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Strange to think about it in these terms now that Johnny Marr is a solo artist and Morrissey is doing his best to please only himself; after the lawsuits and the contractual revelations. Still: the driving principle and greatest strength of The Smiths was always unity – the unique quality they had as a band.
Forty years on from the release of their debut album, it’s that which we celebrate with our the 172-page Definitive Edition of our Ultimate Music Guide to The Smiths. As Mike Joyce writes in his introduction to the magazine, the band had a quality which remained mysterious even to those closest to it.
“The music we were playing was so different, and it stayed like that throughout the Smiths’ career,” Mike says. “It wasn’t punk or reggae or vaudeville, or something with big anthemic tunes but at the same time it was all of that. The band was never about the four individuals. You could say the same about the Beatles or the Stones: how did it work? Why did it work? It just happened that way, as a unit. What we were creating was so magical and diverse it drew us all in.”