On a dark and cold Thursday evening in late November 1983, a small part of BBC Television Centre in Shepherds Bush in west London is a hive of activity, as final preparations are being made for the live broadcast of the BBC’s flagship music programme, Top Of The Pops. A young Manchester group that goes by the distinctly unfashionable name of the Smiths are nervously waiting to make their debut appearance on the venerable programme. Lead singer Steven Morrissey knows how important the programme could be to the band’s future.
The band is surrounded by the good, the bad and the downright ugly of early 80s pop. On the show that night, the Smiths will be delicately crow-barred between the laughable gender realignment of Marilyn and the stylefree conceits of the Thompson Twins. As the band are sitting in the Top Of The Pops dressing room waiting to go on, someone asks drummer Mike Joyce when the band will be getting changed into their stage clothes. His reply that this was it doesn’t go down well. Morrissey’s Evans’ blouse, beads and flailing gladioli are as flamboyant as it gets.
However, this is no ordinary group and they are promoting no ordinary single. This Charming Man, the song they will be miming to in a few moments time, is an early peak in what is set to be an extraordinary career. Their appearance that night, 25 years ago, will become a touchstone for future generations of musicians, many of whom will shape British rock well in to the next millennium. As Morrissey, Marr, Rourke and Joyce take to the stage, a nation is transfixed. Love them or loathe them, nobody could ignore the Smiths.
how it began
Almost as soon as the Smiths debut single had been released, the search was on for the next release. Hand In Glove had been a positive start to the band’s recording career, charting high in the indie charts, yet failing to register in the national charts. Of the number of songs the Smiths performed in their live set in the summer of 1983, the obvious contender to become the second single was Reel Around The Fountain. Test pressings were made, and an advert placed in a trade magazine, but then the band’s first brush with the national media threatened to derail their career before it had begun.
Tabloid reports had suggested that the song contained allusions to paedophilia and the BBC had refused to play a session version of it on the radio. It all turned out to be nonsense, of course, but the damage had been done, and confidence in Reel Around The Fountain being the next Smiths single drained away. However, as luck would have it, Morrissey and Marr had just written a new song they felt had promise.
recording the song
The first time This Charming Man was recorded was in the BBC’s Maida Vale studio on 14 September 1983, only days after Johnny Marr had first started playing around with the chords. It was during the recording of this Peel session that the final decision was made to drop Reel Around The Fountain as the next single and push ahead with This Charming Man instead.
The first Rough Trade recording was attempted in late September 1983 at Matrix Studios in central London. When it was deemed to fall short of expectations by all concerned, the song was rerecorded the following week at Strawberry Studios near Manchester. Although both versions were eventually released on the 12” of the single, it was the Manchester version that won the day and was released as the 7”.
the b-sides
On the flip-side of the 7” was Jeane, which had been kicking around for months, and was an obvious choice when the band began to record their first album with ex-Teardrop Explodes guitarist Troy Tate. Although those sessions were ultimately scrapped, Jeane had always been intended as the bside to Reel Around The Fountain, and so when This Charming Man became the aside, Jeane retained its status as the 7” bside. Jeane has been covered by a number of different artists, probably most famously by Sandie Shaw with help from the Smiths, but the most affecting version has to be by Billy Bragg.
As well as two different versions of the aside, the 12” also featured two other songs, Wonderful Woman and Accept Yourself. Wonderful Woman had started off life as What Do You See In Him? and had slowly evolved into the version heard on the record. Accept Yourself was a much newer song that soon became a fan favourite, apparently provoking a flood of fan-mail.
what happened next?
This Charming Man (Rough Trade RT 136 and RTT 136) was released on 28 October 1983, a matter of weeks after it had been written and recorded. The New York remix 12” version (RTT 136 NY) followed in early December, just after the band’s appearance on Top Of The Tops. The cover star was French actor Jean Marais, lover of film director Jean Cocteau. The song’s live debut had come at The Venue in London on 15 September, but it was only when it first appeared on television that it caught the public’s attention, and started its creep up the charts and into the nation’s consciousness. The song was first aired on Channel 4’s The Tube on 4 November in a specially commissioned film (certainly not a video!), and then on the BBC’s Riverside the following week, followed by the momentous appearance on Top Of The Pops on 24 November 1983. Although This Charming Man only managed a chart high of 25, the Smiths were up and running. The next twelve months would see the band elevated to the status of conquering heroes by the weekly music press, selling out national tours and scoring Top Ten hits. And the song wasn’t finished there – it climbed to number 8 when it was reissued by WEA in 1992, giving the Smiths their highest ever singles chart placement… so far.
what does it all mean?
For a lyric so widely quoted, its true meaning remains tantalisingly elusive – suffice to say, Morrissey has never made any effort to fully explain or expand upon the true meaning behind the song, not even to other members of the band let alone the general public.
The song contains a direct lyrical steal from the early 1970s film Sleuth (“a jumpedup pantry boy who doesn’t know his place”) written by Anthony Shaffer, as well as a lessdirect reference from one of Morrissey’s favourite films A Taste Of Honey, involving not being able to go out tonight due to a lack of apparel. More surprising are the number of lyrical similarities between This Charming Man and Randy Newman’s song Simon Smith & His Amazing Dancing Bear. Much has been made of the potential homo-erotic overtones to the lyric; however, it should be remembered that Morrissey insisted on a number of occasions that he sang from a standpoint that was neither male nor female, part of his ‘third gender’ persona. In addition, Morrissey has often sung in the third person or taken on different characters in his songs, which often leads to confusion and even controversy (coincidentally a trait he shares with Randy Newman).
One thing was for certain – as the band left the Top Of The Pops stage on that fateful November night in 1983, neither the Smiths nor the face of British pop would ever be quite the same again. They travelled immediately from the studios to Euston to catch the next train back to Manchester. Within hours, they were on stage at the Hacienda, in front of an adoring home crowd. The Smiths were ready to take over.
A SELECTION OF CHARMING RARITIES
1 the test pressings
As mentioned earlier, Rough Trade’s RT 136 catalogue number was originally intended for the release of Reel Around The Fountain as the Smiths’ second single. Only around 25 seven-inch test pressings were made – a fact confirmed to me in 1986 by Scott Piering, the Smiths’ manager/publicist.
Contrary to popular belief (including a number of well-respected books and websites), the version of Reel on this single is NOT the Troy Tate production – at the time of the test pressing’s manufacture, Rough Trade had two different versions of the song to choose from – the Tate version, and another recorded for the BBC (and later released on Hatful Of Hollow). Rough Trade preferred the BBC session version, and it was this that was used on the test pressing. Copies of this single rarely turn up, and are currently valued at up to £1500 in mint condition (beware though, it has been bootlegged).
Once the decision had been made to go with This Charming Man instead, new 7” test pressings began to appear. The rarest by far was of the rejected London version, which would have been pressed up for internal use only – renowned Smiths test-pressing expert Billy Albert believes that as few as two onesided copies still exist, and could be worth £500 or more. Once the Manchester version was selected as the eventual A-side, it also appeared as a one-sided test pressing, and is worth around £300. The only 12” test pressing to surface so far is of the New York remix, and is also worth around £300. In theory, two-sided 7” test pressings and standard 12” test pressings should exist, but have yet to appear; further details on a lightly tattooed postcard, please…
2 the real scrapped version
The first released versions of the UK single came with a variation of the Rough Trade logo that bore a distinct similarity to Capitol Records’ logo; this eventually led to the labels and sleeves being reprinted with a new, plainer logo. However, this didn’t happen until nearly six months after the single’s original release, by which time it had been up and down the charts and sold continuously on back catalogue. If anything, it is the repressed version that is rarer as it sold in much smaller numbers before being deleted.
Unscrupulous dealers like to refer to this version as being ‘scrapped’, but what is less well known is that there was a genuinely scrapped version of This Charming Man – the very first pressing of the 7” came with a ‘Capitol’ logo but also a solid centre rather than the four-pronged push-out centre preferred by Morrissey. In addition, an outof- date contact address in Portland Street in Manchester was printed on the rear of the sleeve. When the solid centre and address were spotted, all copies were recalled, with records repressed and sleeves reprinted, leaving us with a rarity worth at least £40.
While we’re dispelling myths, another popular one is that the Smiths hated the New York remix so much that they forced Rough Trade to scrap it – in reality, not only did RT not scrap it, they actually repressed it in 1984, with the new logo on the label and the band name printed on the front cover. A mint copy of one of these can cost up to £40, as does the standard 12” which was also reissued with the band’s name on the front, having originally featured no text at all. All other 7” variations are currently worth no more than £10, with other 12” variations no more than £20.
3 the early German version
The standard releases in Germany were a 7” on the Intercord label and a 12” on the Rough Trade Deutschland label; both of these are fairly common, and are worth about £15 and £20 respectively in mint condition. However, there was an earlier and much rarer release of This Charming Man in Germany – available on both 7” and 12”, they are actually British pressings but came with dual British/German catalogue numbers (RT 136/ RTD 010 and RTT 136/RTD 010T) printed on the labels, and were intended for export to Germany.
It’s not clear how many copies made it over the Channel, but it would appear that this would have been purely an interim measure following the fairly recent establishment of Rough Trade Deutschland some months before. Values of these two records are still quite low (you could probably pick either one up for around £20) but expect them to rise as this variation becomes better known.
Additionally, although the New York remix was never officially released in Germany, copies exist of the UK 12” version with a large Rough Trade Deutschland sticker on the back sleeve, so presumably this was another export/import deal.
4 the early French version
This Charming Man was released in France in both 7” and 12” formats. There are two different versions of the French 12” which look almost identical but have completely different catalogue numbers. The first pressing (Virgin 601 110) was released in early 1984, just as the company was being restructured.
Virgin France SA came into being later that year with a different numbering system, so This Charming Man was reissued with a new catalogue number (Virgin 80 074). The first pressing was only available for about six months and is worth about £30; the second pressing around £20. The 7” copy (Virgin 105 736) doesn’t appear to have been reissued, and is worth about £20.
5 other European versions
This Charming Man was released in a small number of European countries, including on 7” in Greece (Virgin VG8005), worth about £20, and on 12” in Spain (Nuevos Medios 41- 061M) which added the New York remix to the London version, and is worth around £25. It was also released in the Benelux countries – although copies have ‘Made in Belgium’ printed on the labels, they would have been distributed throughout Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg. The standard 7” (Megadisc RT136) and 12” (Megadisc 12RT.136/RTT 136) were almost identical to the UK versions apart from having Megadisc logos added to both back sleeves.
Additionally, Belgium/Benelux was unique in releasing the New York remix as a separate entity (RTT NY 136), rather than merely adding the vocal version of the song to the standard 12” as a few other countries did.
6 the Japanese version
This Charming Man was only available as a 12” in Japan (Tokuma Japan Corporation 15RTL-3), and as usual with Japanese releases was pressed on high-quality vinyl, and came with a printed insert and the traditional obi. Stock copies are worth around £60, while promo copies – which com e with a ‘sample’ sticker on the sleeve and promo print on the label – are priced just a little higher.
It should be noted, though, that the rear of the obi offers Japanese consumers the opportunity to also purchase the next two Smiths releases, What Difference Does It Make? and the debut LP, both of which weren’t released in the UK until early 1984. This confirms that This Charming Man wasn’t actually released in Japan in 1983, and only appeared as part of a reissue programme a year later.
7 the antipodean versions
This Charming Man was released in both Australia and New Zealand with identical catalogue numbers – on 7” (CBS/Rough Trade RTANZ 001) and 12” (CBS/Rough Trade RTANZ 12001). They even came with the same tracks, including the unusual combination of the two New York remixes and Accept Yourself on the 12”. However, telling the difference between Australian and New Zealand pressings can be tricky to the uninitiated, as the sleeves are usually identical and the labels are usually very similar.
Having said that, This Charming Man is actually one of the easier Down Under releases to differentiate between, as Australian stock copies came with light brown labels while New Zealand stock copies have green and red Rough Trade labels. Later on, once the Aussies stopped using coloured labels and reverted to the same green/red labels as New Zealand, you can tell the difference by whether your copy has ‘Made in Australia’ printed at the bottom of the label – Australian ones do, New Zealand ones don’t. But that’s another story.
All stock copies from both countries in both formats can usually be found for under £20. Australian promos came with printed white labels, and will set you back around £30 for the 7” and £40 for the 12”; New Zealand promos are just stock copies with a promo sticker on the b-side, and cost around £15 for the 7” and £20 for the 12”.
8 the Dutch promo
It came as a surprise to many that This Charming Man wasn’t added to the Smiths’ first album when it was released in February 1984. A number of countries around the world chose to add the song to the album’s track-listing, including Australia and the USA, the latter having already taken the equally surprising decision not to release the single at all.
However, rather than messing around with the original UK track-listing, Megadisc in Holland came up with the unique idea of pressing a one-sided 7” single of the track (RTOS 136), to be included with initial copies of the debut album. The single comes with a plain white paper sleeve, and can usually be picked up for around £25 on its own (buying the single and album as a package costs around £40). Record Collector 35
