I just finished reading Tony Fletcher's amazing new book A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of The Smiths. Despite its more than 600 pages, it's a fast read, yet informative and well researched. And it's not a song-by-song analysis of the Smiths catalog (although there's plenty of that) but rather places the band in their cultural, social and political context in 1980s Britain. I highly recommend it.
In any case, now that I've completed the book, I'm going back over the pages I dog-eared for further research. I like to hear the influences Fletcher writes about and I'm spending a lot of time on YouTube following up on his writing. And I'll no doubt have more of these types of posts in the near future.
Today I start with the story of when Britain's Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron referred to himself as a Smiths fan -- something both Marr and Morrissey -- in a rare moment of post-breakup solidarity -- forbade him from doing. And then something even more peculiar happened: This exchange between Cameron and a Labour M.P. over who could name more Smiths songs:
Don't you wish we had something like Prime Minister's Question Time in this country?
That is a great story.
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