Great Songs from My Favorite Year in Music: 1985, Part 33

The Smiths - "How Soon is Now?" & "The Boy With the Thorn in His Side"





(Single Releases: January & September 1985)
As an adolescent, I was filled with existential angst. I was questioning everything from religion to sociology, politics, human nature, and everything beyond and all points in between. Naturally, the best soundtrack music for existential angst was The Smiths. Morrissey and Marr were my philosophical guides, providing musical poetry as the backdrop to every agonizing exploration of my psyche. Though The Smiths were not exactly carefree music material (I was once roundly chastised for putting Hatful of Hollow into a tape deck at a junior high school party), they were important in far too many other ways. As I've written earlier, The Smiths are part of my holy triumvirate of favorite bands. I even did a school report on Morrissey that completely exposed my "sensitive poetic teen" side. Sometimes it is hard for me to pinpoint a favorite song or even album, but there is no denying how important "How Soon is Now?" was and is in my life. First of all, it is called "How Soon is Now?" and not "I am Human." Despite my empathic and sensitive nature, the next goth kid, vampire nerd, or witchcraft obsessed dork who calls it the latter will get a punch in the tooth. Though the lyrics of the song are often painfully self-aware and overwrought, there is no doubt of its universal themes and feelings. We all feel that need to be loved. But, some of us are more painfully shy than others, and I certainly related with Moz on that count. Even our best intentions often turned out badly, reflected in the lines, "There's a club if you'd like to go / You could meet somebody who really loves you / So you go and you stand on your own and you leave on your own / And you go home and you cry and you want to die." Been there. All this is set to the backdrop of Johnny Marr's incredible guitar work. The vibrato bed that he created for the track is now somewhat lost to time, making it even more mythic and, in turn, unique. While "How Soon is Now?" was a non-album single, only later appended to copies of Meat is Murder, "The Boy With the Thorn in His Side" was the first salvo from what was sure to be one of the band's most recognized and popular albums, The Queen is Dead. Yet again loaded with angst, Morrissey claims that the song is about the music industry and its lack of faith in him. That being said, it is difficult to ignore this as a possible anthem of homosexual solidarity and pride. "How can they look into our eyes and still they don't believe us? / And after all this time, they don't want to believe us / And if they don't believe us now, will they ever believe us?" Those lyrics seem too perfectly crafted to be simply about the music industry. With references to having a "desire for love" and "love in our eyes," I think Morrissey might have been obfuscating. If you remember, Morrissey wasn't entirely up front and out back then. Plus, the inclusion of an exuberant and playful Truman Capote as the cover model for the single lends additional credibility to this interpretation. I am usually both awed and amused by the Mozzer's lyrics and these were certainly no exception. The lines, "And when you want to live / How do you start? / Where do you go? / Who do you need to know?" held particular fascination in my mind. Though this song and others like it might indeed be specifically related to Morrissey's sexual orientation, they were always written to be more inclusive and open to interpretation. For instance, you could imagine the "us" and "our" in the latter song to be about a young straight couple in love, a la Romeo and Juliet, whose peers and parents could never understand or believe in their union. The Smiths is one of those bands that I could listen to at any time in almost any situation. I just heard that they are releasing a huge vinyl box set with all their albums and 25 singles, but alas, as a grad student I won't have the equivalent of £150 by October 3rd. Birthday donations are accepted...