Vinyl magazine, The Netherlands.

In its day, with its professionalised fanzine aesthetic, hip day-glo cover designs and a series of free flexidiscs, Vinyl had a reasonable claim to being the coolest music magazine on the planet. It was also the first publication not written in English to carry a Smiths interview feature, and sponsored the Smiths' first concert on the European continent, at Amsterdam's De Meervart leisure complex in April 1984.

The interview was conducted by Fons Dellen on 24 January 1984 (the day the Smiths' third single,"What Difference Does It Make?", entered the UK singles chart at number 26) and published in the March 1984 edition of the magazine. English translation by Bertrand Tyke.

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This Charming Man

The Smiths: a new band with a new sound? Well, no, not entirely. The Smiths: pop for softies? Sure, but what is “pop” anyway? And what’s a “softy”? The Smiths: yet another over-hyped sensation from the city of corduroy trousers, red brick and Joy Division?¹ Morrissey, former depressive and now the band’s singer, tells us frankly what the Smiths are about. 

All week it has been raining buckets from the grey London skies, but this afternoon the sun is shining. A pity. A nice drizzly atmosphere would have been so perfect. As perfect as the quintessential English cup with more milk than tea. Which is something we can soon forget about. Our encounter with this charming man will be characterised by a businesslike rush. Not ours, but his. Oh well, what difference does it make?

Flowers

A bell, a voice, a buzzer and the door to the grand apartment block opens. Four flights of stairs and another door. In the doorway stands a young man, stylishly dressed with a large quiff. A brisk handshake and a somewhat shy smile. "Hello, I'm Morrissey". We are led into the first room to the left and invited to take a seat. The room is in a sober and traditional style, dimly lit by a table-lamp. It reminds me of a flat in an old people's home. Morrissey takes a bunch of flowers from its packaging, arranges it precisely in a vase, offers us no tea and sits down. Later, he will insist that the flowers be included in the photograph. This charming man. This busy popstar...

I want a cigarette. "Do you mind if I smoke, Morrissey?". "Yes", he says, timidly but at the same time resolutely. This is followed by giggling. "I find it strange... I don't smoke or drink. I barely understand why people go out in the street and breath in all those exhaust fumes, but I really don't understand at all why people inhale dirty fumes of their own free will. It sounds completely neurotic, but that's how I feel." He talks quickly and eloquently. Now and then, for no apparent reason, a vague smile crosses his face, as if to communicate that he can't help it. He has, like the Smiths’ music, something innocent and melancholic about him. "I... er... yes, I can't deny being melancholy. A lot of things things have been wrong with me in the past. You know... things that hit me very hard. Thanks to The Smiths, I'm doing a lot better now, but er..." The phone rings. It doesn't stop ringing but Morrissey refuses to pick it up. We lose the thread of the conversation, if we ever had it. "I don’t really have a private life", says Morrissey. "I hardly have any friends, to tell you the truth. So I don't have to worry if the things I say fall on stony ground."

All men have secrets and here is mine. So let it be known. ("What Difference Does It Make?")

"For a long, long time I was really depressed. A depression that really dragged me in. It stopped me from doing all kinds of things. I couldn't do what I wanted to do. I was unemployed for years on end. Voluntarily, I must add, because I just didn’t want to work. A normal job, working for someone else... I would never want that. I couldn't do it. It's hard enough work just being me. Well, the point came when I had fallen so low that I decided that depression could no longer be allowed to ruin me. I came out fighting. Almost at that moment, I was approached to sing in a band, The Smiths. No, it wasn't an escape from reality. I never try to escape anything. That makes no sense. If you do, you'll  just fall back again twice as hard when you're left on your own afterwards. The Smiths were more like treading water, the only way to make reality bearable. That's how hopeless things were for me."

I would rather not go back to the old house. There's too many bad memories. ("Back To The Old House")

Photo from Vinyl, March 1984. Photographer uncredited.

"I come from a very poor family. We hardly had any money and we lived on the margins of society, if I can put it like that. In a perverse way it was, all the same, very pleasurable. It sounds strange, but living under those circumstances did me good. There was a feeling of togetherness. We were bound together by fate. We shared a sort of journey. You could compare it with the experience of war. It's a feeling that also shines through in the music that the Smiths make and I think many people are drawn to it for that reason. It comes out of depression, but it is not depressing. Quite the opposite. The music isn’t depressing, the lyrics aren't depressing. It absolutely has to be positive. I think that something resonates in my songs about destroying and overcoming your fears."

Within six months of the Smiths’ formation, Morrissey was barraged with praise as England’s great hope in a dull age. Twenty-four years young (old, according to him) and hailed as the latest reincarnation of the Beatles and the Buzzcocks. An exaggeration? Of course. That’s not to deny that the Smiths have already, in their young existence, several near-classic pop-songs to their name. If it really is the honest pop music it seems to be, only time will tell. Morrissey clearly thinks it is and, I have to admit, I have more faith in his honesty than in that of the Duran Durans, the Spandaus, the Whams and so on. The Smiths make the kind of music I have been missing for years. Not that I play their records day in day out, but significantly more than I do other "soft" music. Because it goes without saying that the term “heavy” does not fit the Smiths. When they rant and rage, it is sophisticated, measured and acceptable across generations. Gleaming guitar and wistful harmonica melodies (courtesy of Johnny Marr), tight, stylised basslines (courtesy of Andy Rourke) and punchy drumming (courtesy of Mike Joyce) make the Smiths something more than average. Not only to the delight of the hit-minded public (the singles “This Charming Man” and “What Difference Does It Make?” sold 200,000 copies in the UK) but also to that of Rough Trade Records, who are in severe financial difficulty.² And the boys naturally delight in it themselves. Isn’t that right, Morrissey? Tell us why that might be...

Capitalist

Morrissey: "It all went very quickly and smoothly for the Smiths. I had expected that, really. I think a lot of people were just bored with what was going on in pop music. The Smiths just suddenly created a different kind of emotion in people, I think. I'm not saying that to be cocky, but because I mean it. Before I started, I had already noticed a gap to be conquered by the Smiths. I looked around the music scene and just couldn't see anything that could really mean anything special to anyone. Now I know that for sure. So I hope to make money. That's the thing that I want to achieve in the near future. Not because I am a capitalist who wants to grab as much cash as he can, but because I believe that what I do has a financial value. I see so many other people around me with no brains, delivering utterly insignificant and useless products and making a mountain of money. There is a lot of money to be made in this industry and I'd rather take it myself than let others have it. But an artist isn't supposed to say things that, is he? You're only supposed to talk about creativity, not money."

This charming man...

"The cover of the single really means a lot to me. That figure lying on the ground in total innocence... A man full of self-adoration, full of... Well, to a certain extent I am in love with myself, yes. But I know when it becomes foolish. I know when I need to stop. When? We, er… I think we all know that. When it just goes too far..." With, once again, a vague smile he asks if that scares me. I say I don't know. Almost at that instant, the doorbell rings. It is the turn of the gentlemen from the NME to conduct an interview. A momentous interview, a cover story. Because the Smiths have been voted "best new act of 1983" by the readers.³ Things are going well for the latest sensation from Manchester. So well that Morrissey should be able to keep his second home in London’s upmarket Kensington, for the time being at least. So well that you really should think about giving the Smiths' first LP a listen. Judge for yourself whether Morrissey is worth your money, whether the Smiths are the forgers of your dreams.

¹ The origin of corduroy is obscure, but it may have originated in Manchester or thereabouts. Corduroy trousers are known in Dutch as Manchester broek (Manchester trousers).
² In spite of a healthy turnover, the distribution activities of the Rough Trade group meant that it frequently owed large sums of money to independent labels such as Mute and Factory. This resulted in cash-flow problems and in mid-1983, a few months before the release of The Smiths' second single, "This Charming Man", the majority of the staff were made redundant, including all the staff at the famous Rough Trade shop in London's Notting Hill.
³ A scan of the NME interview is available here.