by Morrissey
Gelato had gone too far for me to spit him out, and the obligatory appointments are made to see Appian Way houses that are up for sale. I am told that this is the first, or the oldest, road in the world. I am fully prepared to believe anything. Kneeling beggars remain in the city squares, while out here above the catacombs the fields are rife with cats, but the houses are mildewed in comparison to those of Los Angeles, and I am flooded with too much choice.
Alain’s writing for Ringleader of the Tormentors had elegantly surpassed itself, with what would become Life is a pigsty, I will see you in far-off places and The father who must be killed defined for all time as the very best. Recording traffic noises for the song The youngest was the most loved we walk around late-night Piazza Euclide. A hardy shout comes from an open-top mini (which we later use on At last I am born), whilst Alain’s impromptu bop-a-bop-bom loops itself into the opening confusion of the track. Tony Visconti shatters my gooey dreamland when he tells me, ‘Mikey is actually a very average musician, you know.’ This is not true, and I won’t be unsettled during such a picture-perfect session. Some debates are better left unvoiced.
I wake in the middle of the night and I have no idea where I am. Jesse is my main companion, of late-night walks and cellars full of wine, whereas my friendship with Alain had reached its natural term long ago. My nightly walks with Jesse would begin at the tip of Villa Borghese where Via Ulisse Aldrovandi lines up its glossy array of roadside prostitutes – mostly male, hard-bitten heroes fastidiously attired as sons of Eros. Their eyes are darts of desire, standing in the trees beyond, with legs wide apart. Every single night they are there, like a soccer team awaiting the club bus, and we are struck by how none of them are identifiably emasculated; they are just manly sons of mothers in search of others.
The blaze of the May sun falls on curtained doorways and shuttered houses, and all of my questions paralyze action. Could I possibly, possibly just take it all as it is? The timeless chirp of distant children always seems to be somewhere, and on my daily walks I reflect on how my loneliness had cost enough. The sunniest pair of eyes are never mine. Only the grand completion of a recorded song allows my heart to laugh, and Ringleader of the Tormentors crowns a satisfying collection of songs, filling a final need in a lengthy search for perfection. But once you have said Life is a pigsty, where to go from there? Was it all the end of me?
One afternoon at the studio Tony shows me a film of a singer called Kristeen Young playing somewhere in New York. Everything about this singer is new. The solid fixity of her presentation is as striking as having a safe drop on your head from a tenth-floor window. She belongs to no other time or fad. Even her makeup is a mystery. The voice sails and then anchors at perfect pitch – ready to swallow up children and out-pace migrating herds. She is Maria Callas if not for the keyboard that she plays like a set of drums, talent as much a demand as a gift, and eyes lost in stark sadness. She does not plan to waste her life making tea for in-laws. A midwinter heart, her Julys are darker than her Decembers – carried away like a thing lost in the early stages of pregnancy. I am quite possibly in ... quite possibly in ... what’s that compulsive, addictive, obsessive hairball mess thing called? ... um, yes, love. There, I’ve said it. Eternally caught in life’s screen door, Kristeen will discard the dress and wear the hanger. Her voice soars to unimaginable heights – straining blood out of stray cats as it rises. This Pola Negri gives such a swirling chase of emotion to each song that I feel I am witnessing the mutual understanding of struggle. Be this, or die – cannon fodder for art, tears with accuracy. Whenever she speaks, I do not want to miss a single word. Weren’t we made to be this way? Kristeen and I become great friends, and my life would have been emptier for not knowing her.
Mikey Farrell is an outstanding addition on keyboards – an infallible guide of new sounds and dry wit, of mid-western hardiness and team squad yardage. Interestingly, a vast knowledge of show tunes and an ability to play almost anything ten seconds after first hearing it. His opening words to me were, ‘I’m a poor man’s Roger Manning,’ in his shaggy-hangdog look that would soon sharpen itself into stylish Pepe le Moko aspect.
‘My wife saw you at the Roxy when the Smiths first played in LA,’ he went on.
‘Oh, that must’ve been an interesting night since we’d never played the Roxy.’ God forbid I just leave things as they are. From Cleveland, Mikey is of Irish grandparents and is stubbornly competitive, which I enjoy since it usually works to my favor. Proof of something is the sun-drenched day when we all play football at Hyde Park in London, and once I’ve scored the first goal I close down the match since ‘it seems obvious where this is going.’ Mikey fumes since his chance to wrestle me into unconsciousness is thwarted.
ME: Do you know what you haven’t got?
MIKEY: A personality?
ME: Well, besides that. You don’t actually have piano fingers.
It is a noisy gathering at Pizza Express on Parkway in Camden.
MIKEY: The Queen is Dead had a big influence on me in high school.
ME: A bad one, I trust?
MIKEY: Of course.
I smell a new world of music with Mikey, but I also realize that he’s the type who would jump ship should the royal wave come from Barbara Strident. If I was anything at all, I was sewage disposal. The mouth speaks first, and then thirty seconds later the brain catches up with whatever it is I’ve just said.
Whilst recording in Rome I meet Elton John, who is shockingly down-to-earth and gives me high praise for You Are the Quarry. He tells me how he loved the New York Dolls and Jobriath, but how he considered Bowie to be ‘a vampire’. A pleasant evening passes under a Rome sun which – even into late evening – seems not to go away.
2006 sweetens with the news that Ringleader of the Tormentors has entered the UK chart at number 1, which is my third number 1 in three different decades (and still Alain Whyte says nothing). Jed Weitzman and I dance around a Hamburg hotel room like childish imps once Jennifer Ivory had delivered the news. Jennifer, of course, remains of Griselda composure whereas I beg forgiveness for my insane happiness. Jennifer held the Sanctuary branding iron and had cut her industry teeth quite quickly once her native Lost Angeles had been abandoned for the drainpipes and black cabs of London’s asphalt and the whateveritwas of Belsize Park. It was Jennifer’s idea to issue I have forgiven Jesus as a single during the Christmas period, and although I laughed at the bleak absurdity of such a move, it proved to be a great success. ‘But you can’t expect radio to play it,’ Jennifer finger-wagged, ‘even cutting-edge radio finds you too cutting-edge for their playlist.’ Although the record had reached number 10, there would be no Top of the Pops invitation, even though records that had yet to be released were included in the show as I lay languishing and neglected at 10, like a discarded lodging-house towel. What is everybody so afraid of? From Ringleader of the Tormentors, the lead single You have killed me had already bounced in at number 3, and these victories have so much meaning in the face of the now standard zero airplay and the usual knife-wielding reviews. Buying a Morrissey disc remains a political gesture, but the strain shows on the follow-up single The youngest was the most loved, which has a mid-week position of number 1, yet finally lodges in at number 14. A third single In the future when all’s well rattles in at 17, and fourth single I just want to see the boy happy clips in at 16, but still, radio DJs in England will not play these songs, and the consternation is quite incredible, as if you just haven’t earned it yet, baby.
But the final sting of 2007 is an interview with the ever-lurking NME. In fact, the interview is very pleasant, as the writer is very sensitive and courteous. The day after the interview he contacts my manager with sincere thanks, and he respectfully asks for tickets for the upcoming New York shows. The latest NME editor then offers me a special NME Award with the industry whisper that he is determined to get Morrissey and Marr in the same room together at an NME function. I pol
itely decline the award because the glitzy grandiloquence of the prize system tends to present itself as the ultimate reason why artists do whatever it is they do, and once you’ve seen a thousand lightweight mediocrities flouncing offstage clutching their Brit Awards, you see the silliness of it all. I refuse the NME award, and then suddenly the editor elects to write the interview piece himself, booting his journalist sideways.
The piece emerges as the most offensively malodorous attack, reviving the NME’s groundless racist accusation, but the editor gives the story teeth by switching the wording of my replies, and by inventing questions that were never asked. It is catastrophically controversial.
The writer who conducted the interview fires very stressed emails to my manager explaining how ‘this piece has nothing to do with me,’ and ‘it has been taken out of my hands,’ and ‘I just don’t understand that magazine anymore,’ added to his ‘Morrissey was so charming during the interview.’ However, the editor is stung. When I realize I have no choice but to legally challenge the NME, its editor tactlessly writes to the Love Music Hate Racism headquarters in London, and he warns them, ‘If you support Morrissey in this dispute you can forget about any support from the NME.’ It is a fascinating explosion of frantic egotism. However, I fight the NME for over four years (quite naturally, even though all could have been resolved within one afternoon since the original interview recording was freely available to both legal teams). For me, there seemed to be nothing to debate, since we could all listen to the original interview – which began and ended on affably good-natured terms – and then we could read the final printed piece, the editor’s damning fantasy bearing no relation whatsoever to the truth of the meeting. It was a stitch-up so severe, with the editor’s misdeed so manifestly grave, that a court loss could kill off the NME for good, since its fortunes had slumped. In the event, the NME ultimately apologized for the piece, although it would cost me several hundred thousand pounds for them to say what they could have said four years previously. I was satisfied with the apology, and I had never sought damages. I’ve been stabbed in the back|so many, many times|I don’t have any skin|but that’s just the way it goes.
Up here in Spokane on May 6th we are in bear-baiting country, which grants me dutiful attack. I suggest we hunt the hunters, and the crowd roar approval. By Friday we are in Omaha, America’s bosom, city of sawdust and mockingbird houses. Daytime streets are dry and wide and always empty, but the audience at the Orpheum belies Nebraska’s poverty of spirit as parents hold their small children up to the stage to be kissed or hugged by a baffled singer. The art of song lights the touch-paper in a way that nothing else can. The audience is confused, though, when I sing David Bowie’s Drive-in Saturday, because evidently they don’t know what it is. It is the only moment when I lose the crowd. By Wednesday I put on my little suit and sing to the Indianapolis joyous. The Murat Theater, once again, seems full of parents with their small children. The kids wear homemade Morrissey t-shirts and are so deep within the gnashing jaws of the front rows that my concern distracts me. Children effect a dramatic passionate mimic at my every move – so solemn and heavenwards, yet unborn even at the time of Southpaw Grammar – they go the way of their parents. There is so much meaning to success in Indianapolis or Nebraska because they are the parts of middle America where most fear to tread. If you can make it here, you’ll make it anywhere. The Kansas City Uptown Theater the following Wednesday is over-stuffed at 2,200, and everyone lets go with so much love that nothing I could say or do could fail to hit the right tone. On Saturday in Austin 5,000 witness such an appalling sound-system that I croak and twinge myself into further despair. A woodland setting, my agitation becomes tiresome and the night fails everyone. The audience are for the most part a robust and forgiving bunch of crunchies; crested hens with their daisies in army black, it is an exciting and perfect swarm of double-barreled broads. The sound at San Diego a week later is so abysmal that I give up halfway through the set – because there really is no point. We have sold 10,000 tickets but there is nothing I can do. Everyone looks to me for bravery, but at this open-air bayside concert the winds are so strong that the sound blows west as we direct our efforts south. It is unbearable and very embarrassing.
At Riverside Auditorium three days later Jesus is in his heaven and all is restored. A sky-scraping image of my face drapes the front of the building, and what good is it all without love?
‘Why, after all these years, are you so surprised?’ asks Mikey, ‘why do you still question the love?’ I wave the question away, the heart stuck in an ice-cold morning of 1970. I am impossible. Inside the hall it is Osmondmania, but thankfully with the wasted corpse of Morrissey in place of the oily Osmonds. The madness makes local television news, with a reporter’s shrug that is so familiar to me now for it tells us what is happening with a look and a tone that suggests it ought not to happen, as if vibrations of Satan follow wherever I go.
By Friday we play the Hollywood Bowl, and Mikey presents a personal guest list long enough to encircle the city, and I reject it since the eye-crossing cost of it is ultimately subtracted from my pension fund. Mikey sulks at the rejection and this creates backstage tension. Filmed as we walk on, we all look uncharacteristically unhappy. Mikey and I will not look at each other, and consequently the concert lacks form, although new-found drummer Matt Walker magnificently takes us all to a new standard, and this disciplined ship is suddenly the best military band in America.
‘I always wanted to live in Bakersfield,’ says Boz as we pull into a pile of dust.
‘But there’s nothing here,’ says Jesse.
‘Precisely,’ says Boz.
A 2,800 sell-out in hazy Hud country brings on a clatter of audience scraps, but I am not at all concerned, and in fact I find it to be quite funny. If people want to fight, then let them. Who’s to say they shouldn’t? I’m not St Francis of Assisi. By the 25th we are in New York at the ice-cold chamber of David Letterman’s television set. David always has the studio at Icelandic temperatures because he apparently sweats a great deal. Fish-eyed, we endure. The shuddering genius of Kristeen Young is with us to alarm David with her spirit-of-the-sea backing vocals, plus a few mid-ocean arm movements as we play That’s how people grow up. Kristeen wears her self-made ‘bubble’ dress that is a sirenesque bubble-wrap of Star Trek in collision with The Jetsons. Kristeen is miffed when the same creation appears on Lady Gaga two years later.
In Birmingham, Alabama, I rush myself to a dentist for the first time in 20 years. I insist upon codeine mixed with heroin and gin in order to settle my nerves, but this simple request is denied. The molar masher is a delightful woman who cures my fear of dental bashers, and my childhood memories of being savaged at a Stretford Road Clinic by a Third Reich dogcatcher had set off an endless mental bleep, and only now, in Birmingham, Alabama, did gentle kindness show me how. I would never again fear dentistry, and my visit makes the front page of the local newspapers the next day. How very odd. If only those hawks at Stretford Road Clinic knew – but surely they are all toast by now?
I walk onstage at Chastain Park in Atlanta and I am confused by the audience. In fact, I do not know who or what or where I am. The audience appears to be all families sitting at tables, ploughing into their homemade hampers of Jesus knows what. Evidently this is what happens at Chastain Park – everyone brings their lunch of skyscraper wedges with a sprinkle of rabbit neck and eagle shit. What a very strange sight it all is. I can’t help wondering how much sow belly gets crunched each time I launch into another crowd-killer. Why am I here? ‘Well,’ manager Merck tells me, ‘it’s the salt pork American underbelly, and if you can crack it here then ... you’ve cracked it.’
Cracked what? The chili-dog fraternity? The po-boy submarine grinders’ club? Get me out! I launch a box of Cheez-Its into the audience shouting, ‘You’ve brought your lunch – here’s mine,’ which, as ever, just wasn’t funny.
By September 20th we are in Tijuana, minus our ma
rbles. The show is nuthouse insane, with plaster peeling onto the heads of a joy-popping crowd. Leaving the venue, we are driven by a local driver for a four-minute skip over the US border. Twenty minutes later we are on a darkened highway, and it naturally falls to me to speak up.
‘The border was four minutes away, why are we still driving twenty minutes later?’
Sitting next to me, the tour manager says softly, ‘Yes, I’ve noticed that.’ My personal security (who is from El Salvador) sits up front next to the driver and begins to tough it out, demanding an explanation. The driver shrugs and is sweating badly. He makes a sudden and dramatic swerve from the freeway exit and continues into highland darkness.
‘STOP THIS CAR!’ I shout, and bang my fists on the back of the driver’s seat. My security orders a stop, and I jump out as the car drives on. Kidnapping in Mexico is almost an expected eventuality for anyone crossing the border with an entertainer’s visa. Insignificant as I am, tonight’s snatch was I, organized by those who obviously didn’t realize that my market value wouldn’t raise enough money to feed a family of five rug-rats. I sit on the ground in the dark, a disused gas station tipping over behind me. As far as the eye can squint, there is nothing.
‘You realize that was a kidnapping attempt?’ I say, looking up at my tour manager.
‘Yes, that’s what I thought,’ he says as if ordering a Spanish omelette.