 
WORD MAGAZINE #23
(Jan 2005)
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Transcribed by Vu
www.wordmagazine.co.uk
"Prodigal Son or Conquering Hero?" (6 pgs)
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writer:
photo: |
Stuart Maconie
Norman Jean Roy |
"Prodigal Son or Conquering Hero? The latter, I think."
He was becalmed in Los Angeles for six years - "time flows quickly when you're asleep".
But Morrissey saved his triumphant return for the moment he was needed the most.
The day that I speak to Morrissey, one Charles Windsor is in the news again. The ageing job-seeker of whom our boy once ask "Oh Charles, don't you ever crave to appear on the front of the Daily Mail dressed in your mother's bridal veil" has this time delivered himself of an extraordinary outburst. It concerns the upstart nature of the great unwashed - or you and I if you prefer - viz: "What is the matter with these people… wanting to be pop stars … aspiration above talents… harrumph."
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"Well, it's a very silly thing to say. But then he's a very silly man, isn't he? Aspirations in excess of talent? Well, doesn't he have aspirations? After all, doesn't he aspire to (fruity chortle) occupy his mother's seat."
Welcome back, old chum. We've missed you. We really weren't getting answers like that from David Sneddon.
David who?
Exactly.
At the height of the weekly music press's tortured, doomed, obsessive love-hate affair with Morrissey, the story went that more people bought the paper when his face and torso was splashed across the cover than sometimes bought Morrissey had fans who were as keen, maybe keener, on his interviews than his records. This was said not so much to belittle his work, but rather to point out how Morrissey had turned the interview into an art form, into a devastating weapon in his artistic armoury, as important as his alluring voice or his unique lyrics.
Lou Reed and Van Morrison were rude in interviews, Brian Eno was clever. Brian Wilson was damaged. But Morrissey was the first musician, at least since the Beatles or Bowie, to charm, to delight, to dazzle.
Of those three weekly music papers that fed voraciously and somewhat ungratefully on him, two are gone and one is ailing. Morrissey however is bigger than ever. Opinion is one thing but the facts cannot lie. This year he has played to the biggest audiences of his career, had his biggest hit single ever, sold almost a million aabums and gazed in that wry, yet strong-jawed '50s film star way from every magazine and TV show imaginable. Forget 1983 - he certain has - this has been Morrissey's annus mirabilis.
"Yes, it's been very amusing hasn't it. Prodigal Son? Or Conquering Hero? The latter I think."
Morrissey used to be in a band called The Smiths. They were from Manchester and they were really pretty special. They made four remarkable studio albums during the middle 1980s, one diverting live album and at least three compilations which are paragons of the form. Also, and very importantly for Morrissey, they produced 18 or so singles which represent as consistently brilliant a canon, as worthy a contribution to the dying art as anyone in British pop.
In a moment I shall pass on some detailed information regarding the sucking of eggs. We know about The Smiths, you cry. Well, perhaps. But judging from the attendees at the Morrissey's recent gigs, there are many Morrissey fans who do not. There's a new intake of acolytes for whom The Smiths are not a rite of passage, not even a distant memory but rather a set text. In the same way that people of my generation have come to know about Mike Love, Nick Drake and their ilk via a kind of Rock 101, by osmosis, by article, by other people's memories, so a generation has learned about the Smiths. At someone else's knee. Or someone else's hi-fi; friends, older brother, mums and dads even.
Morrissey was a Smith for six years. He has been a Morrissey for sixteen. Do the math, as he adopted countrymen would say. "Oh, you've noticed, have you," he remarks slyly. You can understand his weary resignation and dismay at being forever yoked in some people's imagination to the band he joined when he was a skinny, awkward dolesite of 22. but this year was the first time he has genuinely laid that ghost to rest. In 2004, Morrissey snatched victory from the jaws of defeat to the sound of ringing cash registers. Before You Are The Quarry, his last album had been released in 1997, a bad year all around when he had also mired in a painful, ultimately injurious court case brought by former Smiths bandmates, Andy Rouke and Mike Joyce. The album itself was the utterly un-prepossessing Maladjusted. Before you even got to the music, you felt deflated. The picture featured him squatting awkwardly and smiley blandly, dressed, it appeared, for a Sunday afternoon tidying the garage. The title bore pointless, redundant quotation marks like the ones that adorn the special offers on Lambert & Butler in newsagents. The album might as well have been called Not Really That Arsed Actualy.
Morrissey might not agree with all this - why would? - but at heart he knows that for whatever reason his artistic life had unraveled. He had become becalmed in Los Angeles, a fabulous mythical beast lying low in the scant shade of the eternal sunshine of Tinseltown; like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, know that she was still big but the pictures had got small. Though he played live regularly, to fans as intense and transfixed as ever, and though companies made bizarre suggestions - such as that he hooked up with Radiohead according to one interview - he didn't release a note. He didn't even have a deal. Did he despair of ever making a record again?
"No, I never despaired of making another records. I always knew that I would but I was prepared to wait. As the time went by I did begin to wonder but I also knew that when the time was right I would return. And then, suddenly, it made sense to return. It all fell into place when people saw how truly dreadful music had become."
This Arthurian scenario - Morrissey emerging from his slumber, Excalibur in hand to save benighted Albion - was helped by his entering into a cordial relationship with Sanctuary Records whom he claims won his heart with a gift of the white Vox Teardrop Guitar played by Johnny Thunders. Sanctuary are a label who have become famous for skilful stewardship of the modern careers of what are coyly called "heritage" acts. So skilful in Morrissey's case that they have turned that heritage into bona fide contemporary success. The long-awaited return was herald by a flagship single called Irish Blood, English Heart. After the fey diffidence of Morrissey's late '90s singles, it was formidably, engagingly tough, a bolshire Dennis the Menace to those Walter Softies like Boxers and Our Frank, that were the last things we'd heard from him. Against a driving rock arrangement, Morrissey basically invited the world to come and have a go if they thought they were hard enough. "There is no-one on earth I'm afraid of," he declared, and filled out, tanned, steely-tempted and grown up, you believe him.
Irish Blood, English Heart entered the UK chart at number three, by far the most successful release of his career. He is proud of this, and a little prickly. "Entered at Number Three and without anyone's help or airplay, thank you."
I'm about to take issue with this when I realised he has a very particular gripe against former station of the national Radio One. "They are part of the British Broadcasting Corporation. I would have thought that a national radio station have some responsibility to British music and British fans. Some responsibility to what the public like and want instead of this American rap crap. I mean it does seem that people actually did enjoy the record."
A permanently raw sense of injustice has always been a great motivator for Morrissey. Sometimes this can seem like a persecution complex, but not always. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you. I worked on the infamous Madstock edition of the NME, an anguished yet gleeful response to Morrissey's decision to take the stage at the Madness show at Finsbury Park in 1991 wrapped in a Union Jack. The paper was cod-outraged but secretly delighted and just as Morrissey suspects, there was a large contingents who were delighted to see this fall from grade, in fact happy to give him a helping shove. What must have been even more galling is seeing everyone from Noel Gallagher to Geri Halliwell adopting the same look a few years later to a froth of approval from the press and invites to tea from Tony Blair.
"This is one of the reasons that my fans love me. They love me because they see what I am trying to do, they see how passionate I am, and they see me being completely unacknowledged. The audience - my audience - never treat me with anything other than love and I feel desperately sad for them. Because they love me and they see that MTV, VH1 and the rest utterly ignore me. The music business is motivated by spite. It runs on bile and excessive egotism and I've never been prepared to grease anyone's palm."
"I think we've started to pine for people like me who have no choice in the matter of this pop thing. People for whom it is a religious calling. I have come to realise that that is what I am. In the end, people realise the true nature of what you are. I am real and I meant it and I cannot help but do it. So many pop stars or pop artists today who make this techno-pop, for want of better word, they are not pop musicians, they are studio engineers."
In 2004, Morrissey has bestowed his benison and approval on the likes of Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, and The Libertines. The Strokes he quite likes but is very rightly appalled by their artwork. But elsewhere he sees misery and squalor. Pull aside this curtain of shame and you will find, Wizard of Oz style, a fairly nondescript chap called Simon Cowell.
"I'm aware that there's been some kind of re-assessment of me this year and of course that's very nice. But I know that, just as much as that comes from a love for me, I also think it's an acknowledgement that music has just become so atrocious. And the people who make music have become so atrocious."
It is the poor saps who make the music, I wonder in spirit of festive generosity, the ones with their names on the sleeves, or the sinister svengalis who have the business by the throat? Surely the Michelles and the Gareths are just hapless pawns, little matchgirls sacrificed on the altar of ratings and, ahem, world capitalism? His reply is almost contemptuous.
"Do you really think they're like that? Do you really think that they're that good, that decent? Pop Idols is just hellish and dehumanising. I do feel sorry for them but then again it is their own fault. They have completely gone along with this modern mania for celebrity, this feeling that life can offer nothing better than appearing on TV."
Surely being famous was a motivating factor for the youthful Morrissey?
"Never."
Oh come on, those winter Saturday evenings watching Cilla and Sandie and Kathy Kirby by the flickering light of 625 lines of black and white light entertainment?
"But those were much more naïve times… or so I gather. That's what they tell me. And I don't think they and we took it all as seriously then. We take all this stuff so incredibly and ridiculously earnestly these days. As if it means anything. It's terrifying. We are just fed the uselessness of celebrity and we do not question it. And we have no say in it, all these things. These dreadful people are thrown at us and we have no choice in the matter."
Given Morrissey's feelings on the matter of fame, it seems faintly ludicrous - not to say perverse - that he has made his home in Los Angeles. Hollywood. Tinseltown, " a city with all the personality of a paper cup" as one insider had it. By explanation he gives the same oblique answer as always. "It was an accident, honestly". He actually told the French rock magazine Les Inrockuptiles that "I had to leave quickly. It could have been Gibraltar or Morocco, but it was Los Angeles, a town for which I don't feel a crazy love. I thought I would leave one year, in order to let things calm down in England. It's six years now. It's incredible how time flows quickly when you're asleep."
This carries the distinct flavour of one of my GCSE French translations but we can assume the sentiments are sound, even if he's more likely to eat a Ginster savoury steak slice that use the expression "crazy love."
"You may find it hard to believe but I have never wanted to be famous or a celebrity. Those things have never motivated me. Yes I suppose I do find it slightly embarrassingly living in LA and being so excruciatingly aware of this constant conveyor belt of non-entities. The same 12 people who dominate the culture and on-one ever boots them out."
Names names.
"Well, George Clooney seems to be everywhere whether we like it or not. And Tom Cruise! You will never be able to name me any great book that Tom Cruise has ever read."
Over Christmas Morrissey is playing a series of UK dates, a continuation of this summer's celebratory return to the British stage that began with a show at Manchester's MEN Arena. It was his first show in his hometown for 12 years, it sold out in seconds, the streets were slick with gladioli petals and tears and, as if this was not enough, it was his birthday. It must have been a very emotional night.
"Not really," he yawns. "It was amusing. It was amusing and fantastic that it sold out in seconds, because to tell you the absolute truth, I didn't think it would I thought it would reach the halfway mark if I was lucky. Absolutely and truly. And of course I love to play for those people. But I couldn't care less about the Manchester media. They have never done me any favours so I didn't expect them to now. And that's why I was surprise to sell it out."
Morrissey's cultivated air of detachment never extends to his fans, at least not the ones outside the media. He is fiercely loyal and even a little protective towards them. "There is this twisted belief, and it may be true, that you get the audience you deserve. They see in me someone who is passionate and they are passionate too in response. My audience is a reflection of what I'm like as a human being. They recognise that I cannot do anything but this."
"That's why I find touring hugely enjoyable. I always have found it enjoyable, only far more so now. It has never been a necessary evil for me. I've never done it or indeed never done anything because I've been told to. I do it when and because I want to."
In this case, he must have been very accommodating to his PR people this year. In 2004 his profile has been higher than it's been for two decades. His commanding presence and still magisterial quaff has been spotted everywhere from CD:UK to a memorably clenched-buttock appearance on Jonathan Ross' TV show. Did he enjoy that?
"I enjoyed parts of it. I enjoyed the edited highlights. He occasionally got a little tough with me but generally he was never nice. Yes, the profile has been a little higher than of late but I shudder when I hear the word 'come back'. I don't like to think that I'm back. I've always been here. It implies something about revisiting the past. There's nothing in the past I'd go back for. No reason ever to. As far as I'm aware only Doctor Who can go back in time. "
Doctor Who's back as well, you know.
"Well, of course he's back. He can never go forward, can he?"
Morrissey himself is at the helm of the reactivated Attack records, a former reggae imprint. American magazine have taken to referring to this as a boutique label a la Madonna's Maverick, which make it sound like the vinyl equivalent of one of Elton John's portable dogs. Morrissey sees it as a chance to do something good in a tarnished arena.
"I'm going to release great records that I want to release. There's no eye on commercial success. I will not be turning into a record company exec with a sword and steel toecapped boots. I'm trying to revive something good and true about pop music. I'd like to regenerate and rejuvenate some kind of faith in the pop single. I think people are tired of investing so much of their time and faith in albums that aren't worth it."
Initial releases include his neighbour and friend Nancy Sinatra ("her finest album, and one of the more irresistible pop records of 2004," according to the New York Time) Irish acts Damien Dempsey and Remma, as well as old chum James Maker and long-standing enthusiasms the New York Dolls and Jobriath, a criminally neglected and now deceased Rufus Wainwright-style laureate of the glam era.
"I was so pleased about Jobriath's record. The Jobriath single got to number 102, his first ever entry in the British singles chart and 300 years after his death. Of course, it's sad because he isn't around anymore but he isn't around and there's nothing we can do about it. Believe me, we've explored every angle," he chuckles.
You're turning into David Geffen!
"Oh, I think you know that's not going to happen."
You could sign Michelle McManus. She's been dropped.
"Really? She must have made a hell of a dent."
In a few hours' time, Morrissey will be on stage in Paris, a city he seems to enjoy as much as anywhere. "Paris is beautiful. But it doesn't really apply to me because, as usual - and I know it's tiresome to go on about it - but I just feel my usual detachment wherever I go, whether it's Spillage, where I know you were born and raised, or Scunthorpe or whatever."
He is currently writing new material "in dribs and drabs" but travel trends to disrupt all that. "I don't have anything as vulgar as a plan but there will be another record next year."
Good. You've been missed.
"I've been missed!" He feigns surprise. "Well, you know I've always been here. I didn't go to Algeria. And why have you missed me? Have you missed the controversy? I don't know why I'm seen as a controversial figure. I never set out to be controversial, just shows how dull most people must be."
You bring some glamour to our lives, I say amiably. And perhaps for the first time in our conversation, an authentic tone of shock comes through.
"You can't mean that! If you mean that then …" and here the familiar purr of elegant hauteur returns, "… then you need a course of psychotherapy. Because you are in deep, deep shit."
