I was too young for The Smiths the first time around but when I discovered them, I loved the aesthetic. All of Morrissey’s 50s/60s references, cultural touchpoints, obsessions, problems, his whole personality. I wanted to learn everything I could, so I absolutely ate up all that (interviews, books, etc) – fans here lovingly archived most of it - and I look at the music in that context. I was thrilled with the memoirs too.
Then I realise that it has been 40 years since The Smiths and there are new fans now, who are less obsessive and for whom that entire, very English Smiths ‘world’ is an alien entity – they are not interested in the books or gobbling up the kitchen-sink dramas, the context is lost and they judge these songs as if they fell from space. Songs and ideas that would have been ‘obvious’ in an earlier time become totally obscure. And I understand that’s inevitable but it baffles me, all the same, and I feel like there might be ‘older’ generations of fans who feel similarly. It makes me feel a strange sense of loss. Then I remember that Morrissey himself is 62 and still 'fixated' on his teenage world and what Manchester was like in 1974 and ... ugh, the passing of time.