'Hand In Glove'

The Smiths Debut Single

Released May 13, 1983, 'Hand In Glove' is the Smiths' debut single. The single's B-side consisted of a live version of 'Handsome Devil' from the Smiths gig at The Hacienda in Manchester on February 4, 1983 (their third ever). 

 

The single peaked at No. 3 on the UK Indie Chart; however, it  did not make the top 75 of the UK Singles Chart, only reaching the No. 124 spot. Notwithstanding the relative success of the single, it earned the group a listing in the Guinness Book of Records in January 1984 when 'Hand In Glove' and the group's next two singles; 'This Charming Man' and 'What Difference Does It Make?', held the top three position on the UK Indie Chart.

According to Discogs, the 1983 UK single's A-side Matrix contained "KISS MY SHADES . A PORKY PRIME CUT" etched on it, while its B-Side Matrix is etched with "KISS MY SHADES TOO . PORKY".  Interestingly, all other sources omit the secondary 'PORKY' references on each side of the disc.

With a single exception, 'Hand In Glove' is the only Smiths UK single to feature the song title on its cover (the sole exception being the UK issue of 'Barbarism Begins At Home' and excluding the post-Smiths reissues).  

Morrissey had specific instructions on how he wanted the single to be packaged, telling Rough Trade's art department that it should have a paper label center with four vents encircling the middle, in homage to singles from the 1960s.  

The single's cover art boldly (and controversially) features the bare posterior of a male model (George O'Mara), photographed by Jim French.  The photograph was lifted from Margaret Walter's 1978 book The Nude Male. According to French, the photo was taken at a hotel in San Francisco. It probably dates back to the late 1960s or early 1970s.  Andy Rourke later related that when he showed the single's cover to his parents, his father was 'mortified': "He said to me, 'that's a bloke's bum' and I said, 'yeah' but when he asked me why I just didn't have an answer for him."  More than two decades later (2004), Rourke provided a more insightful take on his mindset at the time of the single's release when interviewed by Mojo Magazine:

Andy Rourke:  "Maybe I didn’t agree with all the stuff Morrissey was on about, but I wasn’t going to say that at the time because we had to put on a united front."
Mojo Magazine: "What upset you in particular?"
Andy Rourke:  "It was just stuff I was uneasy about. It sounds ridiculous now, but the cover of our first single, 'Hand In Glove', it’s a naked guy with his arse showing. I remember buzzing, thinking I’ll take this home and show my dad, then realising he’ll be, “What the f**k is that?” And some of lyrical content as well. I was fine with it, it was more my family I was concerned for."

At the time 'Hand In Glove' had been written by Morrissey and Marr in January 1983, the pair had only been working together for a scant eight months, though in that time they had already written more than ten songs together.  While Morrissey and Marr had a song composition method that saw Marr composing music for song lyrics Morrissey's had already written; in the instance of 'Hand In Glove' Marr had already composed the music for the song when he met with Morrissey at his home to add the lyrics.  

"I was at my parents house one Sunday evening, and my little brother had a guitar knocking about. I started to play some chords and quickly came up with this riff. I got very excited about it as I knew it was good. But I didn't have anything to record it on, so my girlfriend Angie who's now my wife, ran around to her house and snuck her dad's car out. I got in the car with my guitar, playing the riff over and over again so I wouldn't forget it! We drove to Morrissey's [home]. I got there, and I'm holding this guitar outside his door in the rain, unannounced. 'Oh, hello' he says, 'what have you got there?' I said: 'A new song.'  'Well, you'd better come in then.'  So in I went, and Morrissey pulled out this tape recorder, and we recorded the music. Then I went home. He called me the next day and said, 'That new song's called Hand In Glove.'  We would rehearse five nights a week in our manager's clothing warehouse. The minute we started to play the new song, I knew we'd gone to a new place, because of the melody and the riff, and also because the words and music were an exuberant celebration of both our lives. Friendship [...] was what had changed in his and my life. We had met each other, were working together, and we were in love with each other, in the best possible way. And Hand In Glove came out of that. The words sound like the music, and the music sounds like the words... a beautiful thing. [...] Hand In Glove was our anthem."

- Johnny Marr  

Morrissey has said that he wrote lyrics for 'Hand In Glove' in the span of two hours.  Even prior to performing the song live, the members of the band were unanimous in the opinion that 'Hand in Glove' was their strongest song to date.  

According to Morrissey, 'Hand In Glove' is about "complete loneliness," going on to state: "It was important to me that that there'd be something searingly poetic about it, in a lyrical sense, and yet jubilant at the same time.  Being searingly poetic and jubilant was, I always thought, quite difficult because they're two extreme emotions and I wanted to blend them together."  

Morrissey said that he considered 'Hand In Glove' to be the group's "most special" song, and that he was particularly proud of the song's second verse, which included the lines "The good people laugh/Though we may be hidden by rags/We have something they'll never have." Morrissey explained that the verse described "how I felt when I couldn't afford clothes and used to dress in rags but I didn't really feel mentally impoverished."  Morrissey went on to say that he especially favored 'Hand In Glove'  "[...] Mainly because of the circumstances in which it was recorded. The remix on the first album I'm not quite too sure about but the actual single was such a joyous occasion for everybody that it still means more to me - and other members of the Smiths - than anything else we've done."

In the song's lyrics, Morrissey references works by playwright Shelagh Delaney, whom he would reference again in several later Smiths songs (and whose image would appear on the cover of two Smiths' releases). The song's line "I'll probably never see you again" appears in Delaney's kitchen sink realism play A Taste of Honey and The Lion in Love. Morrissey paraphrased the line "Everything depends upon how near you stand next to me" from the 1974 Leonard Cohen song 'Take This Longing'.  Music journalist and author Simon Goddard has postulated that the song's title was inspired by the 1947 detective novel Hand in Glove by Ngaio Marsh. 

The lyrics of 'Hand In Glove' are also quoted in the coda of 'Pretty Girls Make Graves', another song that is included (along with ‘Hand In Glove’) in the Smiths eponymous debut album.

According to Johnny Marr in a 2006 interview with Uncut Magazine, "Even I assumed that [Hand In Glove] was about [himself and Morrissey] when we did it, purely because we were the only people hanging out with each other at the time."

'Hand In Glove' begins with Johnny Marr playing a harmonica over the rest of the music.  Author Goddard has written that Marr's use of the instrument "purposefully evoked the very same 'blunt vitality of working-class "northernness" that Ian McDonald attributed to The Beatles' 1962 single 'Love Me Do', though infinitely more melancholy."  Of the backing music, Goddard wrote, "Marr's redolent minor chord wash weeps with a rain-soaked hopelessness while Rourke contributes one of his most inspired bass patterns".

"The original 'Hand In Glove' was financed by The Smiths... representative... Joe Moss, and took a day in - where else - Strawberry Studios... one day in Stockport to enliven history. I re-did the vocal a week later, if only to make a point of starting as stroppily as I intended to continue. The next day we took the train to London, to Rough Trade at the old Blenheim Crescent place. We waited for hours to then be told that Geoff [Travis] couldn't see us, so Johnny said, "Who is Geoff Travis?" and someone pointed to a looming figure swarming down a corridor and Johnny raced after him and forced him to listen. Two hours later the record was cut."
- Morrissey, The Catalogue, 1988

"I remember Johnny glowing with pride saying 'This is it! Just listen to this.' I was helplessly won over."
- Rough Trade's Geoff Travis on being forced to listen to the demo of 'Hand In Glove', The Face, 1985

"Like Morrissey, I feel that my life was leading up to 'Hand In Glove,' and from then on things began to happen. My life began. That record set the standard. When Johnny played me their first demo tape, I thought it was the best thing I'd ever heard, both musically and lyrically. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and too good to miss, so I leapt at it as quickly as possible."
- Mike Joyce, Record Mirror 1984

 "[The studio engineer] was very, very difficult and narky, and made us feel like we were an inconvenience, which is somewhat annoying because even now he tells everyone how he helped us birth our sound. Morrissey went back and re-recorded his vocal to the song a week later, which was very smart and showed how on our game we were. Most bands who just start out are just so happy to have a cassette with their tune on it. But to know it wasn't quite right and go back to re-do it shows a degree of perfectionism. From the first recording to the last, I'm still like that now. I just turned up unannounced [at the London offices of Rough Trade Records] and said, 'I've got this song for Geoff Travis.'  I got the old, 'Is he expecting you?' 'No'.  'He''s not around. You'll have to come back next week'  I was kicked out and stood outside for ten minutes, when I noticed this car go back and forwards full of boxes of records. So I walked around the back of the building and there was a loading bay open, with a couple of hippies loading records into this car. I climbed into the loading bay and pretended I was working, and got into the building that way. I found my way to Geoff's office. He looked really busy. I hung around until he was on his own. Then I made a break for it, and just at that point he came out of his office. I just grabbed him and said, 'Hey Geoff, uh, hi, my name's Johnny. I'm in a band from Manchester and you won't have heard anything like this...'  That's what just came out!  Anyway, he was pretty gracious, gave me the brush-off, but he took the tape."

- Johnny Marr, Daily Mail, 2013

While reviewing a 1983 concert by the Smiths at The Venue in London, Barney Hoskyns, writing for the NME, described 'Hand in Glove' as "one of the year's few masterpieces, a thing of beauty and a joy forever".  Hoskyns went on to say that the song "swept into my heart" when writing of it in the 1984 edition of The Rock Yearbook.

Bill Black, writing for Sounds, described 'Hand In Glove' as a "daunting" debut. 

Writing for AllMusic, Ned Raggett called the song a "stunning, surprising debut" and describes the music as "sparkling", highlighting Marr's "careful overdubbing of acoustic and electric guitars". He also described Rourke's bass and Joyce's drumming as "sparse but effective", and said that Joyce "especially shone".

Two months after the single's release, the Smiths recorded the song again during aborted sessions for their debut album with producer Troy Tate. This version was recorded a tone lower than the original in the key of F♯ minor, and features a shorter introduction. The Smiths recorded the song again with producer John Porter in October 1983 at Manchester's Pluto Studios. Morrissey rejected this version of the song. Due to impending deadlines, the version that ultimately appeared on the band's first album, The Smiths, was a remix of the original master recording from the Strawberry Studios session. For this version, Porter increased the separation between Marr's guitar tracks and Morrissey's vocals, emphasized drummer Mike Joyce's drum beat, pushed Rourke's bass back in the mix, and created a more dramatic opening and conclusion to the song.

According to Stephane at Passions Just Like Mine, 'Hand In Glove' is the Smiths most prolific concert song:

'The song has been performed live 177 times by the Smiths, perhaps up to 207 times when taking into account the number of unknown setlists from the early Smiths days. This makes it the most played song by the band. It was done 42 times in 1983 (perhaps even up to 64 times) before the release of the debut album. The reason why the song has been done so many times for only 45 concerts is that the band's debut single was often done twice in those early days, once in the set and again as the encore. This happened again in 1984 following the release of the debut album, but in a significantly smaller measure, and the song was done 67 times (perhaps even up to 73 times) for 65 concerts given that year. It was on the setlist almost every night on the 1985 Meat Is Murder tour, for a total of 47 performances (including the handful of 'loose' dates in early 1986). After the release of the Queen Is Dead album in the middle of 1986, it was performed another 21 times (perhaps even 23 times) before the end of the year, which means almost every night on the North American leg and the first British leg of the Queen Is Dead tour, but not on the second UK leg.'