The Smyths Are Here for All Your Non-Morrissey Smiths Needs

It’s a Saturday night in late July and an excitable buzz zips around London’s infamous 100 Club. Like the dozens of legendary artists that have graced the venue’s stage, tonight’s band have a huge cult following, have toured all over the globe and played at various major festivals, including several appearances at Glasto. Their singer has an instantly recognisable voice and a much-imitated signature style, and whether you’re aware of it or not, you definitely know at least half a dozen of their songs, even if you’ve never really gone out of your way to listen to them. That’s right. Tonight, Matthew, we’re going to be watching The Smyths.

No, that’s not a typo. The Smyths. Pronounced like "wives." It’s 2018 and a not insignificant number of people are paying 20 quid on the door to watch the tribute band, fronted by a ginger man called Graham, perform two hour-long sets of 30-year-old songs about being sad in Manchester in the 1980s. Steven Patrick Morrissey, you will probably recall, is not ginger. Some of these people are my age or younger. Tickets are 20 (twenty) pounds sterling and it’s warm outside, and yet The Smyths are popular enough to play two separate dates at this venue, as well as a further 30 or so gigs around the country for the rest of the year. So… what’s that all about? Well, in the hope that if I ask people why they won’t spit in my eye*, I head in to find out.

The first thing I notice when I get inside is the merch stand selling replicas of some of The Smiths’ iconic band tees. When I look around there are a fair few people wearing them already, as well as a lot of people in actual Smiths and Morrissey T-shirts. One of those people is Barbara, here with her partner Ed and wearing a pink Morrissey tour tee. They’ve seen him live on several occasions, but have also seen The Smyths “ten or 11 times” before. “Morrissey doesn’t tour that often but The Smyths tour all the time,” Ed tells me when I ask why, “and they’re good, these guys!” he insists, a little defensively, perhaps sensing my slight cynicism.

I also speak to Dave, Bernie and Mick, who grew up together in south London listening to The Smiths. “We couldn’t get to the Morrissey concert at Brixton Academy earlier in the year because it sold out, and we heard about The Smyths and decided to come and see if they live up to the reputation of the original Smiths,” Mick tells me. “We all saw The Smiths in their heyday, and we haven’t seen these guys before but we’ve heard they’re the best tribute. And to be honest we aren’t really here for a Morrissey imitation, we just want to listen to the stuff live and get a chance to join in and sing along. I expect it’ll be a great night.”

But it’s not just older funsters getting nostalgic about their youth. There are also a fair few younger-looking people in the audience, who never had the chance to see The Smiths play live. “Obviously you can’t see The Smiths anymore, and if you close your eyes with these guys you can’t really tell the difference,” says Alex, who’s 26 and here with his 40-year-old ex-colleague Simon. “I suppose if you factor in that precondition that you can’t see them live anymore, you’re asking why anyone would go and see The Smiths.” Simon reckons that there’s also “a real joy factor to seeing somebody emulate somebody that you and they love. Kind of like karaoke, but karaoke makes it sound cheap. People think tribute acts are kind of cheesy and tacky but these guys aren’t at all.”

The band is about to come on, so I go and stand on my own at the back (it’s what Morrissey would have wanted), watching the crowd as much as the band on stage. I can see why they’re known as the best Smiths tribute act; when Graham opens his mouth it’s Morrissey’s voice that comes out, which is kind of unsettling at first, like one of those surreal dreams where everything is not quite true to life. Even his between-song patter is reminiscent of Morrissey, overladen with colourful adjectives (though mercifully few references to UKIP councillors). The crowd are already lively from the moment they come on, but everything kicks off when they launch into “There is a Light That Never Goes Out”, followed swiftly by “William It Was Really Nothing”. Lots of dad-dancing ensues, and it’s difficult not to crack a smile.

Watching the crowd, I notice how many of the younger people here seem to have come along with their parents. As the band finish up their first Smiths-themed set, I speak to Charlotte, 20. She's here with her dad Martin, who is pleased that she’s “inherited the Smiths gene”. Like a huge number of The Smyths’ older audience members, Martin saw The Smiths play live once, in Kentish Town in north London. He hasn’t seen Morrissey solo, but he looked up the prices for his Royal Albert Hall gig earlier this year and decided they were “far too expensive” to justify. For Charlotte, it’s not just the extortionate ticket price that stops Morrissey from being an option, but also his very questionable politics these days. “This is good because I like the music, but I don’t have to see him perform it. And he always cancels anyway, doesn’t he?” In other words, The Smyths are like The Smiths, but unproblematic.

For a lot of the parents and kids in the audience, The Smiths’ music seems to be something that transcends generations. Some of the most enthusiastic dancers in the crowd are Jane and Jodie, old friends who've come to London to see The Smyths along with their large adult sons who both live here. “Our parents brought us up on The Smiths,” one of their sons tells me. “I was probably only two or three years old when they started playing them for me. I remember being a kid when we went on holiday, driving from Cornwall to Kent, and I think I must have listened to Frankly Mr Shankly about 30 times.” Jane and Jodie drove from Rochester to Margate to see The Smiths play live in 1984. “It’s great that music can be passed down from mother to son, that it’s so universal,” Jane tells me. “And because our boys live in London it’s nice to catch up with them and spend some time together. So we’re really here to see our boys.”

I ask "the boys" if there are any current bands whose tribute bands they reckon they'll be taking their own kids to see in 30 years. “Arctic Monkeys probably – I bet there’ll be a few tribute bands for them. But they might still be around so probably still The Smiths to be honest. I don’t know, it’ll be 50 years after they were around so maybe there won’t be any tributes, but I hope the music still makes sense to them.”

So, why would anyone drop a 20 to spend a sunny weekend evening hanging out in a basement watching a man in his late forties who isn’t even wearing a flowery shirt and has the completely wrong hair colour doing two hours of covers of a band who last released music in 1987? Well, from hanging here tonight, nostalgia mostly. These are people who grew up with the Smiths and want the chance to drink some pints while having a sing-along to the songs that made them fall in love with music when they were teenagers.

But, more than that, the 'real deal' is now a Tommy Robinson-sympathising arsehole who charges three figure sums for his live shows, cancels them half the time and hasn’t released a properly good album for over a decade. In other words, the Smiths are cancelled. It's all about the Smyths now. And as long as The Smyths can keep pulling in audiences like this, it definitely seems like their legacy is a light that will never go out.**

*sorry about this terrible dad joke, I am trying to delete

** so sorry

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