Ian is probably right about Morrissey. I quote: "that he PURSUES people he idolises, and loves meeting them, and WHEN he meets them, it practically looks like HIS EYES ARE COMING..." Penman probably had some up-close industry encounters with him as twendy NME scribe, though I've a tale from quite the other side of the fence. A fanboy shard.
While never a lover of The Smiths I did swallow and wallow in "Hatful of Hollow". That record has great stripped-back production, all those renditions, while sourced from various conventional releases, were performances from the Peel shows of the day. On the LPs (The Smiths, Meat is Murder, The Queen is Dead) I found the sound a total disaster, a woeful stodgy mix when all that was needed was crisp guitars. The Hatful of Hollow's versions are brazen, bright and sharp. The perfect setting for those beatnik ululations. I used to get fairly lachrymose over "Please Please Please let me get what I want" and "Reel around the fountain". I'd shove a bunch of dahlias up my arse. However, my favourite bit of The Smiths' music was the intro to "How soon is now".
Aah that tasty reverb and those crashing chords! I even like the lyrics: "I am the son/sun, and the heir/air........of a shyness that is criminally vulgar". My very close friend of the time, the rogue who fixed me up to the spliff, was a more serious Smiths fan. He had an awesomely glamorous background, and I lay the charge at his door that it's his fault I'm a star-fucked tossbag. My friend's Dad was a famous film director, and then (1988) at the peak of his powers. He'd just completed one of those once-in-a-blue-moon movies whereupon Britain defeats Hollywood and had popped back to London where he was turning out jaw-dropping commercials which blurred that old art/commerce line. My friend and I would loll round his uber-hip batchelor appartment and rush on music with the great man. It must have been uncomfortable for my friend (who I love like a brother) to have his mates so in thrall of his Dad, especially when he could be a right bastard.
One of the adverts he'd just finished was for a brand of jeans and "How soon is now?" was the music they used on it. The opening frames,a shot from below, had a native american in eagle's wings spiralling atop a desert pillar. It was the perfect counterpoint to Johnny Marr's locked fret-throb. The ad cut a rain-dance against a bunch of London kids sheltering from a storm. My pal even had a cameo. It was a VERY beautiful commercial, and hugely celebrated. I remember one of those "History of Commercials" programmes on Channel 4 in the early nineties (damn thats a cheap programme to make, like MTV eh! Free content!) and after all Ridley Scott's Hovis micro-epics they asked "What of the future of commercials?", and they chose that ad to illustrate the poetic possibilities.
One day my friend joined us in his room, where we were scraping around the sofa's inners searching for stray roaches we could martial into something resembling a joint (that sad), and sat down with a pale face. "Morrissey is upstairs with my Dad." I was shocked. What was he doing there? Shmoozing? Dammnit he was supposed to be on the moors, or down the docks, or crying in a potting shed. Morrissey disappeared just as quickly as he showed up, prompting even more discomfort. What! Fast transport! Where's his bike? The whole thing left me mildly disillusioned. My friend, I know, felt yet more upset. What space is there for post-adolescent angst when Morrissey wants to hang with your father?
Posted by Woebot at August 8, 2003 06:26 PM