Once Upon a Time in the Top Spot: The Smiths, “How Soon Is Now?”
30 years ago today, The Smiths topped the UK Indie Singles chart for the fifth time…and for the fifth time, they managed to do it with a song that wasn’t, at least as of when the single was released, actually available on an album yet.
“Hand in Glove”? Released May 1983. “This Charming Man”? October ’83. “What Difference Does It Make” was the first single actually intended as a teaser for their self-titled debut, but the single came out in January 1984, and The Smiths didn’t hit record store shelves until February ’84. And in May, when most bands would’ve still been busy pimping tracks from the album they’d released a mere three months prior, they were releasing a new, otherwise-unavailable single: “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” which probably could’ve been a direct quote from their label, even if it did prove to be the band’s fourth #1 on the Indie Singles chart. If you want more of an idea of just how much emotional trauma was caused to Rough Trade by The Smiths’ desire to keep releasing new, non-album singles, go read Tony Fletcher’s A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of the Smiths, but for now, let’s talk about that fifth #1.
Written by Johnny Marr within the same four-day period that also resulted in William, It Was Really Nothing” and “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want,” “How Soon Is Now?” went through a bit of sonic evolution as a result of a discussion between Marr and producer John Porter about Elvis Presley’s early recordings, but Marr came up with the unique guitar sound in the studio.
As Marr told Guitar Player in 1990:
“I put down the rhythm track on an Epiphone Casino through a Fender Twin Reverb without vibrato, then we played the track back through four old Twins, one on each side. We had to keep all the amps vibrating in time to the track and each other, so we had to keep stopping and starting the track, recording it in 10-second bursts... I wish I could remember exactly how we did the slide part – not writing it down is one of the banes of my life! We did it in three passes through a harmonizer, set to some weird interval, like a sixth. There was a different harmonization for each pass. For the line in harmonics, I retuned the guitar so that I could play it all at the 12th fret with natural harmonics. It's doubled several times.”
Or in other words, when Marr also indicated that “it took a long time” to get the “How Soon Is Now?” sound down, he wasn’t f***ing kidding.
The Smiths were understandably less than thrilled with Rough Trade’s decision to bury “How Soon Is Now?” on the B-side of “William, It Was Really Nothing” because they felt it wasn’t sufficiently representative of the band’s typical sound, but they were ultimately redeemed when UK DJs recognized the brilliance of the track and helped it break out as a success in its own right. While certainly not as successful in the U.S., the song also went on to achieve cult classic status in the States, with Sire Records’ Seymour Stein having once described it as “the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ of the ‘80s,” and it’s also found new fans through covers done by Snake River Conspiracy, Quicksand, Love Spit Love – whose version originated on the soundtrack of The Craft and ended up as the theme song to the similiarly-premised TV series Charmed – and the Russian duo T.a.t.u.
Oh, right, and let’s not forget that Mr. Marr’s unmistakable riff found new life when it was sampled in the Soho single “Hippychick.”
Or, better yet, let’s do forget it – at least for the moment, anyway – and just go listen to the original.
