Better information from Songs That Saved Your Life:
"The Hand That Rocks The Cradle’ (Morrissey/Marr)
‘Suffer Little Children’ (Morrissey/Marr)
Recorded August 1982, Decibel Studios, Manchester
Engineered by Dale Hibbert
First studio recording
In Hibbert, Morrissey and Marr finally had the means to access free studio time, even if The Smiths were still a ‘group’ in name rather than body when they made recorded their first demo at the end of the summer. ‘If there were any local bands that I liked then we used to do these overnight sessions’, says Hibbert of his job at Decibel. ‘I was left to lock up so I used to let these bands in. Nobody ever paid. I used to justify it by saying that I was learning a skill.’ Accordingly, Hibbert refutes the myth that his keys to the studio were the only reason Morrissey and Marr accepted him into their bosom to begin with. ‘I always maintained that it wasn’t because of free session time’, he stresses, ‘because as a friend of Johnny’s I would’ve given them that anyway whether I was in the band or not.’
Over an insomniac marathon seven hour session between 11.00 pm and 6.00 am the next morning, two tracks were recorded and mixed, aided by former Freak Party drummer Simon Wolstencroft who’d been coerced by Marr to help out at the eleventh hour. The chosen songs were the first two they’d written together. ‘The Hand That Rocks The Cradle’ featured a grumbling low Morrissey vocal, typical of the group’s formative recordings, while Marr soaked his sketchy, central riff in a shallow flange-pedal wash. Surprisingly, the surviving demo also reveals Marr’s shaky attempt at a backing vocal harmony. Though Hibbert played bass, come the next track, the Moors Murders elegy ‘Suffer Little Children’, he was banished to the control room, leaving Marr to overdub a crude bass part of his own.
At seven minutes plus, the Decibel ‘Suffer Little Children’ is a much longer prototype than that which was finally to appear on 1984’s The Smiths. Though Wolstencroft’s pattering rhythm was discernibly different from that later applied by Mike Joyce, Marr’s basic melody was intact, if less pithy. So too was Morrissey’s stirring baritone, utilising wraithlike reverb for added drama (the only lyrical difference being the surplus lament from Myra Hindley’s conscience, ‘oh, what have you done?’). The mock Hindley voiceover was also more explicit, cackling haughtily and audibly crying out the victims’ Christian names: ‘Lesley! Edward! John!’.
‘That was a girl, a friend of Steven’s,’ says Dale. ‘She just turned up towards the end and did this weird laughing.’
‘Never saw her before, never saw her afterwards,’ laughs Marr. ‘She was nice. Very kind of studenty. From what I remember she had an archetypal 60s vibe — a bob haircut and a duffle coat. Morrissey never being one to miss a sartorial angle!’ The mystery girl was one Annalisa Jablonska, whom Morrissey had previously named as being his ‘girlfriend’ in correspondence with Scottish pen pal Robert Mackie. ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ he teased Mackie in a letter dated 4th December 1980. ‘Do you like girls? I have a girlfriend called Annalisa. We’re both bisexual. Real hip, huh? I hate sex.’
In preparation for ‘Suffer Little Children’, Marr brought in a cassette of a separate piano melody to tack on as an eerie epilogue. Grinding to a halt on a slovenly strummed minor chord, the song segues into this fittingly maudlin piano coda. Its grief-stricken tone would be amplified by the distant sound effects of children playing (a device they would repeat on ‘What Difference Does It Make?’) and a chiming music box.
‘I’d recorded that on this little piano in Shelley Rohde’s house,’ remembers Marr. ‘I stuck a microphone out of the window as there were children coming out of school. So I had this music box going, kids playing outside and me playing this piano part all at the same time. I can remember it clearly, a beautiful summer’s day, because when me and Morrissey met it was the start of summer so our relationship, our writing relationship, just bloomed all the way through that summer of ’82. I was living in the attic of this groovy bohemian house with an inherited record collection [from his friend, record shop owner Pete Hunt] and an amazing girlfriend [Angie, who he later married], having just met The Other Guy. So, y’know, no wonder I was happy. It was a fantastic time and that’s how I remember that whole first demo.’"
I have always wondered about the 'Decibel/le Demo' that was leaked (the master being allegedly sold to a fan by Dale).
It certainly isn't 7 minutes long and makes me think that it is an edit of some variety, but if it came from the master - why an edit!?
There is confusion regarding what tracks he's actually played on and there needs to be some acknowledgement that 'Decibel' and 'Decibelle' are separate places despite how books conflate the two (one's in Manchester & one's in London).
So, people may have seen Hibbert's bass attributed to several tracks from those recording sessions, but there's nothing concrete to go on - hopefully, the 7 minute version will surface and some clarity will follow. That said, the general accepted view is he wasn't playing on Suffer... and was on Hand That...
Regards,
FWD.
