How jealousy helped inspire The Smiths song ‘This Charming Man’
‘This Charming Man’ is a song explicitly written about being whisked away into a better life. The Smiths’ homoerotic-fuelled second single contains themes of vanity, insecurity, and jealousy, all stacked on top of a tale revolving around an older man picking up a “jumped-up pantry boy” when his bicycle tire blows out by the side of the road.
The debate about how much of the song, if any parts at all, were inspired by real-life events has been at the forefront of fans’ minds for decades. Morrissey remained coy about his own connection to ‘This Charming Man’, usually dismissing the lyrics as a complete fantasy. However, at least some elements of the song were from Morrissey’s own life.
“For years and years, I never had a job, or any money. Consequently, I never had any clothes whatsoever,” Morrissey told Undress in 1984. “I found that on those very rare occasions when I did get invited anywhere I would constantly sit down and say, ‘Good heavens, I couldn’t possibly go to this place tonight because I don’t have any clothes, I don’t have any shoes.’ So I’d miss out on all those foul parties. It was really quite a blessing in disguise.”
As for the music, Johnny Marr has maintained that the circular central riff was written out of necessity. “I remember writing it, it was in preparation for a John Peel single. I wrote it the same night as ‘Pretty Girls Make Graves’ and ‘Still Ill,'” Marr told Guitar Player in 1990. According to Marr, the success of Rough Trade label mates Aztec Camera also caused him to buckle down and write the guitar lines for ‘This Charming Man’.
“A couple of days before I wrote ‘This Charming Man’ I’d heard ‘Walk Out To Winter’ by Aztec Camera on BBC Radio 1, and I felt a little jealous,” Marr revealed to Mojo in 2008. “My competitive urges kicked in. I felt that we needed something upbeat and in a major key for Rough Trade to get behind.”
“That’s why I wrote it in the key of G, which to this day I rarely do. I knew that ‘This Charming Man’ would be our next single,” Marr claimed. “I did the whole thing in one go into this TEAC 3-track tape recorder that I used to write on. I came up with the basic chords and immediately overdubbed the top line and intro riff.”
The quickness with which Marr composed the song led to him not viewing it very highly amongst the band’s catalogue of songs. “Because I’d done it so casually before I wasn’t sure if it was any good or not. Then we recorded it at Maida Vale and I realized it had something special about it,” Marr recalled to Q Magazine. “I wince a bit when I hear it now. It only tells the shiny side of the story, it in no way epitomizes what was good about the band in the long term. But God bless it though, it seemed to catch on with a lot of people.”
Check out ‘This Charming Man’ down below.
