The Smiths

COVER STORY: THE SMITHS
Forty years on, MOJO revisits the sounds and the stories of a watershed band’s explosive arrival. “My brother said, ‘What kind of music is it?’ Funk? Punk… folk… rock?’” recalls drummer Mike Joyce. “I said, ‘I can’t describe it.’”

MOJO #359, October 2023 - The Smiths.

COMMEMORATING 40 YEARS since they burst onto the music scene and in tribute to their abundantly talented, recently departed bassist Andy Rourke, MOJO returns to 1983 to relive the freshness and wonder of The Smiths and their reinvention of guitars. Also in the issue: Bob Marley – live, intimate and unseen; the incomparable Sinéad O’Connor; Gram Parsons’ Americana visions; Tony Visconti – a life in knob-twiddling. Plus: Hawkwind; Pulp; The Bee Gees; Bridget St John; Blake Mills; Pretenders; Yoko Ono; Neil Young; Herb Alpert; OMD; Paul Rodgers; The Coral; Betty Davis and more!

THIS MONTH’S COVERMOUNT CD is You’ve Got Everything Now! – an indie rock blow-out starring The Sugarcubes, The...

This one escaped me, but here are the items and hammer prices for various relevant lots. The trend is definitely upwards for prices.

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SMITHS - THE BOY WITH THE THORN IN HIS SIDE - ORIGINAL MASTER TAPE.



A boxed reel of Ampex Grand Master 456 audio tape on a 10.5" reel, with contents to include an original recording of 'The Boy With The Thorn In His Side' made by The Smiths at Drone Studios, Manchester in August 1985. The recording on this tape lasts for approx 3.21 and the recording likely differs slightly from released versions, which will have undergone further mixing/mastering. The reel also includes a demo recording by Lisa Stansfield as well as incidental music created for a television show.

Provenance: the vendor was present during the recording session and was later given the tape reel following the closure of the studio. This item is sold as an artefact only, without copyright. Any reproduction is...

It’s forty years since the Smiths released their first single ‘Hand In Glove’. We’ve already seen a slew of articles on the anniversary, and the clichés about this most singular, most wonderful pop group are doing their weary rounds yet again. The Guardian tells us that the Smiths are incredibly influential. But this is sadly not so. I don’t hear any influence, not a note, in anything that’s followed.

‘Over the past 40 years, you can see their aesthetic and spiritual influence in everyone from the Stone Roses to Oasis and the 1975,’ they tell us. If only! Those bands are derivative, certainly, but of the Smiths? Guitars and the North of England aside, it’s hard to imagine greater artistic gulfs. The comparison between the emotional open wound of the Smiths’ output with the 1975’s immaculately hollow, precision-tooled-for-Spotify tunes is laughably wide of the target. I strongly suspect you could remove the Smiths from history, and those bands – and pop music in general –...

The Guardian has another Smiths article today.

Full text below.

In a second feature marking 40 years of the Smiths, fans including Andy Burnham and Connie Constance consider how and why the band have endured.



John Peel once described the Smiths as “just another band that arrived from nowhere with a very clear and strong identity”. Unlike other bands, he said, the Smiths weren’t trying to be T Rex or the Doors; they were simply the Smiths, a group whose aesthetic lineage was curiously hard to trace.

What they left in their wake, of course, is far easier to map out: there are few indie bands since who don’t, at least in some way, take their cues from Morrissey...

The Guardian has a new article by Michael Hann, celebrating the power of the first Smiths radio sessions.

Not everyone finds it easy to listen to the Smiths now, but those early transmissions were utterly formative for this vital new band and their enraptured fans

Full text below:

It’s 40 years this month since anyone bar the attenders at their handful of gigs heard the Smiths. On 13 May 1983, they released their first single, Hand in Glove, on Rough Trade. Then, on 31 May, John Peel broadcast their first session for his BBC Radio 1 show. Before the year was out, they would have recorded one more for him, as well as two for David Jensen. A total of 14 songs were broadcast, all being heard for the first time, apart from a new version of Handsome Devil, the B-side to Hand in Glove.

The Smiths’ radio sessions were as astounding a rush of...

SOUND OF THE SMITHS
re-enters at number 30

HATFUL OF HOLLOW
re-enters at number 49

Oh man, this hurts. Tweet from Johnny:

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Related items:

• Morrissey-solo: [Morrissey Central] "BEAM OF LIGHT." - May 19, 2023
• Morrissey-solo: Mike Joyce pays tribute to Andy Rourke on BBC Breakfast (May 20, 2023) - May 21, 2023

Media items:

• BBC: "Andy Rourke: The Smiths bassist dies aged 59" - May 19, 2023
• The Guardian: "Andy Rourke, bassist for the Smiths, dies aged 59" - May 19, 2023...

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The Smiths official FB as per 'On This Day' thread on the actual day of release:



Regards,
FWD.