Before the Smiths were the Smiths

Johnny Marr & Joe Moss - the cool dude and the true bohemian

I’ve just discovered a photograph that illustrates one of the most celebrated episodes in the history of the Smiths. The photograph, of several buildings on Chapel Walks, Manchester, has never been circulated before. Apparently taken in February 1982, it’s a Manchester back street, Chapel Walks; you can see Crazy Face - run by Joe Moss - and next door, X-Clothes where Johnny Marr worked. It explains the circumstances that brought Johnny Marr together with Joe Moss - Johnny’s mentor and the first Smiths manager. When Joe died in October 2015, Johnny Marr said, “Without him there wouldn’t have been any Smiths”.

Chapel Walks is off Cross Street. It runs up the side of Pret A Manger. At one time the bar and restaurant Grinch was at the bottom of Chapel Walks. A few doors up from there, back in 1982, the Crazy Face shop was in Chapel Walks Chambers, 13 Chapel Walks, and, next door, at Union Buildings, the clothing emporium X Clothes. In February 1982, the 18 year-old Johnny Marr worked at X Clothes, Joe Moss owned Crazy Face.

Johnny and Joe meeting and becoming friends had a host of consequences including generating the occasion Johnny Marr knocked on Morrissey’s door in May 1982, kickstarting a magnificent songwriting partnership.

Joe had been a devoted regular at a club called the Twisted Wheel; a club founded on rhythm & blues, which, at its second location (on Whitworth St), was where the phrase “Northern Soul” was coined by journalist Dave Godin. There’s a ton more on the Twisted Wheel in my history of British nightclubs and music venues, Life After Dark.

In the early and mid 1970s, the ‘head shop’ On the Eighth Day was central to a new, hippiefied scene building in Manchester; you could buy joss sticks, alternative magazines, hand-crafted jewellery, bags and clothes. Joe began selling loon pants there, and a career in the rag trade took off.

Johnny Marr has described Joe as “an original beatnik and a true bohemian”. He wasn’t an ambitious or cut-throat entrepreneur. He became involved in the fashion world – and, subsequently, band management - as a result of his passion for music and street style. By the beginning of the 1980s, Joe had Crazy Face, a clothing line with several stores in Stockport and Manchester; in 1982, he was often to be found in Manchester city centre at the Crazy Face HQ at 70 Portland St (on the corner of Nicholas St).

Johnny Marr was 17 when he took a job at X Clothes. At one time, it was part of a small chain; Leeds had an X Clothes on Call Lane and Sheffield had one on Pinstone Street. Boutiques like X Clothes picked up on the plethora of styles in an era of tribalism, and experimentation. The influence of such places went beyond the provision of clothes to establish, in effect, hubs of information; places to pick up gossip and news about clubs, bars, music. Marr later claimed that X Clothes was “the trendiest clothes shop in town – it was a really big deal and everyone who was anyone came through the shop at some point.”

The emerging fashions were invariably married to music. Quiet Life by Japan triggering demand for David Sylvian-style zoot suits, for example. Johnny used to