Number one for three weeks from w/e 12th October 1985
NME and Melody Maker journalists tended to pull these ideas out of their hats mockingly, though it’s hard to understand why. Most people’s teenage years are confused, bewildering and ghastly, and it’s not as if most of the journalists working for those papers would have been immune from that (odds on that most of them were classroom underdogs for most of their schooldays). I didn't hold Morrissey up as an understanding idol, though; I loathed him as a teen and looked for any group or performer, anywhere, who was holding up a bright primary coloured sign with “Way Out” printed on it. I didn’t want to wallow in my situation, I wanted promise and to be told there was escape.
Escape finally came in the form of sixth form college (not all I’d hoped it would be), university (closer to what I’d expected, but not quite) then… oh shit. Seemingly I hadn’t quite worked out the next step yet. Or perhaps I thought I had, but I’d chosen some of the toughest career options imaginable, and none were working out. Each year led me into dingier and grimmer circumstances, until by my mid-twenties I was in such a volatile situation that a number of people had to do their best to both bail me out and pull me back together.
It was at this point that “The Boy With The Thorn Is In His Side” got plucked off a Smiths “Best Of” and played by me again and again, the words “And when you want to live/ How do you start?/ Where do you go?/ Who do you need to know?” ringing in my ears a lot. My own negative disposition was also addressed by the song, as I upset friend after friend with my frustrations and misdirected anger. Did I, for a few months, think I was the character in the song in the same manner the average, unimpressive fourteen-year old thinks they’re the man with the punctured bicycle in “This Charming Man”? Probably. Was I at least ten years too old to be wading around in these waters? Certainly.
Life is seldom straightforward, but in complete truth, there were escape routes open to me I could have taken if I hadn’t been both too stubborn and too proud. I also had a distinct inability to recognise my own strengths and privileges and turn them to my advantage (if I’d actually been more honest in my phone calls home to Mum and Dad, for example, I think help would have been forthcoming). Imagine my surprise, then, when years later I found out that the main inspiration behind “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side” was Morrissey’s frustration about how he wasn’t yet a proper pop star, and The Smiths were locked outside the establishment’s drinking clubs, awards ceremonies and ballrooms. Oh the fucking irony.
By the time this single was released, The Smiths were having a shaky spell. Their last single “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” hadn’t entered the Top 40, and while the pop world of 1984 seemed to at least tolerate Morrissey’s unorthodox behaviour and camp spikiness, 1985 was as unkind to him as many of the other alternative groups we’ve covered here. It allowed him space in inky periodicals largely read by students and young twenty-somethings, but interest among the glossy magazines and prime time radio and TV shows was beginning to shut down. They’d all distilled Morrissey into a basic and unflattering black and white caricature - a pale, sexless, vegetarian streak who was hardly about to turn on the horny teenagers or suddenly write a smash adult album like “Brothers In Arms”. There was just not enough cash or glamour in the quiffmeister.
At the point of this single’s release, Smash Hits gave him a front cover, but he shared it with Pete Burns of Dead Or Alive, and the accompanying interview saw the pair of them camping it up like two ageing actors in an end-of-pier farce (they both seemed rather quick to subsequently distance themselves both from the final printed article and each other).
“It’s a big step for us, doing this piece together,” Pete Burns said. “We could have done it for The Sun”. No they couldn’t – both their careers seemed on the wane and a tabloid wouldn’t have run it unless they came out as lovers.
If ever a promotional step underlined a central problem, and even accidentally revealed the focus of “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side”, it was that. Morrissey’s grievances in the song entirely related to his own misgivings about where he expected to be at this point in his career (a central cultural figure) and where he was potentially sliding. No matter that The Smiths were one of a handful of alternative bands in with a shot at getting chart hits in 1985, and regardless of the fact that he had already achieved more than most of his peers could dream of, it wasn’t enough. Morrissey was not a man to consider his strengths and privileges either; being something of a success wasn’t the aim. He needed the adoration huge success could bring him. His “murderous desire for love” was all about ambition.
If that makes the single sound like a self-pitying indie take on Dudley Moore’s parodical “Love Me”, Johnny Marr once again picks golden threads out of the frustrated, tightly pinched embroidery. The guitar line isn’t just wonderful, it’s almost too beautiful for such a self-serving lyric; like one of Maurice Deebank’s most stunning runs for Felt pulled apart, slightly simplified and repeated, it becomes almost the focus, softening the message and making the indulgence deeply human and relatable. If the lyrics read bare and without melody seem like a tantrum, Marr turns them into a tight hug from an old friend. It’s a piece of spin so marvellous that you’ll rarely encounter anything so transformative outside of party politics, and it’s indicative of how well the Morrissey/Marr partnership worked.
Morrissey’s pleas for attention did at least restore order to some extent. The single entered the Top 40 confidently and quickly peaked at number 23, not sufficient to make Morrissey believe he might be Marc Bolan reincarnate, but certainly enough to reverse the group’s decline. As we’ll see, over the next few years Morrissey and the group’s fortunes would generally push upwards, but it never seemed like quite enough for him, and it begged lots of questions about what it was he wanted, and why that so very often seemed to be the things he was supposed to hate.
By the nineties he would be complaining that a record label chose to promote Alanis Morissette as a star rather than him, ignoring the problem that you can’t look at Alanis Morrisette’s success with envy unless you actually want to make the same compromises as her; she entered the music business in the eighties as a proper, modern, wannabe pop star, serving a youthful apprenticeship (my wife, a huge Smiths fan, knew her at this point and described her as "that annoying, stagey girl at school who always got fawned over". Did that ever apply to Moz?) Listening to “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side” afresh, you wonder if he ever truly considered his own diagnosis.
As for me, I pulled myself together and found a reasonably comfortable footing in life like most well-educated Western men. During my doldrums, I had an encounter with someone who called themselves a “psychic gypsy” on Southend High Street – where the video for “Everyday Is Like Sunday” was shot, the serendipity just doesn't stop coming – who told me she would give me my fortune “for all the loose change in your pocket”. I did as I was told, and she responded quickly with “You’re intelligent, you’re well turned out, you’ll be fine”, before darting off. At the time I felt wounded by that tart, acidic summing up of what I thought was a complicated personal situation, now I’m wondering if it might have been a lesson I just wasn’t ready to hear.
Week One
23. The Meteors - Bad Moon Rising (Mad Pig)
Peak position: 11
I’m sceptical about the value of most genre-bending cover versions, but this is a corker; The Meteors obviously heard Creedence Clearwater Revival’s sole British number one, noted its rootsy, almost Buddy Holly-esque shuffle and realised that it could benefit from the psychobilly treatment. And does it ever – in their hands, “Bad Moon Rising” is a jumping, jiving harbinger of doom and gloom, like Eddie Cochran’s reanimated corpse rising up to foretell humanity’s demise. A huge hit at 1985 Halloween parties, I can only hope.
18. Play Dead - This Side Of Heaven (Tanz)
Peak position: 18
So much going on here that it’s actually astonishing; motorik synths, chiming guitars, agitated Lydon-esque vocals and driving beats all split in different directions before meshing back together again. Play Dead were close to the end of the line, but “This Side of Heaven” makes it sound as if they were actually on the verge of a major breakthrough.
24. The Jesus And Mary Chain - Just Like Honey (Blanco Y Negro)
Peak position: 24
No explanation about why this appeared for one week in the NME Indie Chart then disappeared – it was never an “indie” release in reality, appearing on the Blanco Y Negro label which was a subsidiary of WEA.
As it’s here, though, let’s all bask in its strange, delirious, leaking gas fire warmth. “Just Like Honey” isn’t the Jesus and Mary Chain live audiences thought they knew in 1984, and showed that beneath the Reid brothers bust ups, drunken antics and misdeeds lay a pair who also were nostalgic romantics – for Spector, for Lou Reed at his most accessible, for beehive hairdos, and even for the idea of women so wonderful that you’d “lick up the scum” for them.
The production creates a shimmering mirage, and it fits the simplicity and inaccessibility of their ideas, also adding to any notion you might have been developing that these brothers were just a pair of dreaming, confused boyish saps in reality - like Beavis and Butthead stranded in the desert on mescaline.
28. June Brides - Every Conversation (Pink Label)
Peak position: 28
A September 1984 single whose burn was so improbably slow that it took this long to register in the NME indie chart. In 1984, there may have been movements towards what we now know as indiepop – The Pastels were certainly a thing back then, for example – but there was less of a sense of a general movement or meeting of minds.
As fringe club nights started to pop up in every city in the land, though, the kind of merry, striding, cheap and mildly amateur pop of the June Brides started to make more and more sense, and a belated breakthrough was assured. While “Every Conversation” rested at the extremely modest number 28 position for one week, they managed to rise to the number one position in the indie album charts with “There Are Eight Million Stories” at around the same time.
Week Three
12. Robert Wyatt & The SWAPO Singers - Wind of Change (Rough Trade)
Peak position: 2
Produced by Jerry Dammers and created for the benefit of the South West Africa People’s Organisation, “Wind of Change” is World Music at its most uncynical and arguably straightforward too. No condescension, tricksy lyrical about-turns or knowing nods here; this is a pure and simple song of hope during difficult times. As always, Wyatt takes the reigns with appropriate modesty and good spirit, in a manner most of the critically applauded frontmen of 1985 really couldn’t have managed.
13. Conflict - The Battle Continues EP (Mortarhate)
Peak position: 2
17. That Petrol Emotion - V2 (Noise A Noise)
Peak position: 3
For all its unorthodoxy, there’s a sense that this became something of an anthem for That Petrol Emotion – its rattling grooves and incessant, almost Duane Eddy-esque riff proved that the ex-members of The Undertones in the group’s line up were now firmly and belatedly post-punk. The song constantly sounds in danger of being submerged in its own mess of oil and mud, menacing but with a glint in its eye nonetheless.
26. The Gents - Stay With Me (Prism)
Peak position: 26
27. Aswad - Bubbling (Simba)
Peak position: 21
Just as it feels difficult to imagine a time when UB40 were deemed an extraordinarily credible group, Aswad’s journey from top tier “serious” reggae act into pop music was a strange one. If their number one single “Don’t Turn Around” can still be heard on oldies radio today, “Bubbling” is an example of what they were producing a mere few years before; not inaccessible as such, but certainly doing much more their own damn thing.
There’s no equivalence between this and the leap from “The Earth Dies Screaming” to “I Got You Babe” – Aswad were, at heart, generally a party band rather than one who were taken to musing about a possible nuclear holocaust – but the feel-good beckoning of “Bubbling” still has the street sound system, rather than the national pop charts, at its heart.
As for me, I pulled myself together and found a reasonably comfortable footing in life like most well-educated Western men. During my doldrums, I had an encounter with someone who called themselves a “psychic gypsy” on Southend High Street – where the video for “Everyday Is Like Sunday” was shot, the serendipity just doesn't stop coming – who told me she would give me my fortune “for all the loose change in your pocket”. I did as I was told, and she responded quickly with “You’re intelligent, you’re well turned out, you’ll be fine”, before darting off. At the time I felt wounded by that tart, acidic summing up of what I thought was a complicated personal situation, now I’m wondering if it might have been a lesson I just wasn’t ready to hear.
New Entries Elsewhere In The Charts
Week One
23. The Meteors - Bad Moon Rising (Mad Pig)
Peak position: 11
I’m sceptical about the value of most genre-bending cover versions, but this is a corker; The Meteors obviously heard Creedence Clearwater Revival’s sole British number one, noted its rootsy, almost Buddy Holly-esque shuffle and realised that it could benefit from the psychobilly treatment. And does it ever – in their hands, “Bad Moon Rising” is a jumping, jiving harbinger of doom and gloom, like Eddie Cochran’s reanimated corpse rising up to foretell humanity’s demise. A huge hit at 1985 Halloween parties, I can only hope.
17. Microdisney - Birthday Girl (Rough Trade)
Peak position: 17
“Birthday Girl” was the first sign that among Microdisney’s finer qualities perhaps also lay an ability to write hit singles. It starts with the kind of juddering rhythms and keyboard lines last heard when The Look were in the top ten, then quickly unfolds into a grim mix of evil thoughts and deeds concealed beneath bright harmonies, like a sunny, charismatic swindler in song form. “Feed the birds poison bread” trills Cathal Coughlan happily at one point, like a murderous Mary Poppins, before singing “When I’m wed I will dream/ in a champagne haze of my first affair” at another.
It’s pure brilliance, and doubtless was a major factor in getting the group signed to Virgin for their next album, where even “Town To Town” couldn’t quite push them over the line.
Peak position: 17
“Birthday Girl” was the first sign that among Microdisney’s finer qualities perhaps also lay an ability to write hit singles. It starts with the kind of juddering rhythms and keyboard lines last heard when The Look were in the top ten, then quickly unfolds into a grim mix of evil thoughts and deeds concealed beneath bright harmonies, like a sunny, charismatic swindler in song form. “Feed the birds poison bread” trills Cathal Coughlan happily at one point, like a murderous Mary Poppins, before singing “When I’m wed I will dream/ in a champagne haze of my first affair” at another.
It’s pure brilliance, and doubtless was a major factor in getting the group signed to Virgin for their next album, where even “Town To Town” couldn’t quite push them over the line.
18. Play Dead - This Side Of Heaven (Tanz)
Peak position: 18
So much going on here that it’s actually astonishing; motorik synths, chiming guitars, agitated Lydon-esque vocals and driving beats all split in different directions before meshing back together again. Play Dead were close to the end of the line, but “This Side of Heaven” makes it sound as if they were actually on the verge of a major breakthrough.
24. The Jesus And Mary Chain - Just Like Honey (Blanco Y Negro)
Peak position: 24
No explanation about why this appeared for one week in the NME Indie Chart then disappeared – it was never an “indie” release in reality, appearing on the Blanco Y Negro label which was a subsidiary of WEA.
As it’s here, though, let’s all bask in its strange, delirious, leaking gas fire warmth. “Just Like Honey” isn’t the Jesus and Mary Chain live audiences thought they knew in 1984, and showed that beneath the Reid brothers bust ups, drunken antics and misdeeds lay a pair who also were nostalgic romantics – for Spector, for Lou Reed at his most accessible, for beehive hairdos, and even for the idea of women so wonderful that you’d “lick up the scum” for them.
The production creates a shimmering mirage, and it fits the simplicity and inaccessibility of their ideas, also adding to any notion you might have been developing that these brothers were just a pair of dreaming, confused boyish saps in reality - like Beavis and Butthead stranded in the desert on mescaline.
26. Big Flame - Tough! EP - (Ron Johnson)
Peak position: 23
Next to J&MC’s first bout of melodic soppiness, Big Flame sound considerably more dangerous than them; but while their disjointed rhythms and electric guitar pratfalls are unquestionably radical, they’re more studied and abstract than the Reid brothers had a hope of hell in being, and while you can imagine them evoking a riot, it would be due to the audience’s pure incomprehension rather than the band’s goading.
Peak position: 23
Next to J&MC’s first bout of melodic soppiness, Big Flame sound considerably more dangerous than them; but while their disjointed rhythms and electric guitar pratfalls are unquestionably radical, they’re more studied and abstract than the Reid brothers had a hope of hell in being, and while you can imagine them evoking a riot, it would be due to the audience’s pure incomprehension rather than the band’s goading.
There would never be any slow ballads on 45 from Big Flame.
28. June Brides - Every Conversation (Pink Label)
Peak position: 28
A September 1984 single whose burn was so improbably slow that it took this long to register in the NME indie chart. In 1984, there may have been movements towards what we now know as indiepop – The Pastels were certainly a thing back then, for example – but there was less of a sense of a general movement or meeting of minds.
As fringe club nights started to pop up in every city in the land, though, the kind of merry, striding, cheap and mildly amateur pop of the June Brides started to make more and more sense, and a belated breakthrough was assured. While “Every Conversation” rested at the extremely modest number 28 position for one week, they managed to rise to the number one position in the indie album charts with “There Are Eight Million Stories” at around the same time.
Week Three
12. Robert Wyatt & The SWAPO Singers - Wind of Change (Rough Trade)
Peak position: 2
Produced by Jerry Dammers and created for the benefit of the South West Africa People’s Organisation, “Wind of Change” is World Music at its most uncynical and arguably straightforward too. No condescension, tricksy lyrical about-turns or knowing nods here; this is a pure and simple song of hope during difficult times. As always, Wyatt takes the reigns with appropriate modesty and good spirit, in a manner most of the critically applauded frontmen of 1985 really couldn’t have managed.
13. Conflict - The Battle Continues EP (Mortarhate)
Peak position: 2
17. That Petrol Emotion - V2 (Noise A Noise)
Peak position: 3
For all its unorthodoxy, there’s a sense that this became something of an anthem for That Petrol Emotion – its rattling grooves and incessant, almost Duane Eddy-esque riff proved that the ex-members of The Undertones in the group’s line up were now firmly and belatedly post-punk. The song constantly sounds in danger of being submerged in its own mess of oil and mud, menacing but with a glint in its eye nonetheless.
26. The Gents - Stay With Me (Prism)
Peak position: 26
27. Aswad - Bubbling (Simba)
Peak position: 21
Just as it feels difficult to imagine a time when UB40 were deemed an extraordinarily credible group, Aswad’s journey from top tier “serious” reggae act into pop music was a strange one. If their number one single “Don’t Turn Around” can still be heard on oldies radio today, “Bubbling” is an example of what they were producing a mere few years before; not inaccessible as such, but certainly doing much more their own damn thing.
There’s no equivalence between this and the leap from “The Earth Dies Screaming” to “I Got You Babe” – Aswad were, at heart, generally a party band rather than one who were taken to musing about a possible nuclear holocaust – but the feel-good beckoning of “Bubbling” still has the street sound system, rather than the national pop charts, at its heart.
For the full charts, please go to the UKMix Forums
Number One In The Official Charts
Jennifer Rush: "The Power Of Love" (CBS)
The Boy With The Thorn always felt a bit ho-hum to me. Worth mentioning are its two superior B sides, Rubber Ring and Asleep, which prove that when he cast his eye further from his favourite subject (himself) Morrissey really could write astonishing lyrics. They should have both been kept back for the Queen Is Dead, possibly at the expense of The Boy With The Thorn, or the dull Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others.
ReplyDeleteGreat to hear The Wind Of Change again, probably for the first time in 40 years...
I genuinely think that TBWTTIHS is one of the finest Smiths singles (as a 45rpm disc) for that reason - fantastic A-side with two B-sides which deserved better to be buried (though I think both were heavily compiled some years later).
DeleteThank you for sharing a bit about yourself. It was well written and resonated strongly for me.
ReplyDeleteGlad it all worked out in the end, Dave. I went through the wilderness years myself to a different extent.
ReplyDeleteI've met so many people whose mid-twenties utterly sucked (or are in their mid-twenties and currently struggling). It's such a tricky phase of life.
DeleteWere Big Flame ever on the same bill as Cardiacs? That would have been a sound sensation and then some.
ReplyDeleteI don't know that Cardiacs' orbit ever really crossed with any of those Ron Johnson bands, but you're right, it would be a logical combination.
DeleteIt's also interesting to speculate about why Big Flame and A Witness always had a lot of press credibility and Cardiacs didn't, and I'm guessing a lot of it was down to presentation.