SNAP ME ON THE PATIO

ILL

One of the drawbacks of bands with relatively short life spans: after a while, you begin to recognise the same portraits, live images and other captured moments. If the music continues to have life, doesn’t it help to have some new, revealing images to engage with? For Smiths enthusiasts, this makes Nalinee Darmrong’s newly-published book The Smiths a particularly tempting prospect. Darmrong was an Anglophile rock fan who in the mid-’80s, became a Smiths gig regular and got to know the band. She first saw them on the US Meat Is Murder tour on June 11, 1985 at the Warner Theatre in Washington, DC. “I had absolutely no idea how my life was about to change,” she writes, describing how she met the group at a cafe the following day. “Going to show after show seemed to happen organically, without hesitation or awkwardness. And all the while I had my modest Minolta 33mm camera in hand (I wasn’t a pro photographer by any means), documenting as much as I could.” She also accompanied the group on a September ’85 Scottish trip, and later saw 16 dates of the Queen Is Dead US tour. These are the scenes also

Revealed! Nalinee Darmrong’s hoard of unseen Smiths photography, 1985-86.