‘How Soon Is Now?’: everything great about The Smiths in one song
Something about jangly guitars and provocative lyrics, right? That’s the usual order served up when describing the sound of The Smiths in a sentence. Through the rubble of Manchester’s punk explosion, Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke, Mike Joyce, and Morrissey sifted around to rehash something entirely fresh and innovative.
Sharpening the otherwise rough edges of British music, The Smiths remodelled the spirit of punk into something clean-cut, led by Marr and Morrissey’s partnership. Their calling card track ‘This Charming Man’ nestled into the middle section of their self-titled debut record, showcasing Marr’s unique “knife on guitar” effect, inciting tearful dancing and blending an otherwise upbeat tilt with Morrissey’s downcast introspection.
While ‘This Charming Man’ and ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ typified The Smiths’ paradoxical sound, another song lurked in the shadows, ready to burst from the shackles of those confines and celebrate something more expansive altogether. With a pulsing rhythm section, Marr’s guitar glitched in the introduction like a silhouette gliding in a Manchester warehouse rave before Morrissey stepped forth to haunt your hallucinogenic-laced trip. ‘How Soon Is Now?’ became an unlikely hit for The Smiths, after merely being released as a B-side, before making it onto their 1984 compilation album Hatful of Hollow, but its unlikeliness only grows more curious in retrospect.
It’s a powerhouse tune that, yes, diverted from the tighter arrangement of their previous hits. However, it undoubtedly showcased their ability to expand their sonic signature into something rousing while maintaining the sharp sense of poignancy that made them so compelling in the first place. It is shadowy, vague, defined and knowable, all in equal, contrasting measure. It’s the sound of The Smiths, and there has never been anything like them or it.
Discussing what he thinks is the essence of the song’s cult success, Marr said, “The vibrato [tremolo] sound is incredible, and it took a long time. I put down the rhythm track on an Epiphone Casino through a Fender Twin Reverb without vibrato. Then we played the track back through four old Twins, one on each side. We had to keep all the amps vibrating in time to the track and each other, so we had to keep stopping and starting the track, recording it in ten-second bursts.”
All the hours sweating over that sound were worth it. In a ghostly way, it captured the sound of the creating dystopia distending itself over working-class life in Britain. As Marr added, “It is possibly [the Smiths’] most enduring record. It’s most people’s favourite, I think.” We’d concur that it showcases everything great about them in a single song.
Moreover, we simply cannot forget the performance of drummer Mike Joyce on this record, whose power on the track not only keeps up with the soaring guitar lines but lends it a groovier disposition that plays an important role in making it an inherent Smiths tune. It’s somewhat muted, being driven forward by a relentless beat, but when flickers of space open up in between Marr’s guitar, Joyce flutters with fills that mirror the endless arpeggiated chords. Meanwhile, the distance of the beat in the mix adds to the gentle unease beautifully.
“For a lot of The Smiths tunes, I wouldn’t say they’re very complex,” Joyce admitted before continuing, “But I don’t really sit on a groove with a lot of them because there’re a lot of guitar changes”. Here, he demonstrates that dynamic distance perfectly.
Concluding, he added: ”So, in terms of sitting on the groove, ‘How Soon Is Now?’, in fact, Donald Johnson—one of Manchester’s finest drummers, from A Certain Ratio—said to me about that drumbeat, ‘Mike, I don’t think you realise just how cool that drumbeat is.’ I said, ‘Well, you know, I just played drums for what I thought worked for the track, and that’s all I can do.”
In fact, it seems everyone did what they could for the track. In the process, they created a defining masterpiece that has no right to fill an indie dancefloor, but it does so by virtue of its stunning human transcendence.
