"After a few years engineering reggae artists, Street and his career took a dramatic turn in 1984. A little band from Manchester was quickly becoming the next big thing, and Stephen Street was their biggest fan. "It was really happenstance," remembers Street. "I was such a fan and I couldn't believe they were coming in. Fortunately for me, I was the onlyu in-house engineer at the time and I got the luck breack everybody needs in this industry when The Smiths came in to do a track called "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now." The rest is history, you could say."

"When The Smiths broke up, I thought it was just a little tiff and they would be back together in six weeks. How wrong I was."

"I think what initially impressed Johnny was the fact that I was really eager to please," says Street with a chuckle. "Lots of times bands come into the studio and they have really indifferent engineers who aren't really that fast and blah blah blah. But I was really keen and that obviously came through, because Morrissey took my number after the session that day and said they would be in touch." But the follow-up didn't happen straightaway. "I thought, 'Well, the chance is gone now. I've blown it.' But fortunately, a few weeks later, I was given the call to come back for the recording of the Meat Is Murder album."

It was the beginning of a long, fruitful relationship Street describes as "a strange gradual progression. When you are working with a band and it's just you as the engineer, you kind of develop a relationship and you start to take on the mantle of more production because you are constantly being asked "Is this the right sound?" "Is this good enough?" and blah blah blah. It was just a gradual thing.

"By the time I got to The Queen Is Dead with them, I started to contribute my own ideas just from being the only guy working in the studio with them at the time." Today The Queen Is Dead still stands as a landmark album and arguably The Smiths' best record. Although the producer credits cite the dynamic duo of Morrissey/Marr as producers, it's widely known that Street was the man operating the boards. This oversight would be remedied for The Smiths' next and final release.

"I was still very young when I did Strangeways, Here We Come with them, but I felt I was getting better at my job so I was able to bring more to it," says Street of his final outing with the band. By this point, he'd been accepted as their sole producer. "I wanted to change the drum sound a bit more between tracks and not go for a certain sound that was prevalent all the way through. Although they were predominately a guitar band, Johnny was quite keen on playing other instruments and orchestrating things a bit more. I think it was a concerted effort on his part to show he could do something a bit different."

Rumors surrounding the Strangeways sessions are still ripe among Smiths fans. After all, it was their final album, and it's often said that Morrissey and Marr were not on the best terms while recording. Street, though, having been on the frontlines during the entire time, begs to differ. "It's funny, because it was a fun atmosphere," he says. "The only problem at the timie was their management. Johnny had found a new manager and Morrissey was reluctant to even talk to the chap. The poor guy was really just trying to do his job but it was very hard to manage Morrissey at all. Apart from that, it was a lot of fun in the studio, and everyone was getting along great. I certainly didn't forsee the break."

"I still like the guy. Morrissey is a genius, there's no doubt. But he's got a history of going through life dismissing and damning people. It's a bit of a shame, really."

"While we were making Viva Hate I was thinking, 'Jesus Christ!" I have to follow in Johnny Marr's footsteps. How does one do that?' I went through quite a lot of grief making that record. I think by the time I finished it, I had brought up so much acidity in the stomach due to tension that I wasn't able to get out of bed one day. I don't know what came over me."

Viva Hate was an album literally born out of necessity. The breakup of The Smiths was untimely but it also yielded no b-sides. Thanks to the record company, coming up with b-sides was going to be Street's job. "Since there was nothing left to work with, I sent a tape to Morrissey with a note that said, "Forgive me for being presumptuous, but if there is anything on this tape you think would be good for b-sides please feel free to contact me." As it turns out, he did contact me, and said he really liked some of the ideas and could we get together for a solo record. So he came round and put some vocal lines on top of the ideas I had laid down. I wanted to do it that way because that's how Johnny would work with Morrissey. It was pretty straightforward in the sense that if you had quite a few lyrical ideas and he had quite a few lyrical ideas, you could just sift through them putting the two together until you found something that worked."

The duo holed up in a studio with Durutti Column guitarist Vini Reilly and wrote as they recorded for the next four months. "I was engineering, producing, playing bass and rythmn guitar," says Street with a laugh. "You could tell by the end I was exhausted. So I did all of that, then Morrissey just went AWOL again. I didn't have any communication for about two months from Morrissey himself. It's as he does. He tends to kind of turn away from people."

Viva Hate premiered at #1 on the UK music charts. Upon the album's success, Morrissey reconvened with Street and the two began writing singles like "Interesting Drug" and "Last of the Famous International Playboys" with ex-Smiths Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke as the backing band. The singles also enjoyed much success and a lasting partnership seemed nigh until one day Morrissey up and vanished without a word. "I think at the end of the day he decided, "I don't need to do this with Stephen anymore. I can just as easily do this with someone else." He just walked away as it were."