INCREDIBLE‼️
MIND BOGGLING‼️
ALERT FOR ALL SKINNYBOPS‼️

it so has been discovered that :handpointright::guardsman::handpointleft:
who cant play the 🎸 properly, using
the wrong chords and playing them out of
tune🎛️
created ALL MUSIC EVERYWHERE‼️
and taught a portion🤏
to the lawnmowers‼️
he can whistle and chuck corn at the same time‼️

:hammer:
 

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