Late one September night in a BBC studio, Johnny Marr sat down and wrote music for a song that didn't yet have a name, one that would reach the public on October 31, 1983. The date was September 14, 1983, and the session for John Peel's radio show would be recorded that same evening. The Smiths guitarist was preparing for a session with the radio host John Peel, and in that same burst he produced 'Still Ill' and 'Pretty Girls Make Graves' too. One of those tunes would change the band's plans entirely.
Rough Trade picks the single
On October 31, 1983, Rough Trade released the second single by The Smiths, 'This Charming Man'. It arrived just weeks after that BBC session, and the song had already beaten out 'Reel Around the Fountain' for the spot. The label had intended to lead with that other track, but hearing what Marr and singer Morrissey had made at the studio in Maida Vale changed the calculus.
The song itself is a strange little story, told in the first person. A cyclist gets a puncture on a deserted hillside, and a passing 'charming man' in a fancy car offers a lift. The cyclist hesitates, then climbs in, and a flirtation starts in the car. Morrissey wrote the lyric with deliberately old-fashioned language, aiming for a courtly world that had nothing to do with 1980s fashion. In the car, the driver says it is gruesome that someone so handsome should care. The narrator also has the line about having no stitch to wear. Morrissey took the phrase about a jumped-up pantry boy from the 1972 film Sleuth.
Fifteen guitar parts and a Linn drum
Musically, Marr built the track from single notes and intervals rather than strummed chords, layering around fifteen guitar parts. He used a loud 1954 Telecaster, not the Rickenbacker many fans assumed. Producer John Porter had the drums programmed on a Linn LM-1, then used it to trigger samples of a live kit, and the rhythm section of Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce played a more danceable beat than The Smiths usually did. Rourke's bass line nodded to Motown, while Morrissey's vocal came in eight seconds after the opening riff. The recording process had a false start. The band first tried to capture the song at Matrix Studios in London in September 1983, but that version was deemed unsatisfactory. They then moved to Strawberry Studios in Stockport, where the familiar A-side was recorded. The guitar work was dense enough that Marr later said the recording had about fifteen guitar tracks. He also tuned his guitar to F sharp and played chords in G so the part would sound in A. His part keeps a countermelody going through the whole song.
The single ran two minutes and forty-one seconds, with three B-sides: 'Jeane', 'Accept Yourself', and 'Wonderful Woman'. It reached number 21 in the UK chart on first release. The track also made it onto the band's debut album, though only on the cassette edition in most regions. A different version, from that Peel session, appeared on the 1984 compilation Hatful of Hollow.
The song's afterlife kept growing. A 1992 reissue climbed to number 6 in the UK Singles Chart, the highest position The Smiths ever achieved. In 2023 the single received a double platinum certification from the BPI. By then, 'This Charming Man' had long since stopped being just a smart indie single and had become the song people reached for when they wanted to explain what The Smiths were. The song's influence extended beyond The Smiths. In 2008, Mojo magazine placed it at number one on its list of the 50 greatest indie records. The single's cover art, a still from Jean Cocteau's 1950 film Orpheus featuring actor Jean Marais, became an iconic image in its own right.
Morrissey once said he liked the idea of a vulnerable male voice, someone who gets picked up and lightly manipulated, instead of heavy machismo. That idea runs right through 'This Charming Man'. The narrator can't push past his own indecision, and the whole song lives in that hesitation, in the space between wanting something and being too unsure to take it.
Morrissey once said he liked the idea of a vulnerable male voice, someone who gets picked up and lightly manipulated, instead of heavy machismo.