Wizards of Moz

The Smiths. Photo by Stephen Wright. Courtesy SmithsPhotos.com.

On one of the more recent rainy days in Manchester, a mixture of academics and civilians congregated in the atrium of a white-walled building at the Metropolitan University. From a distance this could have been a crowd at any academic conference, but a telling clue came from the state of the men’s hair. Amongst the styles were a suspicious number of quiffs in various states of elevation. (A quick definition: a quiff is “a man’s prominent forelock, worn elevated.” Quaff means drinking; quiff means hair like Elvis.)

These quiffs were meant to look like Morrissey, the lead singer of one of the most beloved bands of the 1980s, the Smiths. Some of the greying quiffs in the crowd looked ready to collapse, and were only standing thanks to a few stubborn upright hairs. The younger quiffs were sturdy. It was a hopeful sign. The hairstyle — like the Smiths’ music itself — had been passed with care from one generation to the next.

The crowd in the atrium had gathered from universities in Norway, Portugal and Germany to discuss the literary and cultural significance of the Smiths. The name chosen for this first-ever academic conference to focus on their music and lyrics was a Smiths’ lyric, “Why Pamper Life’s Complexities?” Over the next day and a half there would be discussions of “The Smiths, Manchester and Identity”; “Subjectivity, Suicide and the Smiths”; “The Smiths, Morrissey and Sexual Dialogics.” Ellen Gorman, from George Mason University in Virginia, arrived to talk about the images on Smiths album covers. Amanda Graham came from Oxford to deliver a paper on how the music of the Smiths worked as an inside joke for its fans. There was even a paper entitled, simply, “Does the Body Rule the Mind or Does the Mind Rule the Body? I Dunno.”

What was it about the Smiths that made them worthy of an entire weekend of academic scrutiny? In 1982, a young guitarist named Johnny Marr met aspiring lyricist Steven Patrick Morrissey and the two went on to write, over the course of five years, a melancholic and elaborately literate form of rock music. The band was rounded out by bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce, and while they never achieved a fan base as large as U2, Smiths fans were known for their fervency: these lyrics had to be — just had to be — written especially for them. The image of the Smiths was anchored around Morrissey — Moz for short — who set himself apart from other rock icons with a refusal to announce himself as gay or straight. He fostered a habit of wearing a hearing aid he did not need, and a tendency of throwing gladioli about the stage during live performances. His favorite subjects for discussion were Oscar Wilde, vegetarianism and celibacy. Best of all, he wrote lines to songs that would provide endless courtship material for the sensitive and morose, who could always fall back on what was arguably Morrissey’s most perfect lyric: “And if a double-decker bus / Crashes into us / To die by your side / Is such a heavenly way to die.”

The question for the conference was: what made these Smiths fans tick? During his paper entitled “Last Night They Dreamt That Somebody Loved Them: Fans of the Smiths during the late 1980s,” a lecturer named Karl Maton, from Keele University, attempted to delve into the mind of the Smiths lover. First, he would have to come clean about himself. He projected a photograph on the overhead screen that showed a young man with a dazzlingly high forelock.

“This handsome devil,” said Maton, “is me circa 1990. And yes, aficionados will notice the quiff and the glasses. And yes, that is Oscar Wilde’s grave in Paris in the background.” There was a pause. “And yes, those are flowers that I’ve strewn over the grave.”

Years ago, when he was researching his undergraduate dissertation on the Smiths, Maton placed an advertisement in New Musical Express asking for the experiences of fellow Smiths fans. Bundles of replies came in from the U.K., the U.S., Asia. There were essays, fanzines, poetry. The common theme was that Smiths fans “expressed themselves less as a community and more as individuals who enjoyed a singular relationship with, above all, Morrissey.”

“It’s like having an invisible friend,” one fan wrote. “You know he’s there, but you can’t see him.”

There were murmurs of what sounded like recognition from the audience.

In the main lecture hall, keynote speaker Professor Sheila Whitely of the University of Salford ended her address entitled “This Charming Man” with the simple last line: “All I can say is, Morrissey, I love you and thank you very much.”

After the applause died down, the Q&A started, and quickly settled on the topic of Morrissey. The audience members began to explore their own intricate relationships with the Quiffed One. Was he sexy? Did anyone want to sleep with him?

“You desire him because you can’t have him,” offered one woman.

“Well, he is very aesthetically beautiful,” said another woman. “He’s good looking. But you’d rather have a cup of tea with him than a snog, wouldn’t you?”

A murmur of approval rose up.

“He’s like Jesus,” said another woman. “I don’t want to shag him. I mean, would anyone want to go to bed with Jesus?”

No hands were raised.

“I’ve been a fan for 20 years,” said a fourth woman, who had been waving her hand for the microphone for some time. “In my teenage years I desired him. I went out to find my own Morrissey look-alike. He even had to have his own hearing aid and quiff. I found him but we only had sex three times in four years. Then I went for another chap — sensitive and intellectual, very like Morrissey. And I married him, actually. I had a daughter with him.”

“Is this a question?” someone muttered nearby.

“There is a point,” the woman said. “I think loving Morrissey is about identification. It’s about coming to terms with your identity. Which is why I think Morrissey is a lesbian.”

Read it and weep? The "Why Pamper" program guide. Photo by Craig Taylor.

Meat is Murder is the title of one of the Smiths’ best albums, so at lunch break a group of conference-goers walked down the road to the local vegetarian restaurant. It was in the lineup for vegan chili that I met Steve Titley and Tony Creaton, two men who were wearing the same kind of khaki trousers, and who seemed to have the closeness of longtime friends. They looked like they might have followed Morrissey from town to town during some early tour. But no, they’d only met today. They were not even academics, just two friendly fellows who drove from Oldham and Acton to express their love of all things Smithian.

Steve looked tall and gangly with his Meat is Murder T-shirt under his suit jacket. His fandom was definitely major league. “If I’m not in the premiership of being a fan of the Smiths,” he explained in between mouthfuls of bread, “I’m definitely in the first division. But I came late to them. I wasn’t listening to the Smiths in my teen angst times. You know what I was listening to? Billy Joel.”

“Really?” asked Tony.

“The Stranger is a good album,” I offered.

“OK, sure. He’s got some good lyrics but you really shouldn’t spend your teen angst years listening to Billy Joel, should you?”

Tony looked ponderous. Finally he announced: “I would say the Beatles are the greatest band of all time. But the Smiths. The Smiths are the best band of all time.” I asked Tony, who grew up on the outskirts of London, if his appreciation for the Smiths had grown suddenly because of an epiphany. He said he’d have to get back to me.

Outside the conference I spoke to Angela Rutledge, an NYU student and one of the five young women responsible for the website MorrisseyTour.com. The site provided partisan news and reviews of all Morrissey’s stops. After watching more than 60 live shows, Angela had a sober approach to the man, the legend. Her adventures around the world have brought her into contact with Morrissey in ways most of the fans here could only dream of, but it was only the very special occasions that were worth talking about.

“The first time Morrissey said something to me from onstage was in São Paulo,” Angela told me. “I had finished taking some photos for the website, I was leaving the area near the stage and I heard this voice saying ‘Angela, Angela, where are you going?’ I turned around. I was being beckoned by Morrissey.” She looked at me to make sure this fact had registered. “I got a recording of that show. I put it onto my computer. Every time my Mac shut down I programmed it so I would hear Morrissey saying, ‘Angela, Angela, where are you going?’”

After the final lecture, given by music journalist Simon Goddard, Tony approached me in the lecture hall. “I thought about it,” he said. “I think I’ve got my epiphany.” He readied himself. “It was hearing a recording of a live gig they performed in Oxford in February 1985. It was the Meat is Murder tour. I was feeding the cat of a friend at the time. I just thought: Wow, this is it. It showed me the quality of the band. It showed me everything I needed to know, right there and then.”

“What happened to the cat?” I asked.

“The cat was OK. I didn’t neglect it even though I was listening to this amazing gig. You have to be good to animals.”

No matter what the beginnings were — radio shows or mix tapes — it seemed that Smiths fans ended up in a similar place after the quiffs had fallen and the flowers died. What Morrissey had done, I was told again and again, was open the door to a better, more interesting world. He laid in front of anxious young listeners a selection of other options. Why not try Oscar Wilde? Why not engage, read. “There’s more to life than books,” Morrissey sang in Handsome Devil. “But not much more.” It was a lot different than anything A-Ha was trying to convey to its fan base at the time. It was these discoveries that made being a Smiths fan a more interesting and exclusive club than, say, anyone in the fan club of Iron Maiden.

The conference wound down for the evening. Next up was a performance by the Smyths, a tribute band, in a bar across town. There needed to be some great musical release at the end of the academics.

As night closed in on Manchester, the city centre filled with clacking high heels and women wearing next to nothing against the drizzle falling on Oldham Street. The drizzle turned to rain and a cluster of Smiths fans stood near the door contemplating a move to the bar. “I’d go out in that,” said one woman with a smile, “but I haven’t got a stitch to wear.”

The Smyths' Graham Sampson/Morrissey. Photo by Craig Taylor.

At the back of the Dry Bar, the conventioneers gathered to begin the less academic and more beer-focused part of the conference, and to watch while the Smyths set up their amps. Their Morrissey was instantly recognizable by his own impressive quiff. The height was right; unfortunately, his hair was blonde. Morrissey, a.k.a. Graham Sampson, said it usually took him only 74 seconds to get his own quiff up to its proper Smiths height. “I don’t use animal fat,” he said. “Obviously. It’s really just a very powerful hairdryer, teasing fingers, and various L’Oréal products.”

The room filled as soon as the band started. The Smyths played the Smiths’ hits — This Charming Man, How Soon is Now?, Sheila Take a Bow — acutely aware they wouldn’t be able to slip up or step off key while performing to a crowd of such faithful followers.

Tony and Steve stood side by side in the audience, dancing with a passionate unselfconsciousness that resembled a kind of joyful electroshock therapy: it was involuntary, nothing they could control. When the band burst into song they listened intently for a moment, then jerked into motion with euphoric recognition. They tilted their heads back, shook their arms and delivered the lyrics to the ceiling.

At the end of the show, the band began There Is a Light That Never Goes Out and Graham delivered the lines about that double-decker bus to a waving sea of hands. “There’s a light that never goes out,” Graham/Morrissey sang to the crowd at the end. They repeated it back, once, twice and even a third time. Pint glasses were waved in the air. The academics, the Mancunians, the begrudging soundman, even the bald, ruddy Englishman in front of the speaker were all singing, their hands waving in the air. In the red and yellow backlighting, Graham’s quiff didn’t even look so blonde. He could almost be Morrissey. It was that convincing. And the conference-goers kept singing: “There is a light that never goes out…”

Craig Taylor is a feature writer for The Guardian in London, England.