Free Johnny Marr by Richard Carman Page B

Woodentops and Easterhouse. The label gained experience in charting successful singles bands and promoting major acts as well as minority ones, and enabled the company to expand into the US market with record stores and distribution deals. For The Smiths themselves, signing to Rough Trade was a blessing and, as would transpire later, a deep complication.
    The blessing was that, from the very beginning, Johnny and Morrissey had wanted to control as much of their own business as possible. While rumours that the band would sign with Manchester’s Factory Records abounded, and other labels were reported to be interested, Rough Trade offered them the opportunity to retain a much larger share of their record deal than might otherwise have been possible, and left the success or failure of the band more than partially in the hands of the artists themselves. In short, although the advance paid to the band was considerable in Rough Trade’s own terms, it was significantly less than might have been gleaned from a deal with, for instance, EMI. Instead, the deal with Rough Trade would be a profit-sharing offer whereby the company and the band split the income from The Smiths fifty-fifty. If the bandwere hugely successful, their income would be considerably higher than if they were signed on a lower percentage/royalty deal. “We like Rough Trade as people,” Morrissey told Melody Maker in the autumn. “And they like us. That has to be the most important thing. And if people want to buy the records, Rough Trade will supply them.” Such implicit confidence in such a simple process was endearing. Both Johnny and Morrissey trusted that the route to immense success was inevitable. People would hear The Smiths. People would like The Smiths. People would buy their records. Nothing could be more simple for a duo who had etched out the steps to success from day one. “I want to be heard and I want to be seen by as many people as possible,” explained the singer. How he would be proven right, time after time.
    The complication of the contract was that – while they waited until the early summer to formalise the deal – only Morrissey and Maher appeared as signatories on it, and this would come back to haunt them and many of the people around the band in the future. Although Rourke and Joyce were reportedly present at the signing, their names did not appear on The Smiths’ contract with Rough Trade, and so – contractually at least – they were not officially, technically ‘Smiths’. The situation was, much later, to cause Morrissey, Maher, Rourke and Joyce great problems and lead to one of the most acrimonious court cases in rock history, as well as to public vilification at the hands of the ever-considerate British tabloid press who had waited decades to dig their teeth into the band.
    For now though, the deal enabled Johnny to take the band into the studio and start work on the much-discussed, much-anticipated debut album. There were gigs to play, now with theknowledge that the future of The Smiths was in part secured, and it was a heady and exciting time for Maher. Dave McCullough, writing for Sounds a month or so after the contract was sealed, wondered whether Rough Trade were in a position to really do justice to the inevitable potential that the band had. One of the first journalists to try and get to grips with what the band were really about, McCullough noted their confidence – “they KNOW the talent that The Smiths possess.” Morrissey, for his part was confident in the deal. “Obviously we wouldn’t say no to Warners, but Rough Trade can do it too,” he told the journalist. Johnny was keen to stress that one of the reasons that they had not signed to Factory was that they might forever be tagged a ‘Manchester band.’ “What we’re thinking of isn’t even in terms of national success. It’s more like worldwide!” Super-confident they may have seemed but, over the year to come, interviews with all the band