The following is asserted information about sources/inspiration for The Smiths/Morrissey songs. The site is now long gone so I don't know who to thank for their work - I will just have to live with the guilt
I made a copy of the information years ago as it was very thorough and now the site has gone - I'm glad I did.
I'm not sure Morrissey taking bits of the following and crafting them in to songs is some terrible act of plagarism - decide for yourselves. One of the things that first drew me to him were all the references to film/literature et al, so I can't view it as negatively as Mr. Lillywhite.
Anyway, please feel free to add to any song with decent references.
This, obviously, shouldn't be taken as definitive or exhaustive.
The Smiths.
Accept Yourself
"I am angry, I am ill, and I'm ugly as sin"
Magazine (included because of Howard Devoto link)
A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours
"A Rush, a charge from North, South, East and West [and] the land is ours"
Speranza, in an Irish nationalist magazine around the turn of the century
"A rush and a charge and the land is ours"
Traditional Irish battle cry
"...the ghost of Troubled Joe"
Probably a reference to the film Carry On Jack
Asleep
"Sing me to sleep."
"A Taste Of Honey", by Shelagh Delaney. This could be dismissed as a common phrase, but considering the wholesale plundering of both this book and the film version, it's fairly reasonable.
Bigmouth Strikes Again
There is a Kenny Everett (late British 80s comedian) sketch where he is burned at the stake whilst wearing a Walkman.
Cemetry Gates
"All those people, all those lives, where are they now ? Here was a woman who once lived and loved, full of the same passions, fears, jealousies, hates. And what remains of it now ... I want to cry."
"The Man Who Came To Dinner", film
"The early village-cock hath twice done salutation to the morn"
Richard III, Shakespeare
Death At One's Elbow
Phrase from the Joe Orton Diaries
Death Of A Disco Dancer
"I'd rather not talk to my neighbour, I'd rather not get involved"
"Poor Cow", by Nell Dun
Frankly Mr. Shankly
Name possibly from onetime Liverpool FC manager Bill Shankly
Half A Person
"I hitchiked all the way down to Memphis, got a room at the YMCA..."
"Guitar Man", by Elvis Presley
"Caliban is only half a person at the best of times."
From "The Collector", by John Fowles
Hand In Glove
"...and everything depends on how near you sleep to me."
Take This Longing, by Leonard Cohen
"I'll probably never see you again. I know it."
"A Taste Of Honey", by Shelagh Delaney
Handsome Devil
A Boy In The Bush is a novel by D. H. Lawrence
"There's more to life than what you read in books."
"Slaughterhouse Five", by Kurt Vonnegut
The Hand That Rocks The Cradle
"The Hand that Rocks The Cradle", title of "Crib"-detective series,1981
"Climb upon my knee, sonny boy..."
"Sonny Boy", Al Jolson
"Over the stones, rattle his bones, he's only a beggar who nobody owns."
Gray's Elegy (original source)
"So rattle her bones all over the stones, she's only a beggar-man whom nobody owns."
The Lion In Love, by Shelagh Delaney (this is the most likely direct source)
The Headmaster Ritual
"...who grabs and devours ..."
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept, by Elizabeth Smart
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
"Heaven Knows I'm Missing Him Now", song by Sandie Shaw
How Soon Is Now ?
"To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular,.."
"Middlemarch", by George Eliot
I Don't Owe You Anything
"I don't owe you a thing."
"A Taste Of Honey", by Shelagh Delaney
I Want The One I Can't Have
"Health, Health, the blessing of the Rich, the Riches of the Poor"
From Edith Sitwell's "The English Eccentrics"
"A tough kid who sometimes sleeps on nails."
Director Howard Sachler's description of James Dean.
"We all want the things we can't have."
Samantha Eggar in The Collector.
Is It Really So Strange ?
"I could never never go back home again."
24 Hours From Tulsa by Gene Pitney
Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me
"Last Night Was Meant For Love" is a single by Billy Fury (who features on the single sleeve)
London
"..because you notice the jealousy of those that stay at home..."
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept, by Elizabeth Smart
Louder Than Bombs
"...louder than bombs or screams or the inside ticking of remorse..."
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept, by Elizabeth Smart
Miserable Lie
"...by his sweetness and goodness to her through the brief years of his flower-like life."
Oscar Wilde's De Profundis
Paint A Vulgar Picture (and You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Baby)
"You just haven't earned it yet, baby"
Geoff Travis
"Paint a vulgar picture"
Oscar Wilde
Pretty Girls Make Graves
"Nature played this trick on me"
The barber in the film "Victim"
"Pretty girls make graves"
Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac
The Queen Is Dead
"The Queen Is Dead"
Last Exit To Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jnr
"Shall we go for a walk where it's quiet..?"
From the film of Billy Liar
"Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty..." is from the film The L Shaped Room.
Reel Around The Fountain
"Take and mount me like a butterfly"
Exit Smiling - Morrissey (after From Reverence To Rape by M.Haskell)
"...like butterflies on pins."
"...reel around the cafe."
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept, by Elizabeth Smart
"You're the bee's knees, but so am I"
"I dreamt about you last night, and I fell out of bed twice."
both from the film adaptation of A Taste Of Honey by Shelagh Delaney
Rubber Ring
"Everybody's Clever Nowadays"
The Importance Of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde
Rusholme Ruffians
"Fourteen Again"
The whole song is loosely based around this song by Victoria Wood
Shakespeare's Sister
"Shakespeare's Sister"
An essay by Virginia Woolf, also a character in Tennessee William's "Glass Menagerie"
"...our bones groaned like old trees..."
"rocks below could promise certain death."
From Elizabeth Smart's "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept".
Sheila Take A Bow
"If the homework brings you down, then we'll throw it on the fire."
Kooks, David Bowie
Shoplifters Of The World Unite
"My only weakness is ... well, never mind, never mind"
James Dean in "Kraft Mystery Hour : Danger !"
"It's a long time, six months."
"A Taste Of Honey", by Shelagh Delaney
Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others
"Send me the pillow, the one that you dream on"
"Send me the pillow you dream on" - Johnny Tillotson
The lines about Anthony and Cleopatra are about the film "Carry On Cleo"
Still Ill
"Society owes me a living"
Myra Hindley, 1977
"We walked for miles, round the backs, right over the iron bridge and down underneath it on the towpath. We were kissing away and touching and getting really sore lips"
From Viv Nicholson's book, "Spend Spend Spend".
Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before
"Stop Me If You've Heard It"
Short story by Noel Coward.
Strangeways, Here We Come
"Borstal, here we come"
Billy Liar
Stretch Out And Wait
"Jim, do you think that the end of the world will come at night time ?"
Rebel Without A Cause
"We are here and it is now."
Men's Liberation by Jack Nichols
Suffer Little Children
"Whatever Ian has done, I have done"
Myra Hindley
"Suffer the little children to come unto me"
Whispered when Myra walked past by inmates of Hindley's jail (from the bible; "suffer" is equivalent to "allow")
There is a play by Stanley Houghton called "Hindle Wakes".
Sweet And Tender Hooligan
"In the midst of life we are in debt"
Peter Cook & Dudley Moore
"In the midst of life we are in death"
Coleridge (adapted by Cook and Moore for their sketch)
Also from The Burial Service in the Book of Common Prayer
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
"I've watched this happen in other people's lives and now it's happened in ours"
"Alice Adams"
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
In the 1968 film "The Killing Of Sister George", one of the murder methods discussed is that of a ten-ton truck."I suppose I should keep on hoping he gets knocked down by a double-decker bus"
Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, Alan Sillitoe
These Things Take Time
"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord..."
Battle Hymn of the American Republic, Julia Howe "Our eyes have seen the glory ..." Eamon de Valera, Irish Prime Minister
The line "the hills are alive with celibate cries" could refer to the beginning of the film "The Sound of Music", where there are nuns singing on a hilltop.
This Charming Man
"A jumped-up pantry boy who doesn't know his place"
From the film Sleuth starring Michael Caine
This Night Has Opened My Eyes
"You can't just wrap it up in a bundle of newspaper."
"...and dump it on a doorstep."
"That river, it's the colour of lead."
"I'm not sorry and I'm not glad."
"Oh well, the dream's gone, but the baby's real enough.
"A Taste Of Honey, by Shelagh Delaney
Unloveable
"I wear black on the outside, because black is how I feel on the inside."
This line is NOT from the Johnny Cash song "The man in black". Does anyone know where it is from, if anywhere ?
Vicar In A Tutu
"...combatting ignorance and disease."
From the film version of Billy Liar
"...sent to Borstal when a kid for breaking open gas meters and ripping lead from church roofs..."
Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, Alan Sillitoe
Well I Wonder
"... do you hear me where you sleep ?"
"... for it is the fierce last stand of all I have."
"...and cries out hoarsely my name in the night."
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept, by Elizabeth Smart
What Difference Does It Make ?
"...the devil will make work for idle hands to do."
Beyond Belief, Emlyn Williams (after the bible)
"What difference does it make ?"
Terence Stamp, in the film The Collector which features on the sleeve.
What She Said
"I have learned to smoke because I need something to hold on to."
"...I wonder why no one has noticed that I am dead and taken the trouble to bury me"
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept, by Elizabeth Smart
William, It Was Really Nothing
"The rain is pouring on the foreign town, the bullets cannots cut you down."
"This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us", by Sparks
The theme of this song is borrowed from "Billy Liar" by Keith Waterhouse.
You've Got Everything Now
"...as merry as the day is long."
A Taste Of Honey, by Shelagh Delaney Originally from Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing".
Regards,
FWD.
