FEATURE:
There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead at Thirty-Five
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THERE are so many articles out there…
PHOTO CREDIT: Pictorial Press Ltd./Alamy
that celebrate The Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead. The third album from the Manchester band, it was released on 16th June, 1986. One of the finest albums of the 1980s, I have not heard news of a thirty-fifth anniversary release. I know that a lot of people will be revisiting it on its anniversary. I think that The Smiths were starting to hit their stride on 1985’s Meat Is Murder – though there are a couple of weaker tracks. The Queen Is Dead is them at their very best. With so confidence and brilliance in the songwriting and phenomenal production (from Stephen Street), it is no surprise that The Queen Is Dead is regarded as one of the very best albums ever. From the best-known songs like There Is a Light That Never Goes Out, Bigmouth Strikes Again, I Know It’s Over, Cemetry Gates, and The Boy with the Thorn In His Side, to Vicar in a Tutu and the exceptional title track, every track offers something stirring, striking and memorable. It is an album perfectly sequenced so that one finds this balanced and beautifully blended album. I am surprised The Smiths only released The Boy with the Thorn in His Side and Bigmouth Strikes Again from the album. There are so many gems on the albums that would have made for great singles. The entire band – Morrissey, Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce – are incredible on the album. I think the greatest strengths are the compositions from Marr – that are so accomplished and evocative – and Morrissey’s witty and intelligent lyrics. They blend so beautifully on The Queen Is Dead.
I want to source a couple of features that look at the story behind the album. Before then, there is a review from the BBC that I wanted to include:
“Simply put, the greatest Smiths album. Locating Morrissey at the peak of his game, with his players surprisingly flexible, The Queen Is Dead did not disappoint when it was finally issued in summer 1986, after a legal dispute with Rough Trade had delayed its release from the start of the year.
From the excitement and rush of the title track, which was the Smiths' utmost combination of garage rock assault and music hall to the closing “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others”, this was the Smiths working tightly as a unit, breaking new ground, with Morrissey taking his moment in the full glare of the limelight to act up accordingly, with puns ever more daring, sexual politics ever more ambivalent, his heart and his art on his sleeve. Johnny Marr obsessively worked on the sound and texture of the music. Together, it proves an irresistible combination.
It’s got hits – “Bigmouth Strikes Again”, “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side”; maudlin ruminations: “I Know It’s Over” (with the line: ‘Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head’); “Never Had No One Ever”; witty interludes “Frankly Mr Shankly” and “Cemetery Gates”. It also contains “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”, Morrissey’s most poignant lyric, matched superbly by the deftness of the musicianship.
Biographer Johnny Rogan said that with The Queen Is Dead, Morrissey emerged as ‘the most interesting songwriter of his generation’, and it is absolutely true. Few people can switch between high- and low-brow, vulgar comedy and poignant self doubt so convincingly and rapidly over 36 minutes”.
After thirty-five years, The Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead is still being unpicked and celebrated. I was interested learning a bit of background to the album and how it came together. Classic Album Sundays wrote about the creation of one of the very best albums the world has ever seen:
“After a two successful studio albums with Rough Trade Records, the then-leading record label of indie rock in Great Britain, fans and critics alike saw The Smiths to be at the top of their game in 1985. During that time, the band rumored their third studio album was on its way, but after a series of singles were released to lukewarm reception, distress began to arise. The Smiths aimed to be an indie band that crafted a prolific career like The Rolling Stones and The Who, something seen as irregular at the time, and these low-charting singles gave hints that goal may have been too farfetched. This infuriated the band, especially Morrissey.
As a result, Morrissey added controversy to his legacy, which makes The Queen Is Dead’s lead single ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again!’ appropriate. With The Smiths’ eponymous album, the songwriter cemented his image as an emotional, lonely, and confused man who assumes multiple sexual orientations, wisdom from failures to find love, and overwhelming confusion concerning his path in life. This persona evolved during the writing process of the band’s sophomore album, Meat is Murder in which Morrissey continued to lament about his abused heart but also broke barriers in singing about larger than life topics, like abusive school teachers (‘The Headmaster Ritual’, ‘Barbarism Begins at Home’) and morality regarding the eating meat (‘Meat is Murder’). These songs are composed with dense poetry and put him at the face of these issues. He didn’t mind being flamboyant about it either, like if he “[dropped his] trousers to the Queen” in ‘Nowhere Fast’.
Morrissey struggled with people of power in many ways, mostly because he desired to hold a position of high influence himself. When the singles leading up to The Queen Is Dead, ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’, ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’, and ‘The Boy With the Thorn In His Side’ failed to chart, he took it to the music press to make his opinions known. The singer’s pretty-boy face frequently appeared on magazine covers with extravagant headlines and costumes mocking himself as a sell-out or fraud in the eyes of mainstream media. In interviews, he accused radio DJs as fascists and Rough Trade for not caring and underselling their work. He felt nobody was listening to what he had to say about the world, and these loudmouthed statements were meant to grab the attention of his doubters to think again. Even though these statements were outlandish in many ways, it proved The Smiths were different and more human than these popular systems.
Contrary to the public’s distaste for these risky statements, bad press turned into great press for the band. The Queen Is Dead is the band’s most prolific musical statement both instrumentally and lyrically, especially for Morrissey and Johnny Marr as a team. They diverted from what was comfortable, transformed their styles to be more accommodating and confident, and ultimately reached a larger audience. The band picks apart society from the perspective of a self-aware human and native of Great Britain and accommodates it within their music without forgetting their roots with every song.
The Queen Is Dead starts with perhaps its most profound statement with the album’s self-titled song, thanks to Morrissey’s hilarious but bleak lyrics. In 1986, animosity arose between north and south Britain, and Margaret Thatcher had implemented many changes to the nation’s government. Morrissey saw her actions as negative contributions to the country’s environment, art, and leading industries, like manufacturing, and he was infuriated by her manipulation of the country’s livelihood. The songs introduction of ‘Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty’ references The L-Shaped Shaped and states a wish to be taken back to a better Britain, one not led by Thatcher.
Johnny Marr stretches his instrumental muscle most on The Queen Is Dead. He took advantage of the studio to twist an assortment of wah-generated guitar feedback with producer Steven Street to build his parts for ‘The Queen is Dead’ and blended guitar tracks with multiple tunings to compose ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’. He introduced the acoustic guitar to many of its songs, giving the album great texture and driving rhythm. He builds many of the melodies with his mastered chucking guitar-picking method but creates his most memorable moment with ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’, with an angelic riff that never gets old.
The Queen Is Dead made The Smiths’ dreams come true — to become a legendary rock band that is still an integral part of the conversation of modern music. They broke their own comfortable barriers to make grand statements about music and the world around them, and in return, they were passionately embraced and still are today. Morrissey may always be on a search for love, but when he feels the soil falling on his head, he can smile knowing that he and his band were heard”.
I have been listening to the album since I was very young. Although my favourite track from the album changes through the years, it is an album I can listen to the whole way through and not get bored of. Just before rounding up, there is another article. This one is from Far Out Magazine. They provide more details regarding the making of The Queen Is Dead – in addition to its legacy and impact:
“The album was produced by both Morrissey and Marr, who teamed up yet again with iconic British engineer Stephen Street. This has proven to be a now-legendary partnership, and Street had worked on the band’s 1985 classic Meat Is Murder, amongst many other of their earlier releases. Street later recalled: “Morrissey, Johnny and I had a really good working relationship – we were all roughly the same age and into the same kind of things, so everyone felt quite relaxed in the studio.”
The album, it has to be said, was also marred by an ongoing dispute with the band’s label, Rough Trade. In fact, ‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly’ is rumoured to have been addressed to Geoff Travis, head of Rough Trade. Travis has since accepted it as “a funny lyric”, outlining “Morrissey’s desire to be somewhere else”.
Furthermore, the line in the song about “bloody awful poetry” was a reference to a poem he had written for Morrissey. They also call Travis “a flatulent pain in the ass”, which together, seems a little rude. Travis must have really pissed Morrissey off with his prose.
Regardless, The Queen is Dead is classic Smiths. It features many of their most iconic songs including the likes of ‘I Know It’s Over’, ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’, ‘Cemetry Gates’, ‘The Boy with the Thorn in His Side’, ‘There is A Light That Never Goes Out’ and ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’.
Apart from the music, The Queen Is Dead has become iconic for another reason; the album cover. The art features French actor turned businessman, Alain Delon, in the 1964 noir film L’Insoumis (The Unvanquished). Delon had written to the Smiths and gave them the approval to use his image. However, the offer came with one condition, as he revealed in his autobiography: “I told them my parents were upset that anyone would call an album The Queen is Dead.”
In classic Smiths fashion, having already disparaged their label head, this request was clearly ignored. It was also typical of the Smiths to use actors and elements of popular culture for their sleeves. The sleeve for ‘Big Mouth Strikes Again’ pays homage to the actor James Dean, depicting him riding a motorbike, and for ‘Panic’, actor Richard Bradford appears in a scene from his cult television series Man in a Suitcase.
It is this convergence of the Smiths and images from pop culture that adds to the band’s iconic stature. Every Smiths single and album cover has its own interesting backstory. A classic example of this comes with 1984’s release, ‘What Difference Does It Make?’. The band had initially intended to use an image of actor Terrence Stamp from the set of the 1965 film The Collector. The image that they wanted wasn’t actually used in the film, but remains a classic still. It shows Stamp smiling in an unhinged manner, holding a chloroform pad. Due to the violent composition of the image he initially declined to be used, so the Smiths had to find an alternative”.
On its thirty-fifth anniversary, I wanted to spend some time with a classic album. The Queen Is Dead is an absolute masterpiece that has lost none of its majesty and impact. I listen to the album now and the songs seem just as powerful and interesting. Go and buy the album if you do not have it already, as it is one…
THAT you need to own.