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"Hand In Glove" (Morrissey/Marr) These words are transcribed without permission the way they appear in the "Hatful Of Hollow" album which is very similar to the way they appear in subsequent compilations. The repeated lines are not printed in the debut album. Additions to the printed lyrics are in darker text while omissions are striken out.
Hand in glove1 In a few live performances of this song in late 1983, to flatter his appreciating audience, Morrissey sang this line as "This one is different because it's you". 2 Sandie Shaw doesn't sing this line in her version of the song. 3 This was never done in live performances of the song, nor in an early rehearsal which has leaked on the internet. 4 This line was only done this way on the album and single versions of the song, and in latter live performances. In early live performances (1983 to mid-1985 and occasionally later), as well as in the different Troy Tate outtakes and in an early rehearsal which has leaked on the internet, Morrissey sang this line as "we have something they never had". In live performances from 2002 and 2004 without the Smiths, he alternated between the two tenses. 5 In Paris at the very end of 1984 as well as throughout 1985 and 1986 Morrissey replaced this line with a repeat of "the Good People laugh". This is probably the way the song had originally been written because the change is also found in an early rehearsal which has leaked on the internet. 6 Sandie Shaw sings "So hand in glove I'll stake my claim and I'll fight to the last breath" in her version of the song. 7 Sandie Shaw sings "So I'll stay on your arm 'cause you're so charming" in her version of the song.
Quotes
"The favourite lyric I have written appears in a song called 'Hand In Glove'. The lines which are most precious to me are: 'The good people laugh/Yes we may be hidden by rags/But we have something they'll never have'. Which is how I felt when I couldn't afford to buy clothes and used to dress in rags but I didn't really feel mentally impoverished.The inspiration? Just the very idea of people putting enormous importance on what they had and how they dressed and this very materialistic sense of value which is completely redundant. It goes back to the old cliche of what one has inside is really what one is. And that was it really. I remember vividly the night I wrote 'Hand In Glove'. It was just over a year ago. I just wanted to use the theme of complete loneliness. It was to be our first record and it was important to me that there'd be something searingly poetic in it, in a lyrical sense, and yet jubilant at the same time. Being searingly poetic and jubilant was, I always thought, quite difficult because they're two extreme emotions and I wanted to blend them together. I was in my room, alone, with a cassette with a guitar tune on it and I was surrounded by lots of words, and I just sat there for two hours and threw the whole thing together." "Even I assumed that [Hand In Glove] was about [himself and Morrissey] when we did it, purely because we were the only people hanging out with each other at the time." |