"The Smiths: Better than the Beatles?" - Salon article, interview with Tony Fletcher

The Smiths: Better than the Beatles? by David Daley - Salon

No band captured the tormented teen soul like The Smiths. The author of a new 700-page bio explains why they matter.

The terrific British music writer Tony Fletcher has just published the definitive biography of the group, “A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of The Smiths,” taking almost 700 pages to tell the story of just 70 songs and this essential slice of the 1980s.
 
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Can't argue. I can't imagine another solo artist ever achieving as impressive a decade. When I watch the 70s performances and interviews it's mesmerizing. But he seems like a completely different human now, as if he shed anything and everything that was interesting.

Morrissey is, for better or worse, the same person. People changed their own worldviews and lifestyles because of Morrissey's words. Bowie's creativity was staggering but didn't change lives (?)

I read that just as I got to "It's not the side effects of the cocaine..." line in Station To Station. Bowie's decade was remarkable. It's hard to see that ever emulated. The twists and turns of style never compromised the substance.

The only way to tell which band is the best is how much you listen to them. You can't tell by sales because we know plenty of rabidly shite acts sell by the bucketload. Artistic merit is always in the eye of the beholder.

In my case I prefer (currently) Bowie to Morrissey by a significnt distance, and the Rolling Stones circa '66-'75 to either the Beatles or the Smiths. Next week I shall quite possibly think once more that "Lola" is the finest pop song ever written, and know in my heart that "A Pub With No Beer" has a lyric equal to anything Bowie, Cohen, Morrissey, Brel, Lennon, McCartney, Cave or Jagger have ever concocted, and that Betjeman would have swelled with pride had he written it.

Word On A Wing has just come on. I am transported back to trudging through a foot of snow to a job I loathed. It is 1980 once more. This Charming Man is three years away. The Robinson Crusoe of Reading is soon to be rescued by four blokes from Manchester.
 

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