The Story Behind The Song: How The Smiths created ‘The Queen Is Dead’
Of all The Smiths’ iconic recordings, few are more demonstrative of the Manchester outfit’s collective vision than ‘The Queen Is Dead’. Featuring Morrissey’s sharp lyricism, Johnny Marr’s chorus-steeped guitar and the propulsive rhythms of Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce, the 1986 single is a chaotic swirl of fervent anti-traditionalism, garage riffs and effects-driven madness. So how did it all come together?
The Queen is Dead was a patchwork of old demos, tracks Johnny Marr had written during soundcheck and songs spawned from mammoth writing sessions with Morrissey back in Manchester. The album’s lead single, for example, was based on a track the guitarist had originally started writing when he was still a teenager. Back in 1986, Marr explained that it was heavily influenced by his fascination with America’s underground garage scene of the 1960s: “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.”
The majority of the album was recorded at Jacob Studios in Farnham in the winter of 1985, one of the coldest in England since 1925. ‘The Queen Is Dead’ was one of the very last tracks to be put to tape and was recorded on the same day Marr was trying out his brand new wah pedal. While putting the new piece of kit through its paces, Marr decided to revisit an old riff he’d written while still living at his parent’s. Mike offered up a beat, Andy provided a slick bass groove, and they were away.
As Rourke later recalled: “Me, Mike and Johnny were jamming on this heavy riff – we played it solidly for about 20 minutes, looking at each other thinking, ‘We’ve really got something here.’ Johnny made me feel good about it; said it was one of the best basslines he’d ever heard, so my head was kind of swelling through the roof. Then, just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, Morrissey comes and puts his lyrics over the top.”
After a failed attempt to get Linda McCartney to record a piano part and a technical glitch that forced the band to re-record the single at London’s Wessex Studios, ‘The Queen Is Dead’ was released on June 16th, 1986. While not nearly as vitriolic as The Sex Pistols’ effort ‘God Save The Queen’, The Smiths’ single made quite the victim of Queen Elizabeth. Indeed, it features a line in which Morrissey imagines the monarch with her “head in a sling,” as though she has just been guillotined.
Years later, Morrissey would admit that he’d never intended to attack the monarchy in “a sort of beer monster way”. However, he did find himself expressing how “this happiness we had slowly slips away and is replaced by something that is wholly grey and wholly saddening. The very idea of the monarchy and the Queen of England is being reinforced and made to seem more useful than it really is.”
