The Smiths hit song Johnny Marr admitted copied The Stooges and The Velvet Underground
Johnny Marr and Morrissey might be two figures regarded as anything but cut from the same cloth, but within The Smiths, their differences resulted in excellence. Morrissey’s satirical, often macabre lyricism and Marr’s bright, jangly guitar melodies created a unique sonic blend that defined the entire sound of the 1980s.
While working on The Queen Is Dead, Marr and Morrissey’s joint approach seemed effortless. With a handful of songs Marr had written during their recent tour, alongside a series of instant hits written by the pair in a “marathon” session at Marr’s home in Manchester, the record effectively wrote itself with little to no frictions, showcasing the natural synergy between the two musicians.
What’s even more intriguing is that the brilliance of the album seems to speak almost entirely for itself—home to hits like ‘Frankly, Mr Shankly’, ‘I Know It’s Over’, ‘Cemetry Gates’, ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’, ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’, and, of course, ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’, The Queen Is Dead is the perfect storm filled with authoritative disillusionment, anti-establishment social commentary, and a navigation of death and mortality.
In 1986, Marr also explained that ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ was heavily influenced by his fascination with America’s underground garage scene of the 1960s and early ’70s: “I had an idea to do a song that had the aggression of the Detroit garage bands, ‘cos I’m such a Stooges fan,” he said. “And it’s influenced by The Velvets too – it’s The Smiths does The Stooges does The Velvet Underground.”
Beyond ‘Bigmouth’, these two bands formed the core of The Smiths’ indie ethos. The band might not have had the raw power of The Stooges, but they had their stern ability to separate themselves from everything else that was happening in the so-called alternative scene, just as The Velvet Underground had done before them. Just as The Stooges sounded like a late ’70s band rather than a late ’60s one, The Smiths sounded like a ’90s group rather than an ’80s outfit.
So, it comes as little surprise that it was The Stooges that completely changed Marr’s life. In fact, when he was young he raced off to but their most seminal album after hearing tell of its radical force on the grapevine.
”What first struck me about Raw Power was a beautiful darkness to it, a sophistication almost,” he told Spin. ”It delivered exactly what was on the cover: other-worldly druggy rock ’n’ roll, sex, violence, but strangely beautiful somehow. From then on, I just climbed into a world with that record.”
”’Gimme Danger’ was the riff that Billy [Duffy, Marr’s childhood friend and future member of the Cult] thought sounded like my playing, and he was right,” Marr recalled. ”When I first heard it, I knew what he meant and more importantly, I knew I was on the right track, in a big way, so that’s always been a big track for me.”
While much more muscular than a track like ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’, there is something ethereal about the playing on ‘Gimmer Danger’, reminiscent of The Smiths’ soundscapes. Heavier notes lurch out of the mix, leering forth like danger itself. Marr has always been aware of this: the power of placement and pronunciation.
”I love the tune too,” Marr continues. ”I spent an entire winter playing guitar along with the album in my bedroom, in the dark, orange streetlights coming through the windows, when I was sixteen. Its influence came out on the Smiths album The Queen Is Dead.”
The Queen Is Dead is a record that prides itself not on being different but on being itself. Perhaps no band in history achieved that sense of individuality with quite as much vigour as The Stooges and The Velvet Underground – so much so, in fact, that they failed to capture an audience in their day as a result. If The Smiths had found themselves in the big pond of America, perhaps the same fate would’ve awaited them.
