The Smiths, who changed my life
For me, the moment came early on a Friday evening in October 1983. I was in my bedroom, listening to Radio 1's Roundtable - the singles review programme - waiting to be called downstairs for whatever atrocity was to be served up for tea. The record that came on next began with a brisk chime of guitar, which spiraled upwards, pausing for a fraction of a second before descending to allow in bass and drums. The guitar figure repeated itself and then in came a voice, tremulous and yearning: "Punctured bicycle on a hillside desolate," this man intoned. "Will nature make a man of me yet?"
Goodness knows why - I was 14 and had no idea what these words might possibly mean - but everything about the record spinning across the airwaves that night made perfect sense to me. It was as if no one else could be listening to the song, as if it were meant for no one else. When it ended, I felt as if something had changed, as if I'd overcome some hurdle and life was going to be different. I was staggered, then, when the Roundtable panel passed their verdicts. No one cared for it. Adam Ant, I vividly recall, managed to pay the least effusive compliment the Smiths would ever receive: "I liked that line, 'I would go out tonight/ But I haven't got a stitch to wear.'"
This Charming Man was not, of course, the first record I ever heard. Or the first record I bought (the first single was Summer Nights, from the Grease soundtrack; the first album was Powerage by AC/DC, on December 27 1980, for £3.99. I have an anal memory for these things). But it was the first song in which every single element, whether I understood what was happening or not, made perfect sense to me. I liked the guitar riffs of the heavy metal records I had, but I was always embarrassed by them, too, when they came on the TV. I wasn't embarrassed when the Smiths performed This Charming Man on Top of the Pops: I was captivated. I've no idea what my mum thought, because I was too entranced to pay any attention to her, though I can painfully remember her responses to other bands I had liked (of Twisted Sister: "That man's got a bigger bust than me.").
So This Charming Man was the record that made me love music. In its wake I was able to embrace music's myriad possibilities, to find out a little bit more about who I was and what moved me -- and why. This week in Film&Music we've asked 17 musicians to pick the songs that made them love music. Natasha Bedingfield fell so hard for Stevie Wonder she had to shoplift Songs in the Key of Life from her local Woolies. Kano heard Bogle Dance on a family holiday in Jamaica and never shook it.
But what are the songs that turned you on? We're not after coolness, nor the first record you bought, but the one that made the lightbulb come on in your head, widened your eyes and made you say: "So that's what the fuss is all about."
