I'm so convinced the runners in this book represent the smiths.
I’ve seen a few people argue that - Adam Sherwin of The Independent, for instance, who wrote:
‘Literary critics may have missed an elaborate metaphor at the heart of the book. For its four young heroes – Ezra, Nails, Harri, Justy – read Morrissey, Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce of The Smiths. The relay team is “four wheels of the one machine”, just like The Smiths in their pomp.
Their dazzling promise is destroyed by their encounter with an evil force – the devious record industry. Where The Smiths ended in court cases and acrimony, see how Morrissey revels in the painful destruction of his protagonists’ lives, leaving Ezra a martyred figure who acted in the interests of them all but is himself fated never to achieve true happiness.’
Aside from the fact that I think that Eliza is and is meant to be a more sympathetic character than Ezra (until she blames Noah Barbelo for his own assault, I would say the only sympathetic character), this theory just doesn’t stand up for me personally, because I don’t think any of them fit neatly with any of The Smiths.
If Ezra is Morrissey, why is he the most “heterosexually resolved” when Morrissey is the least, and why does he not know who Thatcher and Reagan are when Morrissey so passionately despises them (as Eliza does)?
Then, out of the remaining three (or four, if we include Dibbs), who are Johnny, Andy and Mike (and Craig?)?
We are frequently reminded that Nails and Justy are sexually isolated, but this was true only of Morrissey during the Smiths days (and at various times subsequently - I don’t know when exactly Andy and Mike got married, but they and Johnny were all married by the time of the court case).
I suppose it could be argued that Harri is meant to represent Andy in that he disappears from the group (though obviously under very different circumstances) and has to be replaced by a less preferable alternative, and there are similarities between the other boys’ drunken dialogue about him immediately following his funeral and the lyrics to Sunny, which lots of people speculate was written about Andy, but I don’t know that his personality matches up with Andy’s all that well, and while Morrissey didn’t particularly like Craig Gannon, I don’t think he hated him enough to want him kicked to the floor (and by who? Johnny or Mike? Johnny also seemed to get tired of him, but I’ve never read anything to suggest that he hated him). If there’s anyone Morrissey would want kicked to the floor it would be Mike, but that doesn’t fit in with the structure.
I would suggest that all of the characters contain elements of Morrissey himself and elements of originality rather than one being based on himself and the rest on other people in his life. That said, the “four wheels of the one machine” line is interesting, as is the fact that everything falls apart once one wheel falls off - which makes me think that Harri’s suicide is more likely inspired by Johnny leaving than there being any other, simpler relationship between the relay team and The Smiths - which makes this dialogue (which comes from Nails, not Ezra, but again, I think there is something of Morrissey in all of them, not just in Ezra) all the sadder:
“He’d walk across the field … towards me … with that strong stride and stupid with smiles, and I’d be happy just to hear whatever the hell would stream out of him on that day, on any day … that open face … that knowing grin … that grin I’d known all of my life … before we’d even met. I grew up on tales of his exploits, I knew his body like I knew my own.”
There are some parallels to be drawn with Late Night, Maudlin Street there.
There are also similarities between Harri’s final pages and Morrissey’s lyrics - his discovery of his mother calls to mind Mama Lay Softly On The Riverbed, his suicide calls to mind Asleep, and the phrasing of “Here was his first moment of aloneness, no longer someone’s son, no longer someone’s baby” calls to mind Michael’s Bones and Lifeguard Sleeping, Girl Drowning - which suggests, again, that it’s not a matter of ‘Ezra, Nails, Harri, Justy (Morrissey, Johnny, Andy, Mike)’ (or whatever other variation) but more of ‘relay team (semi-autobiographical)’.
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