On the morning of the 27th of January 1974, three days after the deluge of rain began.
Johnny comes straight to the point, “‘Smashed’ is a ‘River Drama’”.
“It’s unique among my songs because it’s come from a childhood memory”. “It was amongst the last songs I wrote before The Goths went separate ways, about a boat, when the river floods, which gets wrenched from its moorings, washed downstream, and it gets smashed against a bridge”.
“The Gothic novel ‘Gormenghast’ also might’ve been subconsciously in my thoughts, because in the novel, the entire kingdom of Gormenghast is submerged in a flood from endless rains”.
“‘Smashed’ is totally symbolic really. The boat is ‘the cradle rediscovered. I fuse that with this symbolism of the river, which is, well, it is ‘life itself’. The total thing is a kind of take mostly on the idea of an ‘existential crisis’. The beginning riff reminds me a bit of early Kraftwerk, but instead of ‘Autobahn’, you get this very heavy, very kind of frantic, really, build-up”.
“The album, ‘Weather Being’, and the album, ‘Evocations’, are definitely helped, in quite a big way, by ‘Smashed’ being the first single, but then, ‘Smashed’ really was the obvious choice.
When I started writing the song, I was just jotting down bits of music and memories from childhood, which began to form into mental images that, I found, I could quite easily access, and still do to this day.
It’s probably a trait of a lot us, having a mental imagery of some form. It’s probably useful in what some writers call ‘songs that write themselves’.
‘Smashed’ became a mix of things, because I dreamt up the sleeve the same way.
I thought, let’s go for something very graphic and very simple.
I wanted a sort of ‘map’ idea, like ‘Music for Airports’, where you’re holding a map, and you’re looking at a map of a river. It’s almost like, ‘you are here’.
Then I thought, ‘I’ll make the colour of the river blood-red, instead of the usual blue’. Blue is the usual colour rivers on maps are signified.
Rivers really aren’t usually blue, they’re kind of brown. So I switched it, so the terrain became sort of dust-bowl brown, and the river this trickle of blood.
The song evokes a moment in the January, 1974 flood that occurred in the city.
I’d realised that the song came from childhood memories, and the morning of the 27th of January 1974, three days after a deluge of rain began.
‘Smashed’ is a about a huge boat that, when the river flooded, got wrenched from its moorings, washed downstream, and smashed against this bridge.
It all happened in this endless torrential rain. I’d heard about it on the news, on the radio, and I rode off on my bike, to the bridge, to see for myself.
These days I think of it as symbolic, this very heavy, very kind of frantic, really, build-up – the boat smashed into this bridge, and this destruction”.