Morrissey: Un dandy de camisa abierta - interview in Clarín.com



Morrissey: Un dandy de camisa abierta - Clarín.com (Argentina)

Translation to English:

You usually compose with others (just as you did during The Smith): how do these creative couples work?

-I do not consider myself a "musician" in a strict sense, so I like the idea of adding to the music with which my collaborator has been working. The vocal melody usually changes the musical direction of the song, that's true. But it's fine and I also know my place in the collaboration.

-If there are cases in which you only write the lyrics, is it the one that comes first or only arises after the melody?

-The lyrics are always in advance, but the "patch" to the music. It is a craft and at the same time requires effort. It's not easy, but I enjoy it. Because, as I once said, the lyrics should be written as if everyone was listening to you ... although that probably does not happen! Most modern composers joke about how well they spend writing the lyrics but do not make any intellectual effort thinking about the audience, the listeners.

- Of all the producers and collaborators with whom he worked (Stephen Street, Mark Nevin, Alain Whyte, Boz Boorer, Jesse Tobias), which one did you feel most comfortable with?

-It is an unfair question because each of them has their good things and their individual methods.

-It's his autobiography you mention how insistently Bowie was looking for him to do something together. What are your favorite records of {el?

-I would say that The Man Who Sold The World, Diamond Dogs and of course The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I think, by then, no one else could have got away with it as he did. And none more was close to what he achieved! I like artists who have an audacious awareness of everything they do. Today with most modern groups, it does not even matter if they are good or not: they usually jump to the nro. 1 of the charts and ready.

-I would like to ask you about your musical tastes. For example The Kinks in whom I see a kind of elegance and sophistication avant la lettre for The Smiths.

-The Kinks in the 60s were a perfect triumph ... absolutely original ... a wit and occurrence that no other group even tried and definitely memorable. I loved each of his singles but his success was so instantly accepted that no one took the trouble to analyze them. If someone wrote a song like Waterloo sunset today they would give him 42 Grammy awards.

-Nuevamente in his biography, you have writes very unique analogies, as when he says "The Stooges, Lou Reed and Patti Smith are our new Goethe, Gide and Gertrude Stein." I wonder then what essay writing interests you.

-The classics, obviously ... and with classics I mean what almost everyone agrees. As for example, in the 60s, the classic period of pop were The Beatles, Stones, The Who, The Supremes, The Four Tops, Bacharach-David, Phil Spector ... and so on. And with respect to modern speakers, I love listening to Germaine Greer, Anne Marie Waters and reading Christopher Hitchens. They always give me the answers I hope to find.

-Is it your idea that your memoirs be published in the "Penguin Classics" collection, a collection that Penguin only reserves for the canon of deceased writers?

-DO NOT! Of course not! Someone in the press invented that story to make me look like an insufferable person. But I'm used to it ...

-Finally I would like to ask you about the biopic about your life, England is mine.

-I never saw her and I was never consulted by her. They did not approach me or my family, so I have a hard time understanding how the filmmakers could understand what they were doing. Whereupon I ask myself: is it really about me?
 
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