Morrissey says the name of his former band, The Smiths, wasn’t meant to be mysterious, revealing the true origin of it’s name.
The singer offered an explanation during a 1984 appearance on the children’s television show DataRun, where bandmate Johnny Marr pointed to him and said, “We call ourselves The Smiths, because you decided we’d call ourselves The Smiths.”
Morrissey, 66, followed with a rather blunt rebuttal, “And I decided because it was the most ordinary name, and I thought it’s time that the ordinary folk of the world showed their faces.” This follows fans’ recent concern over Morrissey’s health.
The name would go on to define one of Britain’s most influential bands of the 1980s.
Morrissey, Marr, bassist Andy Rourke, and drummer Mike Joyce formed The Smiths in Manchester in 1982.
In a 1987 interview on The South Bank Show, he contrasted the band’s name with the elaborate titles of other acts popular at the time.
“You’ve got all these synthesising duos, really mixing metaphors, really corny as hell metaphorical lyrics with 18-syllable names,” Marr said.
“And because we understood all that totally, we were involved in it to an extent and observed it, we just turned the whole thing around and called ourselves The Smiths.”
Another theory connects the name to the Moors Murders, a series of child killings committed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in the 1960s.
Morrissey addressed the murders in the 1984 track “Suffer Little Children” after reading Beyond Belief, a book about the crimes.
David Smith, Hindley’s brother-in-law, was a key witness who reported Brady to the police.
Some believe Morrissey chose the name in part because of that connection.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.the-express.com ’
