Fact #165821
When:
Short story:
The first steps towards making the album The Queen Is Dead are taken at Drone Studios, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, England, UK, Europe, when The Smiths record The Boy With The Thorn In His Side.Full article:
Morrissey (vocalist, The Smiths) : 1985 with Rough Trade was horrendous; the duels were unspeakable. We were in such turmoil that we had to do something. We were being treated like some untried independent group from Harrogate and it was not acknowledged at all, in the Rough Trade network, that we were saving their skins.
Geoff Travis (owner, Rough Trade Records) : The success of The Smiths meant that we had more money to work with other bands. All the money we made went back into the label. So it meant that we had a chance to make records with Pere Ubu , Woodentops, Shelleyann Orphan and Easterhouse.
We learned how hit records happened and what you had to do. The whole pace of the group, the way they made decisions was fascinating - everything was done on the run. They were great records. I suppose that we got into a situation where we expected everything to do reasonably well. We expected everything to get a good reception.
Morrissey : I personally had to fight for any promotion, even though the first album had entered the charts at Number Two and there had been a string of successful singles.
Johnny Marr (guitarist, The Smiths) : Morrissey was frustrated a lot of the time. And he had a closer relationship with Rough Trade than I was aware of at the time, and a closer relationship with Geoff Travis than I was aware of at the time. That was one of the things that greased the wheels of the band, but it was between him and Geoff. But all that probably isn't as Machiavellian as it may appear.
Familiarity breeds contempt, and we were really, really closely involved with people at the label. And a big part of it is, we weren't advised by anyone to stay or go anyway. We didn't know what we were doing in business.
Johnny Marr : On your third album, you have to be innovative from within yourself. It stops being about wanting to sound like your heroes. I just wanted to be as good … So I was shitting myself before we did it.
Stephen Street (sound engineer) : The Queen Is Dead was quite a haphazard process. It was recorded all over the place. It was a few tracks done here, then a break, and we did some more tracks. It's turned out to be, you know, like you see in the press, one of the best albums of all time, yet at the time we were doing it, we didn't know we were heading off into this huge masterpiece. It seemed to be quite relaxed.
Andy Rourke (bassist, The Smiths) : I don't think Johnny had too many songs completed when we went into the studio for that.
Stephen Street : They decided to go to a little 8-track studio in Manchester. I think they were meant to do a demo. Sometimes, Morrissey would say, ‘that sounds brilliant, we can’t do any better’. That’s what happened. So they decided to release the demo (of The Boy With The Thorn In His Side) as a single.
Johnny Marr : The guy who owned the studio was the engineer. He'd been there for years. And what every band knew about him was, you did your recording and then, come 7 o’clock, you had to go out and buy him a load of alcohol.
Andy Rourke : Halfway through recording, he’d say, ‘I’ve just got to go and speak to my accountant’, and he’d come back stinking of whiskey.
Johnny Marr : The desk was in this little alcove, so unless you were very tenacious - and skinny - you weren't going to be able to hear what you were doing. The walls were covered in unwashed denim - really dark and oppressive, no windows obviously - and he'd be there with his alcohol mountain, doing a very bad job of mixing.
Stephen Street : At that time, Andy was having his problems with drugs and he was a little remote sometimes. He was literally doing his bass track, then he would disappear. Most of the time it would be Johnny and myself in the studio. We were building up the arrangements and orchestrations.
Johnny Marr : We didn't do things in the conventional way. We wanted to do the song very quickly. We didn't want to haul a load of equipment to somewhere in Surrey. We were driven by the passion of the song: when we'd written one, a week was too long to wait to hear it in its full glory. Generally speaking, we would write songs in batches of three - and then three days later, we'd hear that the studio was booked.
(Source : not known)
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Geoff Travis (owner, Rough Trade Records) : The success of The Smiths meant that we had more money to work with other bands. All the money we made went back into the label. So it meant that we had a chance to make records with Pere Ubu , Woodentops, Shelleyann Orphan and Easterhouse.
We learned how hit records happened and what you had to do. The whole pace of the group, the way they made decisions was fascinating - everything was done on the run. They were great records. I suppose that we got into a situation where we expected everything to do reasonably well. We expected everything to get a good reception.
Morrissey : I personally had to fight for any promotion, even though the first album had entered the charts at Number Two and there had been a string of successful singles.
Johnny Marr (guitarist, The Smiths) : Morrissey was frustrated a lot of the time. And he had a closer relationship with Rough Trade than I was aware of at the time, and a closer relationship with Geoff Travis than I was aware of at the time. That was one of the things that greased the wheels of the band, but it was between him and Geoff. But all that probably isn't as Machiavellian as it may appear.
Familiarity breeds contempt, and we were really, really closely involved with people at the label. And a big part of it is, we weren't advised by anyone to stay or go anyway. We didn't know what we were doing in business.
Johnny Marr : On your third album, you have to be innovative from within yourself. It stops being about wanting to sound like your heroes. I just wanted to be as good … So I was shitting myself before we did it.
Stephen Street (sound engineer) : The Queen Is Dead was quite a haphazard process. It was recorded all over the place. It was a few tracks done here, then a break, and we did some more tracks. It's turned out to be, you know, like you see in the press, one of the best albums of all time, yet at the time we were doing it, we didn't know we were heading off into this huge masterpiece. It seemed to be quite relaxed.
Andy Rourke (bassist, The Smiths) : I don't think Johnny had too many songs completed when we went into the studio for that.
Stephen Street : They decided to go to a little 8-track studio in Manchester. I think they were meant to do a demo. Sometimes, Morrissey would say, ‘that sounds brilliant, we can’t do any better’. That’s what happened. So they decided to release the demo (of The Boy With The Thorn In His Side) as a single.
Johnny Marr : The guy who owned the studio was the engineer. He'd been there for years. And what every band knew about him was, you did your recording and then, come 7 o’clock, you had to go out and buy him a load of alcohol.
Andy Rourke : Halfway through recording, he’d say, ‘I’ve just got to go and speak to my accountant’, and he’d come back stinking of whiskey.
Johnny Marr : The desk was in this little alcove, so unless you were very tenacious - and skinny - you weren't going to be able to hear what you were doing. The walls were covered in unwashed denim - really dark and oppressive, no windows obviously - and he'd be there with his alcohol mountain, doing a very bad job of mixing.
Stephen Street : At that time, Andy was having his problems with drugs and he was a little remote sometimes. He was literally doing his bass track, then he would disappear. Most of the time it would be Johnny and myself in the studio. We were building up the arrangements and orchestrations.
Johnny Marr : We didn't do things in the conventional way. We wanted to do the song very quickly. We didn't want to haul a load of equipment to somewhere in Surrey. We were driven by the passion of the song: when we'd written one, a week was too long to wait to hear it in its full glory. Generally speaking, we would write songs in batches of three - and then three days later, we'd hear that the studio was booked.
(Source : not known)