The Smiths, Reunion, and the Promise of Nostalgia

By Eden O’Brien

“I know my luck too well and I’ll probably never see you again”

Great bands come and go, and nostalgia -- that keen and wistful longing for the past -- is a facet of the pop ritual that attests to its enduring importance. From the hypertextuality of sampling to the motley ethos of DIY to all out aesthetic plagiarism (then again, “talent borrows, genius steals”, right?), the continual reunion of past and present, of then and now, has become standard practice for weaving contemporary pop-art expressions within the complex fabric of images, sounds, and stories called popular culture. 

Few are the bands that seriously challenge the claim of nostalgia over artistic and personal significance; that complicate the order of images and sounds so that revival is thoroughly revelatory and restorative. Perhaps The Strokes did just this in 2001 with Is This It , an 11-track blitz of rehashed riffs and Lou Reed-esque word-salad that injected New York and UK scenes with the urgency of 70’s punk in the passing shadow of Nu Metal. 

But fewer still are those acts that devise symbols that add to the pop lexicon. The Beatles did it; so did Elvis, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, and the Sex Pistols. Maybe this is what the most divinely influential acts have in common: talent, drugs, luck, hubris, discipline, “the muse” -- sure. But there is also the fact of being at once profound enough to become enshrined within the lives of a veteran audience and artificial enough to become manipulable within the amalgam of pop-culture that meets the ever-contemporary listener. In pop, the profound and the artificial are never mutually exclusive. 

Ever the Mancunian-Marxist, Anthony H. Wilson of Factory Records fame once said “some people make money and some make history”. For all his charm (and charmlessness), Wilson was an expert at disguising fact as fiction, and thus played a large part in securing the posthumous success and highly crafted legacy of Joy Division. The frenzied re-spinning of the punk-story by Wilson and other more dubious pioneers demonstrates that an anecdote repeated is the beginning of mythos. 

When it comes to the fabrication of sincere pop mythology, very few acts come close to the craftiness of The Smiths. Lasting a mere 4.5 years, from mid 1982 to late 1987, The Smiths were the brain-child of singer-songwriter Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr; joined by bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce (and later, 2nd guitarist Craig Gannon), The Smiths all but defined the British independent music scene of the 80’s and laid the groundwork for the Britpop explosion of the 90’s. 

Musically, The Smiths were led by the startlingly young and equally gifted Johnny Marr who delivered melody driven and guitar based tracks influenced  by the likes of Bert Jansch, Nile Rogers and 60’s girl groups like The Shangri-Las. Marr’s trademark Rickenbacker jangle was delivered with a conscious femininity intended to counter the alleged chauvinism of 70’s dad-rock, whilst retaining its force and technicality. The perfect bridge between pre- and post-punk, Marr’s influence saw the return of guitar-led bands and a degree of virtuoso-ism that the punk ethos rebuffed. 

Lyrically speaking, Morrissey countered Marr’s airy pop symphonies with reflections upon lovelessness, alienation, and death -- all themes which were further complicated by the tone of kitchen-sink realism and exquisite British camp with which they were delivered (see  “The Queen is Dead” for 6 minutes and 26 seconds of irrefutable proof). As Morrissey was keen to prove the literary capacity of the 3-minute pop-single to non-believers and thoughtless consumers alike, The Smiths’ catalogue is as brilliant as it is pretentious (and, in true Wildean form,  twice as treasurable for it). 

The group’s ethos (tragicomically referred to as “Smithdom” in a few interviews from the early 80’s) was aesthetic and ideological in its scope. Visually speaking, The Smiths’ aesthetic scheme is recognizable even without  your -5.00 NHS specs: an array of colour-washed cover stars plucked from every corner of pop-culture, where bed-sit heroes and fierce Northern women rub elbows with camp icons and angry young men. Ever the “outsider’s outsider”, Morrissey utilized a number of props (flowers, hearing-aids, love beads etc.) in a series of quirky Top of the Pops appearances that secured the band’s image as a threeway between the dandy, the nerd, and the rockabilly. As was recognized at the time, the singer demonstrated an all-too-keen interest in semiotics to fit comfortably within the array of typical 80’s pop glamour; yet, this very shortcoming endeared The Smiths to a horde  of misfits spanning generations. 

Lyrical ingenuity, political intent, musical excellence, sexual-ambiguity, English devotion, over-exposure, religious fervour, honourable mentions, pithy phrases: maybe this just scratches the surface as to why, in the 35 years since their split as well as during their chaotic run, gallons of ink have been spilt divining, dissecting and divulging The Smith’s legacy. The nostalgic references to Carry On, “Rebel Rebel”, De Profundus, “A Taste of Honey”, and Lovebug Starski, to name a few, yielded a legacy that resounded between the gutter press and hallowed halls of academia, to say nothing of the postered walls of extra-ordinary kids from Whalley Range to Los Angeles. 
It’s no secret that -- maybe next to The Jam and Oasis -- The Smiths top the list of desired band reunions, and this is a question with which Morrissey and Marr have been hounded for 35 years. It’s also no secret that The Smiths have just as much a chance of reuniting as The Beatles do in their original line-up. What split the band and kept them apart ranged from substance abuse, lack of management (and manageability), shifting artistic visions, legal enmity, and, of course, political differences. But what the founding members do agree on and have expressed in many forms is that the people who made up the original line up don’t exist anymore. For this reason reunion is impossible; but, more interestingly, this is also why The Smiths, a “living sign” through-and-through, have joined the hallowed ranks of popular artifacts that are the reference points of nostalgia itself.