Bernard Sumner’s favourite song by The Smiths: “It knocked me for six”
Joy Division and New Order were at the forefront of Manchester’s rise as the UK’s music capital as the 1970s morphed into the next decade. With Joy Division, they took a bleak, industrial approach to post-punk, while New Order evolved into a machine-powered sound driven by electronics and hypnotic grooves. Both acts were integral to the scene that revolved around Factory Records and the Haçienda nightclub, shaping the city’s musical legacy and inspiring countless artists in the years to come.
However, it wasn’t just them that were making waves in Manchester around this time, and during the 1980s, a flurry of activity began to take place in the city that saw many mutations in sound take place. Pushing forward a sound that would eventually become known as indie rock, a group of four local lads known as The Smiths would one of the city’s next major exports, and even from early singles such as ‘Hand in Glove’ and ‘This Charming Man’, they were already challenging New Order for the throne as the most exciting act in the area.
This didn’t mean that the two were at odds with each other, though, as they were largely attempting to appeal to different audiences at this time. In fact, there was almost an active sense of encouragement coming from bands within the scene to aid Manchester’s bid to usurp London as the main cultural centre of the country, and the jangly sounds of The Smiths were actually appealing to at least one member of New Order, no matter how opposing their sound might have been.
New Order guitarist and frontman Bernard Sumner was a vocal supporter of what The Smiths were up to and proclaimed on an episode of Ken Bruce’s BBC Radio 2 show ‘Tracks of my Years’ that his favourite track by his fellow Mancunians was ‘The Boy With the Thorn in His Side’, originally released in 1985 and later remixed for their third album, The Queen is Dead.
Sumner would also proclaim in an interview with the Independent that The Smiths were a significant band to him, which stunned him when he was first exposed to their music. “I’d not heard anything like it before,” he told the newspaper. “I didn’t know where it was coming from, but I knew I liked it. It kind of knocked me for six, really.”
After The Smiths disbanded in 1987, Sumner recruited their former guitarist Johnny Marr for a project of his own away from New Order. The two had only met once prior while both working on a record for another Manchester band, Quando Quango, in 1984, but Sumner recognised that there was something about Marr’s talents that would make him a prime candidate for working alongside on what would become the project known as Electronic.
Speaking to Mojo in 2013, Sumner would go on to praise the character of his close friend and collaborator, recalling fond memories of how they got to know each other in the late 1980s and attended the Haçienda together. “He can give you an inferiority complex,” Sumner said of Marr’s attitude.
Adding: “His obsession is where a lot of his talent has come from. When others were clubbing, chasing girls and getting drunk, perhaps he was at home, practising his guitar over and over.”
As far away from one another as they may have seemed, they were able to learn a lot from each other, and the appreciation is a mutual and long-lasting one.
