One week at number one on 9th August 1986
Oh God, do we really have to do this? ("Never begin blog entries expressing reluctance, it just puts readers off" – the ed in my head). At its time of release, “Panic” was one of the most-discussed and debated Smiths songs by fans, foes and journalists alike, and the reverberations from its release are still felt as writers continue to highlight this as the point where “Morrissey started to go wrong”.
It’s a den of bears I don’t particularly want to walk into, especially as I doubt I’ll manage to sneak back out past Papa Bear with any kind of shiny prize. The cave is now damp and barren, with just a few cobwebs in the corner and the rotten bones of the last person to try and make sense of it all. Still, it slid into the number one indie spot with comfortable ease, so discuss it we must. Those are the rules (even if they are my own rules and nobody else's) and as much as I'm tempted to just post "Oh, fill in the blanks yourselves, why don't you" in giant 78pt Semplicità font, I hate the idea of cheating myself. So here we are.
Away from the world of lo-fi kids with weird or big ideas, other storms were also brewing, particularly Stateside, which saw DJs and musicians producing increasingly groundbreaking and fascinating work; it’s always struck me as interesting that “Panic” was released the same year as Farley “Jackmaster” Funk’s “Love Can’t Turn Around”, the first single which truly made House music sound like a commercial, rather than purely clubland, force. One song is a series of would-be revolutionary slogans set to a retrograde glam rock beat, the other simply is sonically revolutionary, the eighties equivalent to “I Feel Love”.
In the middle of the eighties it was hard not to get the impression that rock music was possibly a dying force creatively and commercially, and that led to desperate statements from others too. “Keep Music Live” stickers began to appear more frequently on guitar cases. Music television featured members of supposedly radical bands bleating in interviews like weary war generals about the lack of passion and humanity to be found in samplers and drum machines. “Real” musicians got angry. Somewhere in Melbourne, the writer and satirist John Safran wore a Def Jam baseball cap on the tram, and a metaller removed it from his head, ripped it, and threw it to the ground, believing that anyone who approved of rap or hip-hop being mixed with metal was perverse and lucky not to be given a beating. These were strange, insecure times which provoked some frankly silly reactions which barely make sense today - apart from the nakedly racist ones, obviously, which remain a cultural issue.
“Panic” was one of the more extreme examples. Lyrically, it’s not even consistent with Morrissey’s own beliefs – he seemed to have plenty of time for Northern Soul and Motown, both of which tended to produce not especially politicised works (obvious exceptions aside) – and nor is it consistent with human nature which requires art and entertainment which is joyous, frivolous and communal as well as study-bound and introspective. We cannot get all our emotional nourishment from Leonard Cohen records alone. Morrissey surely knew this, but despite this, the track can be heard as their ‘war effort’, The Smiths attempt to take sides to tell the world that they were above mere pop music.
Lyrically speaking, “Panic” was supposed to be poking the mainstream establishment and setting up The Smiths as the slayers of mediocrity. Both Morrissey and Marr insisted that the point of inspiration for the record was Steve Wright on Radio One launching into Wham’s “I’m Your Man” immediately after news of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster broke. Listeners had potentially just been given information about a serious incident which may have a profound effect on their health – at the time the crisis occurred, nobody truly knew what the outcomes would be – but were then invited to party on down to an upbeat hit. Pop was being used, you could argue, as a diversionary tactic to keep national spirits up while lethal radioactivity drifted across the ocean (it’s interesting to contrast this with the way Radio One responded to Princess Diana’s death years later, but I digress).
The group’s response was immediate disgust, and the lyrics were apparently inspired by the situation*, although as numerous other people have pointed out, they actually focus their agitation on club DJs rather than radio ones. “Burn down the disco,” Morrissey states. “Hang the blessed DJ!/ because the music they constantly play/ it says nothing to me about my life”. Radio One doesn’t get a mention; rather, Morrissey seems to be jabbing his finger at the discotheques of the mid-eighties where people gathered at the weekends to get blitzed and forget their worries. How irredeemably shallow of them.
Journalists were quick to notice this and accuse Morrissey of racism, pointing out that his issue seemed to be with black music rather than daytime radio playlists. The group, and particularly Marr, were initially quick to challenge these allegations, pointing out that New Order, for instance, had no black members, but Morrissey helped matters little with other comments he made in interviews at this time. During a Melody Maker piece (which can be found online in full here, and is definitely worth a read) he opined:
“I don't think there's any time any more to be subtle about anything, you have to get straight to the point. Obviously to get on Top Of The Pops these days, one has to be, by law, black. I think something political has occurred among [television producer] Michael Hurll and his friends and there has been a hefty pushing of all these black artists and all this discofied nonsense into the Top 40. I think, as a result, that very aware younger groups that speak for now are being gagged.”
Morrissey had a tendency to grandstand and make inflammatory comments for effect, but this was a particularly dumb statement which defies many soft reinterpretations. For one thing, Top of the Pops was by its very nature a chart show, and favoured appearances by whoever was moving up the charts in any given week. On some weeks that may have caused more black artists to appear, but the programme invariably tended to feature the latest cute success stories with big money behind them; key exceptions like Prince and Michael Jackson aside, those tended not to be black (and let’s not get on to the topic of MTV, who had a serious allergy to any black artists at this time, whether they had hit singles or otherwise). What Morrissey seemed to be indulging here was the standard right-wing political trope of “seeing” blackness everywhere and drawing up imaginary race ratios in a disapproving fashion, interpreting any decrease in inequality as a threat to "his culture". When Reform UK politicians do the same thing today, Nigel Farage gets called upon to fire them.
If we want to be kind – although personally I don’t see why we should be – we can frame his comments in the light of some long-forgotten mid-80s culture wars, which did indeed see lots of fey young kids into guitar-based music feeling that the music they enjoyed was not being given a fair airing. I will concede that this is true, but it had little to do with them not being black. In the case of groups on minor indie labels, the low production values of their work instantly led to issues. There’s a parallel universe somewhere where Steve Wright thought Bogshed’s “Morning Sir” was hilarious – problematically though, its weak production values would have felt jarring and made it seem incompatible with the rest of his polished playlist that day, so even imagining something as simple as that is a huge reach. The eighties were about advancing technology and spit and polish, and indie was very often a reaction (intentional or otherwise) against that perfectly airbrushed world; incorporating its sound and ethics into daytime playlists would have caused endless stylistic issues. C86 operated under financial constraints Britpop seldom had to worry about.
The group’s response was immediate disgust, and the lyrics were apparently inspired by the situation*, although as numerous other people have pointed out, they actually focus their agitation on club DJs rather than radio ones. “Burn down the disco,” Morrissey states. “Hang the blessed DJ!/ because the music they constantly play/ it says nothing to me about my life”. Radio One doesn’t get a mention; rather, Morrissey seems to be jabbing his finger at the discotheques of the mid-eighties where people gathered at the weekends to get blitzed and forget their worries. How irredeemably shallow of them.
Journalists were quick to notice this and accuse Morrissey of racism, pointing out that his issue seemed to be with black music rather than daytime radio playlists. The group, and particularly Marr, were initially quick to challenge these allegations, pointing out that New Order, for instance, had no black members, but Morrissey helped matters little with other comments he made in interviews at this time. During a Melody Maker piece (which can be found online in full here, and is definitely worth a read) he opined:
“I don't think there's any time any more to be subtle about anything, you have to get straight to the point. Obviously to get on Top Of The Pops these days, one has to be, by law, black. I think something political has occurred among [television producer] Michael Hurll and his friends and there has been a hefty pushing of all these black artists and all this discofied nonsense into the Top 40. I think, as a result, that very aware younger groups that speak for now are being gagged.”
Morrissey had a tendency to grandstand and make inflammatory comments for effect, but this was a particularly dumb statement which defies many soft reinterpretations. For one thing, Top of the Pops was by its very nature a chart show, and favoured appearances by whoever was moving up the charts in any given week. On some weeks that may have caused more black artists to appear, but the programme invariably tended to feature the latest cute success stories with big money behind them; key exceptions like Prince and Michael Jackson aside, those tended not to be black (and let’s not get on to the topic of MTV, who had a serious allergy to any black artists at this time, whether they had hit singles or otherwise). What Morrissey seemed to be indulging here was the standard right-wing political trope of “seeing” blackness everywhere and drawing up imaginary race ratios in a disapproving fashion, interpreting any decrease in inequality as a threat to "his culture". When Reform UK politicians do the same thing today, Nigel Farage gets called upon to fire them.
If we want to be kind – although personally I don’t see why we should be – we can frame his comments in the light of some long-forgotten mid-80s culture wars, which did indeed see lots of fey young kids into guitar-based music feeling that the music they enjoyed was not being given a fair airing. I will concede that this is true, but it had little to do with them not being black. In the case of groups on minor indie labels, the low production values of their work instantly led to issues. There’s a parallel universe somewhere where Steve Wright thought Bogshed’s “Morning Sir” was hilarious – problematically though, its weak production values would have felt jarring and made it seem incompatible with the rest of his polished playlist that day, so even imagining something as simple as that is a huge reach. The eighties were about advancing technology and spit and polish, and indie was very often a reaction (intentional or otherwise) against that perfectly airbrushed world; incorporating its sound and ethics into daytime playlists would have caused endless stylistic issues. C86 operated under financial constraints Britpop seldom had to worry about.
Away from the world of lo-fi kids with weird or big ideas, other storms were also brewing, particularly Stateside, which saw DJs and musicians producing increasingly groundbreaking and fascinating work; it’s always struck me as interesting that “Panic” was released the same year as Farley “Jackmaster” Funk’s “Love Can’t Turn Around”, the first single which truly made House music sound like a commercial, rather than purely clubland, force. One song is a series of would-be revolutionary slogans set to a retrograde glam rock beat, the other simply is sonically revolutionary, the eighties equivalent to “I Feel Love”.
In the middle of the eighties it was hard not to get the impression that rock music was possibly a dying force creatively and commercially, and that led to desperate statements from others too. “Keep Music Live” stickers began to appear more frequently on guitar cases. Music television featured members of supposedly radical bands bleating in interviews like weary war generals about the lack of passion and humanity to be found in samplers and drum machines. “Real” musicians got angry. Somewhere in Melbourne, the writer and satirist John Safran wore a Def Jam baseball cap on the tram, and a metaller removed it from his head, ripped it, and threw it to the ground, believing that anyone who approved of rap or hip-hop being mixed with metal was perverse and lucky not to be given a beating. These were strange, insecure times which provoked some frankly silly reactions which barely make sense today - apart from the nakedly racist ones, obviously, which remain a cultural issue.
“Panic” was one of the more extreme examples. Lyrically, it’s not even consistent with Morrissey’s own beliefs – he seemed to have plenty of time for Northern Soul and Motown, both of which tended to produce not especially politicised works (obvious exceptions aside) – and nor is it consistent with human nature which requires art and entertainment which is joyous, frivolous and communal as well as study-bound and introspective. We cannot get all our emotional nourishment from Leonard Cohen records alone. Morrissey surely knew this, but despite this, the track can be heard as their ‘war effort’, The Smiths attempt to take sides to tell the world that they were above mere pop music.
