For this week’s installment of “120 Minutes” Rewind, we turn to a September 1987 episode that features the show’s creator and producer Dave Kendall eulogizing the The Smiths upon their breakup following the release of Strangeways, Here We Come.
Appearing in silhouette — as he often did before becoming host — Kendall declares “The Smiths have officially gone under,” and delivers his “final epitaph” for the band, proclaiming the group “one of the world’s all-time greats.” In a pre-Internet era in which music news could be slow to come by, this may have been some fans’ first awareness of The Smiths’ breakup following Johnny Marr’s departure that summer.
Watch it below via uploader MrPhilrand.
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- ‘120 Minutes’ Rewind: Red Hot Chili Peppers light up the ‘120 X-Ray’ in 1989
- ‘120 Minutes’ Rewind: Peter Murphy co-hosts, swears off Bauhaus reunion in 1992
- ‘120 Minutes’ Rewind: Pale Saints discuss ‘The Comforts of Madness’ in 1990
- ‘120 Minutes’ Rewind: The Sisters of Mercy go under the ‘120 X-Ray’ in 1988
What the Beatles were to the Sixties, the Smiths were to the Eighties: Brilliant.