The Enduring Saga of the Smiths

A Light That Never Goes Out

The first group biography of one of the greatest British bands of all time - The Smiths.

[A] meticulous biography…This exhaustive, well-researched account brings fresh detail and thought to the party.

A finely judged re-telling of a remarkable tale with valuable first-hand accounts of the band’s American adventures, their rapid development into a wonderful live act, plus insights into the spiralling pressures and frictions that faced the individual band members.

An exhaustive labour of love that was three years in the writing but which will be lapped up by fans of the band...written with a real sense of love and affection for the group who, though they were only together for a mere five years, tilted the world on its axis to a degree not seen since the heyday of the Beatles and the Stones…Fletcher is excellent when it comes to widening the view to include the cultural and historical factors behind the band's emergence and the city from which they came.

The story of the Smiths told on the basis of interviews with just about every surviving participant in the Smiths' story. As the story winds on, a chain of no-shows, fits of pique and self-sabotage ... reaches its denouement with an episode from April 1987, just prior to the band's formal break-up. Fletcher is the first writer to have got the full story. Such material highlights the extent to which Fletcher has done his research.

Tony Fletcher’s account is a highly enjoyable way of revisiting [the] story. Crucially, he avoids areas well-served by other Smiths tomes and brings sufficient new material to reward even well-read fans…It’s a tale that’s been told before, but in his biography of the Manchester four-piece Tony Fletcher reveals new details and brings new depths to the story of Morrissey, Marr, Rourke, Joyce and the birth of the band.

There [are] fascinating passages about the bands producers: Troy Tate, John Porter, Stephen Street.  Pages on the members’ childhood add meaningful context, and there are some thrilling glimpses of the Smiths on tour.

The story itself is riveting and Fletcher tells it lucidly and fairly. The drive to continue reading is provided by Marr’s no-nonsense spirit and by Morrissey’s eminently quotable lyrics and interviews.

Tony Fletcher is the bestselling author of five non-fiction books and one novel. His biography of drummer Keith Moon, Dear Boy, has been named in many Best Music Book lists, and his biography of R.E.M., Remarks Remade, has been published in over half a dozen countries. During the 1980s heyday of the Smiths his magazine Jamming!, regularly featured the band as cover stars, and he was a co-presenter of the television show The Tube, for which he conducted Morrissey’s first television interview. Fletcher saw the Smiths in concert for the first time at the London Lyceum in 1983, and for the last time at the Kilburn National, in 1986, on their final tour. 
 
A contributor over the years to a multitude of magazines, newspapers, radio and television shows, primarily in the UK and USA, Fletcher now lives with his wife and two sons on a mountaintop near the village of Woodstock in New York State. There he runs, skis, maintains his web site www.ijamming.net, and plays Hammond B-3 and Rickenbacker in the Catskill 45s, a group that only performs songs from 45 calendar years ago. They look forward to covering the Smiths as of 2028.

To this day, they were, their fans believe, the best band in the world. Critics and sales figures told a similar story. Yet for all their brilliance and adoration – their famously energetic live shows routinely interrupted by stage invasions – The Smiths were continually plagued by their reticence to play the game, and by the time of 1987’s Strangeways Here We Come, they had split. 
 
Tony Fletcher’s A Light That Never Goes Out – part celebration, part paean – moves from Manchester in the nineteenth-century to the present day to tell the complete story of The Smiths. The product of extensive research and unprecedented access, it will serve to confirm The Smiths as one of the most important and influential rock groups of all time.

Tony Fletcher

Wearing the right clothes, liking the right bands – this book summons up what it meant to be a teenager in the 70s.

Charming coming of age tale … An innocent’s story, engagingly told.

Brought back happy memories when bands and their fans were as one.

[A] compelling and evocative memoir …full of great memories of bands, gigs, clothes, girls and parties. It celebrates the vitality of youth and the spirt of the times.

[A] gripping account of the post-punk period ... one of the most essential accounts of this tumultuous yet highly productive period of British music ... Tony Fletcher is an extraordinary character … This book will certainly bring back scores of vivid memories for those of us around Tony Fletcher’s age, and is required reading for anyone who wishes to know more about the late 1970’s music scene. More than that though, is the amazing human story and vivid characterisation that will have you hooked throughout as this period once again truly comes to life.

[An] excellent memoir of adolescent angst and musical obsession … it is surprisingly candid, wryly funny, occasionally harrowing, yet always honest in its descriptions … brilliantly written.

Even if you weren’t there when all this happened, the fast paced narrative will make you feel as if you were … An excellent read and I really would urge anyone with even a passing interest in punk, The Jam, The Who or what it was like being a music mad teenager in London in the late seventies to check it out.

Autobiography is rarely this can-do and candid.

A five star book from the ace face biographer …This honest, pre-pubescent tale of Fletcher’s formative years is frank, candid and, at times, more brutally gory and sexually explicit than a ‘This is England’ sequel.  But as his innocent, bullied, under-developed, paternally undernourished, maternally pampered, determined, stubborn squeaky voiced, rubbish-at-sex music-obsessed skinny body is laid out in a top fifty countdown for all to poke at… he suddenly matures, and emerges as a keen, spirited, clever and resourceful fifth year ready to start a record label … right after he loses his virginity.

A must for anyone with an interest in the 1970s and 80s music scene … Featuring a vibrant cast of supporting characters … Boy About Town in an evocative and wholly original account of growing up and coming of age in the glory days of the 1970s.

Funny, fascinating, and at times quite moving

Fletcher paints a vivid picture of the time – both through the eyes of a boy dealing with growing up and into the underground music scene of bands, fanzines, small record labels, and a staunchly independent spirit …It’s a great read and one which potentially invites the difficult second album syndrome.

Praise for A Light That Never Goes Out: [A] meticulous biography…This exhaustive, well-researched account brings fresh detail and thought to the party.

Praise for A Light That Never Goes Out: The story of the Smiths told on the basis of interviews with just about every surviving participant in the Smiths' story. As the story winds on, a chain of no-shows, fits of pique and self-sabotage ... reaches its denouement with an episode from April 1987, just prior to the band's formal break-up. Fletcher is the first writer to have got the full story. Such material highlights the extent to which Fletcher has done his research.

Praise for A Light That Never Goes Out: An exhaustive labour of love that was three years in the writing but which will be lapped up by fans of the band...written with a real sense of love and affection for the group who, though they were only together for a mere five years, tilted the world on its axis to a degree not seen since the heyday of the Beatles and the Stones…Fletcher is excellent when it comes to widening the view to include the cultural and historical factors behind the band's emergence and the city from which they came.

'I was no longer fitting in at school. I was unsure of my friends, and they were increasingly unsure of me. I wanted to be a rock star. But while all around, voices were starting to break, acne beginning to appear, facial hair sprouting, I remained all flabby flesh and innate scruff, with a high-pitched whine and not a muscle to my name. I was the runt of the class and rarely allowed to forget it. I had no father at home to help me out, and could hardly talk to my mum. So I took solace in The Jam.' 
 
As a boy, Tony Fletcher frequently felt out of place. Yet somehow he secured a ringside seat for one of the most creative periods in British cultural history. 
 
Boy About Town tells the story of the bestselling author’s formative years in the pre- and post-punk music scenes of London, counting down, from fifty to number one: attendance at seminal gigs and encounters with musical heroes; schoolboy projects that became national success stories; the style culture of punks, mods and skinheads and the tribal violence that enveloped them; life as a latchkey kid in a single-parent household; weekends on the football terraces in a quest for street credibility; and the teenage boy’s unending obsession with losing his virginity. 
 
Boy About Town is an evocative, bittersweet, amusing and wholly original account of growing up and coming of age in the glory days of the 1970s.

Tony Fletcher

Praise for Boy About Town

Wearing the right clothes, liking the right bands – this book summons up what it meant to be a teenager in the 70s.

Charming coming of age tale … An innocent’s story, engagingly told.

Brought back happy memories when bands and their fans were as one.

Wearing the right clothes, liking the right bands – this book summons up what it meant to be a teenager in the 70s.

Charming coming of age tale … An innocent’s story, engagingly told.

Brought back happy memories when bands and their fans were as one.

Wearing the right clothes, liking the right bands – this book summons up what it meant to be a teenager in the 70s.

Charming coming of age tale … An innocent’s story, engagingly told.

Brought back happy memories when bands and their fans were as one.

Books by Tony Fletcher

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