Trivia / The Queen Is Dead

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• Creator's Favorite Episode: In 2003, Morrissey named "The Boy with the Thorn in His Side" as his favourite Smiths song.
• Reality Subtext: "Frankly, Mr. Shankly" reflects Morrissey's impatience with Rough Trade CEO Geoff Travis, whom he felt never promoted the Smiths competently. Travis actually showed Morrissey some poetry he'd written once as a way of trying to get the singer to see him as a human being, but as the line "I didn't know you wrote such bloody awful poetry" would suggest, it backfired.
• Technology Marches On: The line "and her Walkman started to melt" from "Bigmouth Strikes Again" is often updated by Morrissey in live performances to "and her iPod started to melt".
• Throw It In!: Morrissey's voice cracks very audibly on the line "I swear to God, I swear, I never even knew what drugs were" in "The Queen Is Dead".
• Troubled Production: The album may be seen as a masterpiece, but it had a turbulent time getting there. First off, before recording sessions even started, they were told by their lawyer that they only had to complete one more album for their label, Rough Trade. This excited them, making them think that they would be signing to a major label soon. This sent Johnny Marr into a workaholic frenzy. The band couldn't focus in their usual studio setting and instead settled in a cottage in the country. Morrissey started developing his infamous ego around this time, making him stressful to deal with. Marr would go days without eating, spending nights that he wasn't recording drinking and using cocaine. On top of that, he started getting exhausted having to manage the band. One phone call in which the label tried to get him to resolve a debt owed to a tour van they used, he screamed "Have someone else deal with it!" Their lawyer then came back and told them that there was a problem with Rough Trade, as the label thought the band owed them more than just one more studio album. The band pushed back, which caused Rough Trade to put an injunction on the new album, meaning it would not be released until a new agreement was made. This delay meant that the band was performing songs for an album with an unknown release date, confusing many fans. Marr attempted to get back at the label by unsuccessfully attempting to steal the master tapes. Finally, shortly before the album's release, bassist Andy O'Rourke's heroin addiction became so bad that he was thrown out of the band. Morrissey left a passive-aggressive note on his car, leading to him spending a whole day crying in Marr's shoulders, unknown what to do or how to cope. O'Rourke was let back in the band soon, leading to his replacement, Craig Gannon, to be relegated to the position of second guitarist. An agreement was eventually made with the label and the album was released in 1986.
• What Could Have Been: Initially the band had asked Kirsty MacColl to contribute backing vocals, but Johnny Marr found her harmonies "really weird" and they were left off the final recording. Instead, the backing vocals were recorded by Morrissey and altered to a higher pitch. Marr and MacColl would later work together as session players on Talking Heads' 1988 album Naked.
• Working Title: Margaret on the Guillotine. Morrissey did use the title for a track on his first solo album Viva Hate. According to Morrissey's autobiography, Bigmouth Strikes Again was another proposed alternate title, which Johnny Marr came up with in response to his parents' complaints about the idea of calling an album The Queen is Dead.

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