Songs That Saved Your Life: The Art of the Smiths 1982-87 by Simon Goddard

Author:Simon Goddard [Goddard, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781162590
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2013-03-05T20:45:00+00:00

‘Vicar In A Tutu’ (Morrissey/Marr)

Recorded October-November 1985, Jacobs Studios, Farnham

Produced by Morrissey and Marr

album track from The Queen Is Dead

Released June 1986, Rough Trade (ROUGH96)

Also issued as B-side of ‘Panic’

Released July 1986, Rough Trade (RT193/RTT193)

The last piece of music to be written for The Queen Is Dead, ‘Vicar In A Tutu’ arose from a spur-of-the-moment studio jam in the final week of recording at Jacobs. That it lacks Marr’s usual premeditation is glaringly obvious, based upon a repeated 12 bar cycle with no bridges, middle eights or other such deviations. It’s also the only moment on The Queen Is Dead to lapse into musical pastiche, a transparent mimicry of Sun rockabilly and the sub-country picking style of Elvis’s original lead guitar player Scotty Moore; one need only compare Marr’s predominant riff with Moore’s mercurial solo on 1955’s ‘Mystery Train’ to note the song’s unmistakable muse.

But what ‘Vicar In A Tutu’ lacks in invention it accounts for in naturalism. Apart from Marr’s own polished restraint (resisting the temptation to switch into fifth gear as on past rockabilly knee-knockers ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’ and ‘Rusholme Ruffians’), Joyce’s breathless brush work also lends the track a tactile radiance unique within the album’s tracklisting, even if the drummer himself freely confesses to the irregularity of the song’s rhythm. ‘It’s all over the place,’ comments Joyce, ‘you try putting a click track on top of it and it’s just impossible.’

The tale of an eccentric clergyman who chooses to preach the gospel half dressed as a ballerina, its words were a softer dig at religious convention than the straight accusations of corruption in ‘The Queen Is Dead’, if ultimately no less disdainful of the church hierarchy. Morrissey’s situation comedy is brilliantly realised with a vivid cast of supporting players; Rose with her collection plate, the ‘monkish Monsignor’ and the singer himself as a petty criminal stealing lead from the spires of Manchester’s Holy Name Church. The lyrics also feature another of the album’s many references to the 1963 film Billy Liar, in which Tom Courtenay daydreams about the state funeral of his grandmother who ‘struggled valiantly to combat ignorance and disease’. Smiths soundman Grant Showbiz has also suggested that the eponymous ‘Vicar In A Tutu’ was, in truth, another of Morrissey’s veiled caricatures of Rough Trade’s Geoff Travis, already pilloried on the album’s ‘Frankly, Mr Shankly’.

As a last addition to The Queen Is Dead, ‘Vicar In A Tutu’ successfully nudged the inferior ‘Unloveable’ out of the running order even if, on its own merits, the song was ostensibly an amusing but lightweight filler.

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