Andy Rourke grave (17th January 1964 to 19th May 2023)

The Smiths were a Manchester-based band for five short years in the eighties but they still maintain a stout following. Here I am on the outskirts of Manchester by the grave of the original bassist.

Andrew (he preferred Andy) was given an acoustic guitar when he was seven and became obsessed with music. Age 11 at school he became friends with met Johnny Marr (who would become the guitarist for The Smiths) and they spent dinnertimes messing around on their guitars. They formed a band and Andy swapped to the bass guitar. Aged 15 he left school and took many mundane jobs through the daytime. In the evenings he pursued his main preoccupation of playing bass in numerous local bands.

Aged 18 he joined The Smiths and they’d go onto achieve critical acclaim with their sad lyrics and hook-based melodies. They disliked the synthesizer-pop new-wave sounds that was voguish in the 1980s. Famous albums followed: The Smiths (1984), Meat Is Murder (1985), The Queen Is Dead (1986) and Strangeways, Here We Come (1987).

Success did not prevent the band from breaking up in 1987 due rows over royalties, managerial conflicts and differing musical aspirations. During the early 1990s Andy became a session musician and recorded on Morrissey’s solo albums and with other artists like The Pretenders and Sinéad O'Connor. Aged 40 and for five years he became a member of the band Freebass. There was also band D.A.R.K. (with Dolores O'Riordan of The Cranberries.) Sadly he contacted incurable pancreatic cancer and died in a hospital in New York aged 59. Of his former band mate Morrissey said, "He will never die as long as his music is heard. He didn't ever know his own power, and nothing that he played had been played by someone else.”

His graves lies on a path shared with three other famous names (if you're a grave-hunting geek like me) in Southern Cemetery about two miles south of the city centre. One sunny Sunday afternoon I went to find him and do a hearty salute. At fifty-nine surely you're only two-thirds through life. Sadly not in Andy's case. Poor lad. I did a salute and left.