Today’s record is Hatful of Hollow (1984) by the Smiths. Strangely perhaps, this is a compilation album that came out the same year as the Manchester band’s first album (which was just called The Smiths). The debut came out in February that year and the compilation in November, awfully close no? Many of the versions on HoH were recorded over several Radio 1 sessions so I guess that made it different enough (for fans). Their record label was Rough Trade – Manchester’s Factory Records and majors like EMI having turned them down, apparently. I don’t play this album very much these days (for many reasons) but I did play it a lot back when it was new. I’ve never had any other Smiths’ albums but for some reason I’ve kept this one – it has a lot of great tracks (if missing lots of the big tracks from later on, obviously, Panic and the like). It’s quite a lonely creature in my collection as I was never really into anything like indie or indie/punk rock (besides dance remixes or bands associated with dance acts) so it stands a bit alone. I think Morrissey would probably approve of that, awkward fecker that he is.
When I got this record I was 17 (going on 18), living in London (our family not long moved down from Middlesbrough) and studying for my A-levels. I think it was a school friend who was into the band and I caught the miserable bug from her. We were both studying English and responded to the words as much as anything, no doubt. Mainly in London up to that point I’d been listening to Capital Radio and going to either disco-type events (where you could see, for example, the first showing of a video for Michael Jackson’s Thriller in a club on the Strand – woooo!) or drunken teenage parties with groups of young men pretending to be in old-fashioned heavy rock bands. This meant the Smiths’ sound was something very different and I don’t think I knew what to make of it. Moody, funny, swirly, knowing, jangly, drony – somehow it suited our 17-year-old brand of giddy, self-obsessed sadness very well and I listened to it quite intensely for a short, period of time. The cover is a big gatefold affair:
I rarely really came back to listen to the band again after those couple of months or so but I’ve always kept the album. There’s something about it – so blue, so much of a time – and there are some cracking songs on it. A friend once recited some of the words to Heaven knows I’m Miserable Now to me (without music) and somehow you get the humour much more that way (I was looking for a job and then I found a job and heaven knows I’m miserable now.... we’ve all been there, n’est-ce pas?). Lyrics in Smiths song are very clearly presented, beautifully so really, and they are often unexpected. Here’s that song:
I know Morrissey has gone beyond the pale and into whatever comes after that but I never liked the band enough, or for long enough, to really care or feel betrayed or anything like that. According to the oracle that is Wikipedia he was an unpopular loner at school so I guess he’s just come full circle. Before big fame he worked in a record shop and wrote for Record Mirror*, amongst other things, so we have a couple of things in common (but nobody’s shouting about that these days). On the other hand, the Smiths’ other big name, guitarist Johnny Marr, couldn’t be more in vogue just now, played with everyone and their dog at Glastonbury last year and is widely agreed to be a genius (while Morrissey has gone more for infamy, a Nigel Farage of pop). For those who never liked him or the band (including my nearest and dearest, who feels about the Smiths the way I feel about Take That ... which is just ugh), this is proof that there was always something off about him. And maybe that’s true but still, some great songs, guys, some great songs.
Back tomorrow with a bit of soul, I think.
*I wrote reviews of 12” dance singles in the 1990s for Record Mirror (a good way to get promo copies more than anything).
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