41. The Smiths - This Charming Man (Rough Trade)

One week at number one on w/e 14th November 1983

Retrospectively trying to describe the birth of a phenomenon is difficult. The further down the road you go as you pass the scene of the incident, the more it slowly retreats in the rear view mirror, the details becoming less clear, the conversation about what happened getting confused by the conflicting voices in the car.

Using that analogy with The Smiths, it sometimes feels as if the rear view mirror was also cracked and twisted, offering so many illusions that nobody is sure what’s true anymore. They were revolutionaries who changed music! They were reactionaries who dragged it backwards! Morrissey spoke to millions of lonely bookish leftists and is also a fascist! And sometimes, besides this, you find yourself leaning on the second-hand anecdotes from friends which may or may not be deeply exaggerated. I’m forced to recall an older friend telling me that he once saw a man with a broken leg dancing ecstatically at an early Smiths concert, so passionately moved by what he saw and heard that being in front of Morrissey and Marr was like a trip to Lourdes.

I heard these tales only from older friends because frankly (Mr. Shankly) I was ten years old when The Smiths broke. The first I truly knew of them was through Tom Hibbert and Sylvia Patterson’s interviews in Smash Hits. That magazine’s approach to all pop stars, whether aspiring or established, was to hold a fairground mirror up to them and distort their eccentricities until certain aspects of their personalities dominated, each interview acting more like a caricaturist’s sketch than a respectful, gushing homage. Paul McCartney became known as “Fab Macca Thumbs Aloft”. Rod Stewart’s nickname was “Uncle Disgusting”. Even when Tom Hibbert interviewed Margaret Thatcher, the one quote that shone through the final article was her icy reply of “Always be serious!” to one of his more flippant, joky comments (in this case, about whether Cliff Richard should be knighted).

Morrissey never had a nickname at Smash Hits, but the way he was portrayed in that magazine often felt more revealing than the reverence bestowed on him by the NME and Melody Maker. For one thing, his quick wit shone through in that publication far more than the others – rival music journalists seemed to want to engage with his cerebral side, ignoring the fact that his lyrics clearly revealed someone with a sharp sense of humour.

On the flipside of this, however, he also frequently came across as a deeply lonely and gloomy soul; the kind of figure who rose at Noon, watched a black and white film on the television while slowly sipping soup, and waited for the phone to ring. Not a pop star, just an alienated man with a lifestyle less appealing than the elderly widower next door; that neighbour may not have had much to envy, but he at least waved from his window cheerily every morning. The Smash Hits Morrissey would never have done that. 

I couldn’t relate to him, and he didn’t inspire me. If anything, I worried on his behalf - my Dad had a troubled friend who lived down the road, an eternal bachelor who had on occasion been sectioned due to his depressive episodes. To me, the Smash Hits Morrissey felt strangely close to the man I knew as Uncle Frank.

Also, for all their originality, there was also something very antiquated about The Smiths which felt odd to the hopeful ten-year old me. With the exception of the bold text on their sleeves, everything was deliberately black and white, frequently featuring pictures of fifties and sixties stars frozen in their monochromatic, pre-1967 world. This approach was not entirely without precedent; Paul Weller was also known to nod backwards in his choice of sleeve design and certainly sleevenotes, and obvious retro-heads like Meri Wilson and The Maisonettes might have shared this aesthetic, but generally speaking, early eighties popular culture was about keeping your eye on the horizon in front of you, not looking behind at a “better” past.

The older I became, the more I was won round. Musically they were often equally backwards-looking but less straightforward. The Smiths were proudly and obviously a “beat combo”, present to prove to the eighties that groups with guitars were absolutely not on their way out (an early review of “This Charming Man” even regurgitates this Decca audition quote) but this is where they ace it. Their sound is, like all brilliant groups, an inexplicable cocktail of everything that ever inspired them, combining to sound like nothing that went before. So much is going on here; the sharpness and brevity of sixties beat singles, the ambitious guitar work of post-punk (Marr has stated he was influenced by Maurice Deebank out of Felt – among others - but his approach is much more urgent and frantic) the taut, driving rhythms of a bass player and drummer who had obviously heard some Motown, all topped off with Morrissey’s shivering timbre, a sealion’s bray communicating one-line quips and deflated profundities, frequently with each following the other.

34. Yazoo - Nobody's Diary (Mute)

One week at number one on w/e 11th June 1983

Imagine being the person who had to manage Vince Clarke’s career in the early eighties – that flibbertigibbet with the haircut of a sulphur crested bird who also seemed as unpredictable and (obvious pun intended) flighty as a cockatoo himself. Consider how it must have felt to have had a meeting with him, relaxed and confident about his current level of success and ready to talk about “cracking the USA”, only for him to tell you that he feels something’s wrong again and he's ready to move on.

Having quit Depeche Mode after only one album, Clarke then promptly formed Yazoo with Alison Moyet, only to discover that, primarily for personal rather than musical differences, they didn’t enjoy working with each other. Moyet’s extraversion appeared to jar with Clarke’s quiet, considered and non-communicative working practices, and neither could seem to find a way of making the duo feel like a satisfactory working partnership. The second album “You And Me Both” – appropriately housed in a sleeve showing two dogs baring their teeth at each other – was therefore recorded with Clarke and Moyet largely handling their parts in the studio at separate times, choosing to have as little to do with each other as possible.

It’s worth speculating whether a more experienced individual than Daniel Miller at Mute Records would have seen the signs or been able to intervene earlier. While there are exceptions to the general rule (Haircut One Hundred?) major labels are usually quick to smell groups whose working relationships are on flimsy or moribund territory. Yazoo were formed very quickly, not long after Clarke left Depeche Mode, and seemingly without a chance to get to understand each other – combine that pressure with the sudden rush of hit singles and touring, and the end result feels almost inevitable. In fact, it seems astonishing we even got two albums out of them in such short order.

“Nobody’s Diary” was the only single to be plucked from “You And Me Both”, and unusually was solely penned by Moyet without any of Clarke’s involvement. Whether the intention was that the record would act as a calling card to anyone wanting to sign Moyet as a solo artist or not, her subsequent view of the record has become unfavourable. Noting that she wrote the song at the age of sixteen, she appears embarrassed by the lyrical contents, feeling that her emotional experience was inadequate to handle the romantic subject matter.

There’s an interesting parallel with Depeche Mode’s “See You” here, the first Martin Gore written track to be released as a single following Clarke’s departure. That too was regarded grimly by Gore as he became older due to its schoolboy lyricisms, but unlike “See You” this single does at least feel more specific in places – “My head was so full of things to say/ But as I open my lips all my words slip away” summons a frustration we’ve all felt as a relationship collapses (ironically enough) into poor communication, and is followed then by a piece of bad, scattershot communication itself – “And anyway!” she snaps, changing the subject. It’s a world apart from walks in the park and sitting on benches, and shows that whatever her doubts were, Moyet’s sixteen year old self could handle this stuff as well as anyone else in the charts that week.

Melodically, the song is beautiful, opening with twitchy, metallic synth sounds before gradually blooming into something considerably more detailed and not as desperate and immediate as much of Clarke’s work. This is no pop banger, instead progressing gradually and unveiling itself, confident that while what it has to offer may be subtle, the song is strong enough to hold the listener’s attention without resorting to repetitive slogans or persuasive drum machine loops. Just when you’re finally admiring it and enjoying its company, it slides back to the icy, minimal synth riff it opened with before slowly fading away.

Moyet’s vocals ensure the song’s impact is fully realised. More so than on previous Yazoo releases, she gives the impression of fully throwing herself into this one, to the degree that when I read about her misgivings I was shocked – I had assumed she was singing about a deeply personal situation, so invested does she sound in the lyrics.