My love of ‘The Smiths’ has always bordered on an obsession and, as the years pass, my adoration only increases. Put simply, ‘The Smiths’, are the most influential English band of the 80’s (or any other time). I never tire of the genius of Morrissey’s lyrics. Across the space of four albums he wrote songs that bear comparison with the greatest literature.
Can pop music be great art? ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ effortlessly answers that question. It is a song aching with loneliness, of chances not taken in darkened underpasses – so achingly romantic that the pain is transformed into the comic. Double decker buses and ten ton trucks careering into the lovers: ‘to die by your side / well, the pleasure, the privilege is mine’
Today, I listened again to a rare demo. Recorded before the song became what it is today – an iconic song, totemic to the band. Here it is still just four young lads in the studio, no one beyond those four walls having heard it yet. Morrissey’s voice – that beautiful voice – tentative at first, wavering a little in the opening bars…How moving it is then to compare it to his performance of the same song so many years later, now joined by a thousand voices in the crowd, every one of them knowing the words, as I do, by heart.
