Product Description

The story of the rise and fall of The Smiths, the lives of singer Steven Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr and the differences that tore them apart.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51061 in Books
• Published on: 1993-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 358 pages

Review
'Made most famous by The Smith's singer's wish that Rogan 'ends his days very soon in an M3 pile up' before he'd read the book. Had he bothered, he'd have found it a deep insight into both halves of one of the 1980s greatest musical marriages.' MONDO

Customer Reviews

It's the best book we've got on The Smiths...
... but even so deserves to be handled with a little caution. On the plus side, Rogan's research is meticulous, and if you really want to know about the young Morrissey's schooldays and so on, this is the place you should come to. It's interesting stuff, written in an interesting manner. Also, Rogan's analysis of the band politics is very good; his explanation of why the band eventually split well argued and pretty convincing...

... But that's not the whole story - it's not even the most important part of the story, in my opinion. As far as any comment on the songs goes, I'm afraid there's little to match the detail put into the biographical sections of the book. Rogan's commentary on Morrissey's lyricism tends to be either glancing or completely superficial. A shame, in many ways...

Connected with that, the well-publicised Morrissey-Rogan spat that accompanied the first publication of this book a few years back does seem - unsurprisingly - to have made Johnny Rogan far less even-handed in his treatment of his subject than he otherwise should be. The mealy-mouthed preface that accompanies the revised edition of the book is a case in point, and is perhaps better ignored altogether...

"The Severed Alliance" is, I repeat, the best work to be published on the most significant songwriting partnership of the 1980s, despite its small but significant failings. But please (please!) could someone get a move on and write something that does justice to the songs themselves?

Pure Excellence
The "definitive story of the Smiths" is told with acute accuracy and candid honesty. Every aspect of The Smiths is scrutinised with suggested explanations, as well as the lyric content and musicological side of the Smith's complete discography being covered. This rock-biography not only disects the lives of Morrissey and Marr, but also acknowledges the importance of The Smiths in the eighties, the indie scene and in alternative music in general.

Steven Patrick Morrissey...this is your life...
This book provides a very in-depth account of the Smiths from the beginning to the end. All members of the band get a look in, not just Morrissey and Marr, although the book is primarily about the massive clash of ego's that eventually led to the downfall of one of the most original and talented bands ever to grace the airwaves. It also gives an excellent insight into the mind of Morrissey...a hugely talented and very strange man. An earlier review said that Morrissey called for the author to be murdered, which is not strictly accurate. He said that he hoped that Johnny Rogan would die in a horrible motorway pile-up :) That Charming Man! All in all, well worth the read...especially if you are a fan of the music of the Smiths.