In May of 1983, exactly twenty-five years after the debut of A Taste of Honey, this young Manchester band, The Smiths, issued their debut single, "Hand in Glove." While the song only reached #127 on the pop charts, every aspect of the record resisted dismissal. From the surprise of despair that waylays listeners on side A, to the calculating sexual predator that narrates side B, to the naked male body that adorns the cover, the entire single acted as a provocation. Critics were intrigued ("...great promise"), transfixed ("debut affair of the year") and indignant ("tinny, messily produced crap").
"Hand in Glove" tells the commonest love story in pop music, even as the narrator disagrees ("no it's not like any other love, this one is different because it's ours"). By the chorus the infatuation is already tedious, the declarations of true love just cliché. But then the last lines turn the whole thing on its head with such a sudden hopelessness it's cruel: "I know my luck too well, and I'll probably never see you again." This dejection is sung with all the cooing melody of the rest of the verse, but the song has been irreversibly changed.
This sudden and unarguable defeat enlisted countless disciples, down-hearted fans in search of an honesty that they could relate to, a truth unfound in the synthetic pop that dominated the radio. By comparison, the top three U.K. singles of 1983 were Culture Club's nonsensical "Karma Chameleon," Billy Joel's maudlin "Uptown Girl," and UB40's ghastly version of "Red Red Wine". Cast into this wilderness, it's no wonder that the audacity of "Hand in Glove" founded an immediate connection with a similarly desperate host of followers. The shock of this honesty was so fresh that it's easy to forgive listeners for missing the fact that the final line of the song ("I'll probably never see you again") was borrowed from an earlier attempt to reconcile life and love: Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey.
The Smiths quickly developed into a rallying force for disaffected youth. Their songs simultaneously celebrated and lamented the path of the outsider, offering sympathy to lonely teenagers as well as encouragement. While the immensely catchy, lovely and melancholic arrangements had their part in this attraction, it was the singer and lyricist for The Smiths, Steven Morrissey, who was at the heart of their appeal. Morrissey himself represented the same type of contradiction as his songs: on the one hand certain that he was always meant to be famous ("I decided that I was going to be a pop star at a very early age"), and on the other, presenting a suicidal, intensely depressed persona that remained alive only to for the sake of making another record ("The group are like a life support machine to me"). His fans both adored him and worried after him, eagerly encouraging both tendencies. Whether or not "Hand in Glove" was a popular hit, by the end of the year, The Smiths had fostered a cult following unlike any in history. As Morrissey explained in a November, 1983 interview, "The disciples we've accumulated are incredibly charming people. They don't spit or gob, they bring flowers."
While each year brought more flowers to Morrissey's stage, these "disciples" became more known for the depths of their fanaticism. Stories of admirers rushing stages, merchandise stands, tour buses, and hotels became common, but the most legendarily hectic part of the mania came at the end of each concert when Morrissey would throw his shirt into the crowd. Baz Boorer, guitarist for Morrissey since 1991, once described this phenomenon in an interview: "Oh, the fights you used to see over the shirts. Fisticuffs! I remember the very first show we ever did and some kid talking to me through clenched teeth, whispering, 'I've got a bit of his shirt in me mouth.' Otherwise someone would have had it."
These fans, who would buy all five Morrissey t-shirts and a tour program at the live concerts; who would place classified ads in homemade publications like Morri'Zine that pleaded for understanding: "I'm in a desperate search to find words to cover the walls of this cold blank room"; who placed their lives at the whim of their favorite singer; such fans were eager to learn about this hero. What they discovered was that Morrissey was very much like them: a victim of a miserable adolescence ("as a teenager, I could never stress how depressed I was"), poor ("I can simply remember being in very dark streets, penniless"); unable to participate in society ("The fear and anguish of waking up, of having to get dressed, having to walk down the road, having to walk into assembly, having to do those lessons"); and, most tellingly, in search of a sympathetic voice: "The power of the written word really stung me, and I was also entirely immersed in popular music."
This is where The Smiths truly connected to their audience. In 1983, Morrissey declared that "we're really trying to attract the shy sort of person who never goes to gigs, never buys records," and by filling the songs with narratives and fears that such people could relate to, they guaranteed the bond. The stories told on their debut record were nothing like the ones on the radio, which, in 1984, was primarily concerned with Frankie Goes to Hollywood ("Relax") and George Michael ("Careless Whisper"). Amid this glib suggestiveness and infidelity, Morrissey was simply terrified by sex: "she's too rough and I'm too delicate"; while pop songs took place in dimly-lit, modern nightclubs, Morrissey was nearly bed-ridden with shyness and self doubt: "I would go out tonight, but I haven't got a stitch to wear"; while every other singer took pains to describe their own sexual allure, Morrissey was flawed to the point of repetition: "Oh I'm too tired/I'm so sick and tired/and I've feeling very sick and ill today."
But it was not enough that Morrissey could tell the same stories as his fans, he truly was one of them. When Morrissey described "the shy sort of person who never goes to gigs, never buys records," he followed up by saying "believe it or not, I was like that before I joined The Smiths!" And just like his shy fans, he knows there is more to him than people see. When he sang, "people see no worth in you, oh, but I do" the disciples knew that he was singing to them. And when he sings "nobody ever looks at me twice", they understood him completely.