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Later,
we would be talking about the poetry of squalor and the ways in which
even the most profound and heart-rending depressions might sometimes
be illuminated by a kind of beauty, a sense of grace. It was worth thinking
about, he said, perhaps these moods were tests of our endeavour and
the skill of living was simply learning how to cope with the depths
and bitterness of our desperations; overcoming them, we might be capable
of so much more.
When he was 18, he remembered - pulling up his knees beneath him an
the hotel bed - and he was suffering the punishments of a sensitive
adolescence, he had tried to retreat from the world and its daily grit,
living on a diet of sleeping pills, incapable then of even getting out
of bed to face the day, lost in barbiturate dreams. This had been the
bleakest of times, months of his life spent in debilitating isolation,
a foul depression that had forced him to confront the nature of his
own darkness, to try to understand it and learn to live with it, if
he was going to live at all.
"I can't even remember deciding that this was the way things should
be," he said. "It just seemed suddenly that the years were passing
and I was peering out from behind the bedroom curtains. It was the kind
of quite dangerous isolation that's totally unhealthy. I think, yes,
there was in some ways a wilful isolation. It was like a volunteered
redundancy, in a way. Most of the teenagers that surrounded me, and
the things that pleased them and interested them, well, they bored me
stiff. It was like saying 'Yes, I see that this is what all teenagers
are supposed to do, but I don't want any part of this drudgery.'
"Talking about it, I can see that it might bore people," he continued.
"It's like saying, 'Oh, isn't life terribly tragic? Please pamper
me, I'm terribly delicate.' It's that kind of boorishness. But, to me,
it was like living through the most difficult adolescence imaginable.
But all things becomes quite laughable. Because I wasn't handicapped
in a traditional way. I didn't have any severe physical disability,
therefore the whole thing sounds like pompous twaddle. I just about
survived it, let's just say that."
Nevertheless, it seemed that even with all this behind his now, he remained
as a writer clearly preoccupied with states of isolation, dreams of
transcendence through flurries of pain; the notion that, in the end,
the weight of the world could not be shared, would have to be borne
- and why not proudly? - on lonely shoulders.
"Yes," he said firmly, without hesitation. "I'm very interested
in the idea of being alone, and people being isolated. Which is the
way I think most people feel at the end of the day. It's a general condition
under which most people live, and I often feel that it has something
to do with death. Because one is ultimately alone when one dies. Even
though you might be surrounded by people, nobody can understand how
you're feeling.
"It's like when you're critically ill and people try to nurse you to
health and assist you. They cannot possibly understand how you feel.
And even if somebody kind of sits in the bed and slaps a comforting
hand on your forehead and says, 'Yes, I understand...,' it doesn't matter.
You're still feeling the illness and you are still on your own.
"It seems that in the very, very serious and critical things in life,
one is absolutely alone. People kind of trundle through life with this
very merry idea that they're not alone. And because they have a partner
and because they marry or have these supposedly concrete relationships,
they are not alone, and there's another person with whom they can share
everything, that there are always these two people in this mystical
communion.
"But I think that it's somewhat of a lie, and I think that even though
the world is frenetically overpopulated, people are still quite profoundly
isolated."
He had more, of course to say on the subject, and like virtually everything
he had to say on anything, it was uncommonly sensible, thoroughly engaging,
often touching in its persuasive sincerity.
But, as I say, this all came later.
The hotel
room was small, harshly lit, anonymous; it bore no evidence of the lives
that had passed through it. Morrissey was sitting on the bed, elbows
on the pillow, waiting to deal with still more questions about The Smiths
and their recent, dramatic ascendancy: 50 minutes had been clawed out
of that evening's predictably hectic schedule to complete the interview.
Outside the hotel room, fat knuckles of rain rapped down onto Reading's
shivering head; The Smiths still had a gig to play it the university,
where the local reporters, knee-deep in trailing coils of microphone
wires and tape spools had huffily demanded exchanges of banter that
Morrissey, on his way from the soundcheck, had politely declined.
These days, everyone wants a part of The Smiths. These last months since
they appeared on the cover of MM, and Ian Pye confidently predicted
the kind of success they are currently enjoying, have been exhilarating
and potentially exhausting for the group. Since December, when Andrew
Catlin's verdant MM cover shot beamed out from magazine stands, The
Smiths have been an ubiquitous presence in virtually everyone's pages.
And, last week, they had "What Difference Does It Make?" and "Hand In
Glove" in the national Top 40; both those singles and "This Charming
Man" in the independent Top Five, and, a debut LP, already praised to
the hilt in these columns for its unassailable emotional whack, apparently
poised to burst dramatically into the album chart, with advance orders
that Rough Trade estimate should qualify for a silver disc.
The Smiths, rather clearly, aren't hanging around for anyone's blessing:
they're out there making things happen for themselves. Which is the
way it should be.
Predictably, Morrissey has taken most of this in a stride so confident
it could quite probably straddle worlds, his only regret being that
more people don't, to use his own words, thump through the attention
that surrounds him and simply talk to the rest of the group; to Johnny
Marr, who plays the guitar and writes all the music for the group's
enormously affecting songs, or Andy Rourke who plays bass or Mike Joyce
who plays drums with the unaffected simplicity of someone tuned into
the perfect beat.
Morrissey's democratic concern is understandable and honourable; but
after talking to the rest of The Smiths for several hours following
the Reading gig, it emerges that he's their own reference point; they
generously point to him as their qualified spokesman, harbour no resentments
that he's become a public focal point for their ambitions. They are
funny, bright and engaging themselves - the provocative Marr, especially,
could hold his own in any popular debating arena - but Morrissey, somehow,
for all of them, is the elusive key to The Smiths' arresting hold on
a popular imagination that might otherwise elude them.
So, we return to this hotel room, this conversation, and Morrissey,
fingers dampening bouts of acrobatic quiffs, telling the reporter that
he hasn't been at all surprised by any of the attention that group has
recently attracted.
"I could never say that," he said, his deliciously soft northern
accent rolling across the bedspread. "Because I had absolute faith
and absolute belief in everything we did and I really did expect what
has happened to us to happen. I was quite frighteningly confident. Because
it seemed like a confidence that had no real place within the whole
sphere of popular music. And, if it occurred in any diluted form, it
would have been quite dangerous and it would have been spat upon. Therefore,
if our confidence had been diluted, I would've felt somewhat like a
target for the critics' barbs as it were, and what I had to say would
have been construed as boring arrogance. If the music was weak and there
were enormous blemishes on what we did, I'd feel very silly and I'd
obviously feel very vulnerable. It would become almost like a very dull
pantomime. But since I actually believe in what I say, I want to say
it as loud as possible. And if that falls on dangerous ground, well,
that's the way of the world and it's a great tragedy, because it perhaps
would halt us in our tracks, and I believe that, at the end of the day,
the records we produce have a tremendous value.
"I think," Morrissey elaborated, responding to a request to do exactly
that, "for the first time in too long a time, this is real music
played by real people. The Smiths are absolutely real faces instead
of the frills and the gloss and the pantomime that popular music had
become immersed in, as a matter of absolute course. And there is no
human element in anything anymore. And I think The Smiths reintroduce
that firmly. There's no facade, and we're very open and we're simply
there to be seen as very real people.
"Also, I think the lyrics that I use are very direct and, as I often
say, I feel the words haven't been heard before. It's not the usual
humdrum terminology. It's something quite different. I could never use
words that rhymed in a very traditional way. It would become absolutely
pointless. So everything I write is terribly important to me. Similarly
the music is terribly fundamental. But not in a sheepish or unworthy
way. It's very strong, in fact. It's like saying, "Look, you don't need
all this fabrication, you don't need all this quite, quite, phenomenal
equipment. It's the way you use the basic utensils, like talent."
I wondered for just how long Morrissey had nurtured this enormous and
not at all disagreeable faith in his own idea of The Smiths and their
music.
"For too long!" he replied with a flourish that nearly set the
curtains on fire. "And this is why when people come to me and say,
"Well, it's happened dramatically quickly for The Smiths," I have to
disagree. I feel as if I've waited a very long time for his. So it's
really quite boring when people say it's happened perhaps too quickly,
because it hasn't."
There seemed no doubt to me, as the author of last week's thoroughly
impressed review, that The Smiths deserved to be whatever they wanted
to be. I had a feeling, though, that some of Morrissey's bugle-blasting
announcements on the relative worth of The Smiths might somehow detract
from the qualities of the group's music, which was eloquent enough to
speak for itself.
Of course, Morrissey had already thought this through: "I think people
can spot fakes quite easily," he said, unruffled. "And the big
bores in the music industry, people laugh at them and chuckle along,
but, at the end of the day, we really know where everybody stands and
we really know everybody's value. Everything has to be taken into account,
not just the fact that I stand on the table and say, 'YES! The Smiths
are absolutely wonderful.' So, looking beyond the quotes, people must
surely see that there are reasons why I say these things and I'm not
just dreaming out loud."
It seemed to me that Morrissey still ran a distinct risk of ending up
sounding like a kind of Interflora Bob Geldof, all mouth and tulips.
"Of course that would be the worst possible thing that could happen!"
he squirmed, visibly aghast at such comparisons. "But because I'm
interviewed so much and in so many ways I'm almost always asked the
same questions, when these things emerge in print, it constantly seems
as though I'm saying the same things all the time, and I could quite
imagine that boring people to death very quickly. So it's really just
a harder job for me, and I have to think about things a little bit more.
But, again, that's just one of those wonderful dilemmas.
"I mean, I can't see any benefit whatsoever in being absolutely mute
or really having nothing to say or having no opinions whatsoever. And
regardless of what one says, there will always be someone in the shadows
ready to point and sneer and spit. And you sound say something that
would appeal enormously to one person, but another person could see
it as absolutely hysterical buffoonery. I feel quite comfortable, really,
with the way things are, and I still have some degree of confidence
in the future. Nothing's changed."
Morrissey
had been written about so much recently, in such a variety of contexts,
that I wondered whether he'd begun to lose sight of himself. Did he
still recognise the portraits drawn of him by so many inquisitive journalists,
all of whom must have thought they'd cut through the bluff to the tremor
of bone?
"Perhaps in a few paragraphs," he said, "but most of it is
just peripheral drivel, and a misquote simply floors me. I really can't
survive being misquoted. And that happens so much, I sit down almost
daily and wonder why it happens. But the positive stuff, one always
wants to believe, and the insults one always wants not to believe. When
one reads of this monster of arrogance, one doesn't want to feel that
one is that person.
"Because," he continued, nosing ahead, "in reality, I'm all of
those very boring things: shy, and retiring. But, simply, when one is
questioned about the group, one becomes terribly, terribly defensive
and almost loud. But in daily life, I'm almost too retiring for comfort,
really."
What do you do when you're not working with The Smiths?
"I just lead a terribly solitary life, without any human beings involved
whatsoever," Morrissey said. "And that to me is almost a perfect
situation. I don't know why, exactly... I'm just terribly selfish, I
suppose. Privacy to me is like the old life support machine. I really
hate mounds of people, simply bounding into the room and taking over.
So, when the work is finished, I just bolt the door and draw the blinds
and dive under the bed.
"It's essential to me. One must, I find, in order to work seriously,
be detached. It's quite crucial to be a step away from the throng of
daily bores and the throng of mordant daily life."
The aloofness from the spit and blood of the daily grind, this assumed
seperateness from the graft of living, seemed at odds with the sense
of communion and compassion from the victims of life's deadly circumstances
that he articulated to such an unforgettable effect in many of the songs
on The Smiths.
"But in a way," Morrissey argued, with a weight of conviction
I knew would be difficult to deny, "the two are probably combined.
I find that people that are knee-deep in emotion and physical commitment
with human beings, I find they're often totally empty of any real passion.
Simply because one is closely involved with human beings doesn't mean
that you understand the human race in a serious, sensitive way. I find
that it often takes people who are totally detached from much that is
considered commonplace to really make strong comments about these things
and to really say things that make people stop and think. I mean, if
we took back on the history of literature, it's always these really
creased, repressed hysterics, if you like, who are enchained in these
squalor-ridden rooms, who say the most poetic things about the human
race. And you often find that the life and soul of the party, the person
with all the punch-lines, had just nothing of any consequence to say
about anything.
"So I think it takes that detachment because, when you're detached and
sealed off, you have a very clear view of what's going on. You can stand
back and you can look and you can assess. And you can't do that when
you're totally immersed in people."
In this context, it seemed that Morrissey's self-proclaimed celibacy,
his abstention from sex, his withdrawal from physical communication,
was more integral to a general creative philosophy, as a way of coping,
perhaps, than it might appear to the kind of cynical eye that would
immediately equate any such admission with a totting up of column inches,
an eagerness, in its way, for publicity.
Or maybe Morrissey was simply frightened by the kind of physical involvement,
frightened by sex, the sweat and tears, ecstasy being more easily imagined
than achieved by effort or technique, and celibacy was a state of mind
and body that evaded responsibility to another person.
"It's not really fear," he replied. "I just don't really have
a tremendously strong belief that relationships can work. I'm really
quite convinced that they don't. And, if they do, it's really quite
terribly brief and sporadic. It's just something, really, that I eradicated
from my life quite a few years ago and I saw things more clearly afterwards.
"I always found it particularly unenjoyable," Morrissey says of sex.
"But that again is something that's totally associated with my past
and the particular views I have. I wouldn't stand on a box and say,
'Look, this is he way to do it, break off that relationship at once.'
"But, for me, it was the right decision. And it's one that I stand by
and I'm not ashamed or embarrassed by. It was simply provoked by a series
of very blunt and thankfully brief and horrendous experiences that made
me decide upon abstaining and it seems quite an easy natural decision."
There are
some records, some songs, some twists of lyric and melody that can make
you feel that the substance, the very fabric of your life, is being
disrupted, enlightened, touched by an inspiration that won't easily
be erased.
These are the kinds of music that most of us listen to when, somehow,
for reasons best kept to ourselves, we feel like we're falling out of
windows, or simply spent, or rotten, or badly used, by lovers or friends,
when we're crawling face down on the carpet, eating shit but looking
for romance, for a taste of times that have passed us by and the people
that went with them. And the best of this music will remind us not only
of what it was like then but of what it will be like again. his kind
of music transcends time, contravenes even the most reasonable contexts.
For my own part, the music that twists my tail in these moods includes
... well, no names this time around, let's just say that, last year,
R.E.M.'s Murmur joined the list. This year, The Smiths', The
Smiths is alongside it, for songs like "Pretty Girls Make Graves",
"Reel Around The Fountain", "Suffer Little Children" and "The Hand That
Rocks The Cradle", songs that will whistle down the years.
But that week, the papers had been full of other people's opinions about
the album. Since Morrissey's lyrics and Morrissey's voice had coloured
any interpretation of the LP, what did he think of it?
"I'm really ready," he said, "to be burned at the stake in
total defence of that record. It means so much to me that I could never
explain, however long you gave me. It becomes almost difficult and one
is just simply swamped in emotion about the whole thing. It's getting
to the point where I almost can't even talk about it, which many people
will see as an absolute blessing. It just seems absolutely perfect to
me. From my own personal standpoint, it seems to convey exactly what
I wanted it to."
And why would you tell people to buy it in preference to anything by
Duran Duran, say, or Culture Club or Simple Minds?
"Oh, I dunno," Morrissey laughed. "I don't think I should
say anything else. I think I've been snotty enough already."
The
above interview was originally published in the March 3, 1984 issue
of Melody Maker magazine and was submitted to this
site by naomi.
Reprinted without permission for non-profit use only.
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