The Smiths formed in Manchester in the spring of 1982 when Johnny Marr knocked on Steven Morrissey’s door in Stretford and suggested they form a band. What followed – four studio albums and a collection of singles between 1983 and 1987 – is one of the most argued-over bodies of work in British music, beloved and reviled in roughly equal measure, and permanently associated with a very specific kind of Manchester: grey, literary, unhappy, magnificent.
Morrissey’s Stretford
Steven Morrissey was born in Davyhulme and grew up in Stretford – the same south Manchester suburbs that housed Manchester United’s Stretford End devotees and the Trafford Centre shoppers who represent everything Morrissey wrote against. The bedsit Mancunianism of the early Smiths lyrics comes directly from these unremarkable streets. The reference to Manchester on the cover of The Queen Is Dead (featuring a still from the 1967 film The Body) is a deliberate literary act – placing Manchester culture in a grand tradition it didn’t know it was part of.
The Salford Lads Club
The photograph of The Smiths outside Salford Lads Club on St Ignatius Walk, taken for the inner sleeve of The Queen Is Dead (1986), is the most reproduced image in Manchester music history. The Salford Lads Club itself is a Victorian philanthropic boys’ club that is still operating as a community organisation. The wall on which the photograph was taken is now a minor pilgrimage destination, covered with photographs left by visitors. The club runs as a Smiths museum alongside its community functions.
Johnny Marr – The Whalley Range Years
Johnny Marr grew up in Wythenshawe and Ardwick before moving to Whalley Range. The house where Marr first met Morrissey was on Kings Road in Whalley Range – a detail that turns up on Smiths fan pilgrimages regularly. Marr’s guitar playing – the jangle that defined the sound – was developed in Manchester bedrooms on second-hand equipment bought from record shops that no longer exist. Marr has remained closely associated with Manchester throughout his career; his solo work continues to reference the city.
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