The Morrissey myth

Drinking in Corbières, a dingy basement bar just off St Ann’s Square, 30 years ago, you could bump into any number of groovy young Mancunians clustered round the jukebox, talking about the bands they were going to form. One night, as the jukey played ‘The Cutter’ by Echo & the Bunnymen, all evening long it seemed, there was talk of an odd duck from Stretford called Steven Morrissey. Nobody knew him but his name was in the wind.

Soon he had formed The Smiths with a guitar player, Johnny Marr, whose sweet pop sound complemented, or supplemented, his partner’s predominantly sour words. For three years the collaboration worked, so long as you felt, as many teenagers have always felt, that the world was jolly unfair, and your place in it uncertain. For those who had scrambled through their teenage years the band’s appeal was less obvious. Richard Williams, the sort of critic who gives pop journalism a good name, thought The Smiths represented the clearest possible case for the restoration of national service.

Morrissey was indeed an odd duck. The use of a surname by itself was the first clue. It seemed to say: I’m not just a pop star, I’m serious. Then there was the self-conscious dropping of literary names, starting with every troubled adolescent’s favourite spokesman, Oscar Wilde. Sometimes it is hard to realise what a remarkable man Wilde was, given that so many mediocrities have sought to summon his spirit to give flavour to their own lives.

But what made Morrissey unusual was the often clever way in which his songs incorporated other aspects of popular culture. The Smiths were not merely a pop group, they were a northern pop group, like The Beatles before them.