Never Had No One Ever

Morrissey's Cri de Coeur

"On The Queen Is Dead, 'Never Had No One Ever', there's a line that goes 'When you walk without ease/on these/the very streets where you were raised/I had a really bad dream/it lasted 20 years, seven months and 27 days/Never had no one ever'. It was the frustration that I felt at the age of 20 when I still didn't feel easy walking around the streets on which I'd been born, where all my family had lived - they're originally from Ireland but had been here since the Fifties. It was a constant confusion to me why I never really felt 'This is my patch. This is my home. I know these people. I can do what I like, because this is mine.' It never was. I could never walk easily."
- Morrissey, Melody Maker, September 27, 1986

A younger Morrissey quite literally walking down the street where he was raised.

According to Stephane at PassionsJustLikeMine.com, an instrumental demo of ‘Never Had No One Ever’ was recorded in December 1984 at Island Record's Fallout Shelter while the band were in the studio mixing the material that would soon after be released as the Meat Is Murder album.

Musically, the song took on its familiar form during recording sessions in September 1985 at RAK Studios in London; however, the initial mixes from these sessions featured high-pitched yelps from Morrissey as well as mumbled lyrics on its outro. Morrissey’s vocals were re-recorded at some point in October-November 1985 at Jacobs Studios in Farnham (Surrey) during the course of the Smiths’ recording sessions for the upcoming The Queen Is Dead album. It was at this time that the band experimented a bit, trying out a trumpet on the song, but this was thankfully abandoned for the definitive version. According to Stephen Street, Morrissey was “[…] squirming in discomfort before breaking into uncontrollable fits of laughter whilst the brass player was giving his all playing over the track!”.

Listen to the 1985 demo of the song (which showcases Rourke’s nimble, adroit bass) with trumpet here:

Morrissey and Johnny produced the definitive recording of the song, with Stephen Street acting as recording engineer.

Supposedly, Johnny Marr’s musical arrangement on the song was inspired by The Stooges’ ‘I Need Somebody Like You’. Listen to this song here and compare:

'Never Had No One Ever' ended up as the fourth track on The Queen Is Dead studio album, coming after the melancholy-effused ‘I Know It’s Over’, which was a curious choice of placement given the latter’s profound pathos. One imagines that sandwiching 'Never Had No One Ever' between ’Cemetry Gates’ and ‘Bigmouth’