Smiths Photographer on Witnessing Band at Their ‘Frenetic’ Peak
Nalinee Darmrong was a teenager living in Washington, D.C., in 1984, when a friend gave her a cassette tape containing the music of a then-emerging British band called the Smiths. About a year later, she went to see the Smiths perform in D.C. during the Meat Is Murder tour, and the next morning, after waiting outside their hotel for autographs, Darmrong and her friends met the band. That marked the beginning of Darmrong’s friendship with the Smiths and a two-year odyssey during which she followed and photographed them during the subsequent touring for Meat Is Murder and The Queen Is Dead. “Traveling home, I remember feeling so incredibly lucky and grateful and also dumbstruck by how magical the last year had been for me,” she wrote later. “I feel that sentiment even more strongly today, and will never have any regrets, deciding to boldly go where I had never gone before.”
Three decades later, Darmrong has assembled the photos she took of the now-legendary group – a majority of them unpublished – in The Smiths, a new book published by Rizzoli. In addition to the mostly black-and-white images capturing the band onstage and in candid moments, the book also contains pictures of memorabilia that Darmrong collected from the period – such as tickets, set lists, and a paisley shirt that Morrissey wore during a show.
In an recent interview with Rolling Stone, Darmrong, now a freelance house photographer for D.C.’s 9:30 Club, reflected on what it was like to unearth these photos after 30 years, and her time with the Manchester legends.
Why did you gravitate towards the Smiths’ music after you got that mixtape from your friend back in 1984?
I’ve always been into alternative music. I love all music, but I always keep an ear out for music that’s just a little bit different, that has a little quirkiness to it, no matter what decibel range it is. When I first heard the compilation tape, I knew they were different, especially with the music going on around. Morrissey’s voice – it’s like you either loved it or you hated it. That’s the first thing that I thought when I heard the tape. And Johnny’s guitar – I’ve always been into melodic solo guitar heroes. To hear how they worked together and wrote songs, I just knew it was different even back then. But it was after I saw them live that I knew it – they were on to something.
How did the idea of the book come about?
This all happened when I was 17, 18 years old. Through that experience [after the tours], I knew that someday I would want to share it with the world. I never really told anybody about it. Only a handful of friends experienced it with me. It just seemed organic. My friend got me a ticket for my first [Smiths] show in D.C., and then my other friend got me a ticket to the next show [in Philadelphia], and it just kind of happened from there.