The Smiths - Legacy

Legacy

The Smiths have influenced a number of alternative rock bands. As early as 1985, "the Smiths had spawned a rash of soundalike bands, including James, who opened for the group on their spring 1985 tour". Marr's guitar playing "was a huge building block for more Manchester legends that followed The Smiths", including The Stone Roses, whose guitarist John Squire has said Marr was an influence. Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher also cites The Smiths as an influence, especially Marr. Gallagher has said that "When The Jam split, The Smiths started, and I totally went for them."

Simon Goddard argued in 2007 that as "the one truly vital voice of the '80s, The Smiths were the most influential British guitar group of the decade. As the first indie outsiders to achieve mainstream success on their own terms (their second album proper, 1985's Meat Is Murder, made Number 1 in the UK), they elevated rock's standard four-piece formula to new heights of magic and poetry. Their legacy can be traced down through The Stone Roses, Oasis and The Libertines to today's crop of artful young guitar bands."

Uncut magazine's Simon Reynolds wrote of the band: "Once upon a time, a band from the North came with a sound so fresh and vigorous it took the nation by storm. The sound was rock, but crucially it was pop, too: concise, punchy, melodic, shiny without being "plastic". The singer was a true original, delivering a blend of sensitivity and strength, defiance and tenderness, via a regionally inflected voice. The young man's lips spilled forth words that were realistic without being dour, full of sly humour and beautifully observed detail. Most recognised their debut album as a landmark, an instant classic."

The "Britpop movement pre-empted by The Stone Roses and spearheaded by groups like Oasis, Suede and Blur, drew heavily from Morrissey's portrayal of and nostalgia for a bleak urban England of the past." Blur formed as a result of seeing The Smiths on The South Bank Show in 1987. Yet even while leading bands from the Britpop movement were influenced by The Smiths, they were at odds with the "basic anti-establishment philosophies of Morrissey and The Smiths", since Britpop "was an entirely commercial construct." Mark Simpson has suggested that "the whole point of Britpop was to airbrush Morrissey out of the picture ... Morrissey had to become an 'unperson' so that the Nineties and its centrally-planned and coordinated pop economy could happen."

Playwright Shaun Duggan's stage drama William, Alex Broun's one-man show Half a Person: My Life as Told by The Smiths, Douglas Coupland's 1998 novel Girlfriend in a Coma, Andrew Collins' autobiography Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now, Mark Spitz's novel How Soon is Never?, the pop band Shakespear's Sister, the defunct art-punk group Pretty Girls Make Graves, and the Polish filmmaker Przemyslaw Wojcieszek's short fictional film about two Polish fans of The Smiths, Louder Than Bombs, are all inspired by or named after songs or albums by The Smiths. The Smiths' album, The Queen Is Dead is referenced in the Sleeper song, "Dress Like Your Mother". The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now?" is the theme song for the US television series Charmed and, in a cover version, for the 1996 Columbia Pictures feature film, The Craft, in which it is played under the opening credits by Love Spit Love.