Meat Is Murder: How The Smiths Cooked Up A Classic Second Album

Lyrically, too, Morrissey was hitting new heights. While his words had previously lingered on feelings of emotional isolation and sexual longing, and were often painted in a distinctly nostalgic hue, he was now writing songs reflecting the socio-political issues of the day.

“It was a challenge, but I enjoyed it”

Morrissey came out fighting with The Headmaster Ritual, in which he addressed his unhappy school days in Manchester, policed by “belligerent ghouls” of teachers who left terrified pupils with “bruises bigger than dinner plates”, and he addressed domestic violence and child abuse on Barbarism Begins At Home (“A crack on the head is what you get for asking”). Rusholme Ruffians – which described stabbings and a suicide attempt – also brimmed over with violence, yet Morrissey pulled even fewer punches on the album’s title track, during which he asserted his pro-vegetarian stance in no uncertain terms.

The song was “a direct statement” he told the NME in December 1984. “Of all the political topics to be scrutinised, people are still disturbingly vague about the treatment of animals. People still seem to believe that meat is a particular substance, not at all connected to animals playing in the field over there. They don’t realise how gruesomely and frighteningly the animal gets to the plate.”

Morrissey’s visceral imagery (“And the flesh you so fancifully fry/Is not succulent, tasty or kind/It’s death for no reason/And death for no reason is murder”) was matched by the song’s sombre backing track, which took shape during the final album sessions at Ridge Farm Studios in Surrey. The music hadn’t previously been demoed, and it sprang from a studio jam which Johnny Marr enhanced with piano before Morrissey asked Stephen Street to create the sound of an abattoir with help from a BBC Sound Effects album.

“It was a challenge, but I really enjoyed it,” Street said in 2015. “I found some machine noises and put them through a harmoniser and turned the pitch down so they sounded darker and deeper. I did the same things with the cows to make it sound spooky. It was like a sound collage. The band learnt how to play it live after we recorded it.”

“The stars were in alignment”

The Smiths were confident they’d created a keeper with Meat Is Murder, and they were proved absolutely correct. Released on 11 February 1985, the album shot to No.1 in the UK, dislodging Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA and going gold almost instantly. The band celebrated with a major 23-date tour of their homeland, with prestigious European and North American tours following. In the wake of Meat Is Murder, The Smiths’ collective star was firmly in the ascendant.

“They knew they were onto something good,” Stephen Street later recalled of this exhilarating time in the band’s history. “Everything was flying, and it was all very exciting. Everything seemed to be working and it felt like the stars were in alignment.”