Re: These Things Take Time In-Depth Discussion That'll Piss Some People Off.
Thanks Amy, great feedback, except:
NONE of the early songs i referenced above are or could possibly be about Johnny Marr. These are roughly the first 10 of the 15 Smiths songs ever written. Most likely, every lyric was written before Johnny met Moz in May of 1982.
Moz left school in 1976. My guess would be the "affair" with the unknown person we're talking about, which formed the basis of all those early songs, happened in 1980 or 1981. Probably someone at the local uni. And recently enough that Moz felt going back to those lyrics, which had already been written (in some form) not too long before Marr came along, was a good idea.
Hell, I remember writing about 50 poems about a break up to a relationship that never happened when I was 18. Morrissey was barely 23 when Marr came along; most likely, these are the deeply poetic and talented but nonetheless typical poems that young broken-hearted people write in their rooms to vanquished dreams of love at that tender age.
It wasn't Marr, and I doubt it was James Maker. The muse remains undisclosed, but when you look at that earliest body of work, it seems clear that most of The Smiths and Hatful of Hollow was inspired by, if not one person, then a series of similar events.
It's no secret Moz likes the rough boys (Boxers, etc)... which leaves a lot of room for quashed hopes and misunderstandings, especially in working-class Manchester around 1981.
Eee, calm down, calm down!
I do not think Morrissey had a substantial amount of lyrics written before '82 - or in case, not ones that would later be used for Smiths songs. He might have had fragments, poems, a few lyrics that he might have tried out with other bands - but when the Smiths first started gigging, they had so little material that they added cover versions to their set.
This isn't to negate your belief that those songs were about a pre-Smiths relationship (very possible), but I'm convinced that whatever he had by '82, it wasn't 12-15 songs just sitting in his notepad, waiting for the music to be added. By Morrissey's own admission, he had almost "given up" on his musical ambitions by the time Johnny arrived (having failed to set the world on fire with his early bands or writing projects), and most of his time was spent waxing enthusiastic in the NME reviews section and writing to pen pals. Of course, along with "Jeane" and "Miserable Lie", it's plausible that the muse for many of his early lyrical attempts was Linder - but for the fact that "These Things Take Time", "What Difference..." etc have a strong homoerotic undercurrent.
Now, I know you named a cluster of songs where Morrissey fantasizes about shagging some anonymous rough (Handsome Devil, Reel Around The Fountain) or bitter memories and "what ifs" from school (You've Got Everything Now) - I don't think they have anything to do with Johnny, so we're in agreement there. My gist was that as The Smiths got off the ground, there was a definite lyrical shift away from the early-sexual-fumblings topic (probably based on experience) to a consistent theme of unrequited or unfulfilled desire for someone who is out of reach, whose
mentality has not caught up with their
biology. Hell, that's practicall the Smiths' oeuvre. I made specific reference to "I Want the One I Can't Have", which was on Meat is Murder (definitely stretching it to suggest that the lyrics for the second album were written by '82, surely!) and to "What Difference Does It Make?", which as we know, was
re-written for the final single in '84. I also mentioned There Is a Light, I Won't Share You and I Started Something I Couldn't Finish - hope to God they weren't about a teen romance in 1980! As for your comment about "Forgive Someone", come on now...concede that one and we'll say no more about it.
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I feel that maybe wires got crossed somewhere and I didn't make myself very clear with that first response. I'm not saying every song on every album is about Johnny, or every single song that deals with homoerotic longing and relationships - just...a lot of them. Particularly in the period from '84-88.
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