Fact #162838

Grant Showbiz (soundman, The Smiths) : There was a lot of tension. We spent two weeks doing B-sides for Girlfriend In A Coma and that was horrific. I was actually frightened of Morrissey. I felt physically threatened by him.

Fred Hood (friend of Johnny Marr) : I reckon I was one of the first people Johnny ever told - other than Angie - that he wanted to leave The Smiths. And it was a very weird moment, because my reaction was very important. It was very important to him that my reaction was positive.

Johnny Marr (The Smiths) : It was utter misery. The group were really falling to pieces. We'd finished making the record and I thought, "Right, now for the first time, I can have a couple of weeks way from the group". That's all it was. I wanted to get away and I felt we should all have taken a holiday. I told Morrissey he needed a holiday.

The band put what I thought was really unfair pressure to come up with two B-sides for Girlfriend In A Coma. I fought against it. I felt I'd worked far too hard to be put in that position, coupled with the fact that Morrissey had decided he didn't want to work with Ken. That was OK. That was a problem I could have dealt with. I just felt round the corner it was never ending. It was like I was never going to be allowed to come up for air.

I wrote I Keep Mine Hidden, but Work Is A Four Letter Word I hated. That was the last straw, really. I didn't form a group to perform Cilla Black songs. That's the main thing.

I made a decision that I was going to get away on holiday. The only place I could think of was L.A. That was the only place I'd ever been whenever I had time off on tour. I was never a person who took holidays. I never did with my parents. L.A. was the only place I knew where there'd be sunshine, so off I went. I never saw Morrissey again.

Grant Showbiz (soundman, The Smiths) : Johnny was so happy when they split up. I was speaking to him almost every day and he was saying, 'I just woke up today and I feel great, because I don't want to be in The Smiths anymore.'

Geoff Travis (founder, Rough Trade records) : If Morrissey had said to Johnny, 'Look, why don't you just go away on holiday for six months,' then I think they'd still be together. Look at Peter Buck and Michael Stipe. Peter Buck's done about four million outside projects. It's possible to operate like that. Perhaps Morrissey's all-or-nothing attitude wouldn't have allowed that, and if that was the case that was a silly, juvenile, elementary mistake on his part.

Stephen Street (recording engineer) : I thought it was just an argument. I never in my wildest dreams imagined Strangeways would be the last album. Even after I'd written and produced Viva Hate with Morrissey, I always felt that the following year they were going to get back together again.

Andy Rourke (bass, The Smiths) : I felt a big fucking void. It was like the rug being pulled from under your feet. For about two years I wondered what the fuck I was going to do. Would I join another group? Would I form another group? I was really at a complete loss.

Mike Joyce (drummer, The Smiths) : When Johnny left, me, Andy, and Morrissey were trying to carry on (with Ivor Perry of Easterhouse on guitar), trying to keep together what we had. But then things started to turn a bit weird and I just said, 'Well, look, I don't want to know anymore.'

Scott Piering (radio plugger, Rough Trade records) : It was like a fun spree through the traditional world of pop, and they wanted to break as many rules as they could. They were an incredibly subversive band. They had all sorts of themes and, as articulated by Morrissey, were completely radical. That was the beauty of The Smiths. It had fire, it had passion, it had that real inspirational thing of just doing it as you went along. It was completely within the ethos of all you had learned to believe was great about the punk and post-punk era and everything that boded well for music.

Geoff Travis (founder, Rough Trade records) : There's hardly anything to do with The Smiths left in the can, which is quite unusual. The quality of everything they did was of such a high standard that it was all releasable. I mean, Johnny and Morrissey's sense of the importance of what they were doing was probably greater than mine. They wanted it all documented.

Stephen Street (recording engineer) : There's nothing left over from Strangeways, Meat Is Murder or The Queen Is Dead. Absolutely nothing. I mean, there's some of those horrendous B-sides that came out towards the end of their career...

Grant Showbiz (soundman, The Smiths) : Yeah, it's an Elvis Presley cover, A Fool Such As I. It would have been a third track for the 12-inch of Girlfriend In A Coma. My engineer at the time, the only thing he ever did wrong was to wipe off the first four bars of this track. I think they've tried to piece it back together since, but it's just not happened. It's alright. It's pretty much a Latest Flame sort of vibe.

Mike Joyce (drummer, The Smiths) : I've got some really great unreleased Smiths stuff. Outtakes, singles that never were. When we did Girl Afraid, we did a couple of other songs that I've got on tape. But I'll never... I've just got them on tape. I'll never blag them to some bootlegger.

Andy Rourke (bass, The Smiths) : My wife, Maxine, often throws on a Smiths CD. She tends to play the stuff more than I do. I still like listening to it, but it sort of wrenches my guts a bit, so that I can't really enjoy listening to it. I love it, but it's really not something I can relax to. It makes me very emotional.

Mike Joyce (drummer, The Smiths) : I've got a tape of Strangeways, Here We Come in my car. Tina, my girlfriend, was listening to it the other day. I thought it was something else - it was just this black cassette - and I was listening to Death Of A Disco Dancer and A Rush And A Push and stuff. My head was so full of emotions about the music - because I was thinking about how other people listen to it, and I was also thinking about that time, and time before and the time just after, and the way that Johnny, Morrissey and Andy would hear it. It disturbed me a little bit.