Murderous lyrics, bare torsos, and disappointment: the story behind The Smiths brilliant debut
When Morrissey first showed his bandmate Mike Joyce the image he’d chosen to grace the front cover of their highly anticipated 1984 debut album, The Smiths drummer found it too close to the knuckle. It was a tender shot of actor and gay idol Joe Dallesandro alongside a lusty co-star, taken from Andy Warhol’s 1968 film Flesh.
“I think Dallesandro and the other guy are both New York hustlers and I think he might have been w***ing him off or something along those lines,” Joyce, now 60, recalls over Zoom. “I was pretty freaked out. I thought ‘I can’t wait for my mum and dad to see that – and the local priest.’”
Morrissey had been remiss in not informing Joyce that the image would be cropped for the album cover to include just Dallesandro’s now-iconic bare torso, cutting out the image’s less Woolworths-friendly elements. Regardless these were the sort of cultural shocks Joyce had signed up for when he joined Manchester’s most transgressive and artistically minded band of the age. “I didn’t say, ‘What? You can’t do that, oh my god!’” he laughs. “It was cool.”
Despite its instantly recognisable album art, The Smiths’ self-titled debut opened more ears than eyes when it was released 40 years ago next week. Fans of the keytar-and-flappy-trouser age were fascinated by its unusually whimsical and poetic opening with “Reel Around the Fountain”; its bursts of punk falsetto and ferocious ennui on “Miserable Lie”, “Hand in Glove” and “What Difference Does It dared plumb: prostitution, sexual disgust, the Moors murders.
