It was 36 years ago this week that The Smiths played their first gig at Manchester's Ritz - and nearly four decades on they remain one of the most influential and iconic bands of all time.

Not that everybody would have believed it at the time - as photographer Kevin Cummins recalls, his first photoshoot with the band was dropped from the cover of NME, whose deputy editor at the time declared they'd 'never be big enough'.

The pictures, shot at Dunham Massey in 1983, featured in CityLife magazine instead - the predecessor to our own title - and one now hangs in London's National Portrait Gallery.

The prediction that the Manchester band would never hit the biog time could hardly have proved more wrong.

"I must have shot Morrissey about 10 times for the NME cover after that," Cummins remembers.

"Those pictures would have been such a great cover for the paper. A couple of months later I let CityLife use them, I wanted them to be seen.

"I'd always photographed in quite an urban setting but I felt they didn't really suit standing up against concrete and brick walls. I wanted something softer so we went to Dunham Massey and did pictures in the grass and around the ornamental pond.

"I liked the narcissism of them looking at themselves in the water but Morrissey wanted to do something different to the rest of the band."

Morrissey had a very clear sense of himself and how he wanted to be portrayed from the start, recalls Cummins, who describes him as one of the most collaborative people he's ever worked with.

(Image: Kevin Cummins)

"I think that Morrissey understands the power of the image and the fact that it plays a vital cultural role, both in terms of creating his own mythology and cementing a place for him in cultural memory," he writes in his new book, Morrissey: Alone and Palely Loitering.

The book collects hundreds of previously unseen photographs, illustrating chaotic live performances and intimate portrait sessions, as well as snatched moments backstage and on tour between 1983 and 1994.

They include pictures of Morrissey's return to the stage for his first solo gig in Wolverhampton in 1988, backed by ex-Smiths bandmates Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke, as well as Craig Gannon filling in for the departed Marr on lead guitar. It was a show fans had been waiting nearly two years for and Cummins' pictures capture the fervour in the crowd.

"There was a lot of excitement around that gig," Cummins remembers.

"[Fans] had been waiting a couple of years for it and they'd made it free admission for anyone wearing a Smiths or Morrissey T-shirt. I shot it from the stage so I was able to get the audience in shot, to get a much better idea of the chaos and excitement."

Don't expect any tales of rock and roll excess on the road in the book, though.

(Image: Kevin Cummins/Idols)

"He was very well behaved," says Cummins.

"It wasn't at all like going on tour with New Order. You were always guaranteed an early bedtime."

While the NME might not have seen The Smiths' success coming, Cummins says he recognised the band had something special to say right from the start.

"At the time they were a breath of fresh air, we'd had a couple of year of New Romantic style bands like Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran, much poppier bands who were the kind of thing your kid sister would like," he says.

"Then suddenly The Smiths came along and The Jesus and Mary Chain and they had a lot of presence and influenced a whole generation.

"The thing with Morrissey was that his lyrics kind of tap into the way teenagers feel and there's always that sense that he's singing directly to you."

Morrissey: Alone and Palely Loitering by Kevin Cummins, is published by Cassell Illustrated and on sale priced at £30 from octopusbooks.co.uk . Photography ©Kevin Cummins