Autobiography (15 page)

All of the new motion and commotion shakes the thought-patterns of Rough Trade Records, who are repeatedly reminded by the press that they are in possession of their first commercial venture – an unthinkable prospect for Rough Trade thus far. But how on earth could Rough Trade ever prosper – out there against brutally crass commercialism – unless the profiteer strangles the artistic elite? By the late summer of 1983 we are in Elephant Studios in Wapping recording our first LP. Wapping was still dankly post-war ruined dockland, and occupied exclusively by the east London poor. It is still the Wapping of
To Sir, with Love
(1967), and taxi drivers give a confused laugh once you state it as your destination. Apart from Peabody Trust flats, empty warehouses, rats that talk, and the left-behind doggerel of deep regret, there is nothing at all in Wapping. The elderly poor still shuffle about, out of time and quietly insane.

An overstuffed confectioner’s shop stands alone on a flattened street awaiting the council chop, and the part-eaten retainer behind the counter looks relieved to finally be on his way out of the new depersonalized world. I walk to the shop every day to buy things that I don’t need, because I want the owner to still feel relied upon, rain or shine. Production is in the hands of Troy Tate, who comes from Yorkshire and who has been appointed producer by Rough Trade. Mysteriously, we don’t object because we all quite like Troy, but his presence indicates a lack of concentration on our part, because we don’t actually know him, and this unfortunately reveals itself in the rash rumble coming from the speakers. It is not Troy’s fault, but recording does not go well, and we all feel that we must have another shot at it in view of the goggle-eyed interest from the weekly music papers. Geoff agrees that the LP must be right and must be improved upon from the Troy sessions. We do not, in fact, know anyone at all who could or should produce the Smiths’ first album. We cannot produce it ourselves because we – and especially I – have minimal studio experience. I actually have no idea what anything does or where anything goes. I am as useless as someone who has been left only as a head following a horrific road accident. John Porter had played for Roxy Music on their second (and magnificent) album,
For Your Pleasure
,
and John had also produced one of our radio sessions for David Jensen, and Johnny thought him a logical choice to produce the album. I agreed.

John was very gentle and understanding, and our radio session had been a good indication of how things could be. We rearranged ourselves and we began again. I look back on the album that became
The Smiths
and I see nothing at all that had anything to do with me. Although the songs were very strong, the recording of those songs – in my view – failed everyone. The Smiths sound had already developed with a bullish fortification that doesn’t remotely suggest itself on
The Smiths
album. Live, Mike’s drumming had an incredible thunderbolt quality, and Andy’s bass had a pealing swagger – neither sound vaguely evident on
The Smiths
album. In fact, the album sounds exactly how the Smiths were
not
: pasty and thin. As genial as John Porter was, both Joe Moss and I could see that John didn’t quite know what to do with the Smiths sound.

The yearning thirst of
Reel around the fountain
was dropped in pitch, and John brought in his friend Paul Carrick to add frisky piano. The result is more caper than lamentation. Our live firebrand
Miserable lie
is choked to death and boxed in, when it had always up to this point detonated as a step-by-step incline crowned by a yowling falsetto – all of this lost in John’s production, which pulls the song back to a plod and makes the falsetto sound breathless and futile.
I don’t owe you anything
is sanitized into a squashy and spongy Spandau Ballet cuddle-up, and John’s remix of our glorious
Hand in glove
finally proves that he does not vaguely understand the rival gang spirit of the original recorded track. The mass of constraints that are evident in the final mix are really and ultimately the fault of the band themselves – for failing to press
STOP
. The album ought to have been a dangerous blow from the buckle-end of a belt, but instead it is a peck on the cheek – correctly reviewed by the press who accurately assess all of the Smiths’ qualities without any claims of debut-album perfection. It is generally accepted that the songs are very strong, but unresolved on
The Smiths
. It enters the
UK
chart at a staggering number 2, held off by the Thompson Twins.

Richard Boon, now on the Rough Trade payroll, whispers to me:
‘You know, it would’ve came in at number 1 but we couldn’t manufacture the cassettes in time.’

My life sinks.
It is a noisy bell to a quizzy mind, and one that sounds and sounds for five years to come, and it tells me that Rough Trade cannot quite produce enough testosterone in matters of big business, and they will hold the Smiths back. Nonetheless, in the market-driven viciousness of triple-platinum Queen and Phil Collins mega-ness,
The Smiths
is right there, insubordinates of an accidental moment in days when there is no sign anywhere of independent artists or a disconnected view. The chilblained mainstream would not comment on the arrival of the Smiths, and then (as now) there would be no Radio One airplay irrespective of how high the records climbed. Highest entry? Radio One had no interest except the ploy of avoidance.

It is forgotten now, but the Smiths’ success was held firmly at bay by the music industry, who instead exercised their
if-we-ignore-them-they’ll-go-away
Punk banishment. We are tellingly billed in the
Sun
for our first appearance on
Top of the Pops
as Dismiss, and
This charming man
garnishes triumphant reviews and begins a twelve-week chart dance. But something is wrong. The single leaps up and then glides down, then rockets then dives, and it becomes evident that Rough Trade cannot keep pace with the demand for stock, for suddenly they have a single that people want to buy, and they are caught cat-napping by the radiator.
This charming man
spends its entire life hedging and hovering outside of the Top 20, Rough Trade unable to supply sufficient quantities when the Top 10 called out with arms wide open.

I stumble into my first television interview, which is for breakfast TV. At 7
AM
I sit quietly in the Green Room with George Best. It is too early in the day to smile, so we both avoid each other’s tired eyes. I am rolled out to face an icy grilling from Henry Kelly – a little, pinched Irish madam who has no time for me and who cuts me off mid-sentence, with neither a ‘thank you’ or a ‘good luck’ as he minces frostily into his next major superstardom moment. Some people are just awful. Kelly was known as the voice and unfortunate face of Irish Eurovision, wearing a suit that looked better on the hanger.

At Rough Trade’s elegant Blenheim Crescent squat I arrive to find a mountain range of boxes bearing the words
‘
This charming man
remix’.

‘What-is-THAT?’
I ask Geoff.

Geoff confesses that the remix is Rough Trade’s first and necessary commercial speculation, and is needed in order to keep the original 7-inch disc alive. Self-exiled in the branches of his own tree, Geoff may not be joining the bureaucrats, but he is suddenly playing the game their way. I have no idea who has remixed the song, and I slide away.

A sudden flood of cash and Rough Trade abandon Blenheim Crescent wok, stock and barrel, for 61 Collier Street – a nineteenth-century workhouse where daylight is wise enough never to enter and where the dank air of Pentonville soups with the constantly lowering clouds of industrial north London. The building is a ringing hum of energy – the staff an encouraging ragbag of Oxbridge ganja dissidents side by side with wicker-basket protectionists, all itching to spar with do-er’s delight. As
The Smiths
album putters about its 33-week chart stay, Charlotte Bront
ë
’s Mr Brocklehurst calls me into his office (which is now a real and proper room) and tells me that a writ has been served by Capitol Records in Los Angeles, who strongly object to the Rough Trade logotype on the paper label of
This charming man
, which replaced the old shattered-glass RT label and instead mimics the famous Capitol logo.

‘So? Why did you do it?’
asks Geoff – a paragon of unity when wind fills the sails, but a rat up a drainpipe when it all goes pear-shaped. In a steady voice I tell him that the idea and execution was not mine, but Richard Boon’s. But here is the true Geoff, desperate to distance himself at the first sign of trouble. Once he realizes that he can’t dump the writ onto me, his face visibly collapses, and the Rough Trade Socialist Federation are nowhere in sight.

I nominate
Pretty girls m
ake graves
as the third single, but a bastion of bearded Rough Trade battleaxes drop on me like a ton of beansprouts and argue against a song with a title that would have made Mary Wollstonecraft throw in the tea-towel. I am shouted down, and Rough Trade wheel out
What difference does it make?
as the next single. I had loved the song until its defilement on
The Smiths
album; the loose swain’s saunter now sounded stiff and inflexible, the drums sounding too frightened to move, the voice sounding like something gone to its reward – or, at least, resting in peace. I use a photograph of Terence Stamp as the sleeve image partly because I am assured that clearance can be gained from Stamp through Geoff’s mutual friendship with Sandie Shaw. Once the single is issued, Terence Stamp objects and will say (years later) that
‘Morrissey
did not ask for approval.’
A new shot is panicked together, wherein I imitate the Stamp shot, although I choose to hold a glass of milk in place of Stamp’s strychnine-soaked muslin cloth. I am ugly against Stamp’s glamor-handsomeness, but it will have to do, since the single has already risen to number 12. Evidently Rough Trade are quite pleased about the sudden censoring of the original sleeve, because it might mean that collectors buy the single with the new sleeve also, thus bumping up sales. I remind Geoff that there is still no sign of airplay (which secretly doesn’t actually bother me that much since I don’t like the song – but I don’t tell him that).

‘Noooo,’
he offers, with that whooping-cough smile of his,
‘but people like it and we have sales of 250,000.’

Although Geoff is tediously teetotal, I assume he has recently hit the bottle, because sales of 250,000 for a single that is only number 12 strikes me as impossible.

Gallantly, Geoff introduced me to his friend Sandie Shaw by wheeling me around to her Harley Street flat. I had collected all of Sandie’s slap-bang singles of the 1960s, and thought that they perfectly traversed the cheap and loud sound of east London skirty jailbait.
I was delighted to meet her in her own London digs – a fascinating floppy padhouse of little and dark cubby-hole rooms, with Sandie still in her pyjamas making
breakfast. She spoke excitedly (and often), eventually asking me if I’d like some toast – an offer I could never refuse. Sandie disappeared and then reappeared holding an eye-squintingly small Hovis-type slice in her left palm, which she did not offer to me until fifteen more minutes of conversation had elapsed, when she suddenly reminded herself with an
‘Oh – here,’
handing me the cold toast, minus a plate or a napkin.

From this meeting Sandie agreed to cover the song
Hand in glove
as a single, which pleased me greatly. In doing so Sandie utilized Johnny, Andy and Mike as her flattered band – free of any studio or session costs. The single jumped to number 27, giving Sandie her first chart hit in fifteen years, and there she was – back on
Top of the Pops
, with Johnny, Andy and Mike behind her (unpaid), and with television throughout Europe calling.

She telephones me:
‘We’re going to Germany to do some TV for
Hand in glove
, but Rough Trade won’t pay for you to go ’cos they say you’re not necessary,’
says the Duchess of Cumberland Place.

‘I had no intention of going to Germany,
because, as thousands of nice people have rushed to point out, I am not necessary,’
I say, in my best not-necessary voice.

‘Also,’
adds the Dagenham doll,
‘27 in the charts might be great for you, but it’s not good enough for me.’

Ugh.
I can hardly believe my ears. And yet,
I can.
The transparency rose as Geoff took me aside to advise:
‘The percentage cut on Sandie’s single is 30–30–
40
...
that’s 40 per cent for Sandie.’

‘
...
because
...
?
’
I attempt to complete his sentence. I am confused, since I understand that the track had cost Sandie nothing. (In fact, I do not ever witness one moment when Sandie treats the band to dinner, or even a bottle of stale ale.)

‘Well,’
says Geoff, suddenly transmuting into Dr Finlay,
‘she needs it.’
His head is now softly to one side, as if a beloved family pet must be gassed for its own good.

To his credit, Geoff had found a flat for me at Hornton Court on Campden Hill Road in Kensington. It was to be a very happy time for me, and Geoff was becoming attentive without foolishly attempting friendship. The flat is haunted – as everyone who calls by testifies (even if the chilled atmosphere is initially assumed to be me). Air of leaden fatigue hangs outside of the bathroom, as if something is standing right there in the hallway. There is also a heavy sense of sadness in the bedroom where I sleep, an atmosphere I am used to leaving behind – but not finding as I arrive.