The Smiths are a British musical group that formed in 1982 in Manchester. The peculiarity of the band was the fact that they influenced several musical trends at the end of the 20th century, although they only existed for about 5 years.
The band was founded by gifted musicians – songwriter and vocalist playing the piano, Stephen Morrissey, and guitarist John Maher, who renamed himself Johnny Marr after a while, as he was the full namesake of another popular musician. The duo was the beginning of a band that opposed the very popular punk rock movement in Great Britain at the time, as well as the New Wave that was still going strong in the 80s.
In 1984 The Smiths added the missing members to the band: bassist Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce, who played drums. It was after that that they gave the name to the band, using a simple and clear word “Smiths”, which means “The Smiths”.
Interesting! Thanks to the extravagant, daring behavior of the band’s frontman and provocative lyrics, the first singles made it to the national hit parade. After that, the guys began to rapidly receive offers from record companies.
On February 20, 1984 the band released their debut album of the same name. It became popular at once – for almost 33 weeks it topped the charts. But it did not do without scandals: tabloids found in the lyrics of “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” support of pedophilia, which was resentfully denied by the frontman.
In 1985, the group’s second album, Meat Is Murder, was released, which featured more pronounced social and political statements. The main song was a protest against the killing of animals, it had bright vegetarian overtones. Nowhere Fast” voiced republican ideas. And the lyrics of “Headmaster Ritual” and “Barbarism Begins at Home” raised always relevant themes of physical abuse of children at home and at school.
Following his beliefs in the songs, Morrissey stated in interviews that all band members were vegetarians. That is why he forbade each of them to eat meat products in public in order not to be caught by the camera lenses.
In the same 1985 the band was on a long tour in the USA and Great Britain. At the same time they were recording their third album, which was released in the summer of 1986. Alain Delon is depicted on its cover. At once the record took the second place in the British charts.
During this period, the atmosphere within the band became complicated. Legal problems with the record company delayed the release: the album was ready in the end of 1985, but it was released a few months later than planned. Because of the lengthy tour Marr very tired, fell into depression, began to abuse alcohol, felt like a sick man.