German news magazine "Der Spiegel" features a one-page-interview with Morrissey in issue nr. 4 (Jan. 19). Unfortunately it´s not featured on their website.
Morrissey states he´s become more easy-going, relaxed & tolerant & he´s feeling better the older he gets. Says he doesn´t have a mobile phone (he´d die from paranoia if he had one) & doesn´t have a home these days. Then he talks a bit about his statements concerning the loss of English identity last year & the diminishing value of music nowadays.
The interview is relaxed & Morrissey comes across as quite serene. A nice read.
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To live without love
The British star Morrissey talks about his new album, his restlessness & his disturbed relationship with music that comes out of the computer
Steven Patrick Morrissey, 49, who just calls himself Morrissey, became famous as the charismatic & eccentrical singer & lyricist of guitar-popband The Smiths. Since 1988 he´s being cultishly admired as a solo-artist also. "Most popstars have to be dead before they can become such an icon", wrote the British "Independent Magazine" about media-shy Morrissey.
SPIEGEL: Morrissey, you´re seen as a great melancholic & infamous loner of British pop music. On the cover of your new album "Years Of Refusal", which will be released in the middle of February, you lovingly hold a baby against your chest. Have you made up with the world just before your 50th birthday?
MORRISSEY: In fact I want to show with that portrait that I´ve become softer. Sebastien, that´s the little one´s name, represents that very nicely: the opening of my heart & the protection of the child from the world out there. A lot about me has become more smooth, more relaxed. I never belonged to any gang, I´ve simply refused to often in my life, I was always at war with the world. Now I´m a lot more tolerant towards myself & towards others than ever before & that was important to me.
S: Are you saying you´re feeling really good nowadays?
M: I´ve come to terms with living without love. It works better than most people can imagine. & with increasing age I indeed feel better & better. An astonishing realisation.
S: Will you be able to keep writing songs at all, if you´ll stay in such a good mood?
M: Probably not, but what kind of songs should that be anyway?
S: You´re one of the idols of British pop culture, but for years you´ve had a difficult relationship with your home country. Last you´ve lived in Rome. Are you now returning to England?
M: No, I don´t have any home anymore, I´ve been homeless, so to say, for three years, because I´m always on the road. Most of my things are stored in storehouses all over the world.
S: The mighty British music press has once again picked a quarrel with you a good year ago & has accused you of being an unworldly eccentric that swears on the traditions of the old England & issues warnings of foreign infiltration. What was going on there?
M: In England the music press is caught in heavy turbulences. The circulation decreases, wild sensational stories help against that. On top of that I repeatedly committed the sin to reject prizes & awards of the musical world. Nobody else dares to do that & they were not amused. & I keep falling into the trap that British journalists can also pretend to be friendly. But as soon as they have the interview, they change the questions, the answers, the whole conversation. Because that´s how they construct their scandals. But nobody can accuse me of hostility towards foreigners.
S: You have a reputation of having a soft spot for nostalgia. Do you suffer from these modern times in which everything is digital & available?
M: Instinctively I reject all that. I never owned a mobile phone & that´s how it will stay, because with a mobile phone you´re always easily traced & observed. It´s a nightmare if you can always be located. If I had such a thing I would die from paranoia.
S: But you do own a computer?
M: Even more than one. But I don´t own an iPod & I never download music from the internet. Music from the computer sounds dreadful, it´s deprived of its sonority. I perceive most of the accomplishments of modern technology as destructive, even if they often seem to be helpful. Music as a culture has been deprived of its value, it lost its cultural meaning. Everywhere, in TV-commercials, in every movie, in every shop it buzzes in the background. &
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