Andy Rourke

Andrew Michael Rourke (17 January 1964 – 19 May 2023) was an English musician best known as the bassist of the 1980s indie rock band the Smiths.

Regarded as one of the greatest bassists of his generation, he was known for his melodic and funk inspired approach to bass playing.

Rourke joined the Smiths after their first gig, having known guitarist Johnny Marr since secondary school, and played on their entire discography.

Rourke was born in Manchester, Lancashire, on 17 January 1964.

His father, called Michael, worked as an architect and was Irish and his mother, called Mary (nee Stone), was English; he was raised by his father in Ashton-upon-Mersey, and later Sharston, after his mother separated from him and left the family home.

He received an acoustic guitar from his parents when he was seven years old.

At the age of 11 he befriended the Young John Maher (soon to be Johnny Marr) with whom he shared an interest in music: both attended St Augustine's Grammar School in Sharston.

The pair spent lunch breaks in school jamming and playing on their guitars.

When Marr and Rourke formed a band, Rourke switched to bass, which he fell in love with and continued to play for the rest of his career.

Rourke left school when he was 15 and passed through a series of menial jobs, playing guitar and bass in various rock bands, as well as in the short-lived funk band Freak Party, with Marr.

Growing up on the Racecourse Estate in Ashton upon Mersey, he began using heroin, a habit that would spiral out of control once he made more money with the Smiths.

Marr later teamed up with Morrissey to form the Smiths.

Rourke joined the band after its first gig in 1982, when Marr fired original bass player Dale Hibbert, and remained through the rest of its existence.

The band's second studio album, Meat Is Murder, featured the track "Barbarism Begins at Home", a seven-minute funk-inspired track regarded by several critics as one of Rourke's greatest contributions, along with songs such as "This Charming Man", "The Queen Is Dead" and "How Soon Is Now?".

He was also praised for rockabilly-inspired basslines on the tracks "Rusholme Ruffians" and "Nowhere Fast".

Suffering from heroin addiction, Rourke was arrested for drug possession and sacked from the band in early 1986, via a handwritten note left on his car windscreen by Morrissey.

Experienced session musician Guy Pratt was brought in as a replacement and found Rourke's compositions difficult to learn; he was relieved when Rourke was restored two weeks later, having been cleared to tour the United States.

Just after Rourke's restoration, the Smiths released their third studio album, The Queen Is Dead.

In his absence, second guitarist Craig Gannon joined the band.

Marr described Rourke's contribution to that album as "something no other bass player could match", and the heavy bassline on the title track as one of the best he had heard.

Rourke played cello on several Smiths tracks, including "Shakespeare's Sister", "Rubber Ring", "Oscillate Wildly", and the Troy Tate version of "Pretty Girls Make Graves".

After the group broke up in 1987, he performed on some of lead vocalist Morrissey's early solo releases.

The Smiths released their fourth and final studio album Strangeways, Here We Come in 1987 to critical acclaim, and broke up soon after.

Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce started legal proceedings against Morrissey and Marr over royalties.

With Craig Gannon, he provided the rhythm section for two singles by Smiths vocalist Morrissey – "Interesting Drug" and "The Last of the Famous International Playboys" (both 1989).

Rourke recorded with Sinéad O'Connor and the Pretenders in the early 1990s, and was a member of the supergroup Freebass and the band D.A.R.K., and later Blitz Vega with Kav Sandhu.

Rourke appears on her second studio album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (1990).

Rourke also played bass guitar on Morrissey's "November Spawned a Monster" and "Piccadilly Palare" (both 1990) and composed the music for Morrissey's songs "Yes, I Am Blind" (the B-side of "Ouija Board, Ouija Board", 1989); "Girl Least Likely To" (a B-side on the 12-inch single of "November Spawned a Monster"; also released as a bonus track on the 1997 reissue of Viva Hate); and "Get Off the Stage" (the B-side of "Piccadilly Palare").

In 1994, he worked as a session bassist with the Pretenders, appearing on six tracks on Last of the Independents; as well as working with Killing Joke, Badly Drawn Boy (with whom Rourke toured for two years), Aziz Ibrahim (formerly of the Stone Roses), and ex-Oasis guitarist Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs as Moondog One, which also included former Smiths members Mike Joyce and Craig Gannon.

Short on money due to his heroin addiction, Rourke settled out of court for £83,000 and 10% of future royalties while relinquishing all further claims; Joyce pursued the claim until 1996 and was awarded substantially more in court.

Having spent the settlement, Rourke later found himself being declared bankrupt following a petition of the Inland Revenue on 25 January 1999.

Soon after the break-up, Rourke and Joyce played with Sinéad O'Connor.

He organised the Versus Cancer concerts from 2006 to 2009.

Rourke died of pancreatic cancer on 19 May 2023, aged 59.

Rourke also played bass guitar for Ian Brown, both on tour and on Brown's fifth solo studio album The World Is Yours (2007).

Rourke formed Freebass with bassists Mani (ex-Stone Roses) and Peter Hook (ex-New Order) in 2007 and remained active in the group until August 2010.

Early in 2009, he moved to New York City, where he had a programme on East Village Radio and worked as a club DJ with Olé Koretsky under the name Jetlag.

This led to Rourke and Koretsky forming the alternative rock band D.A.R.K. with Irish lead vocalist Dolores O'Riordan from the Cranberries.

The trio released their debut studio album, Science Agrees, on 9 September 2016, through the independent label Cooking Vinyl.

In 2016, Rourke appeared on the cover of Bass Guitar magazine.