Fact #167540
When:
Short story:
John Porter, having been appointed as producer of The Smiths, decides to re-record everything they've done so far towards their debut album.
Full article:
Mike Joyce (The Smiths) : We recorded everything the first time around, with Troy Tate down in Elephant Studios in Wapping, and the initial recording I thought had more atmosphere to it.
John Porter (producer) : I know I only got £500, and I think we only had five or six days to do it again. Johnny (Marr) and Morrissey were very close and had great faith in each other.They were really clueless at that stage - they were so clueless as to even ask me to manage them. The dreams and plans were wonderful, but there was a certain frisson.
It became like (Johnny Marr) was my little brother. We struck up a friendship.
Johnny was obviously really excited about the possibilities of the studio, whereas Morrissey just wanted to bang everything down in one take and go home. Maybe half of it would be out of tune. He had only a limited vocal range at the best of times. In some cases it was the first time he’d ever sung it through, but that was the immediacy he wanted.
Morrissey was wary of my influence. I was totally into black music, and I think he saw that as a bit of a threat to their style. There was one famous occasion where we were doing a vocal at Matrix in Bloomsbury. We’d got to the end of the first verse and Mozzer disappeared. So, we chatted on for half an hour, and it was like, ‘Where’s Mozzer gone?’ Eventually we found out he’d walked out of the studio, got on a train and gone to Manchester.
So I grabbed all the tapes, booked a studio, got on a train, spoke to Mozzer’s mum, got hold of him. He came in, did another verse, went out to get some chips - and went back to London again. We finally got the third verse sorted back in London.
Andy Rourke (The Smiths) : John Porter (producer) suggested getting that bloke Paul Carrack in on keyboards to see what would happen, and I thought it really brought it alive.
Mike Joyce : I was going to say, for me, the idea of an organ being in The Smiths really didn't turn me on. It softened it out a lot, made it more radio friendly, but the way that we worked together, for anybody else to actually come in and play on it, it's got to be fucking good. That was the gang mentality that we had, wasn't it? (Andy nods) Anybody that was coming in from the record company or whatever, we were like, What? What d'you want? It felt like they were coming in to intrude on our little party. I didn't think that any of these people felt about the music as strongly as the band did. Maybe it's a kind of possessive thing. The way that we were working, it was ours.
Mike Joyce (drummer, The Smiths) : We used to have a version of What Difference Does It Make? Which was a lot more rumbly, drum-wise, more of a jungley rhythm. John Porter listened to it and said, ‘Try it like this.’ Very much straight fours. I thought, ‘Hmmm, I don’t really like this.’ and Morrissey looked at me as if to say, ‘I agree with you, Mike.’ So me and Morrissey would be sitting on one couch, and Johnny and John would be on the other, both grumbling away at the others. We tried it John’s way and he was bouncing around the room, like, ‘Cool, sounds more like a single!’ And, of course, he was right. It turned out to be one of our biggest hits.
Andy Rourke : Well, quite a few times Johnny would play a guitar part to Morrissey, and Morrissey would either come up with lyrics or he'd have some already written which he'd fit to that. We wouldn't hear Morrissey sing at that point. We would record the whole thing, even up to guitar overdubs and everything, and we still wouldn't have heard what Morrissey was going to put over the top. Right at the end he'd come in and sing and it would all make sense, wouldn't it?
Mike Joyce : Yeah. It was one of the most fantastic things about working with The Smiths. Morrissey wouldn't be patrolling the rehearsal room going, ‘Hang on a second, go back eight bars’. He'd just spring this lyric line on you, and it was great, especially when we got to The Queen Is Dead and he'd be doing the vocals and we'd be sat there in the control room and the tension and everything...
(Source : not known)
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John Porter (producer) : I know I only got £500, and I think we only had five or six days to do it again. Johnny (Marr) and Morrissey were very close and had great faith in each other.They were really clueless at that stage - they were so clueless as to even ask me to manage them. The dreams and plans were wonderful, but there was a certain frisson.
It became like (Johnny Marr) was my little brother. We struck up a friendship.
Johnny was obviously really excited about the possibilities of the studio, whereas Morrissey just wanted to bang everything down in one take and go home. Maybe half of it would be out of tune. He had only a limited vocal range at the best of times. In some cases it was the first time he’d ever sung it through, but that was the immediacy he wanted.
Morrissey was wary of my influence. I was totally into black music, and I think he saw that as a bit of a threat to their style. There was one famous occasion where we were doing a vocal at Matrix in Bloomsbury. We’d got to the end of the first verse and Mozzer disappeared. So, we chatted on for half an hour, and it was like, ‘Where’s Mozzer gone?’ Eventually we found out he’d walked out of the studio, got on a train and gone to Manchester.
So I grabbed all the tapes, booked a studio, got on a train, spoke to Mozzer’s mum, got hold of him. He came in, did another verse, went out to get some chips - and went back to London again. We finally got the third verse sorted back in London.
Andy Rourke (The Smiths) : John Porter (producer) suggested getting that bloke Paul Carrack in on keyboards to see what would happen, and I thought it really brought it alive.
Mike Joyce : I was going to say, for me, the idea of an organ being in The Smiths really didn't turn me on. It softened it out a lot, made it more radio friendly, but the way that we worked together, for anybody else to actually come in and play on it, it's got to be fucking good. That was the gang mentality that we had, wasn't it? (Andy nods) Anybody that was coming in from the record company or whatever, we were like, What? What d'you want? It felt like they were coming in to intrude on our little party. I didn't think that any of these people felt about the music as strongly as the band did. Maybe it's a kind of possessive thing. The way that we were working, it was ours.
Mike Joyce (drummer, The Smiths) : We used to have a version of What Difference Does It Make? Which was a lot more rumbly, drum-wise, more of a jungley rhythm. John Porter listened to it and said, ‘Try it like this.’ Very much straight fours. I thought, ‘Hmmm, I don’t really like this.’ and Morrissey looked at me as if to say, ‘I agree with you, Mike.’ So me and Morrissey would be sitting on one couch, and Johnny and John would be on the other, both grumbling away at the others. We tried it John’s way and he was bouncing around the room, like, ‘Cool, sounds more like a single!’ And, of course, he was right. It turned out to be one of our biggest hits.
Andy Rourke : Well, quite a few times Johnny would play a guitar part to Morrissey, and Morrissey would either come up with lyrics or he'd have some already written which he'd fit to that. We wouldn't hear Morrissey sing at that point. We would record the whole thing, even up to guitar overdubs and everything, and we still wouldn't have heard what Morrissey was going to put over the top. Right at the end he'd come in and sing and it would all make sense, wouldn't it?
Mike Joyce : Yeah. It was one of the most fantastic things about working with The Smiths. Morrissey wouldn't be patrolling the rehearsal room going, ‘Hang on a second, go back eight bars’. He'd just spring this lyric line on you, and it was great, especially when we got to The Queen Is Dead and he'd be doing the vocals and we'd be sat there in the control room and the tension and everything...
(Source : not known)