How Soon Is Now - which Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr described as their "most enduring record" - is about their frontman Morrissey's crippling shyness. It has since become an anthem for the alienated and socially isolated.
Musically, "How Soon Is Now?" is famous for that oscillating guitar riff that opens the song and plays throughout. It started as a rather standard guitar riff, but Johnny Marr and Smiths producer John Porter then played it back through Fender Twin Reverb amplifiers set to different tremolo speeds, adjusting them on the fly to keep them in sync. That slide guitar part was layered on top. After they had the track completed, Morrissey assed the lyric.
The title doesn't show up in the lyric. It comes from a question posed in Marjorie Rosen's feminist film study, Popcorn Venus, one of Morrissey's favorite books: "How immediately can we be gratified? How soon is 'now'?"
You'll recognize the song from the last lines in the chorus:
I am human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does
This was a very complex song to record. Marr broke the process down to The Guitar Magazine: "I wanted it to be really, really tense and swampy, all at the same time. Layering the slide part was what gave it the real tension. The tremolo effect came from laying down a regular rhythm part with a capo at the second fret on a Les Paul, then sending that out in to the live room to four Fender Twins. John was controlling the tremolo on two of them and I was controlling the other two, and whenever they went out of sync we just had to stop the track and start all over again. It took an eternity."
The Smiths installed red lightbulbs in their London studio to create the perfect atmosphere to record this song in.
The oscillating guitar is similar to the one heard in The Rolling Stones' cover of Bo Diddley's song "I Need You Baby (Mona)." Johnny Marr was a big fan of both Bo Diddley and The Rolling Stones, and has cited both as an influence. Another instance of him borrowing a riff from The Stones is in the song "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out."
The attention-grabbing intro was intentional. "I wanted an introduction that was almost as potent as 'Layla,' Johnny Marr told Rolling Stone. "When it plays in a club or a pub, everyone knows what it is."
Morrissey lifted the line, "The heir to nothing in particular," from the 19th century novel Middlemarch by George Eliot, who wrote: "To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular."
Many of us thought the opening line was:
I am the sun and the air
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
But that first line is really "I am the son and the heir," which makes more sense, with Morrissey implying that his criminally vulgar shyness has been passed down. This is something we learned when we first saw the printed lyrics.
Their producer, John Porter, is one of those who misjudged the lyric. Marr told The Guardian: "I remember when Morrissey first sang, 'I am the son and the heir...' John Porter went, 'Ah great, the elements!' Morrissey continued, '...of a shyness that is criminally vulgar.' I knew he'd hit the bullseye there and then."
Despite being one of their most popular songs, "How Soon Is Now?" didn't always show up in The Smiths' setlists. That's because it was really hard to play live, especially the guitar section that required so much studio sorcery. Bassist Andy Rourke called it "the bane of The Smiths' live career."
"How Soon Is Now?" didn't rate with the band's record label, so they banished it to the the B-side of the "William, It Was Really Nothing" single, which was released in 1984 a few months after their self-titled debut album came out. A few months later it was included on a compilation album called Hatful Of Hollow, and in 1985 it was finally released as an A-side single after British radio DJs started playing it, included John Peel of the BBC, a big Smiths supporter.
By this time the song had lots of fans, but many already owned it on either the "William, It Was Really Nothing" single or on Hatful Of Hollow, so it charted at an underwhelming #24 in the UK, much to the disappointment of Morrissey, who bemoaned to Creem magazine: "It's hard to believe that 'How Soon Is Now' was not a hit. I thought that was the one."
"How Soon Is Now?" helped secure Morrissey's reputation for being a tormented soul, but he earned it with the Smiths song "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now," released a short time earlier in 1984. Songs like "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" and "I Know It's Over" fueled this fire, that burned well after the group broke up in 1987 and Morrissey went solo. He told Details magazine in 1992: "I am depressed most of the time. And when you're depressed it is so enveloping that it actually does control your life, you cannot overcome it, and you can't take advice. People trying to cheer you up become infuriating and almost insulting." You won't be surprised to learn that Moz doesn't do social media. His official accounts are run by his management.
Johnny Marr was on a roll when he wrote the music for this song; he came up with it, and also the tracks for "William, It Was Really Nothing" and "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want," over a productive four-day period in June 1984.
From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/the-smiths/how-soon-is-now
