What's he on about now?

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   Tuesday, March 28, 2006

   VIVA LOVE: the transformation of Morrissey

As his career begins its third decade, the genius of Morrissey is that we've never really known if it's all been a joke or not. The Duke of Despair, the Sultan of Self-Loathing, he became an icon to a generation of self-absorbed black-clad teenagers growing up lost and lonely in the day-glo dismal 1980's.

Yet, as a mellow 21st-century adult, I listen to those Smiths albums and I still love them because they're so very, very funny. Take the lyrical crescendo from possibly their greatest song, "How Soon is Now?":

There's a club if you'd like to go
You could meet somebody who really loves you
So you go and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home and you cry
And you want to die

That over-the-top wallowing is shriekingly hilarious to me now and yet I'd be lying if I said there was never a night when I came home feeling exactly like that. When the world kicked you in the teeth, Morrissey was there. He understood. Even while, quite possibly, he knew how ridiculous such despair would seem in the light of the next morning. Total genius.

The secret to The Smiths' massive success was the way Johnny Marr piled on the friendliest of jangly guitar-pop while Morrissey's lyrics tugged the other way with outlandish moaning:

I know I'm unloveable
You don't have to tell me
I don't have much in my life
But take it - it's yours

After the Smiths broke up in 1987, many predicted Morrissey would flounder without Marr's talent but he proved to be a savvy judge of collaborators and issued a run of solid albums like 'Your Arsenal' and 'Vauxhall and I' until, somehow, that wisp of humour in his material faded.

Maybe it was the court case: Mike Joyce, former Smiths drummer, sued Morrissey and Johnny Marr in 1996 for royalties acknowledgement. The judge awarded him a million pounds in back royalties and branded Morrissey "devious, truculent and unreliable".
By 1998, 'the Mozzer' was writing songs like this:

You pleaded and squealed
And you think you've won
But Sorrow will come
To you in the end
And as sure as my words are pure
I praise the day that brings you pain

Meanwhile, England was now in love with itself -- celebrating 'BritPop' and 'Cool Britannia' with Oasis, Blur and the Spice Girls. Morrissey's brand of epic gloom was now decidedly out of favour. So he vanished, moved to LA and dropped out of the music scene he was starting to hate. Most of us fans fondly closed the book on a fine career.

Six years later, Morrissey suddenly reappeared -- stockier, healthier, greying at the temples and, well, older. It was a jarring sight but he had come back with 'You Are The Quarry' -- his boldest, sharpest, funniest, saddest album in a decade. All of his legendary solipsistic self-pity was in full effect -- "How Could Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel?" indeed -- but now there was a trace of anger, a newfound sense of purpose in his politics, notably in the bold-at-the-time "America is Not the World."

During a concert last summer, Morrissey announced that Ronald Reagan had just died and infamously added, "Bush should have died, not Reagan." Following that comment, he revealed earlier this year that "the FBI and the Special Branch have investigated me and I've been interviewed and taped and so forth. They were trying to determine if I was a threat to the government, and similarly in England. But it didn't take them very long to realise that I'm not."

But the most intriguing thing about 'Quarry' was that a couple of the songs sounded almost...happy. The jaunty rocker "First of the Gang to Die" was a odd little gift to his large Latino fanbase and the bubbly electronica of "I Like You" sounded like the closest thing to a pop love song we would ever get from him. Since announcing he was celibate way back in 1983, people had wondered if Morrissey was truly as miserably lonely as he proclaimed or if -- given all the homoerotic imagery threading through so many of his songs -- this was just a ploy to keep his closet door shut. In a candid 1992 interview, he said :

I feel completely open. If I met somebody tomorrow, male or female, and they loved me and I loved them, I would openly proclaim that I loved them, regardless of what they were...One of my physical encounters was with a man. That was 10 years ago. It was just a very brief, absurd and amusing moment. It wasn't love. I have never experienced that.

Until 'Quarry', he didn't seem to mind so much but the album's high-point was an epic confessional anthem, "I Have Forgiven Jesus":

Why did you give me so much desire
When there is nowhere I can go to offload this desire?
And why did you give me so much love in a loveless world
When there is no one I can turn to to unlock all this love?
And why did you stick me in self-deprecating bones and skin?
Jesus, do you hate me?

For perhaps the first time, Morrissey's despair seemed entirely genuine -- an anger at the world, the Church, himself, for a life spent without love.

Until now.


Morrissey's new album arrives this week -- with the crazy title 'Ringleader of the Tormentors' -- and it's the sound of a man who's apparently stopped "turning sickness into popular song" and embraced life. While his misanthropy is firmly intact -- "I see the world, it makes me puke" -- it's twisted through with declarations of love:

Can you stop this pain?
Even now in the final hour of my life
I’m falling in love again

That bit is set against pounding, apocalyptic kettle drums and a gorgeous string section. With the help of legendary Bowie & T-Rex producer Tony Visconti, Morrissey sounds more vital than ever and, in case we've missed the point, the final song is called "At Last I Am Born":

I once thought I had numerous reasons to cry
And I did, but I don’t anymore
Because I am born, born, born
...
I once was a mess of guilt because of the flesh
It’s remarkable what you can learn
Once you are born, born, born

It's shocking to hear Morrissey sing about being in love, being happy and -- frankly -- getting laid. "Dear God, Please Help Me" is a sort-of-sequel to "I Have Forgiven Jesus," only the despair has been erased by sex and love:

Then he motions to me
With his hand on my knee
Dear God, did this kind of thing happen to you?
...
And now I am walking through Rome
And there is no room to move
But the heart feels free
The heart feels free
The heart feels free

His voice soars. It's exhilarating because, having followed his career for so long, I know that if a miserable, self-absorbed, vain misanthrope like Steven Morrissey can learn to love at the age of 47, there's hope for any of us.

Labels: homo-a-go-go, music, the 80s, tributes