About Morrissey

I’ve long come to terms with adolescent infatuation with Morrissey and am quite happy to build a metaphorical wall between his early work and the blimpish buffoon he’s become in recent years. (And in similar terms, I feel no need to boycott Gauguin’s art or Ezra Pound’s poems or the Gill Sans font, just because of their creators’ various misbehaviours.)

Steven Patrick himself, however, seems determined to punish his fans from 40 years ago if they haven’t kept the faith all these years:

They also strongly allude to an imaginary time when I was somehow their actual flesh-and-blood friend, and this claim allows them full rights to enlightened bitterness.

PS: Remembering that time I asked Mozz to shatter my youthful delusions once and for all.

About the Smiths

Presented without comment.

Also: vegan curries with Mozz overtones:

Not about Morrissey

Just as it happened 35 or so years ago, while I watched Johnny Marr’s Glastonbury set I gawped at his dexterity, musical imagination, effortless cool and implausible absence of body fat. Of course, in 1983 his serviceable singing didn’t come into the equation, because someone else was handling those duties.

Ah, yes, Mr Morrissey. What started out (apparently) as arch, subversive flirtation with the trappings and iconography of the far right has tipped right over the edge into full-on Faragerie and worse. He is, officially, no longer charming, and people are lining up either to agonise over the delight they once took in him and his mots (bon and mauvais alike), or to crow that they never liked the preening bigot in the first place. I’m in the first camp, but I guess you’d worked that out already.

So, when Marr trawls through his old band’s songbook, what reaction should we expect from the woke crowd? Awkward shoe-gazing? A mass turning of backs? A petition on change.org? Or ecstatic bellowing along from thousands of sunburned people who know all the words and the B-sides and probably the messages etched on the inner grooves as well, which contrasts with the polite response accorded to the guitar hero’s own solo work. (Note to self: remember that in the real world, Smiths fans always resembled the rowdy lads on the inside of the Rank gatefold more than they did Alain Delon or even Yootha Joyce.) Hate the singer – or at least express disappointment in how he turned out – while still loving the songs; that would appear to be the best option. Of course, the spirit of Morrissey still lingers over everything Marr does; at once there and not there, Schrödinger’s lyricist, Banquo at the vegan feast. This was meant to be a blog post about Johnny, but it’s not, is it?

The singer/song divide does appear to be an increasingly popular tactic, whether it’s Quincy Jones playing lots of Michael Jackson songs without ever mentioning Michael Jackson, or Nick Cave’s calm response to the misdeeds of Morrissey himself:

I think perhaps it would be helpful to you if you saw the proprietorship of a song in a different way. Personally, when I write a song and release it to the public, I feel it stops being my song. It has been offered up to my audience and they, if they care to, take possession of that song and become its custodian. The integrity of the song now rests not with the artist, but with the listener.

Which, the two or three loyal readers of this blog will know, is pretty much what Roland Barthes (a French theorist who never heard the Smiths but died a beautifully Morrisseyesque death) argued in The Death of the Author. As soon as the author publishes, or releases, or presses “SEND”, he or she leaves the party. I’ve often deployed this as a critical get-out clause; for example in my book about Radiohead’s OK Computer (all good bookshops, etc), I pointed out that the fact Thom Yorke hasn’t read Philip K Dick’s Valis, or can’t remember that the poem that inspired ‘Subterranean Homesick Alien’ was by Craig Raine, doesn’t invalidate those works’ relevance to consideration of his own music. I never thought it would also allow us to skip gaily over the sexual or political misdemeanours of our fallen idols, and I doubt old Roland did either – which rather proves his point, doesn’t it?

You're older now and you're a clever swine

Anyway, those nice people who do The Grauniad asked me (and quite a few other people, such as Dave H) what I'd like to happen in the next 12 months. So what did I ask for, from the Santa of Farringdon Road? World peace? Cure for AIDS? End of global warming?


Yeah, right, I said...

Haven't had a dream in a long time

Morrissey: Ringleader of the Tormentors (Attack, 2006)

I picked up a copy of Spin magazine the other day. It's not something I tend to do, and I'm not sure why I made an exception, especially since Karen Yeah Yeah Yeah was modelling that blue-bus haircut on the cover. Ewww.

Anyway, as I flipped through it (the mag, not Karen's bad hair) while spooning some not-so-great yaki-soba into my jaded maw, I noticed that British music seems to be making one of its periodic flypasts over the landscape I still like to think of as the Canada-Mexico border. Yes, we know that James Blunt appeals to quantity surveyors on both sides of the Atlantic; and the colonials are even trying to get on the same mental planet as the Arctic Monkeys.

But Spin takes it further. Jonathan Ames goes to a Goth convention in Illinois, and acknowledges there was living death before Marilyn Manson, namechecking Joy Division and Bauhaus. Simon Reynolds looks back to the "Second British Invasion" that dry-humped MTV until about Live Aid, giving us two (two!!!!) pictures of naughty Annabella Lwin, who's now (say it ain't so) 40 years old. Franz Ferdinand and The Darkness get news items, and a 'Definitive Guide To Pop Punk' sources half the top 10 key albums of the genre from the right-hand coast of the Atlantic. (If you're interested, they chose Buzzcocks, Generation X, the Rezillos, the Undertones and, uh, the Vibrators.)

And then there's an interview with Morrissey. Steven's on fine form, hymning the praises of his new Roman home and tipping Billy Crudup to play him in the inevitable Mozopic. He deflects the inevitable sexuality questions ("Sometimes I feel explanations are very unnecessary and really spoil things.") and, yes, he talks about the new album.

And it's a perfectly good Q&A, by Marc Spitz, but the reason I bring it up is that I still think Americans (and an increasing number of Brits) miss the point about Morrissey. Yes, it's lovely to have him back, and he looks spiffy on the cover, in his white tie and tails, and isn't it slightly ironic that this curmudgeonly anachronism tops the British album charts in the first week when downloads count... but... but... but...

There's an 800-pound vegan gorilla in the room that nobody really, explicitly mentions, although Spitz hints hard. No, not that Morrissey's a big poof (although more on that anon). It's this. Morrissey solo is not as good as The Smiths. There. Apart from that mysterious phalanx of Chicanos that Morrissey adopted during his LA sojourn, and the ever-loyal, sexually ambivalent West Ham fans, Moz on his lonesome does not provoke the level of devotion and empathy that was exhibited between 1983 and 1987. And it's not nostalgia, and it's not wistful yearning for the reunion that won't happen, not even for $5 million. And it's certainly not that Morrissey now makes bad music. Ringleader of the Tormentors is a good album. It's just that nothing on it gives you that cerebral judder, half orgasm, half kick in eye, that happened when 'Bigmouth Strikes Again' first struck. Or 'Ask' or 'Reel Around The Fountain'. Or 'Barbarism Begins At Home' or 'Shakespeare's Sister' or 'Suffer Little Children' or 'Handsome Devil' or 'What Difference Does It Make?' or 'Paint A Vulgar Picture' or 'You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby' or...

Need I continue?

Right, the album. Yes, it's good stuff. Mozz seems happy in his new home, but this hasn't lost his gift for the cutting bon mot (or mauvais mot in his case). As he says in 'On The Streets I Ran', Morrissey's peculiar talent is for turning "sickness into popular song", and he's still preoccupied with death and failure and loneliness and all that makes life worthwhile. His cultural references have shifted a little, with Shelagh Delaney being replaced by Pasolini and Visconti (Luchino, not Tony), but it's still Moz.

But what's this? "Explosive kegs between my legs"? Morrissey has, you know, organs? And it's not just sex, there's love too. "I live only for you," he trills on 'Life Is A Pigsty'. The pop world's most notorious celibate (Britney couldn't hack it) is not only indulging in moist rudeness, he's yodelling the fact from the spire of St Peter's. "I once was a mess of guilt because of the flesh," he sighs. "It's remarkable what you can learn." Not that all's entirely well, of course. "I would give you my heart," he declares later; "That's if I had one"

So contentment in the boudoir hasn't dulled his caustic drollery. And it sounds great, too. Tony (not Luchino this time) Visconti produces, bringing on the arranging prowess of Ennio Morricone for one track. Anyone yearning to discover what The Smiths would have been if they'd had a real string section can find out here (with all due respect to Orchestrazia Ardwick and the Hated Salford Ensemble). The three guitarists provide a variety of textures and effects, especially on the opener 'I Will See You In Far Off Places' with its cheekily cod-Indian atmospherics (Bengali in plectrums, anyone?). Mikey Farrell offers some fun piano and trumpet twiddles, although the proggy vamping on 'I'll Never Be Anybody's Hero Now' is probably an experiment too far. Mozz yelps in ways he hasn't since 'This Charming Man' and a single Morrissey yelp has more sex ammo than Christina Aguilera frotting the stage anyday.

It seems as if everything is in its right place, as David Cameron's other favourite band puts it. Except for tunes. Despite Johnny Marr's acclaimed axe heroics, it was his tunes that keep The Smiths a couple of steps ahead of even the best of Morrissey's solo material. Just listen to the Live at Earl's Court album, and the gasps from the punters when Morrissey kicks into tunes written before many of them were conceived. It must be deeply frustrating for long-established artists to have their recent stuff dismissed in favour of the stuff from decades ago, but there may be more in the phenomenon than familiarity and laziness. Ron Wood (the Craig Gannon of grandad rock?) is always complaining that he's perceived as a replacement guitarist, despite the fact that he's been with the Stones for about 75% of their recording career. He hasn't quite got it through his comedy mullet that in his stint with the band, they've never come up with anything half as good as 'Paint It, Black' or 'Let's Spend The Night Together'.

So what's the Poet Laureate of the Maladjusted to do? Well, since any formal reunion with Marr and the others is bound to collapse under the weight of frenzied expectations, tensions and unresolved legal and accounting quibbles, he simply has to find another composer that can match Marr's ear for a tune. Which means not Alain Whyte, basically. Or anyone he's worked with in the last 19 years. Brian Wilson? Burt Bacharach? Paul McCartney? All genius tunesmiths who've stumbled a little when it comes to lyrics. Crazier things have occurred. Hell, if you fly on autopilot for long enough, there's always Rick Rubin to help out.

Ach, what does he care? The Hammers fans and South Central Chicanos will still love this, and now the Roman paninari will probably join the club. But the sad sacks who still troop to the door of Salford Lads' Club will play this a few times, and file it under "Oh well, suppose it's better than Southpaw Grammar".

"So if there was a Smiths reformation," says Mozz in the Spin interview, "I don't think there would be gasps around the planet."

Oh Steven, if only you knew.