What Difference Does It Make?

Hild,

Remember that 7' Single you found in a bargain-bucket on the Tottenham Court Road, ‘What Difference Does It Make’ by The Smiths? How it intrigued us with its elastic bass, contralto wailing and edgy guitar; its narrative of how the persona’s admission to a guilty secret (being gay?) caused the regretful breakdown of a heterosexual relationship whose ardour had been fuelled by collaborative shoplifting sprees.

The cover uses a black-and-white still of the actor Terence Stamp, from his appearance in a 1965 film called The Collector. Stamp was huge in the 1960s, and very much the man-about-town. His star seemed to have faded in recent years. The last significant performance I’d seen until recently was his masterly rendition of General Zod, the arch-baddy in Superman, in the 1980s/90s. This year, he appears in the new Jim Carrey vehicle, Yes Man.

I’ve discovered that this band always used such backward-glancing, nostalgic images on their single and album covers. Most feature an individual, in black-and-white, on a mono-hued background. Most of these individuals are from New Wave British and French Cinema of the 1950s and 1960s, and therefore tend to be, or tend to be playing, working-class heroes of one sort or another: Billie Whitelaw, Rita Tushingham, Shelagh Delaney, and characters from the films of Jean Cocteau. Drag queens and famous gender-benders are also common: Candy Darling (of Andy Warhol fame), and Leo Ford, gay porn star and lover of Divine (a famous transvestite). Icons of popular entertainment feature too: Pat Phoenix (from Coronation Street), Yootha Joyce (from George and Mildred), Sandie Shaw, Elvis Presley, Diana Dors and Billy Fury. What does all this signify?

In The Collector Stamp plays a young, working-class inadequate with a lepidopterical obsession, who wins millions in some sort of lottery, buys a grand house, and becomes obsessed with an artistic young girl, who he later kidnaps and holds prisoner. Most of the novel/film involves their discussions and negotiations, many of which involve the nature of art and, of course, collecting beautiful things. There’s no direct link to the plot of the song; neither do I think there’s supposed to be. The image is, however, iconic. It was the film that made Stamp’s career; ‘What Difference Does It Make’ was an early single that did much to establish The Smiths. But they can’t have known that would necessarily be the case, unless they were possessed by extraordinary confidence in the song. I gather that Morrissey, in particular, wasn't.

At a stretch one might see a parallel between the haunting mien of regret in the protagonists of both works, especially with regard to the keeping of secrets, and behaviour undertaken in the name of love. But this is all too literal. It seems to me that The Smiths were making reference to a set of influences, dropping little hints about their formative cultural experiences, and proudly displaying their outsider status. These singles were released during the 1980s, a time when the default mode of pop iconography and video was brash, forward-looking technicolour. Yet in the sleeve design of releases by The Smiths there’s a delight in the counter-cultural, under-the-counter ‘perversions’ of the banal and quotidian world of the masses. Black-and-white here denotes either working-class realism, or a bygone era when pop icons meant something (should I say everything) to someone living on a terraced street in Northern England.

Stamp looks cheerful, but only hesitantly so. It’s the image of a man trying to be upbeat, but with some traces of psychic uncertainty still loitering in the corners of his limited mind. When you know he’s holding a chloroform pad with which he intends to sedate his captive, it becomes more disturbing; the homely cardigan, open-necked shirt and preppy quiff less reassuring. He knows what he’s trying to do: to keep possession of the beautiful girl, and this, in itself (he thinks) must be a good thing. Yet, he’s still not entirely confident in his behaviour. He thinks he’s benign, but the chloroform makes him look maniacal. He doesn’t seem aware of how he appears to an observer; that his aspirations to the world of art and culture have rendered him malevolent (even though he can’t seem to believe in his own malignancy). In many ways this image of pathetic, timid, moral dubiety – an unsophisticated brand of working-class anxiety – fits the note of most songs by The Smiths perfectly.

Stamp objected initially to use of the image, so Morrissey was photographed in a parody of the scene, holding a glass of milk rather than a chloroform pad. A few, now limited (and consequently expensive) releases, feature this mock image instead. So, a clever joke: milk is a milder soporific than chloroform. In any other context it might be a comforting image, for who wouldn’t view the gesture of milk-bearing in a benignant light? Is this an autobiographical character sketch of the band: they identify with the character in the film, a working-class aspirant to cultural sophistication, but they are not capable fully of becoming villainous in the pursuit: they will always be benign to the point of domestic banality. Yet, when set against the industrial guitar riffs and mild criminality of the song, this contrapuntal iconography is a clever piece of double-think. And it works. Ordinary life is full of psychotic disturbances; yet, these disturbances are the familiar landscape of most lives. What secrets lie hidden behind the veneer? What would be the cost of their being unveiled? “All men have secrets and here is mine, so let it be known…” A young man in a cardigan brings you a glass of milk. What could be more comforting? Or more rich with malice?

After a while Stamp relented, and subsequent releases reverted to use of the original sleeve design. I think we should seek a second copy of the single, one with the Morrissey sleeve, and take both back to Hengist I.