March 26, 1983: An instantly enamoured Jim Shelley chances upon the unknown and unsigned 'handsome devils' as they play a low-key, local soiree at the Manchester Hacienda: "The four Smiths were proud and powerful, pale and angular, a formidable and inventive force. Their sound -- a fine, fierce combination of tight drums, hidden walls of guitar and deepest of bass-lines -- proved to be a suitably refined, aggressive setting for the searing wail and majestic poetry of their enigmatic vocalist."

May 14, 1983: Cath Carroll tracks Rough Trade's latest contract-bearing contenders to their languid, Lancastrian lair and is immediately struck by Morrissey's effortless quotability: "We're out to prove that you don't need dazzling technology to produce music. There's a horrendous myth in modern music that you need the most complex equipment and the most far-reaching ideas, otherwise you don't rate. We've got back to a very basic traditionalist structure with the four-piece set-up which has been severely underrated in the past couple of years... The lyrics I write are specifically genderless. I don't want to leave anybody out... If someone described us as ugly, we'd be terribly offended. Or if they said that we dressed laughably... Before I joined the group, I was in a serious medical condition."

September 24, 1983: 'Hand In Glove', the band's debut waxing, fails to chart, yet its flipside, 'Handsome Devil', causes tabloid outrage (in the pages of The Sun and Sounds -- specifically Gary Bushell's gossip column) when it is alleged that BBC Radio chiefs were to hold an emergency meeting to decide whether a 'song about child molesting' should be broadcast on The David Jensen Show.
NME's David Dorrel corner's an astounded yet unrepentant Mozzer: "Quite obviously, we don't condone child molesting or anything that vaguely resembles it... It's quite laughable coming from a paper like The Sun -- which is so obviously obsessed with every aspect of sex. So it's all really a total travesty of human nature that it's thrown at us, such sensitive and relatively restrained people. I live a life that befits a priest virtually, and to be splashed about as a child molester... it's just unutterable."
When asked about his complex co-conspirator in composition, the perpetually shaded Johnny Marr, the garrulous lyricist admits: "I live a saintly life, he lives a devilish life. And the combination is wonderful. Perfect."

November 12, 1983: Renowned NME scribe Paul Morley deconstructs The Smiths' latest 7" waxing, "This Charming Man": "Taking things seriously; intelligence is not an awkward, obscure thing which is difficult to set in motion, but a way to glory. When you have thoughts of your own, you can be assured that you will be accused of seriousness. So? Morrissey is serious, but he offers us rapture, not dialectics. 'This Charming Man' is an accessible bliss, and seriously moving. This group fully understand that the casual is not enough."

January 21, 1984: Paul Du Noyer awards 'What Difference Does It Make?' the ultimate critical accolade -- NME Single Of The Week: "A wailing, wordless hook from your man Morrissey hovers ghost-like, over a rubbery rockabilly beat, not marred one bit by Johnny Guitar Marr's springheeled periphery riffery. And the lyrics cut you, too. Perfect in its detente of tough and tender... Give these men a big, big hit."

February 4, 1984: 'The Smiths' Winning Ways' -- Four moody Mancunians celebrate their storming of the annual Readers' Poll (Best New Act, 2nd Best Single for 'This Charming Man' and eighth Best Band) by smouldering spectacularly from their first -- Anton Corbijn -- cover. Inside, Barney Hoskyns meets Morrissey in his newly rented Kensington flat and briefly chats with Johnny Marr on the way to Holborn Studios.
Mozzer, as ever, casually courts controversy; "The synthesiser should be symbolically burned. If you brush past someone on the Tube, everybody screams as if there has been a horrible invasion of privacy. I think it's horrific, but it's just a measure of how far human relationships have narrowed themselves. If you ask someone to come round and see you, the implications are horrendous. People think that you want to molest them in front of the fireplace, which is nearly always the case, but... [Freud] made people feel so neurotic about their lives. I mean, if you dreamt about a lampshade, it meant you wanted to be whipped by the local vicar or something."
Marr, meanwhile, cogitates on his contrary relationship with the frontman: "Morrissey and I are total extremes. He's completely the opposite from me. Onstage, Morrissey's completely different to the way he is offstage, he's extrovert and he's loud, whereas offstage I'm too loud and onstage I'm quite quiet. Everything -- he's a non-smoker, he doesn't drink coffee, and I live off coffee and cigarettes. He's not a great believer in going out, because he doesn't have fun when he goes out, whereas I go out every night. So we're two completely opposite cases."

February 25, 1984: 'Gladioli All Over' -- Don Watson pontificates himself into the realms of the intellectual onanist as he attempts to unavel the timeless majesty of The Smiths' eponymous debut album: "Consideration of The Smiths always ends up as an attempted penetration of Morrissey's singular charms, primarily because The Smiths in plural are as average as their uncharismatic name suggests. Where Morrissey is a wielder of the archaic art of the word, his cohorts are merely competent workers in the grimy craft of pop. Musically, The Smiths are little more than mildly regressive. What saves them is Morrissey's rare grasp of the myriad distortions of the pastel worlds of nostalgia. Much of the intrigue of The Smiths is not what they have to offer, but the seductive manner in which Morrissey offers it... For the moment, that's enough."

November 10, 1984: Adrian Thrills reviews The Smiths' time-marking, budget-priced singles, B-sides and radio sessions compilation 'Hatful Of Hollow' with more than a modicum of positivity: "(Marr's) role in the band is now worthy of equal billing with Morrissey's, a fact acknowledged on the awesome 'How Soon Is Now', with the voice buried deep in a clammy, claustrophobic mix. Marr -- adroitly supported by the two unsung grafter Smiths -- unleashes a multi-tracked barrage of multi-tracked psychedelic rockabilly, his Duane Eddy twang destroyed in an eerie quagmire of quivering guiar noise. Magnificent... Seeking splendour in simplicity and bringing magnificence out of misery, these charming Smiths are vivid and in their prime."

December 22/29, 1984: NME's festive fandango is graced with the presence of Moz and Marr. Morrissey reveals his inspirational mentor: "For me, one of the greatest lyricists of all time is George Formby. His more obscure songs are so hilarious, the language was so flat and Lancastrian and always focused on domestic things. Not academically funny, not witty, just morosely humorous and that really appeals to me."
He goes on to discuss the political directness of the band's forthcoming 'Meat Is Murder' album with Biba Kopf: "Of all the political topics to be scrutinised people are still disturbingly vague about the treatment of animals. People still seem to believe that meat is a particular substance not at all connected to animals playing in the field over there. People don't realise how gruesomely and frighteningly the animal gets to the plate."
Mmm, more turkey, kids?

February 16, 1985: After suffering the stark, funereal title track of the uncompromising 'Meat Is Murder' album, shameless omnivore Paul Du Noyer concludes: "Pop propaganda has rarely come so powerful. What difference will it make? Not a sausage, so far as my diet goes, I'm afraid, yet the roast beef of Old England will never taste quite so good again... Whatever, on that track and the record as a whole, The Smiths' artistic achievement is genuinely beyond doubt. As a unit, they've never sounded so sure, so confident, while Johnny Marr is certain to emerge from the relative neglect that has been his lot till now."

February 23, 1985: The quizzical quiff of old Whalley Range smirks from the NME cover as The Smiths dominate the Readers Poll: Best Group, Best Songwriter (Morrissey/Marr), Best Instrumentalist (Johnny Marr), 2nd Best Vocalist (Morrissey).

March 9, 1985: Richard Cook witnesses The Smiths phenomenon as the band wow the florid hordes at the bulging Brixton Ace and concludes: "Any curiosity about Morrissey comes to rest in that voice, a very manly instrument. It's not really like anything else in pop: where George and Michael confect their styles from teenage Americana, Morrissey's is almost Edwardian, a mutton-chop croon. He flirts better than any one of them... The closing 'Meat Is Murder', its ghastly effects scouring out the other music, is a punishment The Smiths practically relish... England, I suppose, is theirs."

June 8, 1985: 'Feast Of Steven' -- an angelic, stigmata-sporting Moz simpers sanctimoniously from the cover. Meanwhile, between the sheets, Danny Kelly transcribes 'The Thoughts Of Chairman Mo'. Along the way, the voluble veggie spouts forth on a dizzying variety of subjects -- The press: "We're still at the stage where if I rescued a kitten from drowning they'd say: 'Morrissey Mauls Kitten's Body'"; The American President: "Why is Reagan there? I'm sure this is a question that's even foxing Americans. It's the Daz mentality! I'm sure they'd elect Joan Collins if she were available"; the inherent vanity attached to purchasing so many photographs of himself: "People can picture me laying naked in my house, covered in feathers, rubbing these pictures on myself. But that isn't the case"; and his ultimate, somewhat libertine, message to the world: "Nothing is important, so people realising that, should get on with their lives, go mad, take their clothes off, jump in the canal, jump into one of those supermarket trolleys, race 'round the supermarket and steal Mars bars and, y'know, kiss kittens and sit on the back of breadvans. Whatever makes people happy they should do it, 'cos time is a mere scratch and life is nothing."

June 7, 1986: A pensive, blue-eyed Morrissey stares stoically from a stark and minimalist cover. Inside Ian Pye enters the Chelsea mews flat of Steven Patrick and is rewarded with a generous quota of golden quotes: "Almost every area of human life really quite seriously depresses me... I do feel that all those tags, the depressive, the monotony, all tags that I've dodged or denied are probably quite accurate. When you put me next to Five Star and judge the whole thing against the bouncingly moronic attitude that is so useful if one wants a job in the music industry, yes I am a depressive. If I wasn't doing this I don't honestly believe that I would want to live... Obviously Madonna reinforces everything absurd and offensive. Desperate womanhood. Madonna is closer to organised prostitution than anything else. I mean, the music industry is obviously prostitution anyway, but there are degrees... I always thought my genitals were the result of some crude practical joke."

June 14, 1986: The band's eagerly awaited third album proper, 'The Queen Is Dead', finds itself within the hard-to-please earshot of Adrian Thrills: "'The Queen Is Dead' is an excellent album, let down only by one spot of neo-psychedelic posturing ('Never Had No One Ever') and a couple of mediocre singles... Maybe the next LP, or even the forthcoming 'Panic' single, should be the quantum shift in musical emphasis that some expected from this set. But, for now, Britain's best band are sticking very agreeably to what they do best, simply being The Smiths."

February 14, 1987: The Smiths completely crush the opposition in the year's Readers' Poll. Their Valentine accolades include Best Group, Best Single ('Panic'), Best Album ('The Queen Is Dead'), Best Male Singer (Morrissey), Most Wonderful Human Being (Morrissey) and, astonishingly, 6th Best Dance Single ('Panic').

February 28, 1987: Dave Haslam reviews the band's second odds'n'sods compilation, 'The World Won't Listen'. Despite reservations, he concludes: "In their finest moment, The Smiths make music that tugs on your memory and gives you great hope; the last romantics, they provoke a more direct emotional response than any other band in the world."

August 1, 1987: NME scoop the opposition with the earth-shattering headline 'Smiths To Split' and reports: "The Smiths look likely to call it a day after the release of their next album in September, and insiders are blaming a personality clash between Morrissey and Johnny Marr for the split." Morrissey, however, is in denial and utters the immortal words: "Whoever says The Smiths have split shall be severely spanked by me with a wet plimsoll."
But in the very next issue, Marr confirms his departure: "The major reason for me going was simply that there are things I want to do, musically, that there is just not scope for in The Smiths."

September 12, 1987: Finally, after weeks of speculation as to a possible replacement for Johnny Marr (Aztec Camera's Roddy Frame was considered the man most likely to fill the absent guitarist's boots) a tearful NME says 'Goodbye, Smiths': "The Smiths are dead... Morrissey intends to record under his own name in the future, and it's now more than likely that the two remaining Smiths -- drummer Mike Joyce and bass player Andy Rourke -- will team up with Johnny Marr in his own band."
Elsewhere in the same issue, Len Brown gets to grips with the band's posthumous album release, 'Strangeways, Here We Come', and sobs: "I passionately hoped that this was not to be their last breath. But, nevertheless, 'Strangeways...' is a masterpiece that manages to surpass even 'The Queen Is Dead' in terms of poetic, pop and emotional power."

December 21/28, 1996: And in the end, acrimony, as the NME reports: "Morrissey and Johnny Marr have lost their High Court battle against fellow former Smiths member Mike Joyce after Morrissey was described by the judge as "devious truculent, and unreliable", and Marr as someone prepared "to embroider his evidence". Morrissey and Marr took 40 percent each from partnership profits from the band, Joyce and Rourke only received ten per cent each.
The judge's ruling that there should have been a four-way split could net Joyce an estimated f1m in royalties. Sadly for Rourke, he had already accepted a relatively paltry f83,000 as full and final settlement of an earlier claim against the Moz/Marr coalition.

This article was originally published in the June, 1997 issue of Vox.
Reprinted without permission for personal use only.