Most presents for The Smiths fans assume the band is the whole story, which is why so many of them end up in a drawer. The Smiths made four studio albums in four years, and the people who love those four records have usually followed at least one of the two men who made them for another thirty. This collection holds two master prints, and choosing between them is really a question about which part of that story the person already lives in.
I am Mike Bell. Every one of these maps comes out of spreadsheets I keep myself, album by album, credit by credit, and everything below is taken from those sheets rather than from a press release.
Four Albums, Then the Line Splits in Two
The Smiths, Marr and Morrissey collection works because the three prints share a beginning. The four Smiths albums, from the 1984 debut to Strangeways, Here We Come in 1987, sit on all three sheets.
After that, they diverge completely. The Morrissey map carries on through fifteen more records, and the Johnny Marr map carries on through fifteen more too, but under eight different band names.
Paul Carrack Is on the First Smiths Album, and Almost Nobody Expects Him
The busiest station on the Smiths' print is the debut, and it only has six credited names. Four of them are the band. The fifth is Annalisa Jablonska, who sings the female voice on "Pretty Girls Make Graves" and "Suffer Little Children".
The sixth is Paul Carrack, on piano and organ on "Reel Around the Fountain", "You've Got Everything Now" and "I Don't Owe You Anything". The man from Ace and later Squeeze and Mike and the Mechanics, on The Smiths' first album, in 1984.
That is the whole argument for this format in one credit. You cannot see Paul Carrack on a sleeve print or a lyric poster, and you can see him on this one from across a room.
Stephen Street Crossed Over, and Mick Ronson Never Got a Line
I have one rule that decides who gets drawn and who does not, and this collection contains the two cleanest examples of it I have found anywhere. A producer only gets a musician line if the sleeve also credits them playing something.
Stephen Street is credited on Strangeways, Here We Come with bass guitar, guitar, songwriting and production, then again on Viva Hate the following year with the same set. He earns his line twice, and he is the only person on my sheets who walks straight out of the last Smiths album into the first Morrissey one.
Mick Ronson produced Your Arsenal in 1992, and my sheet lists him as the producer and nothing else. No instrument, no line, no station. He is the reason the rule exists, and leaving him off is the hardest thing I have had to do on a Morrissey map.
Presents for Smiths Fans Who Followed Morrissey Out of the Band
If the person you are buying for talks about Vauxhall and I more than Meat Is Murder, the Morrissey print is the one. Nineteen stations, four of them The Smiths, and a cast that keeps widening after 1988.
Two lines hold the whole thing together. Boz Boorer plays on every album from Your Arsenal in 1992 through to I Am Not a Dog on a Chain in 2020, twenty-eight unbroken years, on guitar, clarinet, saxophone, mandolin, zither and QChord along the way. Jesse Tobias picks up from You Are the Quarry in 2004 and is still there at the far end.
Alain Whyte does something stranger. His line runs from Your Arsenal in 1992 to Ringleader of the Tormentors in 2006, and then simply stops. On my sheet, he reappears in the most recent entry, roughly twenty years later. Gaps like that are the details people stand and read.
The Marr Map Is Eight Band Names Pretending to Be One Career
Johnny Marr's print is the odd one in the collection, and the odd one is usually the better present for the serious fan. His sheet holds The Smiths, The The, Electronic, 7 Worlds Collide, Johnny Marr and The Healers, Modest Mouse, The Cribs and his own solo records.
The density is wildly uneven, and that is what makes it worth looking at. Mind Bomb, made with The The in 1989, has more than thirty credited names on it, including Neneh Cherry and a full brass section. Ignore the Ignorant, made with The Cribs twenty years later, is Marr and the three Jarman brothers.
Then there is Electronic in 1991, where Neil Tennant sings, and Chris Lowe plays keyboards on "The Patience of a Saint". Both Pet Shop Boys arrive at one station, on one track, and leave again.
Denise Johnson Turns Up Twice, Twelve Years and Two Bands Apart
She sings on "Get the Message," the first Electronic album, in 1991, and again on Raise the Pressure in 1996. Then she is gone.
She comes back on Boomslang in 2003, on backing vocals on track five, under a completely different name: Johnny Marr and The Healers. Twelve years after the first credit, it is the same Manchester voice.
That is the sort of thread I go looking for, and it is invisible unless you lay every record out side by side. On the print, it is one line running quietly across three decades while everything around it changes.
The Famous Names, and Which Print They Land On
| Who | Where | The credit | Which print |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paul Carrack | The Smiths (1984) | Piano and organ on three tracks | All three |
| Ennio Morricone | Ringleader of the Tormentors (2006) | String arrangement on "Dear God Please Help Me" | Morrissey |
| Jeff Beck | Years of Refusal (2009) | Guitar on track three | Morrissey |
| Chrissie Hynde | Years of Refusal (2009) | Backing vocals on track fourteen | Morrissey |
| Thelma Houston | California Son (2019) | Vocals on track three | Morrissey |
| Billie Joe Armstrong | California Son (2019) | Backing vocals on track seven | Morrissey |
| Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe | Electronic (1991) | Vocals and keyboards on "The Patience of a Saint" | Johnny Marr |
| Karl Bartos | Raise the Pressure (1996) | Keyboards, having left Kraftwerk | Johnny Marr |
| Sinéad O'Connor | Dusk (1992), with The The | Credited alongside Marr and Matt Johnson | Johnny Marr |
| Eddie Vedder | 7 Worlds Collide (2001) | Vocals, electric guitar and ukulele | Johnny Marr |
| Zak Starkey | Boomslang (2003) | Drums and percussion across nine tracks | Johnny Marr |
Why A2 Suits One of These and A1 Suits Another
All three prints come in A2 (420 x 594mm) and A1 (594 x 841mm), unframed or in a black wood frame, from £42. Each one is a Giclée print on fine art paper.
The Smiths print holds four albums and a small cast, so A2 works comfortably and still reads at arm's length. It is the easiest of the three to hang in a hallway or above a record player.
The Marr print is the opposite case. With more than thirty names on the Mind Bomb station alone, and Ed O'Brien, Phil Selway, Jeff Tweedy and the Finn brothers crowding into the two 7 Worlds Collide records, A1 is the size that lets somebody actually read it.
Questions I Get Asked About This Collection
Are Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce on all three prints? Yes. They are credited on all four Smiths albums, and those four albums appear on every sheet in this collection, so the rhythm section runs across all three prints.
Does the Morrissey print include The Smiths' years, or does it start at Viva Hate? It includes them. The map opens with the four Smiths albums and then continues, which is why it works as a present for somebody who loves both halves.
Is the Marr print really a solo discography? No, and I would not want it to be. It is every record he has made as a credited player, which is why Modest Mouse and The Cribs sit on it next to his own albums.
What happens when Morrissey releases another record? The sheet updates, and the map redraws. That is the honest answer for any living discography, and it is why I keep the research in a spreadsheet rather than in my head.
What if I can't figure out which one they want? Use the art print gift card. It is the right call when you know they love the band, but not whether they went with Morrissey or with Marr.
If They Already Own One of the Three
Each print has its own longer piece, and those answer a different question from this one. This guide is about which to pick; those are about why that particular map exists.
There is one on The Smiths map, one on the Morrissey map and one on the Johnny Marr map.
If all three are already on the wall, the credits point outwards. Manchester is the obvious next step, and there is a map for Joy Division and New Order, whose Bernard Sumner shares the Electronic albums with Marr, and one for Billy Bragg for the fan who came to The Smiths through the politics.
The full range sits in the Music Wall Art Prints collection. Every one of them is researched by hand and drawn by hand, which is the only reason a credit like Paul Carrack's ends up on a wall at all.
