The Big Time
JOE MOSS: "The reason it came through so fast - the real reason - is because it was so good and so fresh. But you also had people like Scott Piering, who was constantly working on getting airplay and TV spots and plugging the band."
SCOTT PIERING: "I saw their sixth gig (ULU, May 1983), took John Peels' producer John Walters to it, and he immediately gave us a session. We had five sessions on Radio One in very rapid succession, and that's what really helped launch the first album."
JOHN WALTERS: "All credit to Scott, who said, look, there is a huge buzz about these people in Manchester. A band had dropped out and they were pretty much bottom of the bill. It wasn't as if you couldn't move around the dancefloor. You just picked your spot. And Morrissey suddenly dashed out with the flowers, waving them about, you know. It was obviously different and it was obviously about something. It was rather like seeing a young artist or a young painter. And it was certainly worth the risk of an afternoon in Maida Vale."
KEVIN CUMMINS: "They did a massive show at the Hacienda, where the Hacienda decorated the whole place with flowers."
ANDY ROURKE: "Because the architecture of the Hacienda was so cold, for the second Hacienda gig we played (in July 1983), we brought flowers to warm the place up and sort of interact with the audience."
MIKE JOYCE: "Thirteen boxes of daffodils. It smelt great onstage."
ANDY ROURKE: "Slippy though. Bit hazardous. Then we progressed on to the gladioli when the budget went up a bit. And there used to be a eucalyptus tree."
MIKE JOYCE: "It was a massive bush. I mean, sometimes it was just like, you know, a copse. And it had been kind of whittled down, so as not to be dangerous."
JOE MOSS: "Apart from the fact that they were brilliant, the main factor was John Peel completely turning on to it. It seemed as though every time you switched to the Peel show, you were hearing a Smiths session or 'Hand In Glove'."
JOHN WALTERS: "Peel always says I was absolutely raving about it, but I can't quite remember that. I just thought it was a lead worth following. A bit like Inspector Morse, you know. Pursue the lead. And then they became a little like a flag, or a banner with a strange device, as the poet put it."
SCOTT PIERING: "I could tell this guy (Morrissey) was a real serious character. And the band had the best combination of music and attitude I'd seen for a long time. We had some luck with 'Hand In Glove,' but as soon as the second single ('This Charming Man') came out, they were all over the place. They were really happening."
GEOFF TRAVIS: "I was really thrilled by that. I thought it was one of the best things I'd heard, ever."
ANDY ROURKE: "We all knew we were involved in something very special."
MIKE JOYCE: "Really special. Just because of the way I'd feel when I'd do gigs. And the way that people would speak to me about it."
ANDY ROURKE: "Even at rehearsals when Mozz used to come in with a new song. Afterwards we'd have to sit down for 10 minutes."
MIKE JOYCE: "We'd have the music finished and Morrissey would come in and sing the vocals over the top. It was just so moving. It was such an experience to actually hear your singer singing like that over a track that you've just done."
GEOFF TRAVIS: "And what was brilliant about Johnny was the fact that, for someone of his age, his knowledge of music was breathtaking. He knew who John Benbourn was. He knew who Bert Jansch was. He knew who Richard Thompson was. I always thought he was an extraordinary guitar player, because he had that lightness of touch, which is what made him really unique."
SCOTT PIERING: "They only trusted people they were familiar with. It was a bit of a vibe thing. So, like, Grant Showbiz, for example, if they liked the way he did live sound, he was the sound guy. It was always a question of, yeah, he's our man; let's take him on. You were paid with promises, but everybody was like, hey, it's The Smiths, let's stay on board."
GRANT SHOWBIZ: "The Smiths was them. There was no separation, there was no let's-pretend-to-be-The-Smiths. Which a lot of bands do. There was none of that with The Smiths. Everybody had the right rap."
JOE MOSS: "Most young bands seem to think that the world is waiting for them, and everything around is all very stale. But at that period, it was. It wasn't clever, was it?"
SCOTT PIERING: "There was never any doubt that they were going to get there. There was total confidence the whole way. Privately, publicly, in their deepest moments of despair, they knew that they were gifted and they were going to succeed. So much of what most other artists learn, or artificially create, or never get, they had it all at the beginning. And that was the key to it. They had the confidence of knowing they had all the goods, and people could just fuckin' well wait."
GRANT SHOWBIZ: "Amazing, in a way, the confidence that it was really going to happen, and the lack of machinery to make it happen. The way it kind of staggered on. You know, once we lost Joe..."
JOE MOSS: "The reason I left was because it was obvious I was going to be spending more time away from home. And I had a young family. I had an 18-month-old son then, and my wife had just had a daughter in the November (of 1983). Plus I was 40. If I'd been younger I might have viewed it differently."
GRANT SHOWBIZ: "Joe was bankrolling us all. His company were going bankrupt. And I think he just realised that from now on it was going to be a really heavy fight with a bunch of cold, calculating Southern bastards."
SCOTT PIERING: "The world was clawing at them. Everybody wanted to manage them - a lot of charlatans came over from the States and promised them the world. It was a very heady time. By that time I was handling so much of their media and spending so much time with the band that I became sort of a caretaker. But in fact The Smiths called all the shots."
GRANT SHOWBIZ: "We lost Joe, like, three days before we went to America for the first time ever. That was the first time, apart from Morrissey, that any of them had been on a plane. It was so scary to go to America manager-less, to go and sign to the record company (Sire) and do a big New Year's Eve gig. It was unbusiness-like to the nth degree. I turned up at the airport expecting Joe Moss to be there. There was Geoff Travis there, and Geoff is a lot of things but he's not a warm, loving, tender, cuddly sort of guy, which is what Joe was. So we'd been used to feeling alienated in Norwich, and suddenly we were, like, in fuckin' airports with horrible people. And it's no secret that Johnny had broken up with Angie - the only time (they are now married) - so the father figure had gone; the lover, the cosmic twin - 'cos they're born on the same day - had gone. We didn't realise it but Mike Joyce was just about to come down with chicken-pox, so he was feeling really awful. The vibe was a little like, well, all that other stuff was fun. Now we've got to grow up."
SCOTT PIERING: "International opportunities were arising already, and all I could do was help keep them at bay. They turned down about three Japanese tours, and you know how lavish they are. They didn't like the idea of being away from Manchester, they didn't like the idea that they couldn't order egg and chips instead of sushi. They really didn't like foreign food at all. The whole thing was anathema to them. Any foreign place at all - even Europe - they just had the utmost disdain for."
GRANT SHOWBIZ: "And that was it. We never had another manager. We had this series of people who thought they were managers. It was very much de facto. It would change almost from day to day. It would be like if someone spoke at the top of their voice and we all did what they said, he was the manager, or she was the manager. For that day, or that week. Literally."
SCOTT PIERING: "It was so exciting that nobody really cared that it was crazy. We were all kind of holding on by the skin of our teeth. The more they said no to people - the more they fucked people off - the more people kept coming back for more. It was amazing. The fucking Smiths cancelled Wogan! Morrissey got on a train back to Manchester four hours before the live broadcast. One time we went to call him to go to the airport and he wouldn't answer his doorbell. At a whim, we cancelled one European tour at the airport, just when everyone was about to go through customs for the flight out."
DAVE HARPER: "It was early in the morning. There wasn't a lot of conversation going on. I was the only representative of officialdom there. And we were just sitting down in departures and he (Morrissey) just turned to me and said, 'I'm not going.' 'It'll be fun,' I said weakly. 'Go on. Go and have a tour.' But it's the mark of a true star to blow something out without there necessarily being any logic behind it. Anyway, I drove them back to Johnny's flat in Earl's Court, where Scott was waiting in a state of high anxiety."
SCOTT PIERING: "Even when you had Morrissey's full remit, you knew it might be rescinded. I don't know how many European tours and major television broadcasts it took months to piece together."
JAMES MAKER: "Despite the popular portrayal of Morrissey as an inhibited, retiring character, I knew him as a young man who was capable of great resolve and purpose. In the midst of these gentler persuasions lay an extraordinary will. In terms of having a clear, concise agenda, implementing it with total prejudice to compromise, and executing it, his style was Thatcherite. He could be benignly considerate and gracious to those whom he felt were friend or ally, yet breathtakingly inclement to those whom he deemed disagreeable. He is the most self-actualised person I know."
SCOTT PIERING: "He's not an intellectual chess-player. He's a fencer. And he's simply one of the best. He can dodge, defer, parry, thrust, and keep people at bay to the point where they feel they've got something at the end of it, but he hasn't truly revealed anything except some of his own originality."

The Music And The Madness
GEOFF TRAVIS: "We were looking for a producer for the first album. Troy (Tate) had made a single called 'Love Is,' which had a really good sound to it. He met the band; they liked him. We were trying someone new."
MIKE JOYCE: "It just sounded too... oh, indie's not the right word. It didn't have a body."
JOHN PORTER: "It didn't sound that great, and through a mutual friend, Geoff asked me if I'd take a listen to the tapes and see about remixing them. Well, I listened to the tapes and said possibly it would be better to start again. They were kind of out of tune and out of time. To tell you the truth, I knew about The Smiths, but I don't think I'd actually heard them."
MIKE JOYCE: "If there ever was a fifth Smith, it was John Porter."
ANDY ROURKE: "He did get on very well with Johnny, and I think he taught Johnny a lot about layering guitars and overdubs and stuff. Taught him different techniques and tunings and so on. John Porter was very valuable in that respect."
JOHN PORTER: "I sort of felt that Johnny was like my younger brother or something. I recognised that he was an exceptional guitar player and I wanted to build that up. I mean, we used to spend hours in the studio. Quite often we'd put the tracks down and everybody would go, and Johnny and I would stick around all night and have it finished by the morning. We did a lot of guitars. Some songs had 15 guitars or more."
PAUL CARRACK: "I knew John Porter from Ladbroke Grove days - Carol Grimes and all that lot - and he told me he was doing this band The Smiths, who had a phenomenal following, and he gave me a tape."
JOHN PORTER: "Paul Carrack was an old friend and I'd worked with him a lot. I always thought 'Reel Around The Fountain' would be a lovely piano tune."
PAUL CARRACK: "I didn't know anything about them. I thought it was a bit strange. I wondered what it was all about, to start with. I can remember it being very vibey. Morrissey was there. He was just kind of sitting over in the corner quietly, with his glasses on. He didn't say an awful lot. I was doing Hammond and not sure if he was liking it or not. And he said, 'It sounds like Reginald Dixon on acid.' Apparently, this meant he liked it."
JOHN PORTER: "I must say I was never really happy with 'Reel Around The Fountain'. I don't think they ever really captured it. I always wanted to have another go at it."
DAVE HARPER: "They were shuffling back and forwards because they were making the second album (Meat Is Murder) in Surrey, down the A23. So I used to go and get them. The car was fantastic: it was a black Mercedes left-hand drive diesel limo from the mid-70's, an ex-funeral cortege car, which I thought was dead cool. A really long thing, and black, with no hub-caps. You could open the bonnet, but you had to hold it up with a broomstick. Things never quite worked. I was driving Morrissey alone back to Manchester once, and just chatting - he'd be sitting in the back, because there were three rows of seats - but I made the terrible mistake of telling him it was a funeral cortege car and, of course, ooh, no. Wrong. Very wrong. I think it gave him the willies."
GRANT SHOWBIZ: "The Meat Is Murder thing came in and there was that kind of vegetarian watershed. At last we started thinking about food."
MIKE JOYCE: "I haven't eaten meat since 1985, and that's purely because of the track. If we hadn't have recorded that track, I'd be eating meat now."
GRANT SHOWBIZ: "On that first European tour, Morrissey had probably been eating, like, a packet of biscuits a day."
DAVE HARPER: "Cake was a popular thing with Morrissey. Big man for a cake. Cream, you know, creamy, tea-shoppy cake. We did stop at a tea shop once. And dumbbells. Big man with the weightlifting. He had a flat in Kensington and we helped him move. Odd flat. One of those sort of middle-aged person's flats, furnished, quite grand, in a mansion block. Gloomy place, with lots of books and Smiths posters and pictures of him. So we're helping him move, you know, and he had these dumbbells - traditional, metal pole, things at the end. I foolishly tried to pick one up, couldn't fucking get it off the ground. And he said, 'Oh, allow me.' And picked it up in one hand. He looked after himself. Despite the diet of cake."
GRANT SHOWBIZ: "They weren't very good with food. I mean, if you look at Johnny and Morrissey in photographs in the early days, they're very thin. And Johnny used to throw up before every show, because he was so nervous about things."
DAVE HARPER: "We stopped at a service station on the M6 once. There was the bloke out of Orchestral Manoeuvres. Singer. And Morrissey got a bit excited by this: 'Ooh, look, Andy McCluskey, what's he doing here?' And we left the services at the same time as him. And he had a really swish BMW coupe that was bristling with aerials - a nice rich man's motor. It sort of said something. Money. Doing well. And Morrissey became obsessed with following him and trying to overtake him. He was saying to me, 'Go on, go on!' And he left the rear seat and sort of edged his way forward until he was crouched right behind me, urging me on."
SCOTT PIERING: "Morrissey was becoming a big pop star and he didn't even have a bodyguard. And he was being attacked by people, by fans. He would get hit with a bottle or something, and his mum would say, 'There's not enough security.' And she was right. The Smiths were being treated like ordinary Joes and they were big. We actually needed to make it a bit more like rock stars. Rough Trade would send a car and it would be, like, an old estate. The whole operation was just downmarket. We should have upgraded everything, really."
DAVE HARPER: "Then there was the hearing aid, of course. That was the beauty of working with Scott. 'I want a hearing aid. Can you get me a hearing aid?' It's not a reasonable request particularly. I got it from a hearing aid shop in the West End somewhere; a display model. I said, 'We represent a famous pop star and he's going to be on Top Of The Pops and would like to wear a hearing aid.' And they're going, 'Well, he's not taking the piss out of the deaf, is he?' And I went into a long ramble about Johnny Ray and how it was a nod to something or other. I think we were supposed to give it back, actually."
GEOFF TRAVIS: "John Porter and Johnny pretty much did 'How Soon Is Now?' in an all-night session in a studio. I remember really liking it. I think it took us a few weeks to realise how good it was."
SCOTT PIERING: "'How Soon Is Now?' was the international hit that should have happened. It would have changed everything."
JOHN PORTER: "That's where it all, sadly, started to fall apart. We did it at Jam Studios in Finsbury Park. Everybody was a bit hungover from the night before. I don't know what had gone on. They had 'William (It Was Really Nothing)' basically together, so we put it down very quickly. And Johnny played me a little chord sequence which I thought was kind of interesting, but very pretty. And I seem to remember saying to him, 'Play what you think is "That's All Right"' - you know, the old Arthur Crudup tune. 'Play your impression of that.' So he did. So I said, 'Right, now play your chord sequence two octaves down from where you've done it, and let's bolt it on to this other part.' And that sort of happened. They did three takes. It was a Saturday. I don't think Morrissey was there. I posted it, or somebody posted it, through Morrissey's letterbox that night and then he came in the next day with his book and sang possibly one or two takes. And it was done. I thought, 'Right, well, now we're starting to move into second gear. Now we've got something that we can sell in America. Now we've got a band that could be like R.E.M. are now.' We were all really, really excited. In the evening I called Scott and Scott came down. He loved it. He said, 'Yes! Fantastic!'"
SCOTT PIERING: "It was without question the most universal-sounding Smiths record that anybody could identify with."
JOHN PORTER: "He took the tape. Went back to Rough Trade. And Geoff was kind of... he didn't really like it. Which rather deflated me. And subsequently they just put it out as a fucking B-side. I mean, they murdered it."
GEOFF TRAVIS: "Obviously it came out as a single in its own right later. Maybe you could say we made a mistake not releasing that as the A-side (of William)."
MIKE JOYCE: "I remember Geoff Travis saying to Johnny at some point, 'Stop writing A-sides, you'll burn yourself out.' But how can you say that to somebody like Johnny, who was in, as far as I was concerned, the most prolific time that I've ever heard?"
JOHN PORTER: "And strangely enough, that was the last thing I did with them for about a year. I got fired after that."

The Trials And Tribulations
STEPHEN STREET: "The Queen Is Dead was quite a haphazard process. It was recorded all over the place. It was a few tracks done here, then a break, and we did some more tracks. It's turned out to be, you know, like you see in the press, one of the best albums of all time, yet at the time we were doing it, we didn't know we were heading off into this huge masterpiece. It seemed to be quite relaxed."
GEOFF TRAVIS: "The pressures on Johnny were phenomenal, because he had the burden of coming up with the music. I think he started to retreat. I mean, he relished it, but by the same token, it started to get to him. His lifestyle - I mean, Johnny would be up all night. And that old thing of Morrissey going to bed early, that was true really. So the hours when they met, they worked. And that was what kept them together. It was their working lives that kept them together, rather than their social lives."
JOHN PORTER: "Morrissey would disappear. I think he was almost a social recluse. I don't know what he used to do, but I suspect that he in fact went home and used to read, you know, and watch soaps or whatever he did. He certainly didn't hang around too much when Johnny and I were in the studio, 'cos we were hanging out all the time and I was thrusting all these blues records at Johnny which Morrissey hated intensely. He probably thought I was a terrible influence."
GRANT SHOWBIZ: "I only met, I think, one other friend of Morrissey's outsdie of The Smiths, and that was James Maker. Oh, and Linder of course. I don't think Morrissey had a big circle of friends really. He was quite a private person, Mozz. Very few people ever got invited to Morrissey's house."
STEPHEN STREET: "When we did Strangeways we were at the Wool Hall (in Bath), which was a nice residential studio. Most nights were party nights for the guys. They'd be up till four in the morning. As soon as Morrissey went to bed, the funk would come out. Sign 'O' The Times by Prince, put that on full blast."
SCOTT PIERING: "Even Morrissey's sexuality - I personally was with him too often, too long, too much, to believe anything other than what he said (ie that he was not interested). There was never one iota, one shred of evidence to the contrary. Yeah, it's all true. No drugs. No drink. There were a couple of occasions when he was drinking white wine, which is about the nastiest thing I could say about his vices."
STEVE WRIGHT: "We did some pictures outside Coronation Street (for the sleeve of The Queen Is Dead), at both ends. If you'd picked the worst day, technically, to do outside photographs, that was it. It was a bloody dark day. Coronation Street was a street in Salford where people lived; it wasn't Coronation Street as in the Granada set. It's a short street of decaying terraced houses. We did some shots outside Salford Lads Club. I think it was actually shut at the time. There was a bit of a fuss afterwards, because everyone started going down there to take pictures of themselves, like Japanese tourists. People were writing 'I luv Morrissey,' 'Mozz woz here,' sort of aerosoling the brickwork. And the club actually had a go at Rough Trade. They felt that the image of the club had been let down because none of them (The Smiths) had been members of the club. I think they were probably after a new ping-pong table or something. But it did become a problem and I think at one stage they were talking about putting railings right round it. Anyway, then it was, 'Fine. Can you print this one up? This is what we want for the sleeve.' To some extent, what happened with the chosen pictures was something that happened at the other end of the country."
CARYN GOUGH: "He (Morrissey) used to send me rough ideas of what he wanted and ask me to neaten them up and sort them out. And find out whether it was possible to print what he wanted. We always had great trouble finding these typefaces he'd dug out of God knows where. He'd just send me a scribble with notes, which was transalated by Jo Slee (The Smiths' art co-ordinator) a lot of the time. I found them a bit repetitive, to be quite honest. I could do them with my eyes shut in the end really."
STEVE WRIGHT: "Morrissey sent me a postcard as a thank you note. 'A sweeter set of pictures were never taken. I smiled for a full minute (phone Roy Castle, that's a record). I quite fancy Southport's wet sands next or the tropical shores of Belle Vue. It must be done. Fatal regret: I should have worn my mud-coloured cardigan. Oh well, we shall meet when Venus is under Capricorn, so keep your lenses dry and thank you. Morrissey.'"
SCOTT PIERING: "He's a habitual postcard writer. And you treasure it for life. It's a beautiful way of communicating with people and keeping this little circle of distant admirers going. 'Oh, he thought of me.'"
KEVIN CUMMINS: "From the first NME session he wanted a copy of the photograph and he sent me a postcard saying: 'I must have this photograph now'. I sent him a 10 x 8. And he asked me how big I could get it for him. He eventually settled for a 60 x 40 print, which is five foot by three foot something. I had to have it delivered in a van. Andy told me he (Morrissey) put it on his bedroom wall."
STEVE WRIGHT: "Then, some time later, I got sent one afternoon to take pictures of Strangeways, and any signs saying Strangeways Prison, with a view to Strangeways, Here We Come. Maybe they leave a trail of destruction, but after the pictures for Salford Lads Club, that picture on the back of Strangeways, Here We Come - someone nicked the sign."
STEPHEN STREET: "On Strangeways, you got the impression that Johnny didn't know what Morrissey had prepared for it. We were putting the backing tracks down totally blind, just making sure the key was OK with him."
GRANT SHOWBIZ: "I still think Strangeways, Here We Come is the best record. I get really pissed off with this critical cliche, like, they've swept Strangeways under the carpet."
GEOFF TRAVIS: "Jo Slee and I went down to the studio and we listened to the playback and had a big meal with The Smiths afterwards. And I had a feeling then that that was the last time I was going to be in that situation. It felt like that was the end of something. It wasn't obvious - it was a very friendly meal - but it seemed like that was the end, somehow, without anyone saying anything."
SCOTT PIERING: "I just love the idea that they never released anything except on Rough Trade records. I don't know how many times they had me looking for other deals behind their backs. We had Virgin like this, and when they were about to go in, The Smiths said, 'Fuck Virgin'. They didn't like the guy who came over. Met him once, you know. Didn't even get past the formalities."
DAVID MUNNS: "I saw an article in the NME some time in 1986 which said that The Smiths were not having a good time with Rough Trade, so I rang up Alexis Grower (the band's lawyer) and said, 'If there's a problem and you want to talk to another company, and you're free, come talk to me.' This went on for about a year. I rang him every week or 10 days. Suddenly he took the call one day and said, 'OK, maybe we'll talk.'"

The Final Curtain
GRANT SHOWBIZ: "There was a lot of tension. We spent two weeks here (Streatham) doing B-sides for 'Girlfriend In A Coma' and that was horrific. I was actually frightened of Morrissey. I felt physically threatened by him."
FRED HOOD: "I reckon I was one of the first people Johnny ever told - other than Angie - that he wanted to leave The Smiths. And it was a very weird moment, because my reaction was very important. It was very important to him that my reaction was positive."
GEOFF TRAVIS: "If Morrissey had said to Johnny, 'Look, why don't you just go away on holiday for six months,' then I think they'd still be together. Look at Peter Buck and Michael Stipe. Peter Buck's done about four million outside projects. It's possible to operate like that. Perhaps Morrissey's all-or-nothing attitude wouldn't have allowed that, and if that was the case that was a silly, juvenile, elementary mistake on his part."
STEPHEN STREET: "I thought it was just an argument. I never in my wildest dreams imagined Strangeways would be the last album. Even after I'd written and produced Viva Hate with Morrissey, I always felt that the following year they were going to get back together again."
GRANT SHOWBIZ: "Johnny was so happy when they split up. I was speaking to him almost every day and he was saying, 'I just woke up today and I feel great, because I don't want to be in The Smiths anymore.'"
ANDY ROURKE: "I felt a big fucking void. It was like the rug being pulled from under your feet. For about two years I wondered what the fuck I was going to do. Would I join another group? Would I form another group? I was really at a complete loss."
MIKE JOYCE: "When Johnny left, me, Andy, and Morrissey were trying to carry on (with Ivor Perry of Easterhouse on guitar), trying to keep together what we had. But then things started to turn a bit weird and I just said, 'Well, look, I don't want to know anymore.'"
SCOTT PIERING: "It was like a fun spree through the traditional world of pop, and they wanted to break as many rules as they could. They were an incredibly subversive band. They had all sorts of themes and, as articulated by Morrissey, were completely radical. That was the beauty of The Smiths. It had fire, it had passion, it had that real inspirational thing of just doing it as you went along. It was completely within the ethos of all you had learned to believe was great about the punk and post-punk era and everything that boded well for music."
GEOFF TRAVIS: "There's hardly anything to do with The Smiths left in the can, which is quite unusual. The quality of everything they did was of such a high standard that it was all releasable. I mean, Johnny and Morrissey's sense of the importance of what they were doing was probably greater than mine. They wanted it all documented."
STEPHEN STREET: "There's nothing left over from Strangeways, Meat Is Murder or The Queen Is Dead. Absolutely nothing. I mean, there's some of those horrendous B-sides that came out towards the end of their career..."
GRANT SHOWBIZ: "Yeah, it's an Elvis Presley cover, 'A Fool Such As I'. It would have been a third track for the 12-inch of 'Girlfriend In A Coma'. My engineer at the time, the only thing he ever did wrong was to wipe off the first four bars of this track. I think they've tried to piece it back together since, but it's just not happened. It's alright. It's pretty much a 'Latest Flame' sort of vibe."
MIKE JOYCE: "I've got some really great unreleased Smiths stuff. Outtakes, singles that never were. When we did 'Girl Afraid,' we did a couple of other songs that I've got on tape. But I'll never... I've just got them on tape. I'll never blag them to some bootlegger."
ANDY ROURKE: "My wife, Maxine, often throws on a Smiths CD. She tends to play the stuff more than I do. I still like listening to it, but it sort of wrenches my guts a bit, so that I can't really enjoy listening to it. I love it, but it's really not something I can relax to. It makes me very emotional."
MIKE JOYCE: "I've got a tape of Strangeways, Here We Come in my car. Tina, my girlfriend, was listening to it the other day. I thought it was something else - it was just this black cassette - and I was listening to 'Death Of A Disco Dancer' and 'A Rush And A Push' and stuff. My head was so full of emotions about the music - because I was thinking about how other people listen to it, and I was also thinking about that time, and time before and the time just after, and the way that Johnny, Morrissey and Andy would hear it. It disturbed me a little bit."