The recording: “Panic came together with great ease in the studio”
With hindsight, Panic’s title also feels especially apt, as The Smiths themselves went through a turbulent period early in 1986. The band’s landmark third album, The Queen Is Dead, was complete, but bassist Andy Rourke was briefly fired due to his heroin use. During Rourke’s absence band, The Smiths hired Craig Gannon to stand in for him, but with the bassist overcoming his problems and rejoining the group, Gannon was repositioned as a guitar foil for Johnny Marr. As far as both band and onlookers were concerned, the decision to readmit Rourke was the only sensible course of action.
“Rourke may have been the quietest member, he may have been the most subservient, but his contributions had proven absolutely imperative to the group’s success,” Tony Fletcher noted. “And in so many ways, he had served as the group’s rock and its soul, emotional terms that double as musical genres, and understandably so.”
With their new five-piece line-up quickly gelling, The Smiths entered London’s Livingstone Studios, where they successfully nailed Panic with producer John Porter in May 1986. The recording session ran smoothly, with Gannon quickly making his mark on the proceedings.
“Panic came together with great ease in the studio,” Fletcher detailed. “Despite [producer John] Porter recalling that Craig Gannon ‘diplomatically stayed out of the way’, the [then] teenager nonetheless played some of the key riffs on the recording.”
Musically, Panic’s strident backdrop also owed a debt to an iconic 70s trailblazer whose catalogue had been inspiring both Morrissey and Johnny Marr since their formative years.
“The influence of T.Rex is very profound on certain songs of The Smiths, i.e. Panic and Shoplifters [Of The World Unite],” Marr told Les Inrockuptibles in 1989.
“Morrissey was himself also mad about [Marc] Bolan,” the guitarist continued. “When we wrote Panic, he was obsessed with Metal Guru and wanted to sing in the same style. He didn’t stop singing it in an attempt to modify the words of Panic to fit the exact rhythm of Metal Guru. He also exhorted me to use the same guitar break so that the two songs are the same!”
The release and legacy: “A tiny revolution in its own sweet way”
Regardless of Bolan’s influence, Panic was a powerful statement of intent on its own terms. Released as a single on 21 July 1986, and following in the slipstream of the critically hailed The Queen Is Dead, the song was voraciously received by The Smiths’ loyal fanbase. In fact, it rapidly shot to No.11, rewarding the band with their biggest UK singles chart success since the release of Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now in 1984.
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