Originally Posted by
Worm
I remember him saying he didn't read much anymore, too. That's a big clue about his relationship to books. As you wrote, he was a magpie, for many years, picking up scraps from books to write his songs. But I think it was about more than writing songs. It was also about how he defined himself, not only after he was famous but also during his formative years, in his Manchester bedroom. His personality was made up of the art from which he took his inspiration. Importantly, he didn't use this art to reflect his true self, he simply was the aggregation of hundreds of songs, books, films, and other works of art. What many critics missed, when they knocked him for ripping off "A Taste of Honey" for "This Night Has Opened My Eyes", is that he wasn't "borrowing" at all but simply expressing a part of himself which could not be distinguished from the play. In the strict sense, he identified with what he loved completely: he was what he loved. The early Smiths classics, far from being derivative, were as personal as pages torn from his diary.
In the course of his career, like a snake shedding a series of skins, he gradually replaced his outer skin, a layer made up of wholly absorbed outside influences, with a newer, different, more organic skin made up of elements from within. One Morrissey isn't "more authentic" than the other. They're the same. "All You Need Is Me" is as much Morrissey as "This Night Has Opened My Eyes". This is why I believe that his recent lyrics are just as good, in a way-- they force the listener to think about why the Morrissey of 1983 might be totally consistent with the Morrissey of 2012, despite many outward differences. Foremost among the many interesting insights arising from comparisons of the two is this: if the Morrissey of 2012 is the same as the Morrissey of 1983, at least in essence, then it proves that the whingeing brat of 1984 was capable of happiness. The main criticism about Morrissey has always been that he wallowed in misery by choice. Even Johnny echoed this criticism, by implication, when he said of his songwriting partner, "Sometimes I think he just needs a good shag". Well, he's had his shag, thanks, and now he's "better"-- the point being that the young Morrissey, whose very identity was a mass of fictions stolen from pop culture, was justified in his complaints and, all along, was a person capable of escaping books (or, better, bookishness). He was ill and he said he was ill. Not because he was faking it to cut an interesting figure. Not because he was a navel-gazing studenty-type. Not because he was a pretentious fop who kept tripping over his own ego. Not because he was a dork too afraid to ask out another person. Because he was well and truly ill. And the proof of his illness is that he is now healthy enough to stand on his own before the world without trotting out a cardboard figure.
Being the wit that he is, Morrissey has commemorated this achievement by selling cardboard figures of himself.
Morrissey Solo's Lyrics - Where Do You Stand?
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