The Queen Is Dead (19/01/13)

Moved away from politics, back to the personal (though the personal is obviously always the political, and vice versa)

One of the figures mentioned below is described as a caricature. Seven years later he's actually more widely regarded as a hateful old racist and, for a while, he made it very hard for me to listen to the album we're going to talk about. I longed for an instrumental but I've grown to regard this person as two separate singers, I've removed the artist from the art. 

Can't listen to his solo stuff though.

I've got to be honest, I thought the game was up tonight; thought I'd have to admit that after 18 days I had nothing left to say. I was empty, void, finished, over.

There were mitigating circumstances for this; the week has obviously been hideous, I seem to have spent the last 5 days apologising to people and didn't want to carry that mood over to here. Any negativity I choose to put here will be deliberate and have an obvious purpose.

Work is out, I'm not talking about work until the dust settles. Then, and only then, I may have a point or two to make. I can't talk about the match, I've not seen it yet and I refuse to be the blog equivalent of the idiots who call the phone ins to expound on games of football that they followed on a twitter feed. Politically and socially, the last three nights' blogs have pretty much wiped me out. Nothing to talk about.

But I do. I have one thing that I can always talk about. Music is always there.

And the great thing about the position I've held for the last 26 years is that it's always been the music that made the job worthwhile. My standard spiel to new starters has always been that the job we do isn't important; we don't save lives. But we do affect lives. Every day of our working life somebody is buying the first album that they will ever buy, or the song that they will connect with their first love, their newborn child, a lost loved one, a momentous event. Music matters. It has an emotional resonance that no other art can muster, it will always put you in the moment that you bought it, that you first heard it - it will change your mindset.

Joe Strummer summed it up perfectly "Music can't change the world but it can change the way you walk through the world"

My choice of music for the drive to and from work today was directly dictated by the position I'm in at the moment; The Smiths' masterpiece "The Queen Is Dead".

Not because of the subject matter but due to the fact that it's the last album that I bought before joining HMV, it's redolent of the summer of 1986 like no other  record and every emotion that it held stays with me this much later in life.

I was already a Smiths fan; not for Morrissey's painfully alone description of existence, although much of it chimed with my life at the time, 'How Soon Is Now' perfectly encapsulated my attitude to my desperately stilted social life. My Smiths fandom came more from the ineffable cool of Johnny Marr. A 60s bowl cut, a Rickenbacker and a studied nonchalance? Thanks, I'm sold. I'm 49 now, I don't have heroes anymore but I still want to grow up to be Johnny Marr.

'The Queen Is Dead' was overdue, anticipated, preceded (unusually) by two singles 'Bigmouth Strikes Again' and 'The Boy With The Thorn in his Side'; the former rushing, vicious, antagonistic, the latter soaring, chiming, orchestrated, sumptuous. Neither gave full indication of the variety that the album held; from the music hall sample leading into a West Side Story style beckoning whistle fading into rumbling drums that gives the backbone to the wah-wah guitar that supports the anti monarchy stance of the title track, though vaudeville, desolation, despair, acceptance, sunny days spent in cemeteries to the utterly blissful death wish that is 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out', there is never a mis-step. All human life is here and it's gloriously unlike anything else.

I remember the day I bought it, a Saturday morning in work, half day closing in the insurance company that I worked in, a drink in the Philharmonic with a colleague that I haven't seen since that day and a trip into the city centre to buy this in time to be able to answer a question in interview the next week;

"What was the last album and single you bought?"
"The Queen is Dead and Billy Bragg's 'Between The Wars'. Both on Saturday, in HMV."

I don't think it got me the job but I don't think it hurt too much either.

A cassette copy of the album soundtracked an underwhelming holiday with friends in Lloret De Mar, soundtracked the break up of my band and became the sound of the month that ended with meeting the girl that became my wife. It's a big album,  an album for change.

I didn't see The Smiths play live, I didn't think they would be able to recreate the glory of the recorded work on stage. Stupid attitude really. I finally saw Johnny Marr play live with The Cribs  a few years ago at an HMV conference. I was 10 feet away, captivated.

A lot has changed in 26 years, I'm married to the girl I met that month, we have two sons, the job is  winding  down and will soon go but the music is still there, always there.

Morrissey became a caricature of himself, trying far too hard to shock, the material a shadow of his former work. Johnny Marr? Still the coolest man on Earth.