Significantly, it was a late-night viewing of a video on the life of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller that convinced Johnny Marr to get in touch with Stephen Morrissey. Seeing that Leiber had introduced himself to Stoller by arriving at his door and insisting that they form a songwriting partnership, Marr decided to follow suit. When he eventually turned up at Morrissey's house in 1983 his words of explanation were: "This is how Leiber & Stoller met."

Fortunately, songwriting came easy. "We were chomping on the bit," says Marr, "It was like one of us was the key and one of us was the lock." The first few songs they worked on were based around lyrics that Morrissey had already written, Suffer Little Children and The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. However, from then on, Marr would present Morrissey with regular batches of three instrumental tracks to work with.

"We recorded in a real thread-bare fashion," says Marr. "We couldn't afford machines so I put a song down with acoustic guitar onto a cassette and he'd quickly come up with the words and melody. The reason we were so prolific is that we didn't want any other life other than inside the band. Every few weeks we'd write a few songs and book into the studio. It didn't matter whether we were due to make an album, it was like, 'Time for a single, time for a single,' and the albums would take care of themselves."

The run of singles from Hand In Glove in 1983 to Shoplifters Of The World Unite was evidence of a band caught up in a prolific rush of songwriting: "We knew where it was coming from," says Marr, "desire, 18, 20 years of frustration and two people who were a little emotionally fucked up, for whatever reason. If you put so much stock in pop music you've gotta be. When it stopped I carried on writing but that affinity to be able to make that many songs a year was definitely gone. Was it frustrating? No, I figured it was a decent trade-off. Worse things can happen, believe me."

However, ask Johnny Marr to analyse what made The Smiths' songs so special and, to this day, he distinguishes between the song and the definitive recordings. "Journalists always single out writers like Jimmy Webb," he says, "because he's all about form and structure and depth. But for me melody and spirit are more important than words. There are times when you want to hear Superbad much more than A Bridge Over Troubled Water."