by Morrissey
‘So, what do you want me to do?’ he says.
‘El-vest has left the building,’ I say, not remotely funny. It isn’t a question of vanity or ego, but occasionally there is simply no point.
On returning to England I am told by Murray Chalmers at EMI that a certain journalist is now the editor of the NME. This journalist is known to us because he has reviewed five albums by either the Smiths or Morrissey, writing with unabashed hatred, without an avenue of offensiveness left unexplored. However, the significance of his promotion to NME editor is that he has allegedly called a staff meeting at which he has passed the command that his staff writers must now ‘get Morrissey’, and that the plan was now underway to dislodge me as an NME staple.
Soon after, at a Finsbury Park concert, where the main writers from the NME are seated at the back of the park at the mixing desk, and one particularly irritating writer is suckling her newborn, I begin to notice a flux of sharpened pound coins flying at me from sections of the crowd. It takes mission, I thought, to part with so many pound coins. What is happening? I am forced offstage mid-set, which doesn’t worry me greatly since I am not dish of the day, but the backstage view is that the coterie of trouble makers are an organized group.
However, the NME manslaughter erupts with their next issue, where my face grabs the cover with the blaring question ‘Is Morrissey flirting with fascism?’ and their head-shrinking hang-ups waffle on over several pages of burning execution. EMI back off nervously saying, ‘If this NME thing begins to affect the Pet Shop Boys then we’ll be forced to do something about it,’ with no thought whatsoever of me in the burning wreckage of it all. Branded a racist by the NME (who apply just enough question marks alongside their allegations to protect themselves from any specific accusation in a court of law), the finger-pointing goes unanswered from me, but my refusal to feed the NME story causes a bushfire of speculation that forms a part of my biography forevermore. No one comes to my defense, and the ex-Smiths are noticeable in their all-lads-together silence. ‘’e’ll get ’is hair cut reg’lar now,’ one can almost hear. It is a time, though, when Marr, Rourke and Joyce will only raise their heads in order to say something damning, which, ahhh, with maturity one is meant to shrug off.
Although all 36,000 tickets for the Hollywood Bowl have sold out within minutes, the NME is in full Morrissey concentration mode, and they milk and foster their racist allegations – full of high moral code and judicial thuggery. A picture of me holding a Union Jack is infallible proof for the NME that I do not like people whose skin is darker than my own. ‘I wear black on the outside|because black is how I feel on the inside,’ I had sung in 1985.
Suddenly a new generation of pop faces drape themselves in the Union Jack, and the NME celebrates them all as the emergence of ‘Brit Pop’; the Union Jack becomes the NME’s badge, leaving little doubt that the Morrissey fiasco was a personal vendetta by the NME to gain mass attention for the paper and to eke out a historical moment for its own archive. Had I actually been racist, the NME comments would reveal nothing and attract no one, but because the accusation was so unlikely it would naturally have enough impact to stop traffic – which was surely the NME ’s aim. Setting itself up as our moral guardian and jailer, the NME is suddenly our parental safeguard and an ever-vigilant arm of the law. In order to mesmerize the public you must accuse someone of being the opposite of what you have believed them to be, otherwise there’s no story and there’s no plot. Surely if any pop artist were, in fact, racist, it would be wrong of the NME to grant them so much suffocating publicity? The deathblow for anyone with a racist message could only surely be exclusion and neglect? Yet, instead, the NME smothered its readers week after week with the liquidation of ‘racist’ Morrissey, which, had the story any truth, would have placed the NME itself in the foreground for promoting the issue of race hatred so obsessively. The NME editor had written a damning review of my concert at Wembley, in which he assures readers that I had done ‘an appalling version’ of the T. Rex song Cosmic dancer – a song that was not actually played on the night of the review! And then people say you are becoming neurotic about the press, when all one asks for is the truth.
I am called to a board meeting at Warner Records in Burbank where, in an enormously lavish office of pure glass, the revered head of the label examines me as one would a mummified relic.
‘Heaven will seem very dull after a lifetime in this office,’ I tell him, to which he does not smile, but I was simply trying to lighten the atmosphere – which admittedly is not one of my strong points. I am asked a few impersonal questions, the sub-text well hidden. I am being studied like something accidentally dug up.
‘I don’t exactly know why I’m here,’ I say softly, ‘on ... the planet ...’ My voice trails sideways. ‘No, I’m sorry, I mean in your office.’ I try to straighten myself up. I have attempted a second joke, which must be like trying to strangle two people at once.
Seconds later, I am not in his office. I am politely ushered out. I ask key faces at Reprise what on earth it was all about, and I am reliably informed how Warner need a massively successful ‘act’ who is ‘alternative’, and I was indeed being auditioned for the star part since I had thus far been the most successful ‘alternative’ artist in America.
‘Alternative to what?’ I foolishly ask.
I hear nothing more, but I note the immediate meteoric Warner rise of Alanis Morrissette – the incongruous promotional manifesto enveloping her first album that shifts 27 million copies worldwide. Evidently Alanis had all that I lacked in order to gain a saturated global push.
‘Is THAT why I was interviewed?’ I later ask Howie Klein.
‘YES!’ he half-shouts, as if I ought to know everything.
Forever the bridesmaid, I have failed yet another interview, and I shall evermore only exist in French inverted commas, dreaming of how Vauxhall and I could have sold 27 million copies had the head of Warner warmed to the weave of my sleeve. But he didn’t. Still, I was close to that ever-elusive upgrade in the promo stakes.
Mick Ronson had produced Your Arsenal as he struggled on his cancer medication. I first met him at Hasker Street in Chelsea, where he had a neat terraced house on loan from a friend. The house is awash with dive-bombing bluebottles, and Mick casually swats them between his palms as we speak. I cannot think of anything to say on the subject of bluebottle protectionism, so I watch Mick splat, splat, splat. The house is just behind my flat at Cadogan Square, and here we are, together living the leisured London life. In his battered motor Mick and I drive to Bath in readiness to record Your Arsenal. We are good companions, and much of his life floods out on these journeys. Mick has a very attractive face – everything neatly in proportion, and I can still see the Hull school cherub whistling at the girls (and surely getting them without any fuss). Mick is always optimistic and is easy to be around. He takes me to a masseur who, oddly, works on both of our backs at the same time, and then the daily trip to the turf accountant fixes a firmer smile to his face. On our first recording session, Mick pushes drummer Spencer (whom Mick tags ‘Nelson’), but Spencer is affronted and walks out of the session – his manhood bent. We reconvene the following day and all is well. Linder stands by urging more cut and thrust on the vocal for The National Front disco. Ian Hunter walks in and joins Linder’s iron-hearted rallying – egging me on as if this were school sports day in Stevenage.
When I’ve finished the vocal, Ian says, ‘Good God, you won’t be going there again!’ and I’m not sure whether he means the National Front disco or, more likely, back into a vocal booth. For the sweeping coda on I know it’s gonna happen someday Mick utilizes a heavily orchestrated pattern which we are certain echoes the falling moments of David Bowie’s Rock ’n roll suicide. I am slightly troubled by this resemblance, and I point out to Mick that the envelope has been pushed too far.
‘Yes, well,’ says Mick, ‘I wrote that original piece for Rock ’n roll suicide, so there won’t be a
ny legal comeback.’ Mick goes on to say how he wrote the guitar parts for Starman and The man who sold the world. Mick had been naive in the past, but it was not for me to comment since I continued to be naive in the present.
Suddenly David Bowie telephones the studio and asks to speak to me. I am thrilled, but he tells me that he would like me to do a cover of one of his recent songs, and he stresses that if I don’t do the cover, ‘I will never speak to you again, haha,’ which is hardly much of a loss since David doesn’t ever speak to me. The song he’d like me to cover is called Mr Ed, and although I listen to the tape that he sends to the studio, nothing within the song shouts out to me. A few months later I am at my mother’s house when the telephone rings. My mother hands me the 1940s shellac antique.
‘It’s for you – it’s David Bowie,’ and boyhood’s fire is all aglow again, although I cannot understand how David found my mother’s number. He explains that he would like to send me something through the post.
‘Do you have an address?’ I ask.
‘Oh, just write to me care of the management,’ he replies.
‘No, I meant do YOU have an address for ME?’ I say.
Dear Morrissey,
Came by to see if you were OK. Called a couple of times but no answer. If I don’t hear from you or don’t see you, have a right smashin’ time in the States, and I will see you in the NY area. Take care of yourself. I’ll look forward to seeing you soon, OK.
Mick
A letter arrives from Spencer, who encloses a book of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry:
Dear Monsieur Moz,
I do apologize for making a mess at the Wool Hall. It was stupid and immature, no excuses. I know we don’t talk much which is a great shame (well, to me anyway). Even though there is a lack of communication, that doesn’t mean lack of feeling, understanding, and above all, respect.
All my best,
Spencer
The time with Mick in New York is brief. We play the Paramount Theater, which is a great success, but Mick chips in with, ‘I don’t know why you don’t do any Smiths songs. People want to hear them.’ I know this is true, but the imp in me wants to establish a solo footing lest I be intellectually battered for leaning too readily on the past.
Mick’s health is in speedy decline, so I am surprised when he telephones me to let me know that he is in great shape. It is not a steady voice, and these will be our parting words, since Mick will soon be dead. He tells me that he has exhausted funding for his medical care, and my imagination contaminates itself with the despairing notion that Mick’s life might end in struggle. But the end comes sooner than he, or I, dared anticipate. The order of the universe calls upon Mick in April 1993, the year still so young, but already it has taken three close friends from my dishearteningly slim roster. The telephone rang and it was Suzi Fussey – once the girl of a Beckenham High Street hair salon who had created David Bowie’s ‘Ziggy’ cut, and then married Mick. Twenty-three years on from that day, Suzi says ‘My baby has gone,’ and I knew Mick was no more. I am asked to write about Mick in the Guardian newspaper, and talk about him on Radio One, but indecent haste forbids.
Mick certainly saved Your Arsenal, and by extension he saved me. Mid-week of release, EMI tell me that the album is going in at number 1, but as I prepare myself for glory it lands at number 4. An old Manchester rear gunner, Paul Morley, reviews the album’s opening single (We hate it when our friends become successful ), which he explains is a title taken from Oscar Wilde, which, of course, it isn’t. At Top of the Pops, 50s singer Marty Wilde approaches to shake my hand. Singing live, I fluff the words – oh my dear God. DJ Tony Blackburn would later say, ‘I am not a Morrissey fan, but he was right when he said we hate it when our friends become successful.’
There, now!
The solid basis of Your Arsenal threw the line back after the confusion of Kill Uncle, which could wrest nothing from the spirit. It didn’t seem to matter now. In the US Reprise issue the track Tomorrow as a single, and stylish chief Steven Baker writes to me: ‘If we can’t make this a hit then we can’t do anything.’
Needless to say, they didn’t make Tomorrow a hit. It emerges in a sleeve on which I languish by a swimming pool reading Variety magazine. In the background is bassist Gary Day, whom I most certainly have nothing against, but I ask that he be chopped off because he looks like a prop. I am told that no one knows how to take him out of the proofs (this is, after all, 1066), and so Gary remains on the sleeve and I feel slightly silly. Art must wait.
In the Sun newspaper in England a headline rings out, $5,700 FOR GIRL FAN SCARRED BY MORRISSEY, and I am utterly perplexed. The writer is Piers Morgan, who details how a tambourine ‘thrown into the crowd by Morrissey’ at a show in Texas ripped into the face of 21-year-old Shirley, who then ‘failed to receive a personal apology from the singer’. The singer in question, I hastily assume, is me. Until the moment of this article I had never heard of Shirley or the incident, and I had always anticipated possible accidents by throwing tambourines minus their loose metallic discs. However, tambourines were constantly ripped from my hands, or grabbed off the drum-riser by someone who would then dive head first into the crowd, and we suspect that this is how 21-year-old Shirley managed to get whacked. However, from the Piers Morgan headline, the world would be forgiven for assuming that I had stalked Houston side streets at midnight wrapped in a black cloak concealing a sabre, ripe to slash to ribbons the next available plump face.
‘It’s a shame he hasn’t written to me,’ commented Shirley, now evidently fully recovered and giving international press conferences. Her slip shows as she concludes, ‘I’ve got the money,’ which one assumes is far more useful than an unscarred face. Ah, the greasy grind of the press – the scribblers and scratchers, the slingers and spillers.
A note arrives at the Mark Hotel on Madison Avenue in New York. It is addressed to my pseudonym Vince Eager, and is from David Bowie. That evening I am called over to David’s recording studio, where he guides me into a favored chair at the control desk – central to the speakers. David flicks on the tape and the mammoth waft of his version of my own I know it’s gonna happen someday attacks the room with tsunami turbulence. Seated beside me in spiritual quietude, Linder is pale with emotional understanding. David’s beautiful wife, Iman, folds herself away in a corner seat. Iman had been plucked from the streets of Kenya to illuminate catwalks all over the world, and had become one of the first women of color to grace the covers of style magazines that had not previously given space to women who were non-Caucasian. Iman has a gentle patience and a friendly perception. She does not edge into the conversation until invited, yet her comments are always thoughtful and precise. I like her a great deal. Now launching her own skin-care range, I ask her what products other than her own does she use on her skin. ‘Oh, I just mix bits of everything,’ she says.
The sound coming from the speakers is the gift of life, and nothing will keep me level after David’s bestowal. Here is the unimaginable culmination of a mad process that began for me sometime in 1970, as On the Buses chirped annoyingly in the background. Jets of steam rise in the New York streets as Linder and I walk slowly back to the hotel, scrutinizing events. David had been an infallible guide, and these are the years when he still developed his ideas with pride, and always at considerable distance from the sparkling modernities of pop. I am all parts gratitude.
With no movement on the Smiths chessboard since the almighty crack of 1987, I decide to write to Johnny – hacking into mountains of ice. His handwritten reply instantly follows.
Dear Moz,
Sincere thanks for your letter last week and for your concern. I do realize that it must have taken a lot of brainache/heartache to have gotten in touch. The main thing that I want you to know is that I really regret us not being friends. I’ve only recently come to realize that you genuinely don’t know all the reasons for my leaving. To get into it
would be horrible, but I will say that I honestly hated the sort of people we became. I have no ambitions to be a solo guitar player. I will never point the finger at anyone but myself, and I am glad I took a step towards making my life sane.
After getting your postcard I felt that the only way to explain things would be to come round and see you personally. I also felt bad that you were so unhappy and it’s only circumstances that made it possible.
I hope I see you soon.
Love, Johnny
A week later his Mercedes pulls up outside my mother’s house and we are both briefly united. Behind the wheel, he makes for Saddleworth Moor, and the social unit slots back together again.
‘You really don’t know the full story of what happened at the end, do you?’ Johnny asks me as rain whacks the window screen. If anyone has a right to raise their voice, it is me. So I do.
‘I know NOTHING!!!’ I shout.
Does anyone go to war and win?
No.
Everything I had said at the Smiths’ demise had led me directly towards trouble, chiefly because I could not explain to anyone exactly why the roof had fallen in. I couldn’t even manage eloquent evasion. You begin to imagine facts where originally there were none. A hurt sensation rises like dough every time your own name is mentioned. People who have been close do not need to say very much in order to wound each other. The Smiths were my first life’s pleasure, and were turned into incomprehensible sorrow. Groups disband because they dry up; the Smiths broke up as their powers increased. Even amidst whirlwind success you might ask yourself if you actually have a life. The seething rot that had shot the Smiths down remained undisclosed by Johnny on this drive to Saddleworth Moor (oh, Saddleworth Moor, so much to answer for), and instead we let our minds run on the joy of the songs created – songs that were still growing in stature, working wonders for the strangled spirit. I wanted a day without blame, since I had carried so much of it like an unfed donkey on the streets of Delhi. It is a simple truth that everything in life ends badly – few people die in a fit of hysterics, so why should the Smiths be exempt. In months to come, Johnny will appear on television several times under scorching lights. He struggles with the truth, half-forgetting, he says he split the Smiths up, and then in a later television spot he says he did no such thing. Johnny spits out my name, changing his story as he shifts from foot to foot; he says he had no idea, and then he says he fully intended to ‘move on’. Always saying too much, something has happened to Johnny once again, and each appearance gives an entirely different account. He no longer listens to the Smiths’ music and he criticizes it. Morrissey is a bad smell in the attic. Morrissey is a death-machine. Morrissey is evil and should be stuffed. But as Johnny spouts he looks all wrong. His clothes are crooked and the eyes are in torment. What had happened since the serenity of our drive to Saddleworth Moor, when the coffin-lid shifted and the old spark rose like a small miracle? Someone, by now, is preparing to save Johnny’s soul as the nightmare of the Joyce Case flexes itself in readiness. The petty guidance of advisors are grooming Johnny for his upcoming role as sacrificial lamb – always a hit with judges who demand subservience above truth. Darting schizophrenically in the pursuit of self-interest, Johnny now looks pale on the scaffold – the opportunism of wolves giving him a notably punished look. Revenge is calling, and I am the quarry.