Songfacts®:

• The name "Suedehead" came from the title of a book by British author Richard Allen about post-skinhead gangs known as "suedeheads." The lyrics don't seem to have much to do with the novel, and the word suedehead never appears.
  
  The song describes a person who seems to be a haunting presence in Morrissey's life:
  
  Why do you come here
  When you know it makes things hard for me?
  
  And it sounds like they were intimate, as Moz repeats the line "It was a good lay" at the end of the song.
  
  He says it's about a real person, but he won't say who. He did reveal that the song takes place during his early teenage years around 1972.
• Morrissey was a journalist for the Record Mirror before forming The Smiths with guitarist Johnny Marr in 1982. The group released four albums that were very popular in their native UK, with Marr distinguishing the group musically with a guitar sound both jangly and modern, and Morrissey adding emotive vocals with lyrics that revealed a tortured soul. When they split in 1987, Morrissey wasted no time in getting his solo career started. "Suedehead" was issued as his first single in February 1988, just five months after the last Smiths album.
  
  The song rose to #5 in the UK, higher than any Smiths single. Morrissey kept the momentum going with his next single, "Everyday Is Like Sunday," which rose to #9. His solo career proved long and fruitful, and in the '90s he was able to draw crowds in America, something The Smiths were never able to.
• The British band Suede, known for '90s hits like "Stay Together" and "Animal Nitrate," didn't name themselves after this song (they liked the way "Suede" looked on posters) but were big fans of Morrissey and The Smiths. Their lead singer, Brett Anderson, told The Observer in 1992: "When we started the group, we felt that people were starved for music which allowed them to let themselves go. The last group like that was The Smiths."
• On the opening track of his debut solo album, Heartbreaker (2000), Ryan Adams argues with vocalist/guitarist Dave Rawlings about which album "Suedehead" first appeared on. The 37-second track, listed as "(Argument with David Rawlings Concerning Morrissey)," finishes with a flubbed start of "To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)," the first song on the album.
• This isn't the first song Morrissey titled after a piece of literature that he never mentioned in the lyric. The Smiths song "How Soon Is Now?" is titled after a line in a book called Popcorn Venus by Marjorie Rosen.
• Morrissey wrote this song with his producer, Stephen Street, who also played bass on the track. Street was an engineer for The Smiths and got on well with Morrissey. A few years later, he became Blur's producer.