as Morrissey once said (Royal Albert Hall).

This "interview" contains 2 quotes from Morrissey, honestly. And onr of those is about the tape recorder "It's plasic!"

Why have they been flogging this interview for weeks, it really is embarrasingly bad.

Nice photos.

in a few of the magazine article scans I've seen on this site lately I have noticed he looks a LOT thinner...

and yes, douglas is an excellent writer but this article really stinks. What is with that comment about his 'big head'?? How does that have any ounce of jouranlistic integrity? He is right, it is in extremely bad taste. It would be very easy to make fun of Douglas' fat girly lips, but we wouldln't do that would we?

So this is what Douglas Coupland considers not "phoning it in"? This is the worst article I've ever read on Morrissey. Absolutely pathetic. Sloppy, vulgar, and devoid of even a glimmer of intellect. 90% of the reviews on "Aint It Cool News" are better written than this bilge.

I now feel fully justified in making, years ago, what had been at the time an admittedly prejudicial and baseless decision to scorn "Girlfriend In A Coma" and all the rest of this guy's work.

Let's hope the ROTT journalism gets better from here.

-- Worm

I'd be really annoyed that I sat a hour and a half with a guy just so he could write that I had a big head.

Oh well.

There were a couple interesting parts (e.g. that he is getting in touch with his Catholic roots) and some very nice photos.

Coupland is so unbelievably full of himself and he proves it time and time again, and again with this article. whatan ass. someone needs to tell him- and really get it through- that he is "only Douglas Coupland."

lots of people are very full of themselves- Bono, Bowie, Madonna, Noel, Trump, Lagerfeld, Nicholson, Morrissey- but they are icons and as such they can back it up and pull it off. Doug is juste Doug- a relatively successful author from BC who can and should feel good about a lot of the work that he has done in his life but should never let it go to his head becos it juste comes off as embarassing.

its an interesting (albeit nauseating) contradiction as well since, while being comepletely full of himself, he clearly has an extreme paranoia and insecurity about himself. his ultra-paranoid and utterly patheitc take on interviews illustrates juste how feeble a personality he really is. ilov how he wished to discuss these ideas with Morrissey yet he obviously juste projected his ideas upon Moz and imagined that they felt the same way- ireally dont think Morrissey is as weak-kneed or tortured as Dougy when it comes to being interviewed. really, ifound most of Coupland's "insights" on Moz to be hopelessly wrong and oddly designed to make himself feel better.

"Oscar Wilde is correct: the last thing we ever understand in life truly is the way that others perceive us." im not so sure that Wilde is absolutely correct, but in the case of Coupland ithink hes probably spot on.

I get the feeling that Coupland really got annoyed with Morrissey when he did this interview. It is entirely possible that Morrissey did not like the original transcript of the article and did not give permission for Coupland to publish it in the obsever, (After all Coupland in the article does say "you could interview Morrissey for a 1000 years and you would learn nothing" The paper still had to run with it as The Observer had already advertised it.

I think this scenario is more likely than Coupland just simply refusing to publish his interview.

What I got from that "interview" is Coupland seems devoid of humour. The fact that he took exception to Morrissey winding him up about his plastic recorder is proof of that. Does he show any sense of humour in his books? I've not read them.

Copeland's clearly much more interested in himself than he is in Morrissey. He gets two hours with the subject and manages two direct quotes which are contrasted with several meaningless, rambling paragraphs about interviews, something which he clearly knows nothing about? Pathetic.

i think that what Coupland says is a bit true after i saw Moz bounce around David Fricke a couple of times when he asked a few questions that Morrissey didn't particularly want to answer even though most people would see nothing wrong with a question like "how does your writing process go?"

it made me think back to the movie Shakespeare in Love when Queen Elizabeth, played by Judi Dench, cut Gweneth Paltrow off with "the plays are performed for ME."

I LOVE Douglas Coupland. The first time I read ' Girlfriend In A Coma', I couldn't put the damn book down! I fell in love with his form of writing. I am currently catching up on all of his books!

* Woot!*

~ Just Some Girl.

Is the pullover he's wearing the first one is mum bought for him?

Some of you are missing a trick here with this interview. One aspect is that Coupland expressed his desire to really do this interview, to interview someone who had inspired him, but also that he had some difficulties in how to approach such an interview.... I imagine that it must be very difficult to interview the musical legend that is Morrissey (ed: it is!) and preparing for that would take some time to prepare (ed: It does!)

Funny how Sanctuary arranged for him to listen to the album on a mp3 player and portable speakers after a few attempts at playing the encoded disk at home. After all that, Coupland still reported the new album was wonderful.

And Morrissey having moved to Rome had, at last, found a new creativity in his opinion which he though had been missing (ed: never!) from some of his previous works.

He forget to mention that this is also down to a lot of hard work from Boz (ed: that's another story.)

titter not,

Strawberry

I loved the article--especially the apologist stance on interviews. The thronging detractors seem to be missing the point of the piece: if Douglas Coupland had done an interview, it would have been as bland as all the rest. Instead, Mr. Coupland gave us something interesting, interested, and insightful.

Let's face it. Having more direct access to Morrissey through True-to-You hasn't raised the caliber of questions...or answers.

It's not entitled "Heaven Knows he isn't Miserable Now".

I personally would have rather have had the interview. I assume anything Morrissey has to say, even without interest, would be of better kind and print than some aging wannabe poet, stuck in the belief that he will get the 'real' Morrissey. He didn't.

Even at the start when he states - 'But Morrissey? I'll confess that I'm a fan - not quite at the concealed shrine in the basement stage'. Oh great, so he's keen to distance himself from ever having been considered to be a fan. He's 'confessing', allowing us to somehow thank him for sharing and being with us. Who cares if he's fan or not? What's wrong with being a fan of Morrissey? Seemingly in the eyes of Mr Coupland, it turns you into a confused maniac.

As for it being very Tony Wilson -

'Is the interview dead? Well, it's certainly not having triplets and running marathons'

'It was produced by Tony Visconti who seems to have bitch-slapped Morrissey out of his LA-induced trance and said to him 'Boy, you need to write songs people will enjoying listening to over and over and over. They must all sound dfferent and they must be produced with subtle layers that make each listening reveal something new. You are not allowed to paste everything over with noisy guitar nonsense. And a listener must feel that you're actually revealing something to them, because if you're not doing that, then you're not making art.' Thank you, Tony.

'Be realistic: people paint the flowers, not the stem of the plant. People are remembered by their flowers and seeds, not their mulch. Fuck interviews'

'I finally ended up listening to it for the frst time while lying on my Roman bed with three-quarters of a hangover and a white plastic-battery powered Logitech portable minispeaker resting on my rib cage.

'I was told I could have four hours with the album and machine, except I got a phone call from a handler at the two and half-hour mark saying that Morrissey was bored and wanted to do the interview earlier. OK whatever.

'And a patient dressed in a white terry cloth robe in a Swiss tuberculosis sanatorium waiting to die. OK, maybe the robe is black. And maybe it's not Switzerland, either - it's Manchester in 1983. But you get the picture.

_______

It's like the worst travelogue in the world. A trip through the episodic brainfreeze of a man desperately trying to escape convention but once inside, realising that 'it's rather quite nice'. He states that he has become friends with those who have interviewed him, so really, he goes to Rome, not to tell any truth but to beg Morrissey to like him through a gaggle of inferior, pubescent pseudo bullshit in a malingering pisspot of words. 'Oh, like me, like me, please'. 'I have a brain, I will not ask you the same questions all those bad men have asked you over the years'. Thus, treating Morrissey like some sexually-abused child, waiting to have been interviewed by Officer Coupland. 'Tell me what happened, in your own words and own time'. But we never get to see his words, only that of the raked-over 'celeb' quotes from the 'Importance of being Morrissey' documentary.

I know it seems as if I'm being cruel to someone, who if we are to believe him, set out to give and get a good interview but it's all too lax, too knowing and too few of anything regarding the subject. I'm not too crazy as to finding out what colour of sick Coupland threw up. He builds it up so much, he invites you in and then fails to deliver on the interview. Of course if it had been longer, if they allowed for both sides of the coin, gave him his celebrity author stance and Morrissey a few precious words. But it doesn't. You buy it under the impression that it is an actual interview. It isn't.

Sure, Coupland probably planned to have people like me disapprove in such a strong fashion because it makes 'good copy' and allows him to bounce about his non-furnished house saying 'I told you so, nah, nah' But Morrissey fans do get a hard time. People somehow believe that we will hate every bit of press he gets. That we are o

Read the rest of this comment...

The question posed in the subhead is: "...can Coupland ever hope to understand a man who 'defines eccentricity'"?

Apparently not.

I quite enjoyed it.

Morrissey does have a big head. A big, splendid, handsome head. I think that's fair comment.

I read the article and loved it... and you should too... but don't take it on this sentence... read on and lets talk about why without getting our fandom all mixed up in it.

I have met Douglas Copeland a few times, and gotten the chance to talk to him for a few minutes each time. He truly is a Morrissey fan, he's not shitting about that. Last time I talked to him, which was around the middle of last year he said that he and Morrissey were "working" on something. He gave the impression that they were discussing writing something together (I can't remember if he outright said they were writing something). Perhaps this "interview" is all that came of it.

To really understand the article you need to understand the writer. Douglas is an oscure guy. His pretty soft spoken himself, quiet in general. He talks sometimes in an odd way that makes you have to think about what he says before responding and he writes in the same manner. I've read many of his books and at first reading, didn't really get it fully. And then suddenly a few days later his message hits me. The funny thing about the article is that is written the way he talks, either in person or on stage. Douglas talks in this sort of odd combo between soliloquay and point form. I know it's odd but that's how he talks, and it's how the article is presented.

All the fans can be pissed off about him saying something about his head (it's true) or writing that Morrissey is a bit bitter and sometimes petty (it's true and even Morrissey will admit that, and has) but in the end what you have is a true account of the experience of meeting Morrissey without all the stupid questions like "what do you think of Elton John getting married" and "what is your favourite Smiths song". He makes some observations that he found interesting and in the end, wrote an extremely insightful and positive review of the new CD.

One other thought is the danger of metting someoen you idolize or are a fan of. Sure there are fans here that have met Morrissey, but how many have sent a few hours with him... alone. None I woudl imagine. In spending that much time, some of the things that we hold up about a hero tend to disappear. When they become a real person, it allows you to see them in a new light, in a way you couldn't see them before (blinded by your fandom) and that includes the flaws they have. Haven't you ever met someone famous... and you walk away and are saying to yourself, wow they aren't what I pictured... I thought they'd be taller, and so on. I think that's really all that came out in the article. A fan... who's hero suddenly became a human, full of flaws or quirks, just like any other human in the world, and when you meet a person as guarded as Morrissey, perhaps that is all that is allowed to be taken away.

Well there's my thoughts. No need to get all hostile of you vehemently disagree, but I think that we can debate the merits of the article in a more insightful manner than just saying we love it or hate it.

As a last word... do yourself a favour and go out and grab a few books of Coupland's, such as Hey Nostrodomous, or Shampoo Planet.

Dave Towers (http://davestapes.tripod.com)

Do I understand this correctly? The writer flew from Canada to Rome, met Morrissey with the sole purpose or conducting an interview with Morrissey but then couldn't manage to write one. H e flew home again. This is an appalling waste of aviation fuel with the attendent huge carbon emissions.

a huge fan of Coupland and Morrissey, I was really looking forward to this. I was quite disappointed. :-(
An opportunity wasted.

for Christ's sake!! - I'm never going to know!