58. The Smiths - How Soon Is Now (Rough Trade)

Two weeks at number one from w/e 2nd March 1985

There’s a huge “what if?” surrounding “How Soon is Now?”. It's one of The Smiths most enduring tracks; when I was round my friend’s houses as a teen, it was there. When I was finally old enough to go to alternative nightclubs, it shot out loud and proud. When I packed up my things and went to university, it followed me, and whenever anyone mentions The Smiths in a brief piece on radio or television, it is still to this day somewhere in the background.

Very few bands are lucky enough to write songs which end up becoming slightly clumsily described as "legendary". Most amble their way through their brief careers pushing out material which is well-liked by a small section of the public, but usually left behind by radio and television a few years later, only fondly reminisced about by fans who complain you don’t hear them in public often enough nowadays.

Ironically then, nobody at Rough Trade foresaw that “How Soon Is Now?” would be so highly regarded. They worried that it didn’t sound sufficiently Smithsian and, as a result, relegated it to the B-side of the twelve inch single of their previous release “William It Was Really Nothing”. Only the growing number of fans bothering DJ’s with requests to hear it on evening Radio One shows and continued club play forced a panicked reassessment of the situation and its eventual re-release as an A-side, but by then, everyone who owned a copy of the 12” single of “William” already had it, and the new B-sides “Well I Wonder” and “Oscillate Wildly” on the reissue didn’t seem to be creating as much excitement.

The net result was the peculiar situation of a potentially huge single peaking at number 24 in the UK chart (though it managed a fairer number 5 in Ireland) and a mere couple of weeks on top of the NME indie chart. Oops.

In Rough Trade’s defence, you can understand their concerns. The group were still establishing themselves, and the previous Smiths singles had been chiming, intricate and melodic affairs. “How Soon Is Now” consists of Johnny Marr locking himself into a shimmering but dirty hypnotic groove, offering only anguished howls from his guitar as any kind of diversion or punctuation. If The Smiths other singles are restless with possibility, with Marr’s guitar lines ricocheting all over the place and unearthing a new melody every thirty seconds, “How Soon Is Now” is locked on one killer hook and trusts it implicitly. Grooves, even of the swampy, unconventional kind, were not the kinds of things Smiths records entertained prior to this point.

On top, Morrissey delivers his anguished tale of being unloved and unlovable in some of the most unusually direct language heard on a Smiths 45 prior to this point. The opening line “I am the son and the heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar” is probably the most poetic. The rest descends into direct emotional bloodletting which may or may not have been inspired by the singer visiting gay clubs – my lawyer has instructed me not to speculate – but nonetheless said something a lot of teenagers, whether gay or straight, wanted to hear.

As an adolescent, there’s a tendency to believe that everyone around you is either being adored by a significant other, or could be if they so chose. It’s only in adulthood that most of us look back and realise that the two 14 year olds we knew who held hands and kissed for an entire year were freaks rather than a couple to be envied, and everyone else was either being dumped and publicly humiliated by a different person every third week, or being ignored like the other 75% of the school year. Morrissey singing “I am human and I need to be loved/ Just like everyone else does” was catnip to thousands of underdeveloped brains and souls who felt that only they were missing out on tenderness, but it also became a clear message for those who were shy and awkward adults, or just plain undesirable (and there are many cruel ways people can end up “difficult to love”, often outside their control). Heard one particular way it’s a teenage whine. To another person in another set of circumstances, it’s a banner to be held aloft at a protest march society has yet to schedule.

47. Sandie Shaw - Hand In Glove (Rough Trade)

 

One week at number one on w/e 28th April 1984

Arthur Crabtree: Hey. I say, is that that bird?

Billy Fisher: What bird?

Arthur Crabtree: There. Getting a lift in that lorry. That bird that wanted you to go to France with her.

Billy Fisher: Do you mean Liz?

Arthur Crabtree: Yes, where's she been this time, then?

Billy Fisher: I don't know. She goes where she feels like. She's crazy. She just enjoys herself.

Billy Liar.

There’s an idealistic, euphoric vision of the sixties I carry around with me in my head (having never lived through it myself) which clashes with the lived reality of others – my parents, for example. My Dad once told me that for him the sixties didn’t result in any real change. He still had the same job and the same lifestyle, and his only minor brush with the era’s glamour was when a friendly post-fame Peter Sarstedt mistakenly walked into the wrong South London boozer. Carnaby Street styles and fame tended not to reach Peckham. They disintegrated on impact with the South Circular Road.

Then there’s the vision I have of the famous people who littered the era, some of which is probably highly accurate (I’ve devoured enough Beatles biographies to at least have a fair idea of what went on) some driven by fantasy. Sandie Shaw, for example. She was fascinating to me because she was from Dagenham, a mere few miles from where I grew up, and my best friend’s mother was mates with her as a child, a fact she always revealed very cautiously and defensively. Of all the famous female British singers in the sixties, Sandie seemed the most local and the most relatable, but also the most flexible and shapeshifting. Who was she? Seemingly, whatever I wanted her to be.

In early promotional photographs, she looks as if she’s won the football pools and is posing for a Littlewoods advertising campaign. She’s pretty and breezy, all delighted smiles, light eyes and freckles. This fits the narrative. She was a Ford factory worker at the Dagenham plant who won second prize in a local talent contest, earning her a slot at a charity event in London where she was spotted by Adam Faith. He put in a word for her with his manager, and as such, Shaw is an early example of the “working class girl unexpectedly lands showbiz opportunity” sixties fairytale. There would be more of those (and then eventually, as the decades drifted forward, less again).

Earning numerous massive hits, including two number ones, her image moved gracefully forward with the sixties. Almost in sympathy with her aspirations (or her manager’s) to be a pan-European star, she recorded hit singles in French, German, Spanish and Italian, and slowly the image changed to that of a glamorous professional, a Saturday teatime ratings puller, a cosmopolitan singer who could be either playful, insouciant or sophisticated when the song or occasion demanded it.

Perhaps inevitably, her continental appeal led to her representing Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1967, resulting in a song she never liked (“Puppet On A String”) being voted as the public’s choice for her to perform. She won, but blamed the subsequent steady decline of her career on the kitsch, tacky image the tune and event gave her (though she was quite happy to sell anniversary souvenir whisky glasses of the victory not long ago, one of which I bought and still happily drink from). “Puppet” is an oompah heavy, knees-up piece of simple pub-friendly, tankards aloft pop dropped into an era of colour and experimentation, closer to The Scaffold than "Strawberry Fields Forever". It worked perfectly in the context of Eurovision and was extremely popular with the British public, who gave her a third number one, but in terms of fashion and the onward movement of popular culture in the late sixties, it couldn’t have seemed more dated; a bubbly bit of Parnes-era pop parachuted into the wrong end of the decade.

Whether it directly caused the decline of her career is a point I’d probably contest. The last few singles leading up to “Puppet” were comparatively weak sellers (the one prior to it, “I Don’t Need Anything”, only just charted at number 50) and I’d actually argue the Eurovision win relaunched her in the UK for a brief period as showbiz royalty, our Queen of Light Entertainment. Despite the temporary lift it gave her, though, it sat awkwardly with who she truly wanted to be, which was pushing the boundaries of pop along with many of her fellow stars.

An album was released in 1969, “Reviewing The Situation”, where she attempted to reposition herself as a progressive artist and correct the public’s view. It’s damn good, and could have been her “Surf’s Up”, but sold naff-all. From that point forward, she would score no further hit singles, living out her showbiz life through occasional appearances on light entertainment shows, performing old standards and even music hall ditties with a slight glimmer of reluctance in her eyes. She attempted to retrain as an actress – something you can easily imagine her succeeding at – but her husband Jeff Banks’ bankruptcy forced her back towards familiar territory to keep the household finances afloat.

The eighties started to be gentler to her. Martyn Ware and Ian Marsh of Human League/ Heaven 17 produced her version of “Anyone Who Had A Heart” in 1982 which failed to chart, but brought her back into the public eye as a credible artist. A none-more-eighties electro-Buddhist single “Wish I Was” followed, and in the background, long-term fans Morrissey and Marr were desperate to earn her attention and get her to cover one of their songs.

There was reluctance on Shaw’s part initially, who seemed untrusting of the group’s slightly unusual angle on the world. This was exacerbated by the tabloid outrage caused by the song “Suffer Little Children” about the Moors Murderers, which nearly caused her to completely withdraw from any associations with them. Eventually, however, she was talked around to the idea of recording with them, and this cover of The Smiths underperforming debut single “Hand In Glove” is the end result.

The first thing that strikes you is how effortlessly Shaw has shapeshifted yet again. The Smiths lyrics weren’t typical of the eighties or any era before them, but she adapts, instantly understanding what to do with her vocals and how to both gel with the strange angles around her and also project her own personality on to them. She barks defiantly, almost in block capitals, “The good life is out there somewhere!” She copies Morrissey’s hollers and howls, but with confidence rather than despair – they seem to suggest “This is who I am” as opposed to “Oh God, so this is who I am”.