Meat Is Murder is The Smiths’ second studio LP; it went to #1 in the UK and to #110 in the US and Rolling Stone ranked it among the top 500 albums of all-time (#295 in 2003). So many great tracks! I love the two singles The Smiths released form Meat Is Murder: “Barbarism Begins At Home” (Italy and Germany in ‘85, the UK in ‘88) and “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” (#49 UK), which is one of my favorite of the ultra-miserable Smith songs (and there a lot of those) and supposedly one of Johnny Marr’s, too. I spent a lot of hours in ‘86 wallowing in teenage misery to that song. I also love “The Headmaster Ritual,” “I Want the One I Can’t Have,” “What She Said” (a great Smiths rocker), “Nowhere Fast” and the title track “Meat Is Murder.”

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Allmusic’s Steward Mason describes “The Headmaster Ritual” as a “song [that] basically sums up the entirety of their 1984 self-titled debut before the rest of the album branches out into new musical territory. More than any other Smiths song, it redefines the word ‘jangly’; Johnny Marr’s overdubbed guitars have the shimmer of 100 Rickenbacker 12 strings through 100 Vox amps, playing a circular riff that’s as much overtones and harmonics as it is actual notes. Rather than a proper chorus, the song features interludes of Morrissey wailing and ululating wordlessly along with Marr’s guitars; indeed, the second half of this nearly five-minute song consists of nothing else, and it has the hypnotic power of a classic Krautrock track. Lyrically, the song provides some of the earliest hints that perhaps Morrissey doesn’t wish to be taken quite as seriously as he had been; the deliberately over-the-top verses castigate the staff and faculty of Britain’s school system as ‘Belligerent ghouls’ and ‘Spineless swine,’ and one verse features the contents of a forged note excusing young Stephen from gym class. It’s all quite silly, and deliberately so; that a large portion of the Smiths’ audience never quite got the joke of lyrics like these is the band’s tragedy.”

Belligerent ghouls
Run Manchester schools

Spineless swines
Cemented minds

Sir leads the troops
Jealous of youth
Same old suit since nineteen sixty two

He does the military two-step down
The nape of my neck

I want to go home
I don’t want to stay
Give up education
As a bad mistake

Mid-week on the playing fields
Sir thwacks you on the knees

Knees you in the groin
Elbow in the face
Bruises bigger than dinner plates

I want to go home
I don’t want to stay

Da-da-da
Da-da-da
Da-da-da
Da-da-da
Da-da-da
Da-da-da
Da-da-da
Da-da-da
Da-da-da
Da-da-da

Belligerent ghouls
Run Manchester schools

Spineless bastards all

Sir leads the troops
Jealous of youth
Same old jokes since nineteen- oh- two

He does the military two-step down
The nape of my neck

I want to go home
I don’t want to stay
Give up life
As a bad mistake

Please excuse me from gym
I’ve got this terrible cold coming on
He grabs and devours
He kicks me in the showers
Kicks me in the showers
And he grabs and devours

I want to go home
I don’t want to stay

The b-side, “Oscillate Wildly” is an instrumental that appears on some Smiths’ compilation albums like Louder Than Bombs and The World Won’t Listen.

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I am pretty sure I picked up this copy sometime during 1986 and it is a re-release of the UK original because “How Soon Is Now,” the B-side to the single “William It Was Really Nothing,” appears on my copy. Warner Brothers added “How Soon Is Now” to its North American market after “Meat Is Murder” gained chart success in the US and Canada, but interestingly the listing for “How Soon Is Now” does not appear on the back cover but plays as the first track on Side 2.

Oh how I loved wallowing in the sadness, despair and longing of this record back in the teenage years of the 80’s! “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” gave words to the angst of (perceived) loneliness and isolation. (In hindsight I was neither lonely nor isolated, though I clearly remembering wandering the halls of high school listening to this on my Walkman feeling miserable.) The album also helped kickstart a lifelong flirtation with vegetarianism. Hurrah for Morrissey inspiring healthy eating habits!

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