at a glance...

Hometown:
Manchester, England

Personnel:
Morrissey: vox
Johnny Marr: guitars, keyboards
Andy Rourke: the bass guitar
Mike Joyce: drums

In the Family:
Morrissey, Electronic, Johnny Marr and the Healers, The The, Julian Cope

Notes:
Legend has it that young guitar prodigy Johnny Marr had to make several pleading visits to local eccentric and NME letters-page-botherer Steven Patrick Morrissey's home in an effort to convince the retiring aesthete to join his new band. One wonders what might have happened had his entreaties been unsuccessful: would Morrissey have continued a life of solitary bedsit moping, a legend in his own mind? Would Marr have gone on to make pleasant if unremarkable pop music (as he has for most of his post-Moz career) instead of changing the very way guitar bands thought about their craft (as he did with The Smiths)? A few things seem certain: the miserable adolescents of the '80s would have had only The Cure and other Goths to turn to, and the rest of the world would have been deprived of the most unique-sounding rock group of the post-punk era. The Smiths' early singles and eponymous debut album caused quite a stir in Britain, despite the fact that the latter was a slightly overproduced and under-realized affair (a fact borne out by the brilliance of early singles and b-sides comp Hatful of Hollow). Marr's ridiculously unfashionable trebly guitar sound and understated virtuosity made The Smiths an intriguing musical proposition; Morrissey's outlandish personality and Wildean lyricism made them a sensation. Second LP Meat Is Murder solidified their fanbase but The Smiths were rightfully considered a singles band until 1986 tour de force Louder Than Bombs. Another ungodly run of singles (collected on U.S.-only comp Louder Than Bombs) followed, but the pressures of newfound fame drove a wedge between the band's songwriting duo and difficult fourth album Strangeways, Here We Come proved to be their last. The band split in 1987; surprisingly, Morrissey went on to make occasionally brilliant, Smiths-y pop for another eight years before being overcome by irrelevance. Marr worked in near anonymity as sideman to Matt Johnson (in The The) and Bernard Sumner (in the occasionally excellent Electronic). Marr finally emerged with his own band in 2003 - the surprisingly hard-rocking Healers.