103. The Smiths - Girlfriend In A Coma (Rough Trade)

One week at number one on 29th August 1987

Sometimes, amidst a string of often more noble efforts, one particular single becomes a catchphrase in a band’s career. It’s not necessarily their best single, or the most advanced, or even their biggest hit; it’s the one that seems, rightly or wrongly, to define their whole ethic to the Mums, Dads and "squares".

While watching “The Chart Show” in the summer of 1987, the video for “Girlfriend In A Coma” came on and my parents immediately began spluttering in disbelief. “Oh, come on. Is this a joke?” they roared; a question that probably needed to be asked, since Morrissey was, as ever, playing his role dryly. “Well, I’ve heard everything now”, my Dad muttered, and from that day forth, whenever Morrissey appeared on television, “Girlfriend In A Coma” would be brought up. To my parents, Morrissey was no longer the man with some flowers up his bum – his previous identifying factor in my house - but the bloke who had a partner in intensive care.

“Is this his new one, then?” my Dad would ask. “Is it about his girlfriend again? Is she out of hospital now? Well, at least he’s got that going for him, anyway”.

And it didn’t stop with my parents. Smash Hits listed the single as having one of 1987’s very many “rum” song titles. It also later became the name of a reasonably good novel by Smiths fan Douglas Copeland, and I’ve also seen poetry events named after it (“Girlfriend In A Comma”) and reviews of curry houses referring to it (“Girlfriend In A Korma”, even though that doesn’t really work unless the eatery involves cannibalism). On and on the track’s influence churns, despite the fact that it’s not exactly a radio favourite – and is obviously banned from every hospital radio playlist in the land – and wasn’t really regarded as much more than a quirky glitch in the Smiths catalogue at the time. It was reviewed favourably enough and sold healthily, but it hardly sat alongside “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” or “This Charming Man” as being their most respected work.

Firstly, as to the completely fair question about whether this is a joke – I would argue (as I did with my parents at the time) that it’s really more of a cheeky homage. “Girlfriend In A Coma” feels spectacularly indebted to the sixties death disc, although instead of The Shangri-Las “Leader Of The Pack”, it appears to be taking its cue from Twinkle’s much more mournful, understated motorcycle crash 45 “Terry”.

Twinkle was supposed to have been a superstar in the sixties, a prodigious teenage singer-songwriter whose pop songs seeped with vulnerability and introversion. Instead, the music business pulled her in then spat her out with distaste after her attempts to follow up her big hit faltered. Her second single “Golden Lights” was a mournful study of the downside of being a famous person’s other half, and was actually written while she was dating Dec Cluskey of The Bachelors. The public only cared enough to take it to number 21, and it would be her second and final hit.

The Smiths covered it in 1986 and placed it as the extra track on the 12” single of “Ask”, so they had already doffed a cap to her work. “Girlfriend In A Coma” appears to be looking more in the direction of “Terry”, noting its strangely hushed and understated delivery of a deeply controversial subject matter (it was effectively banned by the BBC for its morbidity). If the subject matter of the leathered-up motorcycle tragedy of “Terry” is vaguely rock and roll – even though its shuffling rhythms and delicately plucked instruments barely qualify – “Girlfriend” erases every last final drop of teenage rebellion from its likely influence and is lyrically stark and almost weirdly understated.

Marr’s simple, unambitious but pretty acoustic guitar lines combine with Morrissey’s softly sung pleas of “I know, I know it’s serious”, “No I don’t want to see her” and, contradicting himself in his mental muddle, “Would you please let me see her”, to create what can only be described as a sombre lullaby of panic. The string section adds some drama to the mix, but it’s ultimately an exhausted collection of thoughts, positive and negative, guilty and concerned (“There are times when I could have strangled her/ but you know, I would hate anything to happen to her”).

There’s an alternative reading to the above, of course. Just as you might listen to Cliff Richard’s “Carrie” and suspect the man at Carrie’s old address had murdered her, I’ve often had a slight feeling of unease that Morrissey is hinting that he is in some way responsible for the coma. His lines about murdering or strangling her followed with “you know, I would hate anything to happen to her” feel almost as if he’s protesting too much, playing a role; yes, of course we regularly bickered, your honour, but it wasn’t me in the greenhouse with the quiff and the cricket bat.

The only thing that scuppers the above is the track’s genuine sense of kitchen sink distress, the repetition and disorder. Where Twinkle sang “Don’t do it, don’t do it!” Morrissey also repeats himself and circles slowly around the truth, arriving thereas the reality of his situation cements itself (“Let me whisper my last goodbyes”).

Of course, I have no doubt that the single probably isn’t intended as an entirely serious artistic statement – it’s The Smiths attempting sixties baroque pop but amping the tragedy and the melodrama to the max, taking the ideas as far as they’ll go before the balloon bursts and the idea becomes too ridiculous to contemplate. It walks a very fine line between homage and parody, and in its own way is as attention seeking as “Panic” or “Shoplifters Of The World Unite” – only the idea seems to have had much more durability and continued shock value than either of those, the thought of quiet ballads to comatose lovers being too ludicrous for some to handle.

83. The Mission - Garden of Delight/ Like A Hurricane (Chapter 22)

One week at number one on 2nd August 1986

Two weeks after they vacated the indie number one spot with “Serpent’s Kiss”, The Mission returned again with this huge sounding double A-side. Rather than offering us further lumps of paisley rock, both “Garden” and “Hurricane” feel like wordy, skyscraping resignation letters to the independent sector from its latest breakout talent.

Listening to these again feels odd. While they were generally applauded by critics in a lukewarm fashion, The Mission were never given universal acclaim. There have also been very few revisions to that view since, meaning that almost all non-genre based lists outlining the best music of the eighties and nineties fail to mention their name. Subsequently, you find yourself stunned when revisiting their sudden rush of cult fame in 1986, which delivered two Top 75 singles on a relatively unestablished indie label (with this one even creeping into the top fifty). Viewing their promo video for “Serpent’s Kiss” recently, I was struck by just how playful it was, but also how much the band’s confidence over-rode the indie budget – The Stone Roses may have been arrogant sods, but their bleached-out cheapo promos didn’t contain even a grain of Wayne Hussey’s self-assuredness.

“Garden Of Delight” is the first single to really put that confidence across on vinyl. The Mission here don’t sound ‘indie’, they sound massive. Once again, Hussey tries to set himself up as the goth scene’s resident poet - “Revelation is laid, and reflects/ on the windswept liquid mirror/ of this breathless whirl, this happy death/ this elegance and charm” he declares, doubtless penning the words in elaborate, curvy purple ink – but rather than backing off uncertainly, the band around him rise to such towering declarations with the confidence of city stockbrokers. In particular, guitarist Simon Hinkler puts in another brilliant performance of complex jangles followed by uncertain, ascending tension (there’s a weird parallel universe somewhere where he never left Pulp, and they ended up making these noises instead).

For all that, though, it still sounds more like a music business calling card than an obvious single to my ears; the group offering something because it sounds big and important rather than a good candidate for a standalone 45. The inflated nature of it makes it sound like something that would appear towards the end of side one of an album rather than anything else – an end to the First Act and a sop to any wavering listeners assuring them that bigger, grander tunes were still to come.

The other A-side, a cover of “Like A Hurricane”, was given less airtime so far as I can recall, and is more along the lines you would expect, albeit having the kind of production you would anticipate from an established, successful American performer or group on their fifth or sixth album (and I did initially think Hussey was singing “You are like a hurricane/ there’s cum in your eye” rather than “calm”). Between its moments of arena pretension, though, there’s a gothic thunder in the basslines and drum patterns and Hinkler’s guitarwork moves from jangle to solid soloing and back again, acting as the focal point of interest when Hussey’s hollering gets a bit much.

For all that, I have to confess that I don’t really enjoy either side all that much. They did the job and The Mission were releasing records on a well-funded major label before the year was up, but there’s something about their grandness which I find cold and difficult, as if the group are high up on a platform, out of my eyeline and away from my lived reality, thundering on about the elements, decadence and death... but then again, I never was the type to be enticed by either aspiring Rock Gods or actual ones. 

The group clearly were, though. Following the release of this single, they became a major cult act and then, with their John Paul Jones produced number two album “Children” in 1988, moved extremely close to becoming the serious international mega-rock act “Garden Of Delight” seems to hint towards; no longer merely toying with Led Zeppelin imagery, they saw fit to get a member of that band to come in and guide them forwards.

Their appeal took a significant topple in the early nineties and by 1995 they were straight back to indieland again, Phonogram having lost patience with their big proposition. More of that when (and even if!) we get to that point, but it’s hard to resist quoting Andrew Mueller of Melody Maker’s review of their LP from that period, “Neverland” - “a stadium record that is never going to fill a theatre, a defiant gurgle on the way down the sinkhole”. Nine years is a bloody long time in rock music.

This ignores the fact that The Mission’s story prior to that point is actually a triumph, with large selling albums in Britain and significant, mid-chart cult sales abroad. The fact they’ve often been ignored in stories about eighties rock may be due to the fact that, even with the close calling “Tower Of Strength” on their side, they never produced a truly enormous anthem in the UK; indeed, they join the ignoble gang of bands who may have had scores of Top 40 hits, but never quite managed to edge into the top ten. 

80. The Mission - Serpent's Kiss (Chapter 22)

Three weeks at number one from 14th June 1986

During my final year of sixth form college, I developed a slight crush on a goth girl in the year below (Cliche alert - I realise this isn’t remotely uncommon. Almost every male friend my age has suffered a similar predicament, and almost every female goth has had to toss away unwanted Valentines). Shamefully, I can’t remember her name for certain – which indicates that she obviously didn’t work her way into my affections to an unhealthy degree – but I can still remember how studiedly and absolutely she embodied ‘the look’, even getting angry when she ‘caught some sun’ and freckled her nose at an outdoor gig, ruining her pale skin plan. I also loved the confident way she played up to her dorkiness rather than trying to hide it under self-conscious posturing. She seemed friendly, quietly funny and unbelievably cool in a way almost everyone else I knew wasn’t.

I thought I’d kept my admiration for her on the downlow, but obviously not, because one night outside the local nightclub one of my friends drunkenly blurted out “Oi Dave, it’s that goth girl you fancy!” while she was within earshot. Clearly my poker face needed work. After she split with her unbelievably lanky, long-faced and permanently weary looking boyfriend, who it seemed had been her other half since birth, she awkwardly initiated further conversations with me and gave the impression she might be interested.

Reader, as I’m sure you’ve already gathered, it didn’t happen. I can’t remember the reasons, but her finding another suitor who was just more gothic than me was almost certainly the prime factor. I had something of a quiet aversion to the key things that made her world revolve, feigning interest whenever we spoke but probably never being able to successfully conceal my doubt. Some time before this, a friend or acquaintance gave me a C90 compilation tape of current goth sounds and I listened, trying to get to grips with it. By the thirtieth minute, I was bored shitless and realised I was never going to commit to a lifestyle that had so much dreary sludge as its soundtrack. 

Thanks to this blog, I’ve been thinking back to that sliding doors moment a lot lately, and wondering if maybe my friend did me – and goth in general – a disservice. He focused on the long, soporific aspects which leaned towards the seriously morbid and epic. While ploughing through the indie charts for this blog, I’ve been forced to remember that musically speaking, goth was actually a much broader genre than that, to the point of near-meaninglessness. Besides the punk originators (The Damned, Siouxsie And The Banshees) and their Batcave heirs, there were also groups who performed camp electronic nonsense (Alien Sex Fiend), arena-eyeing rock God goths (The Cult, Gene Loves Jezebel, *coughs* The Stone Roses) and also a bunch of groups I now think of as paisley bloused goths, adding loose-fitting hippydom to their sound (The Cure, The Bolshoi, All About Eve). These little sub-genres don’t necessarily always make sense or fit, and the groups I’ve mentioned tended to jump between them periodically, but they’ve helped me to make sense of a movement which stylistically sprawls in a number of directions.

This was perhaps demonstrated by Wayne Hussey and Andrew Eldritch's falling out while both were members of the Sisters of Mercy (which we’ve already covered in quite dramatic detail). One of the issues seemed to be that Eldritch had written new songs for the Sisters Of Mercy which were far too minimal for the rest of his group’s tastes, whereas Hussey’s were seen as too unusual. It’s not really clear how much of that eccentricity found its way into his subsequent group The Mission, but on the strength of their debut single “Serpent’s Kiss”, it would seem not much.

It starts predictably enough, filling your ears with dank guitar lines, wilted flowers and lyrics like “Ash on the carpet and dust on the mirror/ Chasing shadows and the dreaming comes clearer”, proving that Hussey had the poetry of his audience down pat. Where it suddenly shifts gear and shows its true colours – which aren’t entirely black – is in that zippy, celebratory chorus. “Screaming howl and the children play/ Serpents kiss for the words you pray” may be words which sound as if they need a reverberated steady backbeat and a gravelly vocal, but The Mission launch into them as if these child-bothering snakes are actually a good thing. It’s closer to Jim Morrison celebrating the dark arts with a forceful chorus than Bauhaus, shimmying and shaking its tight-trousered butt around the imagery rather than screaming about it.

Hussey, like Robert Smith, also gave the impression that taking the piss and even misleading the public was one of his motivations in life as well as trying to write great songs. When asked if he had “a type” when seeking out ladies, he responded with glee that his slogan could be “Wayne Hussey – he’s not fussy”. You can’t imagine Andrew Eldritch giving his game away so easily. The cheap and cheerful promo clip for “Serpent’s Kiss” is a thing of strange colour and joy too, filled with lipstick kisses from Uncle Wayne, while the group twirl multi-coloured umbrellas, and leap, lark and generally tit around in the country. Visually it has more in common with a Dukes of Stratosphear video than the rainy, rockist visuals which accompanied The Sisters “This Corrosion”.