RIP Andy Rourke – The Smiths – 1964-2023

August 1983: I’m at The Lyceum for a triple-header, waiting eagerly for the first band of the night. They’ve just released their first single and done a Peel session and the music press are all over the new boys from Manchester.

Top of the bill is Howard Devoto, in his first solo outing post-Magazine (and Buzzcocks). He was a little bit underwhelming as I recall. He was preceded by SPK, a radical group of Australian Marxists whose performance incorporated flame-throwers and panel beaters.

Before them was the new group from Manchester.

Honestly, I was disappointed. The singer was an arrogant, conceited bellend with a bunch of flowers in his back pocket who spent much of the set sarcastically insulting the audience for not acclaiming him as the demigod he clearly believed himself to be.

A generation of people would soon do precisely that. But not me: I was disappointed to find that the lively jangle that had attracted me so much to that first single underpinned pretty much all the other songs with little variation.

And while I liked the sarcastic lyrics, I’d be lying if I said I could decipher them through the sound mix offered to a bottom-of-the-bill band in the early 1980s.

I did recognise some of the songs from that Peel session, though, including this one which ended the show, because it was the single I had bought a few weeks earlier. I love that harmonica that wails over the opening bars, and I love the sprightly bassline, whose player has just left us.

RIP Andy Rourke