Handsome Devil

“The lyrics I write are specifically genderless. I don’t want to leave anybody out. Handsome is a word that people think is applied to males…but I know lots of handsome women. After all, there is such a thing as a pretty male.” - Morrissey, interview with Cath Carroll, New Musical Express, 14 May 1983.

Origins, Early Performances and Recording History

Among the initial batch of songs written by Morrissey and Johnny Marr in 1982, “Handsome Devil” came together shortly before the Smiths’ debut concert at the Ritz in Manchester in early October (where it was performed as the penultimate song on their abbreviated set-list).

“Handsome Devil” was first recorded professionally at Drone Studios in Chorlton, Manchester, in December 1982 - a truly pivotal moment in the band’s formation and identity. as the session marked the first time bassist Andy Rourke¹ played with the group after being recruited by Johnny Marr. With original bassist Dale Hibbert recently dismissed and drummer Mike Joyce only newly installed², the Smiths were still an unstable, unfinished project; the session effectively captured the emergence of the band’s classic lineup for the first time in a professional studio setting.³

During the Drone session - paid for by EMI Records⁴ - the Smiths assembled a three-song demo: the aforementioned “Handsome Devil” (which featured saxophone by hired session musician Andy Gill⁵), “Miserable Lie,” and “What Difference Does It Make?”, intended to secure a contract with EMI. Unfortunately, the record label was not impressed with what they heard, and the anticipated contract did not materialize.

The song was performed again on 25 January 1983 at Manhattan Sound in Manchester, marking the live debut of the Smiths’ classic lineup of Morrissey, Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke, and Mike Joyce. A little over a week later, on 4 February 1983, the band performed “Handsome Devil” at the Haçienda, where their set was professionally filmed and recorded.

When the Smiths recorded their intended first single, “Hand in Glove,” at Strawberry Studios in late February 1983, they brought with them a tape of their performance of “Handsome Devil” at the Haçienda earlier that month. The Strawberry Studios’ recording engineer mixed “Handsome Devil” for them gratis and added the finished track to the completed “Hand in Glove” master tape, which was subsequently shopped to Rough Trade Records. Rough Trade agreed to release the single despite the absence of a formal contract.

The Smiths’ debut single, “Hand in Glove,” was issued on 13 May 1983 in 7-inch format, with the live Haçienda version of “Handsome Devil” appearing on the B-side. The runout etching on the single’s B-side, “KISS MY SHADES TOO,” humorously echoes the A-side etching, “KISS MY SHADES.” Both inscriptions are playful and mildly insolent, referencing the image, style, and cultivated cool embodied in each track. The two near-identical phrases evoke fashionable detachment and a degree of self-conscious pose, while simultaneously parodying those qualities through their flippant tone. Together, the paired messages reflect the Smiths’ blend of irony, wit, vanity, and mock-provocation.

Listen to the single version of the song in the following link:

The song was recorded again on 18 May 1983 for the Smiths’ first appearance on John Peel’s BBC program (broadcast on 31 May 1983), with producer Roger Pusey. This version of “Handsome Devil” was later featured on the Hatful of Hollow compilation album that was released in November of the following year.

Listen to the Peel version of the song here:

“Handsome Devil” was among the songs found on the fabled Pablo Cuckoo Tape⁶. Listen to this raw version of the song here:

The song was recorded a third time in the summer of 1983 at London’s Elephant Studios with producer Troy Tate in the aborted sessions for the band’s debut album.⁷ Listen to the Tate version here:

Unlike the rest of the songs from these sessions with Troy Tate, ‘Handsome Devil’ was not covered when John Porter was recruited⁸ to re-record the album material. This omission could possibly be the result of the negative press the song was receiving at the time.

Media Controversy and Moral Panic

Shortly after the song’s release, controversy began to brew in the UK music and tabloid press over the meaning of Morrissey’s lyrics, particularly those of “Reel Around the Fountain” (which was broadcast along with “Handsome Devil” on Peel’s radio program on 31 May 1983), whose suggestive imagery became the subject of considerable scrutiny. Some writers in the music press began interpreting songs such as “Handsome Devil” through the lens of pedophilia, as illustrated by journalist Dave McCullough’s observation that:

“The subject of child molesting crops up more than a few times in Smiths songs. They are hilarious lyrics, more so because they will suddenly touch on the personal.” - Dave McCullough, “Handsome Devils,” Sounds, 4 June 1983.

The issue even reached the floor of the UK House of Commons when Conservative MP Geoffrey Dickens⁹ claimed that “Handsome Devil” was explicitly about child molestation.

By late summer 1983, distinctions between the songs had blurred in the tabloid press, with Morrissey’s coded sexuality and lyrical ambiguity recast as evidence of moral deviance rather than theatricality, irony, or emotional complexity. The matter came to a head when The Sun published an article alleging that the Smiths were writing songs containing “clear references to picking up kids for sexual kicks,”¹⁰ a charge Morrissey publicly refuted in subsequent interviews:

“It’s quite laughable coming from a newspaper like The Sun - which is so obviously obsessed with every aspect of sex. So it’s all really a total travesty of human nature that it’s thrown at us, such sensitive and relatively restrained people. I live a life that befits a priest virtually and to be splashed about as a child molester…it’s just unutterable.”¹¹

“this piece makes me out to be a proud child-molester and I don’t even like children. ‘Handsome Devil’ is entirely directed towards adults.”¹²

The extent of concern within the British media can be further illustrated by the fact that “Reel Around the Fountain,” which was recorded again in late August 1983 for the Smiths’ appearance on David Jensen’s BBC radio program, was actually omitted from the broadcast when the BBC aired it on 5 September 1983.

Morrissey later addressed the media furor surrounding “Handsome Devil” in a September 1983 interview with New Musical Express, laying bare what he viewed as the flimsy logic employed by certain journalists:

“...the message of the song is to forget the cultivation of the brain and to concentrate on the cultivation of the body. ‘A boy in the bush...’ is addressed to a scholar. ‘There’s more to life than books you know, but not much more’ - that is the essence of the song. So you can just take it and stick it in an article about child-molesting and it will make absolutely perfect sense. But you can do that with anybody. You can do it with Abba.”¹³

Eroticism, Ambiguity and Interpretation