5. ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...THE SMITHS

The absolute very first time I saw The Smiths play live was on February 16th 1984 at Leicester University. I wasn’t at University, I was still at school (and not one in Leicester either), but the Smiths didn’t seem to do school disco gigs so we didn't have much choice but traipse over to Leicester whether we liked or not (and, along with most of the people who lived there at the time, we didn't). I've heard it's a lovely place now though.

The Smiths had only started releasing records late the previous year so, unusually for me, I was an early-adopter of the band. In fact, taking into account the 18 month time lag for anything cultural to reach my rural home town, I actually liked The Smiths before I’d even heard of them. I had been searching for a new 'favourite band' at the time and it looked like being a toss-up between Big Country and Kajagoogoo so, if I'm ever asked what I would be if I wasn't a Smiths fan, I can safely give the same answer as Peter Crouch (click here if you don't know it).

I arranged to drive some mates to the venue. I borrowed my mum’s red mini which was a tricky negotiation because it had only just been repaired from a previous trip to the same venue a few days earlier. I’d managed to crash it on the way back along the winding country lanes by taking one of the bends a little too fast. My girlfriend, Julie, had been in the car with me and so - as teenage boys are programmed to do - I drove unnecessarily fast to impress her, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that, contrary to what I've been told several times since, I have always had a natural gift for understanding women. Either that or I was pretending my mum's little red mini had go-faster stripes & a headlamp bar and I was in the Italian Job (more of that in a later blog).

I hit a tree head-on although Julie (sensibly strapped into the passenger seat less than 12 months after seatbelts had been made compulsory - one of the few things to thank Jimmy Saville for) suggested afterwards that I managed to swerve to the right just before impact in an act of self-preservation bordering on manslaughter. She actually told me recently (she was the one to break up with me but, after 30 years and at the start of the 2nd lockdown, I magnanimously agreed to let bygones be bygones and speak to her again) that she had no recollection of the crash at all. Or of going out with me. She's even reinstated the restraining order.

Anyway, this time round I managed an accident-free journey to the venue, despite the threat of snow showers, and we'd got in early enough to use the supporting band's set (the Red Guitars - very good but surprisingly poorly-named) to manoeuvre ourselves close to the front of the stage. I recognised Morrissey from Top of the Pops a couple of months earlier when This Charming Man hit the heady heights of No.25 in the charts. Clearly this appearance captivated me far more than the general music-loving public because, after their virtuoso performance, the single promptly fell back down the charts the following week.

I had also been struck by the Smiths single covers, especially the first single which showed a bloke’s naked bum on the artwork - I know naked bums are two-a-penny nowadays but they were quite the rarity on record sleeves in 1983. I spent the first half of the gig trying to figure out whether it was Morrissey’s bum on the artwork. Apparently, as I found out much later, it belonged to a chap called George. Morrissey’s jeans fell straight from his waist to the back of his knees, uninterrupted by a pair of buttocks, so George’s bulbous cheeks had obviously won the day.

After a handful of songs, the gig was warming up nicely. Morrissey had thrown his bunch of gladioli (my teenage daughter just asked if this was a type of pasta - I’m honestly not kidding) into the audience and some enthusiastic lad threw one back and hit Johnny Marr’s guitar as he was playing ‘You’ve Got Everything Now’. The only musical instrument I played at that age was the recorder (not very 'indie pop' but it was compulsory at my school) so, aside from the odd shoe, I'd never had anything thrown at me mid-tune and was in no position to judge my future guitar hero's reaction. As it was, he pointed his plectrum at the offender, threw a hissy fit and stormed off stage. This seemed a little rich given the earlier flower-hurling antics of his own front-man but I think we were all quite keen to get out of Leicester before we were snowed in so we happily shuffled out of the concert hall and made our way home. I've heard it's a lovely place now though.

In hindsight, I realise that JM hadn’t cut the gig short but that 45 mins was the Smiths version of a 90 mins set, an approach mirrored in their 12 inch singles where, unlike the usual remixes, live recordings and bonus tracks which other bands offered, the A-Side of a Smiths 12 inch single was remarkably similar to the A-Side of their 7 inch version. If you were lucky, the B-Side carried an extra track - usually from an album you already owned - and, for all that, you had to fork out £1.99p which was twice as much as the 7 inch, nearly as much as an LP and roughly £300 in today’s money. Many people would've been put off purchasing them but, with a shrewd eye on their future investment potential, I bought every one I could get my hands on.

As I write this, it's a Wednesday night and I'm halfway through my second bottle of pinot noir. I have just paused my nightly eBay search for 80s nostalgia (Battling Tops, Fighting Furies and Subbuteo mainly) so I could check on my Smiths nest egg and there are literally thousands of the bloody things on eBay at roughly the same price now as I paid in the 1980s. What a bummer (the George version not Morrissey's pathetic effort). I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour but heaven knows I’m miserable now (ba-dum tish).

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