This interview was conducted by Georges Daublon on the occasion of a Smiths gig at Loughborough University on 17 March 1984, during the band's first "proper" UK tour. It was published in the May 1984 edition of the magazine. English translation by Bertrand Tyke.
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Start! - The Smiths
I have always thought of England as a surprising place. For
example, the kids, as they are called over there, are very easily
able to go without things that we French consider essential, such as a bidet,
central heating or a bottle of plonk. And yet, they never miss the chance to
catch up with what, for them, are the pleasures of everyday life and, for us,
have become commodities of such scarcity that the tickets permitting their
consumption are quickly snapped up by credit card.
What could be more everyday, after all, than a concert, a
Saturday night at the University of Loughborough, in a small town neither
duller nor more exciting than a dozen others in Leicestershire. But let’s take
a peek at what’s on the bill. “Tonight: The Smiths” (last week it was Ian
Dury). Let us enter the de-rostrumed lecture theatre serving as our concert
hall. Here, we find ourselves in the midst of a thousand people, all very young
and, aided by pints of lager and the very English notion of a Saturday night,
very excitable. They have all come to see a band who, before even a single
showbiz lackey had time to notice, have risen to number two in the charts with
their debut LP and all (yes, all) of whose singles have entered the top 30, as
well as making a squat out of the indie charts.
An English miracle? A triumph of fashion? Let’s forget the
clichés as Morrissey, the singer, takes the stage. He’s quite a character. A
tall chap, almost comically gangling, he strides up and down decked out in a
shirt too big for his puny shoulders and a dodgy pair of jeans from whose bum
hangs a bunch of wilted daffodils. This is a long way from high fashion. We are
definitively won over as Johnny Marr, the guitarist, launches the first song,
evoking the sixties of the Byrds, the Doors and the Velvets combined. A sort of
magical chemistry between the two men is evident straight away. Marr’s
crystal-clear sound and technical expertise, combining gentle arpeggios and
trenchant riffs, are a perfect match for the wandering voice of Morrissey, who
expresses himself, totally intuitively, like Tim Buckley crossed with Lou Reed.
The guy’s hard not to look at. He fascinates from the word
go. He walks between and around his musicians - Marr, Andy Rourke (bass) and
Mike Joyce (drums) - distant, untouchable, raising his long arms to the ceiling
for a time, then suddenly sliding down to the floor and curling up in a ball,
belting out at extreme high-pitch: “I need advice, because nobody ever looks at
me twice” (“Miserable Lie”). Hands reach
out desperately towards him. Occasionally, he lightly touches them and risks
being swallowed up by the voracious audience. But he doesn’t maintain contact.
Various young women, hypnotised by this new Lizard King, attempt to hurl
themselves onto him, but he doesn’t even see them as they are intercepted by
vigilant roadies. He is elsewhere: “I don’t want a lover, I just want to be
seen in the back of your car” (“You’ve Got Everything Now”). Because Morrissey
sets off in the hall a fantastic hysteria. With his protruding chin, his tuft of hair
like Riquet,
his lost eyes, his grubby clothes and the flowers with which he plays
throughout the show, Morrissey manages the feat of becoming handsome!1
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But Morrissey is not only a showman and singer with a rare
gift. His is, foremost, a poet. His lyrics are imbued with an unremitting
sadness. But, rather than falling into pompous despair, he brings out in them a
sort of subtle, bitter fatalism. Although you can never tell if he is talking
to a woman or a man, he has a proclivity for love as a subject matter.
Impossible love, love that will never be realised. Is that all he wants?
Morrissey: Love is sort of like living in your own world.
You think about other people, you feel very strong feelings but in reality
nothing really happens. There are people who we adore but we will never sit
down next to them and tell them. It’s very strange.
Who are you speaking to in your songs? A woman or a man?
It doesn’t matter much to me. I’ve always found it very
difficult to put men and women into categories that are really distinct. For
me, people are all the same and gender is just an accident of nature. I write
for a mysterious person who could be male or female. There’s no barrier and
there never ought to be one.
So why have you looked to the gay side with regards to
your record sleeves (Terence Stamp and Jean Marais for the two EPs and Joe
Dellessandro for the album)?
I’ve always felt that it was of primary importance to make
record sleeves such as have never been seen. Putting on a sleeve a strong male
image, using the male as a model, almost as a sex symbol, that’s never really
been done. Because we see so many stunning women on sleeves, nobody is
surprised by it. It can no longer say anything and it no longer has any impact.
I try to strike a balance without falling too heavily on the side of sexual
connotation, but rather to provoke a more abstract curiosity.
Why do you take flowers on stage?
For quite selfish reasons, really. Firstly, I like them,
just because flowers are nice, and it’s a good counterbalance to our music,
which is quite dark and mournful. I think flowers symbolise a new beginning.
Daffodils are also an anti-nuclear symbol. Plus, I’ve always been very
influenced by Oscar Wilde and I’ve always found it quite funny that he took
flowers with him into the most incongruous places.
You give me the impression of not liking the success you
have achieved so quickly.
No, it’s not that, but I find it very difficult to adopt a
general attitude towards a public made up of people who are very different. I
know that there are people whose lives are very intimately affected by our
music and my words, but there are others who absolutely do not care. They
listen to us today, tomorrow it will be someone else. But, personally, being
older than the others, I had been waiting longer for this type of situation,
and I was ready. I know we’ve only been together 18 months. People see it as
very fast for us, particularly because we did it on our own, without a manager
or videos or adverts and I’m absolutely not surprised by the situation, because
we are in control of everything.
In “Still Ill” you say: “If you must go to work tomorrow,
well, if I were you I wouldn’t bother” and in “You’ve Got Everything Now” you
say “I’ve never had a job because I’m too shy”. Which is your real attitude to
work?
I see nothing that could justify being bored by your job all
you life. I find it absurd to have to make excuses for not working. I you don’t
want to, that’s enough. When I say “I’m too shy”, I’m thinking of all those
people I used to see when I went to sign on who were made to feel guilty for
not working. It’s ridiculous.
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Someone who has had to work at his music is Johnny Marr, the
magical imp of the guitar. A small lock of brown hair falling over sparkling
eyes, shell necklaces over a flower-power shirt. You can imagine him at the
side of a Jack Casady or a Jerry Garcia in the heyday of the Fillmore. In any
case, he makes no secret of his love of the sixties.
Johnny Marr: At the start, people said we were like The
Byrds. I like them a lot, but I also like Tamla Motown and people like John Lee
Hooker. I’m listening to a lot of Carly Simon at the moment.
How do the two of you work together?
I write the music and then Morrissey adds his words and his
voice, but there’s no rigid formula. The fact that Morrissey doesn’t play an
instrument is very interesting because he manages to come up with ideas that
would never occur to a musician.
On record, you use a lot of acoustic guitar.
Yes, I like the elemental sound of the acoustic guitar. As a
general rule, we prefer not to overproduce our records. We like a relatively
simply sound, in fact.
Simple like the name The Smiths?
Yes. We wanted a very ordinary, human name, not something
pretentious that would have made us seem like spacemen or that type of
nonsense. I think people like us because
we are totally accessible. They take us for what we are, just honest people.
Most groups today try to be as cool as possible and, because that’s not
natural, they become unapproachable. For me, if there’s a country where I’d
like The Smiths to be massive, it’s France.2
He told me that like a child telling a secret, but I took it
as a compliment. And yet I can manage very well without a bidet.
1 In a French fairy tale, Riquet is an ugly prince with a projecting tuft of hair, magically made handsome by a princess so that she may marry him.
2 This sentence seems a little out of place, as if there has been some wayward sub-editing at play. It is as it is in the original.
1 In a French fairy tale, Riquet is an ugly prince with a projecting tuft of hair, magically made handsome by a princess so that she may marry him.
2 This sentence seems a little out of place, as if there has been some wayward sub-editing at play. It is as it is in the original.
