Craig’s Songbook – “How Soon is Now” by The Smiths

I was two months from my 18th birthday, freshly graduated from high school, when a friend told me about The Next Big Thing, what was then termed ‘progressive music’ –what we now would refer to as alternative or college rock.

Dragged into a local music store, I was introduced to the likes of XTC, Echo and the Bunnymen, and a band with the very bland name of The Smiths.  The album from the latter was Meat is Murder, and I recall wanting to dismiss it there and then as being some kind of pinko, limp-wristed crap that I had no intention of liking.

“Seriously, dude, you gotta check this out,” my friend exclaimed. I put on a set of headphones and queued the first cut, “How Soon is Now”.

As Johnny Marr’s opening guitar line set the pace, drummer Mike Joyce and bassist Andy Rourke drove home the intent of this dreary ode to loneliness and I was eternally hooked. I coughed up the $8 for the cassette, commandeered my father’s Sony Walkman, and listened to that one cut, repeatedly, for days.

Nearly 25 years since first hearing “How Soon is Now”, it remains at the top of my list of favorites.

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