When you've been touted as the next big thing as comprehensively as the Smiths, life in the goldfish bowl can start to get pretty uncomfortable. Recent pop history is littered with the skeletons of "big things" picked to the bone by avaricious media vultures and then discarded.
Under such intense scrutiny bands can start to get a distorted image of themselves. Worse still, they can start believing what other people say about them. Some bands throw a protective screen around themselves as a safeguard but this can often result in a seige mentality that can eat away at them from the inside.
So far the Smiths have danced neatly round these pitfalls, pre-empting the plaudits by displaying as high an opinion of themselves as the most sycophantic scribes. That may come across as outrageous arrogance but in reality it's nothing more than candour combined with powerful self-confidence.
The Smiths started by announcing to anyone who would listen that they were something special. Even then it didn't sound like a gimmick. In the succeeding year they've produced three remarkable singles and an album of rare beauty. But verbally they haven't changed their stance at all. They haven't even bothered to gloat.
There's no need to dwell on the reasons why the Smiths are so manifestly the next thing. Your reasons are just as valid as mine and hopefully less cluttered up by all the 60s comparison claptrap that ageing hacks like me are so besotted with.
This article was conceived as a state-of-the-Smiths piece on their first "proper" tour around England. Already the Smiths are starting to figure large on the rock and roll grapevine, that source of all innuendo and occasionally truth. The rumours are circulating: "This is their last tour," "The Smiths want to leave Rough Trade," "Morrissey is seriously ill and will have to leave the band". How will the group's much vaunted candour cope with that little lot?
Initial efforts to intercept the Smiths on tour are thwarted when a string of dates are blown out because Morrissey is "ill" (ah ha!) and I wouldn't bet my editor's expenses that they are going to turn up tonight at the University Of East Anglia in Norwich. They were due here at 4pm and it's just after 8pm and despite the road manager's assurance that they have left London there are some very suspicious looking furrows on his brow.
But the furrows disappear a few minutes later when the band arrive. Morrissey still has a hacking cough however - the remains of a "clinging virus" (my description appeals to Morrissey's floral senses) that is unlikely to improve with touring.
It is however strong enough to withstand a manic journey through the fog in my car to locate the hotel before the show. And when he's not peering into the swirling mists he talks about the book he's preparing on British girl singer's voices of the 60s (which makes 60s obsession pale into insignificance). It's already about to yield one surprising spin-off - a single with Sandie Shaw singing "Hand In Glove" - but the book itself won't be out for a while, Morrissey believing that his profile is high enough for the time being.
Back in the dressing room with seconds to spare - the furrows were back on the road manager's face again - Morrissey starts rounding up the four boxes of flowers (the only rider on their contract at the moment) and coughs his way towards the stage.
The set is scarcely 40 minutes long and misses out a couple of Smiths' classics such as "Reel Around The Fountain" which might cause permanent damage to Morrissey's throat if he were to attempt it.
But such is the compelling emotional appeal of the band that the eleven songs are quite sufficent for one Smiths session, leaving your senses sated even if your body could do with another couple of numbers to bop to.
The sound is relatively quiet by rock and roll standards but with a clarity that enables every nuance of guitarist Johnny Marr and the subtlety of the rhythm section to show through. And the contrast between the slow ballads and the harder songs is heightened by placing new songs such as the plaintive "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" (which will be the next single) or the almost funky "Barbarism Begins At Home" next to such stalwarts as "Hand In Glove" and "Back To The Old House" respectively.
The audience is stirred if not exactly ecstatic. But you get the feeling as they leave that they'll be thinking about the Smiths regularly over the next couple of days.
Back at the hotel Morrissey is more understandably concerned over the state of Morrissey than the state of the Smiths and retires to his room. But I've already opted for Johnny Marr as the man closest to the pulse of the Smiths and we retire to his room - fending off frequent interruptions from the rest of the band and crew looking for "action" (later boys, later).
We start by talking about the unexpected twists that happen to every suddenly-successful group, however much they've remained in control.
"One thing I wasn't expecting were the leeches diving in. People like my mum kept saying 'everybody will want to cash in on you if you make it big'. I didn't believe them but it's true. At the moment everybody we meet wants to be our manager! But we're just organising ourselves at the moment and not listening to anybody.
"The other thing that's weird is this phenomenon called fans. They keep saying to me 'Don't you get pissed off 'cos Morrissey's always in the papers'. I don't know why they think that because I never do but they expect the rest of us to be mad about the publicity Morrissey is getting."
Johnny is clearly only just getting used to the Smash Hits/Number One fan mentality. But is this really the first and last Smiths tour? "Well, it is, sort of. Because of our status and the new album we were expected to do this tour but then I started thinking that we're just doing what other bands do.
"We're proud of our records and sleeves because they're different from everybody else and it should be the same with the gigs too. But there's no way we're going to stop playing gigs. We're not going to do the Marc Almond bit! We'd like to play two dates a week or something but we're not that keen on doing traditional tours because it can become a bland circus. I'd hate to get sick of playing gigs but I'm worried that by this time next year we'll have played so many that we won't want to play again.
"I'm on a massive high again with the Smiths. Not that I was ever very low but there was a period after 'This Charming Man' came out and we played loads of gigs and appeared on Top Of The Pops and I started wondering 'well, there must be more to it than this.' And now I know there is so I'm back up again."
The rumours of them leaving Rough Trade are not true, but at least Johnny knows how that one got started.
"We didn't like the dance mix of 'This Charming Man' which they put out as a 12-inch and we told them so but we're certainly not going around saying 'Rough Trade have screwed us up'.
"I know we're at the stage where people are looking for the smallest blemish, any little differences between us and Rough Trade or between ourselves but I still think it's daft."
With the usual Smiths blushing modesty, Johnny thinks the album is "phenomenal". "All the elements of the Smiths are there. There's nothing lost, I'm sure of it. Our producer John Porter was the perfect studio technician for us. He got some amazing subtleties but at the same time we were putting some things down in just a couple of takes.
"We did some recording beforehand with Troy Tate but it didn't really work out. It meant so much to him, he's thought about it all so much that I felt really bad about saying 'no' to some of his suggestions, particularly as I'd got really friendly with him. But it was a weird period for us. We were going into the studio for a lengthy spell for the first time and we were a bit worried about what might happen to our sound.
"The new songs we've got are just as good as the old ones but I don't want the next album to be the first album part two, I want it to be unexpected.
"We are avid watchers of the pop scene and we know what the pitfalls are. I don't want to follow in a Smiths tradition necessarily. I don't want the second album to sound like a logical or credible step forward. I want it to be unexpected Smiths."
He's not even phased when I suggest that the idea of being successful is perhaps too expected for the Smiths and maybe they should do something about that?
"We want to be universally successful but what's more important to me - and I realise it more as we get more popular - is that we are the people who have to live with our records. I'm into a Muddy Waters trip, which sounds really corny, but I want to be influential over the next few generations. Pop music is such a powerful force and I want to stand out in that force."
But is it still? Aren't kids buying video games rather than records these days? "Only because there has been nothing of any real significance lately. I don't like video games but if it was a choice between that and the new Visage LP I'd get the video game.
"We're just trying to get back to some of the original notions about what a group is really about."
And that perhaps is where the Smiths are being most successful. They have a passion for rock music that puts most modern bands to shame and while it's easy to argue that these are early and naive days for the Smiths, they know too much about how the business functions to get trapped by the treadmill. There is no Smiths facade. As Johnny says, "I don't think we try to pretend we're invulnerable because we're not - not like these bands who try to put on a superhuman persona even when you're talking to them in the dressing room."

The above article was originally published in the February 25, 1984 issue of Sounds magazine. Reproduced without permission for non-profit use only.