from the (so la la) google translator:
MORRISSEY The most dazzling pop writer of the 20th century. Identification figure and lifesaver for an entire generation. Enigmatic fixed star of the subculture and the last controversial exceptional artist. Or ambivalent provocateur and capricious agitator? "Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not."
No other quote could be more appropriate as a headline for the life and work of Steven Patrick Morrissey. It comes from Alan Sillitoe's groundbreaking 1958 working-class novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and was made famous by Karel Reisz's film of the same name, which became the first and perhaps the most important work of the so-called British New Wave, a new movement of social realism with an almost documentary focus on the life of the British working class. In the film, the young Albert Finney speaks this sentence in the role of the "angry young man" Arthur Seaton, who becomes a role model for the young Morrissey because, like Finney and his film character, he grows up in Salford or Stretford in the harsh north of England. The sentence provides information about his social roots, his spiritual home and his artistic self-image. And it is also emblematic of the reference spectrum of this 92 same pop stars, which he built at a young age from his very own, captivatingly individual world of rebels, outsiders, eccentrics and provocateurs. Because what else can you do when you grow up as an extremely introspective, shy youth with no prospects on the outskirts of Manchester, which is just as hopeless, than to flee into the world of your idols? These heroes are the iconic James Dean, the glam rock shockers New York Dolls and the no less crazy Sparks, radio stars like Sandie Shaw or Dusty Springfield, but also British writers like John Betjeman, Shelagh Delaney and Oscar Wilde, English eccentrics like Edith Sitwell and strikingly weird TV celebrities like Jimmy Clitheroe, Viv Nicholson or Patricia Phoenix from the kitchen-sink-weekly "Coronation Street". What all these characters, no matter how different they may be and how contradictory their creative and spheres of activity are also united: They shook the palaces, questioned the social and artistic status quo, were modern, provocative, ambivalent, androgynous, proletarian, proud, controversial, self-confident, self-empowered, different. Morrissey wants that too. He just doesn't know how yet. equally intelligent way that they hit the British music world like a bomb in combination with Johnny Marr's innovative and catchy-melodic guitar playing. Together with Andy Rourke (bass) and Mike Joyce (drums) they call themselves The Smiths, and the youth of England, pissed off by soulless radio-plastic pop à la Phil Collins and Michael Jackson, get the message: These are not aloof Rock stars like the rest, they're just as doubting and brave, wild and shy, sad and funny, simple and complex like us. And they defy all the mechanisms of the music business, don't do media nonsense like music videos, merchandising and promotional gibberish, no, they aren't even played on the radio, and then only at night on the BBC shows by John Peel or Janice Long. But they still become superstars of a whole new kind, and Morrissey attains almost iconic status over the next five years. He stands for the opposite of the 1980s zeitgeist of right-wing conservative yuppieism and ice-cold capitalist Thatcherism. His lyrics are ambivalent and ambiguous, witty, sad, profound and sometimes incredibly funny. They save lives, and not in a figurative sense. And they don't speak to any specific gender, which is why Morrissey is idolized by girls and boys, women and men alike. He's a whole new type of pop star, he's attractive and shy at the same time, he's flirtatious and intelligent at the same time. And when he throws his shirt into the raging crowd at the end of a concert, his fans tear it to thousands of shreds just to take home a piece of him, the charismatic savior with the quiff.
This changes abruptly when Morrissey, who had just turned 17, witnesses a big bang in June 1976: He is one of just 40 spectators watching four shrill figures from London on the stage at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall set about bringing down the foundations of the United Kingdom with anarchic guitar noise. The characters call themselves the Sex Pistols, and after this performance, the music world will be different forever. While Morrissey will continue to stamp every week and tend to spend his days walking Lancashire's cemeteries, he's now part of the exploding punk scene, writing lyrics, letters to the editor, playing in obscure bands and gaining local notoriety. But it was still a few agonizingly long years of unemployment until one day in 1982, the then 18-year-old Johnny Marr – an aspiring guitar virtuoso with a quiff and rolled-up jeans and, like Morrissey, the son of Irish immigrants – rang the doorbell of his parents' house and asks if the two might want to write a few songs together. So many legends have grown up around this first meeting of the two still unrecognized geniuses that in 2017 a separate film entitled “England Is Mine” was even made about it. In retrospect, what happens next actually seems as if the lives of the two dissimilar boys from Manchester only came together towards this one moment from the start: everything is discharged in the songs that the two write the references and quotes from Morrissey's inner world in such a touching, compelling and equally intelligent way that they hit the British music world like a bomb in combination with Johnny Marr's innovative and catchy-melodic guitar playing. Together with Andy Rourke (bass) and Mike Joyce (drums) they call themselves The Smiths, and the youth of England, pissed off by soulless radio-plastic pop à la Phil Collins and Michael Jackson, get the message: These are not aloof Rock stars like the rest, they're just as doubting and brave, wild and shy, sad and funny, simple and complex like us. And they defy all the mechanisms of the music business, don't do media nonsense like music videos, merchandising and promotional gibberish, no, they aren't even played on the radio, and then only at night on the BBC shows by John Peel or Janice Long. But they still become superstars of a whole new kind, and Morrissey attains almost iconic status over the next five years. He stands for the opposite of the 1980s zeitgeist of right-wing conservative yuppieism and ice-cold capitalist Thatcherism. His lyrics are ambivalent and ambiguous, witty, sad, profound and sometimes incredibly funny. They save lives, and not in a figurative sense. And they don't speak to any specific gender, which is why Morrissey is idolized by girls and boys, women and men alike. He's a whole new type of pop star, he's attractive and shy at the same time, he's flirtatious and intelligent at the same time. And when he throws his shirt into the raging crowd at the end of a concert, his fans tear it to thousands of shreds just to take home a piece of him, the charismatic savior with the quiff.
The scandal unleashed by staunch vegetarian Morrissey in 1985 when Smiths third album was titled Meat Is Murder is unimaginable today, and is only eclipsed by the follow-up album, whose timeless grandeur becomes almost a side issue because its title draws so much attention: "The Queen Is Dead" torches everything that is sacred to conservative, royalist Britain. “Anarchy In The UK” and “God Save The Queen” by the Sex Pistols had already summed up the hatred of the English working class for the degenerate spawn of the royal family, but after “The Queen Is Dead” they suddenly come into their own such as tourism advertising by the London Tourist Board. In the album's title song, Morrissey attested to Prince Charles, among other things, that he would certainly like to appear on the front page of the Daily Mail, and in clothes in his mother's wedding veil. That was enough in 1986 to be declared public enemy number one by the press and society. But that's exactly why the thinking youth of England and Europe is at the feet of the Smiths, countless bands are founded just because of them, and always new indie music movements with such funny names as twee, jangle or anorak pop, C86 or a little later Shoegaze are created in the example and spirit of the Smiths. "Burn down the disco / Hang the blessed DJ / Because the music that they constantly play / it says nothing to me about my life" from the Smiths' anthem "Panic" became the credo of all these movements, and the Smiths mentioned in the same breath as the Beatles because of their importance. The English weekly magazine New Musical Express (NME) will even go so far in 2002 that The Smiths as the most influential band of all time to crown In 2013, "The Queen Is Dead" was even voted number 1 of the 500 greatest albums of all time by the same magazine.
What made Johnny Marr leave the Smiths unexpectedly in 1987, the world will never know for sure, but it is largely exhaustion and being overwhelmed by Morrissey's increasingly difficult character and the insurmountably large musical and thematic differences between the two Smiths - Owed to masterminds. The Smiths split up and it's the end of the world for their fans around the world. Newspaper reports of isolated suicides circulate, and in Denver, Colorado, a gunman 18-year-old storms into local radio station KRXY, takes its crew hostage and forces Smiths songs to play non-stop; after four hours, the police can end the hostage-taking. This event will also be processed in another cinema film, "Shoplifters Of The World" from 2021.
Morrissey decides to continue solo - initially with the remaining ex-members of the Smiths, from 1991 with a group of young rockabillys around guitarists Boz Boorer and Alain Whyte - and, contrary to expectations, becomes more successful than ever before ... and in the most unlikely place of the World: While the English press and the public obviously cannot forgive him for the end of the Smiths and the love for their former idol has noticeably cooled off, the big USA accept him like a prodigal son, like a reborn Elvis and idolize his self-referential outsider songs like "Everyday Is Like Sunday", "Sing Your Life" or "The Last Of The Famous International Playboys". When Morrissey went on a big USA tour in 1991, the legendary Hollywood Bowl was sold out faster than with the Beatles, and in all the other large halls scenes took place every evening, alternating between Holy Mass and boundless frenzy. Concerts have to be interrupted or canceled completely because the hysteria surrounding Morrissey knows no bounds and completely uninhibited, crying fans storm the stages to hug their idol. Even TV show legends like Johnny Carson and Jay Leno run out of superlatives when the Brit in a black lamé shirt appears at them with constant screaming and fainting spells.
The fateful year 1992 follows, in which Morrissey releases one of his best albums, "Your Arsenal", which also contains the rock song "The National Front Disco". The zeitgeist in England and Europe is now shifting from right-wing to left-liberal, and suddenly much of the British press, offended by Morrissey's critical non-conformism of the past few years - half out of stupidity, leading the excellent Text not understood; the other on purpose, because she deliberately wants to misunderstand him - uses this very song as proof that Morrissey has actually always been a racist and a nationalist. He is declared persona non grata, and newspapers like the Guardian or the NME effectively end his career. When three years later the new Britpop establishment roamed the country waving the Union Jack and adoring Tony Blair, Morrissey was only a marginal figure, despite other brilliant albums such as “Vauxhall and I” (1994), “Southpaw Grammar (1995) and Maladjusted (1997). And so at the end of the 90s he was without management, without a record deal, yes, simply without anything.
But that's exactly why a whole new audience is discovering the expelled "crooner": It's the Los Angeles Latino community that finds itself in Morrissey's songs and lyrics, and who will become his most passionate and loyal fan base for years and decades to come. allegiance becomes. In 1999, Morrissey organized a quasi-self-administered tour through the USA, Mexico and finally all of Central and South America, which turned out to be a triumph. In Argentina and Chile he plays in sold-out football stadiums and can hardly believe it himself. The English press, in turn, is now also aware of this – and is rethinking its unfounded allegations and the ideologically motivated witch hunt against the former subculture icon. The NME apologized profusely and officially, and BBC's Channel 4 has the lavish, highly watchable TV documentary The Importance of Being Morrissey produced, which finally attests to the controversial pop star's unique status that he has had from the start . Nancy Sinatra, Bono, Noel Gallagher, JK Rowling, Chrissie Hynde, Alan Bennett, John Peel, they all appear in the documentary to pay tribute to Morrissey. He then ventured a risky coup and booked the holiest concert venue on British soil for September 17th and 18th, 2002, London's Royal Albert Hall – mind you still without a record deal, management or any promotion - and sold all 11,000 tickets within twenty minutes. Even David Bowie is said to be present on the first of the two evenings in the breathtakingly beautiful setting. It will be a service, it will be a triumphant return that was thought impossible. When his comeback album "You Are The Quarry" was released a year and a half later, it stormed the charts worldwide and became the most successful work of his entire career; all four single releases end up in the English top ten.
So is everything okay? Not at all. Because Morrissey remains true to himself, even if that means the renewed dismantling of his career, which intensifies persistently over the next two decades. Nothing is as repugnant to him as the zeitgeist, the music business establishment, political and social ideologies. In his concerts he denounces the machinations of the meat industry with sometimes the most drastic video projections, in his interviews and songs he becomes more and more explicit in relation to his contempt for the British monarchy, the occupation of Northern Ireland and the political orientation of England. When in 2008 the radical left BDS movement, led by anti-Semitic rock stars like Roger Waters, called on the music world to boycott Israel economically and culturally, Morrissey was the only one besides Nick Cave to resist and shortly afterwards gave concerts in Tel Aviv. This brings back the Guardian and other left-liberal newspapers who don't see it as part of their political agenda, and it all starts all over again: Morrissey becomes racist, muddlehead and musical again titled irrelevant anyway. In addition, the allegation that is as old as Morrissey's career, rehashed that he cannot be assigned to any sexual camp. That that is no one's business and it's artistic Existence is also completely irrelevant seems to have caused a furore in the press to be secondary. "I am mine", I am mine, had Morris- sey sang to it in 1995, and how right he is. In its extremely elegantly written "Autobiography" (2013) German Doesn't he admire the fact that he's been in love with people all his life into a gender; a simple but wise answer. In a social present, in which nothing matters 24/7 which seems to go beyond sexual identity, gender belonging and permanent outing of the most marginal minorities ten with some of the most absurd sexual preferences is such a differentiated attitude, of course, an impudence, an ultimate provocation.
At some point all of this doesn't leave him unscathed either, and he becomes increasingly defiant, recalcitrant and difficult, which is also reflected in the titles of his upcoming albums: "Years of Refusal" (2009), "World Peace Is None Of Your Business” (2014) or “I Am Not A Dog On A Chain” (2020) bear witness to a retreat into the role of the outsider of outsiders. It doesn't matter what Morrissey does or says - and there are also some contradictory and stupid things that shouldn't be concealed here - he's done with the media. But he can't and won't help but call things by their names. He did the same on May 22, 2017, his 58th birthday, when a bomb exploded at the concert of pop singer Ariana Grande in his hometown of Manchester, killing 23 people, mostly children and young people, and injuring another 800. Out of misunderstood political correctness, the media initially withheld the fact that it was an Islamist terrorist attack by a suicide bomber from Libya, who also had numerous previous convictions and was well known to the police. Not so Morrissey - and of course he is immediately the racist in the media. This event left him with deep wounds and he recorded an entire album about it in 2022, evilly titled Bonfire of Teenagers. This is now scheduled for release in March 2023, but as is so often the case in Morrissey's unique, rule-breaking career, it is currently not known whether this album will actually see the light of day. The new songs, which he presented at acclaimed concert series in Las Vegas, London or Paris, promise great things, but once again he is without management, record label or promotion. Is he a victim of the Cancel Culture outrage industry, or is he perhaps a capricious, uncontrollable egomaniac? Perhaps the answer lies in the supremely self-referential lyrics of "Speedway," that masterfully enraptured 1994 song in which Morrissey candidly and directly to his loyal fans sings: "I've always been true to you / In my own strange way / I've always been true to you / In my own sick way / I'll always stay true to you". It may be his signature song, in any case it is proof that Morrissey is aware of his ambivalence and his contradictions; that he is no saint, no role model, and that he never made it easy for himself and his family. In October 2022 he gave an interview in front of a camera for the first time in many years. The content of this interview can be summarized under the core quote "Diversity is conformity" and is a passionate plea for individuality, otherness, free personal development, non-conformity and independent thinking. The opposite of the current ideologically motivated diversity zeitgeist with its dogmatic moralism. The world we live in needs more contradictory, controversial misfits with complex views and uncomfortable attitudes that challenge us to think. The world needs more extraordinary artists like Morrissey.
www.morrisseycentral.com
