"The Smiths' eponymous debut is their most astonishing record, 'The Queen Is Dead' their best, but 'Meat Is Murder' is my favourite: freewheeling, exciting, political, with Morrissey's words and Marr's music interlacing perfectly.
It starts as if in the middle of something – you're already part of this. 'Meat Is Murder' is local and British from the first line – "Belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools" – and expresses fury at a kind of school life that has been forgotten. When the album was released, corporal punishment was still legal – it wasn't banned until 1986 – and everyone had a particularly sadistic teacher like Morrissey's "spineless swines". Mine was Miss Grant, who had a flat bat on which she had chalked two faces, one happy and one down-in-the-mouth – if the smiling face was showing, the bat would be hitting someone that day. The brilliantly titled Barbarism Begins at Home, during which Morrissey yelps as if in pain, is also about children being hit – "a crack on the head is what you get for asking". There's a lot of violence in the Smiths.
Rusholme Ruffians, with Johnny Marr's rockabilly riff, is about Manchester too and makes the city (home of much of the history of British feminism, socialism, vegetarianism and the Guardian) sound exciting, a place where things happen. Who wouldn't want to be ruffian from Rusholme? I was from the other side of the Pennines, but pilgrimages to the city (because of the Smiths) gave me style (old men's coats from Affleck's Palace, the second-hand clothes and records emporium that opened in 1982), rare Smiths 12ins (What Difference Does It Make? with Morrissey on the front instead of Terence Stamp), photos in front of Salford Lads Club, chance meetings with Morrissey's ex-girlfriend (artist Linder Sterling, working in Deansgate Waterstone's), and, just a little bit, a sense of possibility.
It's a record full of yearning("I want the one I can't have, and it's driving me mad"), the humiliating obviousness of when you want something ("It's written all over my face"), low expectations ("Please keep me in mind"), the melodrama of youth("This is the final stand of all I am"), and romance ("My faith in love is still devout").
It's also funny. "I'd like to drop my trousers to the Queen," sings Morrissey on Nowhere Fast. "Every sensible child will know what this means. The poor and the needy are selfish and greedy on her terms." It's hard to hear the song without wondering if Morrissey is already, on only his second album, parodying himself: "If the day came when I felt a natural emotion, I'd get such a shock I'd probably jump in the ocean."
I love the way What She Said, one of the best Smiths songs, is told from a female perspective – it's rare for male songwriters to write about women with empathy rather than desire – and how it taps into a certain kind of teenage girl's fantasies: "What she read, all heady books, she'd sit and prophesise … It took a tattooed boy from Birkenhead to really open her eyes." And the tune! Morrissey beats a path to your head, but it's Marr who carries the words to your heart.
And then, right at the end, the title track: a great political song, and the best ever written about animal rights. (Even famous vegetarian Paul McCartney, who has written tracks about the British in Northern Ireland, revolutionary politics and 9/11, has never written a song about vegetarianism. He once told me he'd always found it curiously hard to commit one to paper, even though he'd tried, and that he greatly admired the Smiths' effort.) Meat Is Murder's sinister opening, full of strange noises that conjure up an abattoir, moves into a terrible, beautiful melody. "The carcass you carve with a smile, it is murder … And the turkey you festively slice, it is murder." The song made me stop eating meat, and I haven't eaten it since.
Sometimes I wonder if a love affair with the Smiths is an 80s, self-absorbed, teenage thing, something you grow out of – perhaps when the day comes "that you feel a natural emotion". But those witty, thoughtful lyrics; that beautiful guitar; an album containing the great line, "a double bed, and a stalwart lover for sure – these are the riches of the poor". It's a wonderful thing." - The Guardian
Compact Disc Pressing
Tracklist:
1. The Headmaster Ritual
2. Rusholme Ruffians
3. I Want The One I Can't Have
4. What She Said
5. That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
6. Nowhere Fast
7. Well I Wonder
8. Barbarism Begins At Home
9. Meat Is Murder
