[The Smiths’] career prospects were always held in check by a problem that grew worse as their success increased: Morrissey’s refusal to employ a manager or submit to the standard promotional grind, both of which were at odds with his almost pathological griping about chart positions, radio play and the esteem in which they were or were not held by their record company, Rough Trade.As he seemed to see it, if the Smiths were commercial underachievers, it was always someone else’s fault – but if you refuse to make videos, blow out TV appearances at a moment’s notice and cancel European tours in the airport departure lounge, then “the margins” are something you will never quite escape. Moreover, without a big figure to oversee the business side of their lives, any comparable group would have probably buckled, something beautifully captured in one Marr quote: “I’ve never met anyone who thinks that the 23-year-old guitar player of a really big band should be the manager.”