The People Speak

In my day job, I cover politics and frequently report on public opinion polls. Today, I got an email from Public Policy Polling, a pollster we often cite, with results of a poll they conducted on music.

Some highlights:
Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and the Beach Boys are overall very popular: All three have favorability ratings in the 70s and unfavorability in the teens. Not so for Michael Jackson, who's 48 favorable, 44 unfavorable. And Madonna and Kurt Cobain are under water in terms of favorability -- more people have unfavorable views of them than favorable views. They even polled on Morrissey, who scored a 17 percent favorable rating versus 31 percent unfavorable (with 52 percent not sure).

Now, when you break things down by political persuasion, things get interesting. Democrats overwhelmingly have a favorable view of Michael Jackson, while Republicans do not. And when you ask people who their favorite Beatle is, Democrats say John Lennon while Republicans say Paul McCartney.

Finally, Republicans say the 1950s were the best decade for music. Democrats say it's the 60s. No surprise, there. But overall, three quarters say the best musical decade was either the 50s, 60s or 70s. My favorite musical decade -- the 80s -- only got 15 percent. But at least that beat the rock-and-rap 90s, which had a paltry 6 percent! Sorry, Limp Bizkit.

Johnny Marr at Irving Plaza

It was probably two songs into Johnny Marr's set last night at Irving Plaza that I realized I had died and gone to heaven. I was hearing "Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before" -- a Smiths song being played by a Smith.

"Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before" is one of the strongest songs off the Smiths last studio record Strangeways Here We Come. But I associate it very closely with Morrissey, perhaps because the video features the Moz and a bunch of lookalikes riding bikes around Manchester. Last night -- at least for me -- it became a Johnny Marr song.

The Smiths aren't coming back. There won't be a reunion -- the personalities are too strong, the divisions too deep. So that leaves the 40-something Smiths fan with two choices: Morrissey or Marr. Whose stamp is more important on the Smiths? Obviously, they were equally important. But would you rather hear Morrissey sing with a backing band that can't handle the sublime guitar parts that made the Smiths shine? Or would you rather go straight to the source, and see Johnny Marr?

For me the answer was easy. And my incredibly high expectations were more than met at last night's show. Marr's guitar work, of course, was as fantastic as ever -- even better than the studio albums would lead you to believe. And as a frontman, he's surprisingly good, with a genuine, rock star cool that doesn't come off as affected or cheesy. He kicked off with "The Right Stuff Right" and played a lot of his new solo album The Messenger, culminating in my song of the year so far, "New Town Velocity".

But it was the Smiths tracks -- "Stop Me", "Bigmouth Strikes Again", "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out", "London" and, of course, "How Soon is Now?" -- that really got the crowd going.

Marr handled the Smiths songs very well. His voice doesn't have the character of Morrissey's -- for better or worse -- but he sung them well. And therein lies the inherent conundrum in all of this: What does Marr think when he sings Morrissey's words? He didn't tip his cap to his erstwhile partner the whole night, which, considering how nice a guy he seems to be, was, at least to me, a surprise. But then again, it's Marr's music, so he has every right to take ownership of it. And I'm sure Morrissey's not thinking about Marr when his band plays Marr's music.



Anyway, the set had a few surprises: A cover of the Crickets' "I Fought the Law" (played faithfully to the Clash version) and two Electronic songs -- "Forbidden City" and a terrific guitar version of "Getting Away With It."

The show also surprised me culturally. Sure, the crowd was largely older -- lots of guys in their 40s, many with thinning hair. But there was a good crop of younger kids, too, and it's good to see them turn out for a guy who has influenced so much indie music over the past 20 years. One side note: there was an older Miami Vice looking guy and his equally older girlfriend or wife standing near me and I overheard them talking before the show about how no one in the crowd "listened to [The Smiths] the way we did" and that the "kids" in the crowd can't possibly be true fans like them. And then to prove they were the assholes I suspected them to be, the guy got into a shoving match with someone as the show got underway. Nice.

Another Smiths Homage... to T. Rex

Here's another obvious Smiths touchstone: T. Rex. You'll hear the homage instantly in The Smiths' "Panic", which lifts its chord structure straight from T. Rex's "Metal Guru."

Here's "Panic":

And here's "Metal Guru":

Morrissey and Johnny Marr were huge T. Rex fans dating back to the early 1970s.And as they say, imitation is the greatest form of flattery.

A Light That Never Goes Out, Take 2

Here's another fun nugget from "A Light That Never Goes Out", Tony Fletcher's book about the Smiths.

In 1983, as Johnny Marr and producer John Porter (the bassist from Roxy Music) worked out the track that was to become "How Soon Is Now?", dance music was all the rage. Hip-hop was taking off, The Smiths had toured in clubs like Danceteria in New York, and their American record label even released 12" dance remixes of Smiths songs, as was the order of the day. Fletcher writes about the production of the track -- at the time just called "Swamp" -- and what was to be Marr's final instrumental flourish before Morrissey was called in to add lyrics:

"The final instrumental touch was Marr's relatively simple melody -- the high notes heard at the end of each 'verse' -- which he played using the electric guitar's natural harmonics. An almost precise replica of the synthesized vibraphone sound heard loudly on Lovebug Starski's 1983 12" "You've Gotta Believe," this was Marr's not to Starski as both a distant hip-hop influence and an immediate welcoming presence when the Smiths appeared at Danceteria. Such subtle notations were his way of countering the Smiths' public perception as '60s revivalists and rock purists."

Listen for yourself. Here's Lovebug Starski's "You've Gotta Believe" -- and the notes Marr borrowed for what was to become "How Soon is Now" will be very obvious:

And here's "How Soon is Now?":

A Light That Never Goes Out, Take 1

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?