“We were high with it, and after just a few takes, we had one of our best ever songs – something that felt like pop music and beyond”: The making of the Smiths’ 1986 classic The Queen Is Dead

It was the summer of 1985, and Johnny Marr was a man out of time. Three years earlier, while still a teenager, the guitarist had co-founded the Smiths in Manchester, England, with vocalist Morrissey (bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce completed the lineup).

But the crystalline chime of his Rickenbacker 330 was still a lone voice in the era of sweep-picked flash. “The ’80s shredders were a joke,” Marr told this writer in 2009. “That’s guitar playing as an Olympic sport. If you’re into decent music, it’s just offensive.”

What, then, did Marr deem ‘decent music’? In their early career, the Smiths had covered more ground than their indie-jangle elevator pitch would suggest, roaming from the swampy tremolo judder of How Soon Is Now? to the airtight Chic-inspired funk of Barbarism Begins at Home and the ringing doublestops of This Charming Man (a track Marr always denied was influenced by African highlife, but it sure sounds like it).

But the band’s opening albums had been patchy, and now, as he sketched out the songs for third release The Queen Is Dead, the guitarist knew nothing less than a masterpiece would do.

“It occurred to me one afternoon that the next Smiths album had to be a serious piece of work,” wrote Marr in his 2016 autobiography, Set the Boy Free. “The stakes had got higher, and greatness was a possibility for the band if we were prepared to go for it. I stood and thought about it, and then I said to myself, ‘You’re going to have to dig deep, whatever it takes.’”

The material took shape fast. Marr remembers sitting nose-to-nose with Morrissey to present the new songs on his 1971 Martin D-28, and in a single evening, the pair had chased down the foundations of Frankly, Mr Shankly, I Know It’s Over and There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.

“We didn’t waste any time,” he wrote of his ferocious work ethic in the period.

The Smiths Live | The Queen Is Dead | Brixton Academy | December 1986 - YouTube

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Likewise, as the band loaded into London’s RAK Studios, the 21-year-old guitarist became the driving force. When he wasn’t out on the floor with a rig that included a ’78 black Les Paul Custom (later loaned to Noel Gallagher of Oasis) and a ’63 L-series white Strat, Marr was to be found presiding over the mixing desk from morning until midnight, fueled by an endless stream of joints and strong coffee.

“Smoking pot in the studio never hindered me – it helped me shut out the outside world just enough to do the job,” he reflected. “I didn’t need anything else in my life. My world was the studio, and I tried to ignore everything that might distract me.”

That was easy: these were songs you could lose yourself in. The Queen Is Dead’s opening title track began with Joyce’s tribal tom tattoo, but it’s Marr’s thrilling wah-soaked outro that defines it, the guitarist channeling the Velvet Underground’s I Can’t Stand It as he beats his Les Paul almost into matchwood.

“Johnny did that pretty much live in one take,” recalled engineer Stephen Street. “It was just one of those inspired performances. He just got this great harmonic feedback from his Les Paul and as he changed the angle on the wah pedal, it changed the note.”

At the other extreme, there was the melancholy shimmer of There Is a Light That Never Goes Out, Morrissey’s ode to doomed romance and shared suicide (‘To die by your side, well, the pleasure, the privilege is mine’) driven by a stuttering chord sequence that held magic even in embryonic form.

“I decided to record it using the Martin acoustic I’d written it on,” explained Marr, “and it felt like the music was playing itself. We were high with it, and after just a few takes, we had one of our best ever songs – something that felt at the time like pop music and beyond.”

The Smiths Live | The London Palladium | October 1986 [FULL SHOW] - YouTube

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With the possible exception of the turgid Never Had No One Ever and the demented rockabilly of Vicar in a Tutu, The Queen Is Dead demanded front-to-back listening.

There was the sardonic swipe at label boss Geoff Travis on the aforementioned Frankly, Mr. Shankly (“It was in total contrast to the others and sounded like an eccentric vaudevillian romp”). There was the grave-waltz of I Know It’s Over (one of the few songs where the Smiths deserved their miserabilist reputation). “I’ll never forget when Morrissey did that vocal,” Marr told journalist Johnny Rogan. “It’s one of the highlights of my life.”

On the flipside, that desolate number was countered by the spring-heeled rhythm punch of The Boy with the Thorn in His Side and Cemetry Gates.

“I was on the train,” reflected Marr of writing the latter song, a joyous Kinks-influenced sunbeam that belied Morrissey’s lyric about an afternoon exploring the tombstones. “And I was thinking, ‘Right, if you’re so great, first thing in the morning, sit down and write a great song.’ I started with the Cemetry Gates B-minor-to-G change in open G.”

At the album’s midpoint, meanwhile, was Bigmouth Strikes Again, its visceral minor-key assault establishing Marr among the most muscular players in British indie-rock. “I wanted something that was a rush all the way through,” said the guitarist, who described the song as his take on the Rolling Stones’ Jumpin’ Jack Flash. “I thought the guitar breaks should be percussive, not too pretty or chordal.”

Finally, signing off the album was Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others, a baffling ode to the differing dimensions of the female form that would have been a throwaway curio without the hypnotic glide of Marr’s folk arpeggios. “Some things just drop out of the heavens, and Some Girls was one of them,” he reflected. “It’s a beautiful piece of music.”

So The Queen Is Dead was done, and Marr knew “no-one could touch us – that was the peak of the Smiths’ career.” An unequivocal triumph, then? Not exactly. The laser focus of helming the album sessions had weighed heavy on the young guitarist, whose weight fell to about 98 lbs. as he ran on nervous energy, brandy and cocaine.

“I rarely thought about food unless it was absolutely necessary,” he recalled. “I’d just get on with recording and sometimes someone might make me a sandwich.”

The music was just one of the burdens carried by Marr. Facing legal action over the Smiths’ move from Rough Trade to EMI – and serving as the band’s de facto manager, right down to the logistics of van hire – it’s easy enough to join the dots between the overworked, rail-thin figure haunting the mixing desk and the borderline-alcoholic who would soon write off his BMW, then walk away from arguably the most important British guitar band of the decade at the peak of its powers.

“The more bitter the split became,” wrote Marr of that 1987 parting, “the better off I felt out of it, and soon I was just happy to be out of it altogether. I was in charge of my own life again.”

But that was all to come. For just a heartbeat in the summer of 1986, the Smiths were the greatest band in Britain. With 40 years of hindsight, it might seem gloriously unlikely that The Queen Is Dead came into our lives the same year as Metallica’s Master of Puppets, Van Halen’s 5150 and Poison’s Look What the Cat Dragged In – and stranger still that the album defied the zeitgeist to achieve gold sales in the U.S.

But perhaps that just speaks to the magic of a charmed 12 months in music, when it seemed anything was possible.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.