REAL GONE
The Man, The Smith
Andy Rourke, bassist with The Smiths, left us on May 19.
What a difference he made: Andy Rourke backstage with The Smiths, Reading University, February 22, 1984; (opposite, top) The Smiths, 1985 (from left) Johnny Marr, Morrissey, Joyce, Rourke; (bottom) Rourke with Johnny Marr, backstage at Madison Square Garden, New York, October 1, 2022.
Tom Sheehan, Ross Marino/Getty, Riaz Gomez,
IN 2016, MOJO asked Andy Rourke if there was another musician he would have liked to have been. “None,” he replied with characteristic equanimity. “Everybody else is taken.” It was a modest answer which quietly articulated his individuality. Rourke sometimes mused that his objective as a bassist was to make “a song within a song,” and he achieved this repeatedly in The Smiths. Arguably the definitive British indie group, they were full with forceful musical personalities, yet Rourke was able to make his unorthodox, intuitive bass an essential part of their sound. Born in Manchester on January 17, 1964, the young Rourke’s life was complicated by his mother leaving the family home when he was just 11. As aspirant guitarist, he met future Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr at St Augustine’s Catholic Grammar School in Wythenshawe: the two bonded over their love of Neil Young, and Rourke later recalled that he was “for a brief moment” the better musician. Their teenage bands The Paris Valentinos, White Dice and Freak Party followed, during which time Rourke switched to the bass, with Stanley Clarke and Bill Wyman among his touchstones. In December 1982 he was called to play on a demo session for Marr’s new band The Smiths at Drone Studios in south Manchester. Singer Morrissey admired Rourke’s “combative” bass lines and wrote that the band was “as commando-tough as could be imagined.” Within a year, The Smiths’ second single This Charming Man was a hit and they were on Top Of The Pops: Smithsmania had begun.