Andrew Rourke who died today, was an English musician, best known as the bassist of the Smiths. He was renown for his melodic approach to bass playing. Rourke joined the Smiths after their first gig, having known guitarist Johnny Marr since school. The pair spent lunch breaks in school jamming and playing on their guitars. When Marr and Rourke formed a band, he invited Rourke (still then a guitarist) to try on 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.
Marr later teamed up with Morrissey to form the Smiths. Rourke joined the band after its first gig, and remained through most of its existence. Suffering from heroin addiction, he was sacked from the band in early 1986, rejoining two weeks later just before they released ‘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”. The Smiths released ‘Strangeways, Here We Come’ in 1987 to critical acclaim, but split soon after.
Immediately after the break-up, Rourke played with Sinead O’Connor – Rourke appears on the album ‘I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got‘ (1990). Along with Craig Gannon, they provided the rhythm section for two singles by former Smiths singer Morrissey – “Interesting Drug” and “The Last ofv the Famous International Playboys” (both 1989). Rourke also played bass on Morrissey’s “November Spawned a Monster” and “Piccadilly Palare” (both 1990) and composed the music for Morrissey’s songs “Yes, I Am Blind”, “Girl Least Likely To”; also released as a bonus track on the 1997 reissue of Viva Hate; and “Get Off the Stage”. Rourke also played and recorded with the Pretenders, Killing Joke, Badly Drawn Boy (with whom Rourke toured for two years), and ex-Oasis guitarist Bonehead as Moondog One, which also included Mike Joyce and Craig Gannon. Rourke also played bass for Ian Brown, both on tour and on Brown’s album The World is Yours’.
Rourke, his then-manager Nova Rehman, his production company, Great Northern Productions, and others organised Manchester Versus Cancer, a series of concerts to benefit cancer research, later known simply as Versus Cancer. The initiative was prompted when Rehman’s father and sister were diagnosed with the disease. The first Manchester v Cancer concert took place in January 2006. It featured a reunion between Rourke and his former Smiths bandmate Johnny Marr, who performed one song together. He organised further concerts in the three following years.
Rourke formed Freebass with bass players Mani (ex-the 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, 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 band D.A.R.K. with singer Dolores O’Riordan from The Cranberries. The trio released their debut album, Science Agrees in September 2016.
