Rourke was as gifted a bass player as Marr was a guitarist: when fabled session bassist Guy Pratt was drafted into rehearsals following the drug bust, he arrived assuming no one would notice Rourke’s absence (“let’s face it,” he later wrote, “how many people would be bothered?”) but found himself marvelling at the “sophistication” of what he was expected to learn. In Pratt’s retelling, the general sigh of relief when it becomes apparent that Rourke’s arrest won’t stop him touring the US is almost palpable.
Listen closely to the Smiths’ records and the evidence is there. Rourke developed a complex but fluid style of playing, he said, to “overcompensate” for the fact that the band only had one guitarist. On 1984’s Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now or the following year’s The Headmaster Ritual, his bass and Marr’s guitar weave around each other with quite astonishing dexterity. On This Charming Man, meanwhile, Rourke works in perfect tandem with one of the most famous guitar riffs in the history of alternative rock, driving the song along in the process. If you tended to a romantic view of things, you might suggest the sound Marr and Rourke made together was evidence of their longstanding personal closeness.
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