“Cemetry Gates” by The Smiths

“Cemetry Gates” is a song performed by The Smiths that focuses on Smiths’ singer Morrissey’s bizarre fascination with death. Lyrically, Morrissey sings about meeting someone (an acquaintance/friend/lover) at the gates of a cemetery and taking a stroll through the cemetery. The lyrics go on to detail the feelings of sadness that overtake him as he thinks about all the people who have passed away.

Morrissey and his fascination with Death

In his youthful years, Morrissey had a strong obsession with death. Owing to this, he used to spend a considerable amount of his free time visiting the Southern Cemetery. The Southern Cemetery is a popular cemetery located in Morrissey’s hometown of Manchester, England. Once in the aforementioned cemetery, Morrissey would spend an awful amount of time wandering about and just observing. He apparently felt more at home in the cemetery than outside it. This is obviously where the inspiration for “Cemetry Gates” came from.

Facts about “Cemetry Gates”

• “Cemetry Gates” was written by Johnny Marr and Morrissey. Marr wrote the music and Morrissey wrote the song’s lyrics. According to Marr, he wrote the song in his kitchen.
• The word “cemetry” from the song’s title is apparently spelled wrongly. Contrary to popular beliefs, Morrissey didn’t deliberately misspell the word. According to Morrissey, he always found it quite challenging spelling this particular word. In an interview with NME, Smiths’ drummer Mike Joyce also confessed to having problems spelling the word “cemetery”.
• In the song’s third verse, Morrissey advises or rather criticizes an unknown person (an acquaintance) for plagiarizing a portion of the historical play Richard III by William Shakespeare. Ironically, Morrissey himself goes ahead to lift part of the song’s lyrics from the 1942 American comedy film titled The Man Who Came to Dinner. For example, the line “All those people, all those lives. Where are they now?” was copied word-for-word from the aforementioned film.
• The Smiths never shot a music video for “Cemetry Gates”.
• The names Keats, Yeats and Wilde that Morrissey mentions in the song’s lyrics are real people. They are: English poet John Keats, Irish poet W.B. Yeats and Irish playwright, poet and novelist Oscar Wilde (whom Morrissey has been a lifelong fan of). Interestingly, all the three legendary poets mentioned in the song had various degrees of fascination with death, most notably Keats. Keats died at the young age of 25 after a brief battle with tuberculosis.
• “Cemetry Gates” is the fifth track on The Smiths’ 1986 third studio album titled The Queen Is Dead.
• The song has a total length of 2 minutes and 39 seconds.