Jeane
The low-life has lost its appeal
And I'm tired of walking these streets
To a room with a cupboard bare

I bought the reissue of ‘This Charming Man’ in 1992. I suppose it was undercover, as admitting you liked The Smiths firmly put you in the Morrissey camp, and for that you might possibly lose half of your school friends. On the b-side of the single was a track called Jeane. It’s Morrissey’s finest moment. I know they are a ’marmite’ band, i.e love or hate – but this track really set me off on a personal teenage mission of rooting out the history of northern kitchen sink. It’s a sad song, but sang in an upbeat way that never makes me depressed. In fact, whenever I hear The Smiths I want to jump twenty foot in the air with a gaping smile plastered across my face. The Smiths got me through some of the worst times in my life, being the early 90s growing up in Tadcaster as a total loser.

Jeane
I'm not sure what happiness means
But I look in your eyes
And I know
That it isn't there

At the time I thought that Morrissey was the only person who understood what life was like for black clad loners in grim northern towns. Yes, I wore black on the outside because black was how I felt on the inside. And I smoked because I was hoping for an early death and I needed to cling to something…

Jeane is a song about a woman trapped in the routine and poverty of northern life, expressed in such lyrics as ‘Jeane / There's ice on the sink where we bathe / So how can you call this a home / When you know it's a grave ? But you still hold a greedy grace / As you tidy the place / But it'll never be clean / Jeane’. For all haters of The Smiths, you have to concede that those lines are sheer poetry. Regardless of your feelings towards Morrissey, it has to be acknowledged that when he was good, he outshone every other contender in that era. And the song really holds the character of films such as ‘Taste of Honey’, ‘Saturday Night Sunday Morning’, and ‘This Sporting Life’, many of which Morrissey borrowed some of his best lines from.

It was through The Smiths that I started reading Oscar Wilde, Joe Orton, and Shelagh Delaney, not to mention buying records by bands such as New York Dolls, Chic, Sex Pistols, and Phil Spector – all of which were massive influences on the music that they made.

These days I have a bit more of a balanced view when it comes to Morrissey. When he took off to live in LA it dawned on me that he had made a huge amount of money out of suckers like me who bought into his professional miserablism, when in reality he was tanning himself with Nancy Sinatra on Hollywood Boulevard.

I once saw him spend £1700 on a few pairs of silk Prada underpants in Harvey Nichols in Leeds, I was working there as a window dresser, and stalked him during his shopping trip as he was playing at the Town and Country that night. When I got home I threw out my tapes of Viva Hate and Your Arsenal, thinking ‘You are Morrissey, and should be wearing Oxfam shirts! Not tacky underpants from the overpriced retail empire that I work in!’

After that I stopped listening to his records for a while, and I do truly believe that his new records are dreadful. As for The Smiths though, they are still one of the only bands who make me genuinely excited – maybe that’s because they meant so much to me growing up. Without them I would be stacking shelves in Costcutter, with seven kids round my ankles, having never left Tadcaster, stuffed into a life of misery. That’s not an exaggeration, as The Smiths gave me hope when all else failed.

The interesting part of this is how all of the bands from Manchester in that period have been awarded ‘mythological status’ by the media. In the early 90s nobody admitted to liking the The Smiths or Joy Division – wearing an ‘Unknown Pleasures’ t shirt guaranteed you at least a few chortles from onlookers every time you set foot outside. Those bands became a social pariah, yet it didn’t stop me from pursuing my Smiths obsession. I was such a geek that I even went to Salford Lad’s Club to have my picture taken, not only that – I went on a ‘Morrissey Convention’ in London. This consisted of traveling on a bus with fifteen quiffed fans on a tour around Vallance Road, Wapping, and the Blind Beggar on Whitechapel Rd. I saw Moz play at Alexandra Palace on the Your Arsenal tour, and followed him around on his northern tour dates. I was lovesick. Morrissey was everything I could ever want in a man, and I even wrote to pen pals via the NME who mentioned in their ads that they too might be into him. It’s hardly worth getting nostalgic for pre-internet days, but I was elated when the postman walked down the drive with a packet of letters for me. Like Morrissey, I too became an obsessive penpal, and not only that, I would write letters to the NME and Melody Maker every week in defence of northern indie and anything else I could think to moan about.

Exactly why The Smiths appealed to me maybe comes from the campery and fascinations with the black and white 1960s. Through the lyrics I could connect into a bygone age that seemed infinitely more exciting than North Yorkshire, 1992. It was a time where all the boys had undercuts and wore Soundgarden t-shirts. The girls had henna orange hair and smelled of patchouli oil. I couldn’t give a shit about Seattle or lumberjack shirts. It said nothing to me about my life. I wanted glitter, bad dancing, cheap lemonade and Vidal Sasson modcuts. Thanks God Britpop arrived to rescue me. The day I saw Jarvis Cocker in a pair of Freeman Strides high kicking to ‘Sheffield Sex City’ at the Duchess in Leeds I sensed that a new dawn was on the horizon. I swiftly dumped The Smiths and got myself a feather boa. Fickle? Morrissey would have been proud.

Adelle Stripe resides in Whitechapel but hails from nowhere town, Yorkshire. Crap previous jobs include chatline hostess, window dresser, dairy farm midwife, leather factory processor, and 24hour petrol station pump attendant. Last Chance Disco’s work can be spotted under various guises in Scarecrow, Full Moon Empty Sports Bag, Straight From The Fridge Fanzine, and occasionally in The Times. To read a selection of Adelle (Megan Hall’s) stories on the showcase section of this site, click here.

© 2008 Laura Hird All rights reserved.