Light That Never Goes Out: UK Edition - Hardcover

Fletcher, Tony

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0434020664 ISBN 13: 9780434020669

Publisher: Cornerstone Digital, 2012

Synopsis

They were, their fans believe, the best band in the world. Critics and sales figures told a similar story: six albums between 1984 and 1988 made number one or number two in the UK charts. Twenty-five years after their break-up, the band remain as adored and discussed as ever. To this day, there is a collective understanding that The Smiths were one of the greatest of all British bands. The Smiths - Morrissey, Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce - were four working-class youths who came together, by fate or chance, in Manchester in the early 1980s. Their sound was both traditional and radically different, a music that spoke to a generation, and defied the dark social-economic mood of the Thatcher years. By early 1984, barely a year after their first headlining gig, they were the hottest - certainly the hippest - name in modern music. In the years that followed the group produced an extraordinary body of work: seventeen classic singles, seven albums, and [some] seventy songs composed by the team of Morrissey and Marr. Yet for all their brilliance and adoration - their famously energetic live shows routinely interrupted by stage invasions - The Smiths were continually plagued by their own reticence to play the game, and by the time of 1987's Strangeways Here We Come, they had split. The Smiths have never played together again - their enormous contribution to pop culture forever condensed into a prolific and prosperous halcyon period, their legacy intact and untarnished. Thirty years after their formation, twenty-five since they broke up, The Smiths' firmament remains as bright as ever.

About this title

About the Author

Tony Fletcher is the bestselling author of five non-fiction books and one novel. His biography of drummer Keith Moon, Dear Boy, has been named in many Best Music Book lists, and his biography of R.E.M., Remarks Remade, has been published in over half a dozen countries. During the 1980s heyday of the Smiths his magazine Jamming!, regularly featured the band as cover stars, and he was a co-presenter of the television show The Tube, for which he conducted Morrissey's first television interview. Fletcher saw the Smiths in concert for the first time at the London Lyceum in 1983, and for the last time at the Kilburn National, in 1986, on their final tour. A contributor over the years to a multitude of magazines, newspapers, radio and television shows, primarily in the UK and USA, Fletcher now lives with his wife and two sons on a mountaintop near the village of Woodstock in New York State. There he runs, skis, maintains his web site www.ijamming.net, and plays Hammond B-3 and Rickenbacker in the Catskill 45s, a group that only performs songs from 45 calendar years ago. They look forward to covering the Smiths as of 2028.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornerstone Digital
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0434020664
• ISBN 13: 9780434020669
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 704