26 Feb 2011 | 12:53:31

Why Pamper Lifes Complexities? Essays on The

Smiths

Edited by Sean Campbell and Colin Coulter

Reviewed by George De Stefano | Released: February 1, 2011
Publisher: Manchester University Press (262 pages)

The Smiths, a rock quartet from Manchester, England, lasted only five years, from 1982
to their acrimonious breakup in 1987. But the bands popularity hardly ended with their
demise.
After a period in the 1990s when theyand most guitar-driven rock bandsbecame
unfashionable, they were re-discovered, and re-evaluated. The reassessment reached its
apogee in 2002, when the leading pop music paper New Musical Express (NME) voted
them the most important British band ever. A new generation of indie rock bands has
claimed them as a major influence, and even Lady Gaga sings their praises.
As the introduction to Why Pamper Lifes Complexities?, a new collection of critical
essays, notes, The Smiths are now deeply fashionableeven more so perhaps than in
their 1980s heyday. The book, edited by two self-proclaimed fans, Sean Campbell, an
English and Media professor at Cambridge, and Colin Coulter, a sociologist at the
National University of Ireland, comprises thirteen essays that analyze the bands lasting
cultural legacy.
Although The Smiths never achieved mega-stardom, they were hugely popular in the
U.K., where each of their four studio albums reached the top of the pop charts. In
America and elsewhere, they were a cult band beloved by critics and by an uncommonly
ardent fan base. Their best-known song probably is the shimmering How Soon Is Now?
a pop masterpiece later used as the theme song of the television series Charmed.
The Smiths still matterand not only to their original followers. When producer Mark
Ronson in 2009 released a disco remake of one of their 80s hits, he received death threats
from Smithies outraged that he had dared to tamper with their heroes work.
Do The Smiths deserve such devotion? The NMEs coronation of them as the kings of
British rock is definitely over the top. Better than the Beatles and the Stones? Not hardly.
But The Smiths were a distinctive band that sounded like no one else that came before

them. Their best work holds up remarkably well nearly a quarter-century after their
breakup.
Founded by guitarist Johnny Marr and vocalist and lyricist Steven Patrick Morrissey, The
Smiths also included bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce. Marr, who wrote
and arranged the music and produced the records, worked a lyrical yet incisively
rhythmic style that drew on rockabilly, R&B, jazz, English folk music, punk, and West
African highlife. You could call him the Keith Richards of his generation. Like Richards,
the Smiths guitarist blended lead and rhythm, and eschewed the self-indulgent and
tedious soloing of Clapton, Page, and their similarly long-winded imitators. The songs
were the thing, and Marr always found the right riff or melodic phrase to make them
memorable.
But the bands dominant figure, the cynosure of most of the adoration, as well as the
hostility they attracted, was the vocalist. Morrissey, as he called himself, was a sui
generis rock star. His was an unmistakably English voice, with clear diction and at times
posh intonation; there was nothing of the blues or any other African American idiom in
his singing. He crooned, he droned, he yelped, and at times he evoked the microtonal
vocalizing of Indian and Arabic music.
But Morrisseys uniqueness wasnt just a matter of singing style. During the 80s he
delighted in making outrageously provocative public statements. (He still does today, as a
middle-aged solo artist.) Morrissey particularly loathed then-Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher. He said hed welcome her assassination, and when she survived an actual
attempt on her life, he expressed his disappointment in the media. He wanted to title the
bands third album Margaret on the guillotine, but record company execs put a stop to
that. His other targets included the monarchy, meat-eating, machismo, and inherited
privilege. He championed vegetarianism, socialism, and republicanism, as well as the
working class victims of Thatcherism.
As Joseph Brooker observes in his contribution to Why Pamper Lifes Complexities?,
Morrissey and The Smiths represented one of the most radical political voices of a
deeply polarized era.
Morrissey also had a finely honed camp sensibility, and he has written some of the
wittiest lyrics in rock. He identified with Oscar Wilde, whose epigrammatic brilliance
and flamboyant public image he took as models for his art and public persona. Morrissey,
like Wilde, was Anglo-Irish; and like the persecuted writer, he was homosexual. But, also
like his idol, Morrissey never explicitly proclaimed his sexuality. He even, for a while,
claimed to be celibate. But the evidence was there, in the bands cover art, which
Morrissey selected (the first album featured a nude photo of Warhol superstar Joe
Dallesandro) and especially in his lyrics.
In response to an interviewers question about his sexuality, Morrissey replied, Its all
there in the lyrics. Indeed. How many straight rock stars sang odes to this charming
man or implored a lover to Shove me on the patio/I'll take it slowly?

The essays in Why Pamper Lifes Complexities? cover a broad range of topics: The
Smiths Irishness (all four of these English rockers were children of Irish Catholic
immigrants); their ambivalent relationship to their hometown, Manchester; politics; social
class; religion; the influence of 1960s British kitchen sink films on Morrisseys lyrics
and the bands iconography; race, and sexuality. The contributions vary in quality, and
some, such as Fergus Campbells piece on conflicts between academics and journalists
over who owns pop music criticism, and Julian Stringers ruminations on what The
Smiths mean to Manchester, are of narrow interest.
The best pieces, though, represent pop music criticism of a very high order, erudite yet
(mostly) free of academic jargon. Joseph Brookers analysis of the bands radical politics,
Has the world changed or have I changed: The Smiths and the Challenge of
Thatcherism, is outstanding, as is Colin Coulters A double bed and a stalwart lover
for sure: The Smiths, the death of pop, and the not so hidden injuries of class. (Every
essay in the book is titled this way, with either a direct quote or a paraphrase from a
Smiths song, followed by an academically-correct subtitle.) Mr. Coulter offers some
acutely insightful commentary on how The Smiths songs represent in part an endeavor
to critique and resist the atomized and instrumental vision of society that Thatcher sought
to inflict.
Amid all the sociology and lit-crit in Why Pamper Lifes Complexities?, Jonathan Hiams
This way and that way: Toward a musical poetics of The Smiths, stands out as the
only essay that analyzes The Smiths music qua music. Hiam explicates the structural
interplay between the bands sound and Morrisseys words, treating both as equals, in
order to tease out a genuine musical poetics. Focusing on three of the bands songs,
Hiam discusses them in formal terms (song structure, harmony, metrical patterns) without
becoming overly technical. His musicologysophisticated yet accessible to nonspecialist readersmakes a convincing case for the richness of The Smiths songs as
musical compositions.
The most disappointing aspect of Why Pamper Lifes Complexities?, at least for this
reviewer, is the books failure to come to grips with Morrisseys sexuality as it informed
The Smiths music and imagery, and their relationship with their fans. The one
contributor who does focus on sexuality, Sheila Whiteley, does so in the context of child
abuse and pedophilia, because some of the bands conservative British critics,
misinterpreting Morrisseys lyrics, irresponsibly and outrageously accused him of
celebrating sexual contact with minors. Whiteley condemns the conflation of
homosexuality and pedophilia. But by discussing Morrisseys lyrics in this light, she
misses an opportunity to say anything really interesting about his sexuality, his
relationship to gay culture, and to his large gay following. (When I saw the band in New
York, the audience comprised mainly punk rockers in their 20s, teenagers, and gay men.)
The fact is, homosexuality was from the start inextricable from The Smiths image and
music. Stephen Holden, an openly gay critic with the New York Times and an early fan of
the band, noted the candid same-sex eroticism in his enthusiastic review of their debut

album. The British rock journalist Jon Savage commented that the lyrics of How Soon is
Now? were evocative of the Manchester gay club scene of the mid-80s.
But the bands relationship to homosexuality was complex. The Smiths certainly were
not gay rights crusaders. While on tour in the U.S., they even declined to give interviews
to the gay press. That attitude should be understood in the context of the era in which the
band emerged. In the 80s, gayness and gender-bending was beginning to become overt in
British pop. There were the bands Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Bronski Beat, and Culture
Club, all led by gay singers, and also Queen, with its flamboyant gay front man Freddie
Mercury.
A few years earlier, Elton John had declared his bisexuality in a Rolling Stone
interview. But the general cultural environment was far more hostile than now. It was
risky for pop stars to come out, as the backlash Elton John faced after his announcement
made all too evident. In that climate, its not surprising that The Smiths were reluctant to
be seen as a gay band. (And, in fact, it appears only Morrissey was non-heterosexual.)
Its too bad the editors of Why Pamper Lifes Complexities? didnt enlist an insightful
gay critic, or even a savvy straight one, to unpack all of this.
The Smiths may no longer exist as a functioning band, but thats not to say theyve been
forgotten. As noted earlier, theyre held in high esteem by contemporary rock and pop
artists. Their fans crave a reunion, and in 2006, the organizers of the Coachella rock
festival offered them $5 million to reunite for a single concert. Morrissey promptly
rejected the offer. He continues to pursue a generally successful, if artistically erratic,
solo career. His former compere Johnny Marr has embarked on a variety of projects, none
of them as compelling as his former band.
Marr, however, did make waves in the British media recently. When conservative Prime
Minister David Cameron announced last year that he was a Smiths fan, Marr went on
Twitter to forbid him from expressing his love for the band. Morrissey applauded his
ex-collaborator, adding that The Smiths albums were not recorded for such people as
Cameron. If thats mild compared to imagining Margaret on the guillotine, the rest of
Morrisseys anti-Cameron diatribe was as splenetic, and splendid, as any fan could hope
for.
Reviewer George De Stefano is a New York-based author and critic. He is the author of
An Offer We Cant Refuse: The Mafia in the Mind of America (Faber & Faber/Farrar,
Straus, Giroux). He is also a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
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