Queen Is Dead Eulogy - NME Albums Hall Of Fame

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NME HALL OF FAME - Be upstanding for the greatest ever albums

THE SMITHS - THE QUEEN IS DEAD (Rough Trade, 1986)

Manchester, 1986: the birth of indie

When Johnny Marr recently told the NME that New Order's Temptation' couldn't be one of the greatest indie anthems of all time because it was written "before I invented Indie", he was only half-joking.

But Marr wasn't being unduly arrogant: between the years of '83 and '87, The Smiths really did define exactly what we refer to today as 'indie' (It's now long-since ceased to mean bands who record for independent labels). That delicious combination of Marr's cocksure ying and Morrissey's bookish, vulnerable yang; the swagger and the swoon; the pen and the sword: The Smiths are the reason we're all here folks.

By 1986, the only thing The Smiths hadn't done was make a classic album - but 'The Queen Is Dead' was to be it. Until then, Morrissey's arcane lyrical flourishes and obsession with classic British movies had left The Smiths accused of fostering a nostalgic fondess for a kinder England that never really existed. It was a fair cop - this doomed romanticising was a crucial element of The Smiths' appeal - but on 'The Queen Is Dead' Morrissey finally dared to apportion some blame for the country's ills.

In the startling title track and album opener, he still shrinks from the horrors of modernity but actually gains the courage to confront them. A wobbly singalong of 'Take me back to dear old Blighty' (sampled from the 1962 film, The L-Shaped Room), is virtually guillotined by one of Marr's most vicious guitar lines as Morrissey indulges his fantasies of regicide as the solution to a society oppressed by class. However, his revolutionary intentions descend into music-hall farce as Her Majesty recognises the effete palace intruder: "She said 'Eh, I know you, and you cannot sing'/I said, 'That's nothing, you should hear me play pian-er'". Boom, tish!

Buoyed by the triumph of previous hit 'How Soon Is Now?', Marr, aided by the phenomenally versatile rhythm section of Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce - is in transcendent form: 'Bigmouth Strikes Again' could flay skin at 20 paces, while at the other end of the scale, 'Cemetry GAtes' is dazzlingly pretty. When he broke up the band, Marr complained that Morrissey was ruining some of his most delicate constructions with deliberately banal or contrary lyrics (he was referring specifically to the bizarre 'Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others') but he later accepted that the contrast was what made 'The Queen Is Dead' great. How else could he have expected Morrissey to interpret the yearning lilt of 'I Know It's Over' but with a lyric of such ludicrously melodramatic melancholy that it becomes hard to listen to without curling into a foetal ball? "Oh mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head", croons Moz, mourning the break-up of a love affair that we soon discover is all in his head.

A similar fantasy drives 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out', but here Morrissey measures his emotion so perfectly to Marr's finest ever piece of songwriting majesty that the song has, against the odds of its self-absorbed creators, become one of the greatest love songs of all time. Marr remembers "the sunlight flooding the studio floor and a really cruisy, breezy atmosphere between us". The result: four minutes of celestial magic that is bigger than The Smiths themselves. Hardmen weep like babies every time they hear it, and it's difficult to imagine a more potent song in the whole of the British pop canon - Lennon and bloody McCartney included.

'The Queen Is Dead' is an album that has everything. Genuine political rage (and who would have the balls to name an album 'The Queen Is Dead' and mean it, even now?); comedy; joy; spite; and a deep, pervasive sadness. Morrissey's pretensions are rampant - 'Cemetry Gates' and 'Frankly, Mr Shankly' are basically just snobby 'I've read more peotry than you' one-upmanship. His narcissism threatens to spiral out of control, but he's never less than devilishly charming, and when occasionally necessary, he's rescued by Marr's shimmering, divine musicianship. Philistines may hate The Smiths for being "like, sooo depressing", but 'The Queen Is Dead's thunderous cavalcade of emotions proves them wrong.


Hall Of Fame Rules:
1) Albums must be more than 10 years old
2) Have influenced the next generation
3) Still sound as fresh today as the second they were released
4) Albumsinducted in no particular order




Peter
 
Cheers hun, i have just wasted £2.10.:p

Nah, not really coz it has a real nice piece of eye candy in it:D
 
Thank you very much for posting the article, Peter.

The Queen Is Dead is rightly deserved to regarded as a classic.
 
I don't know what a "thunderous cavalcade of emotions" is, but whenever it comes barrelling around the corner please remind me to get the hell out of the way.
 
Someone has got to tell 99% of the world's music writers that this game of "obviously worship Morrissey - but call him pretentious, effete and ineffectual with every word choice, pretend he's not self-aware and generally do all one can to pin the Smiths' artistic successes on Marr" was never effective, and grows less so with every repetition.

That said, not bad.
 
Johnny Marr really does talk a lot of nonsense.

Personally I've long tired of him praising himself and his own band. I realise it's long been a trait of Manc musicians to strut around like peacocks while smothering themselves in a smug lather of self love/satisfaction but really, most other people just find it arrogant and annoying.

Come out your bubble of self constructed mythology and learn some humility and respect, Johnny.

Rough Trade was operating long before The Smiths appeared and bands with love lorn/angsty/humourous vocalists with Rickenbacker guitar backing were recording on THEIR OWN LABEL NOT SOMEONE ELSES long before Johnny Marr was heard of.

Not that the Smiths will ever admit to having ripped off a substantial part of the Orange Juice template.
 
Johnny Marr really does talk a lot of nonsense.

If you're referring to this article, Johnny was joking when he said he "invented Indie". The writer supplied the arrogance. I don't think Johnny would say he "invented Indie" if asked directly. As was discussed last week in another thread about Cilla Black, this is another case of Johnny mocking the official legends that journalists have created around The Smiths.
 
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