Was The Smiths a story of unrequited love?
“You think you were my first love, but you’re wrong / You were the only one / Who’s come and gone,” Morrissey sings on ‘I Know Very Well How I Got My Name’, one of the first tracks he penned following the split of The Smiths.
It begins with a clue as he sings of morphing from a “child in a curious phase” into “a man with sullen ways”. With the titular lyrics, “Oh, I know very well how I got my name”, he seems to be singing about the band, about the success it fostered, making a name for the singer, but also about how the group took Morrissey from feeling like a child when they began to feeling like a sullen and jaded man by the end of it.
But if that’s the case, who is the love he declares to be his only one? On the internet, as the song soundtracks montages of clips and photos, fans seem to have decided it was Johnny Marr, and that this 1988 track, amongst others, was a heartbreak song for the bandmate he loved, really loved.
Morrissey’s sexuality was a strange topic of debate from the start. In 1980, he said both he and his girlfriend at the time were bisexual, then during his time in The Smiths, he claimed he was fully celibate or even asexual. In 1985, he rejected any and all labels, stating, “I don’t recognise such terms as heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, and I think it’s important that there’s someone in pop music who’s like that.”
The truth seems to be that Morrissey is bisexual as he’s been known to have relationships with both men and women, but overwhelmingly, in his own insights to his love life, the singer sees himself as someone doomed to be trapped in something unrequired, stating, “always attracted to men and women who were never attracted to me” and so he didn’t have “relationships at all”.
He said that in 1989, around the time of ‘I Know Very Well How I Got My Name’, and around the time of the end of The Smiths, adding to the canon fodder fired by the portion of their fans who truly believe that the story of the band goes as follows; Morrissey and Johnny Marr met, their creative spark made the singer fall in love hard, their falling out was driven by the heartache and frustration caused by the fact that the guitarist didn’t love him back, and in the end, the group couldn’t withstand the emotional pain it caused the leader.
With that theory in mind, it’s easy enough to find clues that it was unrequited love that powered anything. “On the day that your mentality / Decides to try to catch up with your biology / Come ’round ’cause I want the one I can’t have / And it’s driving me mad / It’s all over, all over, all over my face,” Morrissey sings on ‘I Want the One I Can’t Have’, reminiscing the image of the pair spending days on end at the singers house, frantically writing songs.
The lyrics hinting that the love is “all over” shows up on his face and can be found as real world evidence too, as there are countless images where Marr is blue-steeling at the camera while Morrissey seems to stare wistfully at him, dancing around the stage but only watching him.
It seemed that the band picked up on it too as a interviewed asked Mike Joyce, “So you say they’re usually close?” to which the drummer laughed, knowingly, before answering, “Yeah, you could say that,” adding, “I think they forget the rest of us notice to be honest”, hitting towards another lyric that people pull up as evidence, as Morrissey sings in ‘Hand in Glove’: “And if people stare / Then the people stare”.
It would all be theoretical if it hadn’t been confirmed. Q once asked him straight out in 1994, years after their fall out and when their ongoing hostility was fresh, “Do you love Johnny Marr?” to which the singer said, “Yes… That’s not a hard one. I loved and love Johnny Marr”.
Sure, that could just be platonic, but there are behaviours that suggest not. The lyricism about forbidden love and the songs containing covert gay slang, the immediate heartbreak songs Morrissey wrote after the suddenly breakup of the band, the way Morrissey’s intense jealousy spurred on that breakup if Marr worked with any other artists, as if collaboration meant more than just business, and the intensity of their friendship breakdown despite it’s closeness and how the on-going hostility surely suggest a deep emotional wound that even big bucks reunion deals can’t plaster.
