John Peel once described the Smiths as “just another band that arrived from nowhere with a very clear and strong identity”. Unlike other bands, he said, the Smiths weren’t trying to be T Rex or the Doors; they were simply the Smiths, a group whose aesthetic lineage was curiously hard to trace.
What they left in their wake, of course, is far easier to map out: there are few indie bands since who don’t, at least in some way, take their cues from Morrissey, Johnny Marr, Mike Joyce and the recently departed Andy Rourke. As far back as their 1983 debut, the Smiths were inadvertently shaping ideas about how indie should interact with fandom, masculinity and the mainstream music industry, and writing music that would be referenced and reinterpreted by generations to come; over the past 40 years, you can see their aesthetic and spiritual influence in everyone from the Stone Roses to Oasis and the 1975.
