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"Early December 1983. The Smiths, of Manchester and, already, post-geographic pop heaven, are playing what is approaching their 50th ever gig at the Derby Assembly Rooms. The performance is being recorded for BBC2's Whistle Test, and therefore admission is free.
Those crammed into the Assembly Rooms for these damned extraordinary early-80s, new-born Smiths are a little over-excited. Many of the fans, most of them boys, react to the Smiths and these songs about things no one has put into words before with a helpless hysteria equivalent to the way girls once reacted to the Beatles, as if the thought of them, of what was unleashed, this urgent sense of freedom, was all too much. The Smiths play the number of songs they would play at that time, around a dozen, many of them now acknowledged as pop classics, and at some point during the performance a daffodil, or near offer, is thrown at singer Morrissey, presumably as an act of deep, undying affection. He was, after all, fond of flowers.
It hits him near the eye, and the blow causes him to swoon. He retires injured while the rest of the Smiths doodle for a while. He is to return, but guitarist Johnny Marr would say that this was one of his most embarrassing moments, to see his singer dramatically felled by a flower, as if he was as much delicate and indeed peevish diva as insanely tender, agitated contemplator of depravities and deprivations. Marr's more playful and innocent if sensationally nervous friend was to be replaced by someone a little more difficult and trying.
Just short of 27 years later, I return to Derby, on a damp depleted Saturday that around the shops, even in the afternoon, seems a little Sunday. Not, of course, to see the Smiths. In many ways, they are now beyond Derby. For all their depth and elegance, for all the giddying precision of Marr and enraptured freshness of Morrissey, there was not enough in there, or there was too much in there, to take them beyond four albums and five years. There would be no comebacks, for cash, love and broken old times' sake, and there remains no possibility of one, as though there has been some sort of suicide, and something that could never be replicated went disastrously missing, causing a complicated grief and an appropriately awkward afterlife.
I'm here instead to talk to the Smyths, one of the half-dozen bands that play earnest tribute to the Smiths, as if they can make up for the blasted absence, in ways that whirl uncomfortably between the deeply dismal and the sweetly breezy and near-comic..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/29/paul-morley-smiths-tribute-bands
The video of Morley's interview with The Smyths' lead singer, Graham Sampson, is also here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/video/2010/oct/29/paul-morley-smiths-tribute-video
Those crammed into the Assembly Rooms for these damned extraordinary early-80s, new-born Smiths are a little over-excited. Many of the fans, most of them boys, react to the Smiths and these songs about things no one has put into words before with a helpless hysteria equivalent to the way girls once reacted to the Beatles, as if the thought of them, of what was unleashed, this urgent sense of freedom, was all too much. The Smiths play the number of songs they would play at that time, around a dozen, many of them now acknowledged as pop classics, and at some point during the performance a daffodil, or near offer, is thrown at singer Morrissey, presumably as an act of deep, undying affection. He was, after all, fond of flowers.
It hits him near the eye, and the blow causes him to swoon. He retires injured while the rest of the Smiths doodle for a while. He is to return, but guitarist Johnny Marr would say that this was one of his most embarrassing moments, to see his singer dramatically felled by a flower, as if he was as much delicate and indeed peevish diva as insanely tender, agitated contemplator of depravities and deprivations. Marr's more playful and innocent if sensationally nervous friend was to be replaced by someone a little more difficult and trying.
Just short of 27 years later, I return to Derby, on a damp depleted Saturday that around the shops, even in the afternoon, seems a little Sunday. Not, of course, to see the Smiths. In many ways, they are now beyond Derby. For all their depth and elegance, for all the giddying precision of Marr and enraptured freshness of Morrissey, there was not enough in there, or there was too much in there, to take them beyond four albums and five years. There would be no comebacks, for cash, love and broken old times' sake, and there remains no possibility of one, as though there has been some sort of suicide, and something that could never be replicated went disastrously missing, causing a complicated grief and an appropriately awkward afterlife.
I'm here instead to talk to the Smyths, one of the half-dozen bands that play earnest tribute to the Smiths, as if they can make up for the blasted absence, in ways that whirl uncomfortably between the deeply dismal and the sweetly breezy and near-comic..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/29/paul-morley-smiths-tribute-bands
The video of Morley's interview with The Smyths' lead singer, Graham Sampson, is also here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/video/2010/oct/29/paul-morley-smiths-tribute-video
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