Andy Rourke RIP

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Well, that sucks. I always enjoyed his playing. Those bass lines to "Rusholme Ruffians" and "Barbarism Begins at Home" (among many others) are permanently stamped on my brain.

RIP

Both Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce tended to get lost amidst the outsize personalities that were Morrissey and Johnny Marr, but they were both excellent as well. That first Smiths album remains a huge classic; the rest of their discography provides diminishing returns in my view, even if there is the occasional gem.

While the sadness of his passing is not lost on me, I’d rather dwell on all the great records he played on. No one can ever take away what he laid down with the Smiths.

Listening to song after song on ‘Louder than Bombs’, I’m always smiling and shaking my head at the depth of their catalog in a short period of time. And that collection doesn’t even integrate their studio lps.

Oh I KNOW they’re an ACQUIRED TASTE…but wow to have been a part of those recordings.

I love the Smiths, but my experience would probably back up the argument that they're an acquired taste. There was a little over a CD's worth of music that I thought was truly great - maybe two dozen songs give or take a few? - and as much as I loved those songs, it was all I really enjoyed for a very long time. The rest just didn't seem that interesting; they were only a singles band to me and I didn't get all the praise for the albums. But I had friends who would play them quite a bit and eventually with that prolonged exposure, I really grew to love them all, the B-sides as well. I never got the complete box set from around 2011, but across the four albums and two compilations, I have almost everything they put out. Probably took close to a decade for me to grow from a casual fan to a devoted one. Maybe not so coincidentally, I grew to love the Go-Betweens in similar fashion - I would never mistake one for the other, but the two bands do seem to draw comparisons simply for being very literate contemporaries in the indie world outside the U.S.

I was very sad to hear the news. It was wonderful to see Rourke pop up during the occasional Marr concert, and I even hoped he'd play an entire tour or at least an entire show with Marr but it wasn't meant to be. The Smiths were often a great band to dance to, and Marr, Rourke and Joyce all were equally the reason for that, though maybe a bit more credit should go to the rhythm section.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2023 10:08PM by belfast.