Reader Meet Author (Part 1)

Meetings With Morrissey by Len Brown

Few musicians inspire and provoke as artfully as Morrissey. He is an iconic figure, one whose life and music has invited the scrutiny of a whole army of writers. However, renowned broadcaster and scribe Len Brown might just have written the most compelling tome in the near library of Moz biographies. His Meetings With Morrissey draws on a lifetime’s worth of encounters to try and lift the veil on the enigma. Fresh insights are provided, with the body of work and sources of inspiration outlined with forensic detail. Perhaps the greatest triumph here though is the sense that Brown has teased out more of the real Morrissey – whoever he is – than any other chronicler to date.

In this first part of the interview, Len tells AU about the the influence of Wilde on Morrissey and shares his thoughts on some of the more controversial moments in Morrissey’s life.

You’ve known Morrissey for a long time and have interviewed him more than any other music journalist. It certainly gave you an advantage over other biographers, many of whom had written about his life without even meeting him.

I suppose it’s strange because it’s one of the only books by someone who has known him to that degree. I’ve always been baffled that, 25 years into his career, all the other books have been by people who’ve never met him. I’m not sure why that is, whether it’s just that he’s extra careful with most people and not given them any interviews, but I guess I’ve been sort of lucky as I’ve had a relationship with him as both a journalist and a television producer. That’s the source of most of the interviews really.

Given the sheer mass of previous publications about Morrissey and The Smiths, especially the work of Johnny Rogan, were you not concerned at the outset that you might struggle to bring anything new to light?

In terms of The Smiths, The Rogan book is definitely the best one. I know that he’s done Morrissey: The Albums more recently, but I didn’t think that got to the heart and soul of the character. The other thing about his albums book, is that Johnny, who I know, because I’ve interviewed him for television programmes, seemed to thank me at the start of that book, as if I’d co-operated with him and I felt that had caused problems with Morrissey, so I distanced myself from that. As regards my own work, well, my stuff has been sampled and is on the Internet so I thought why not write it all down and see if there’s any interest. I informed Morrissey I was going to do that and he was a bit non-committal about it. I think he thought that his autobiography was going to come out first, but when I signed up to do the book in January 2006, there didn’t seem to be much of a problem with it then.

You examine the parallels between Morrissey’s life and that of Oscar Wilde. Were you surprised that no-one had previously emphasised the extraordinary extent of Wilde’s influence?

It’s weird, a lot of my contact with Morrissey has been connected with Wilde. I studied Wilde at university and I’ve always been fascinated in that sort of century leap, the fact that the main events in Wilde’s life seem to have parallels with Morrissey’s life a century later. Everything he does seems to have some sort of connection with Wilde. I think that Morrissey has always been surprised that people haven’t gone into that in more depth before. So part of the original premise of the book was to make that connection with Wilde and stand it up and point out that even now, when he has photos taken or when he writes a song, that often there are Wilde connections in there. In terms of influence you can’t put Wilde alongside Shelagh Delaney or Pat Phoenix or Billy Fury, rather it’s actually a fundamental part of his character now. Over the last couple of years and since You Are The Quarry he has embraced his Irish identity much more.

To what degree do you think that these parallels or references to Wilde are something that Morrissey is consciously drawing upon?

He seems to have been indoctrinated into Wilde’s gospel from a very early age. I think his mother must have given him Wilde’s children’s stories when he was 6 or 7 years old. A lot of his reference points are clear, there are songs like ‘Oscillate Wildly’ and some of the early Smiths’ songs that these songs are inspired as much by Wilde as by Delaney or anyone else. More recently, with some of his lyrics, whether he knows he’s doing it or not, there are Wildean elements that have crept into the songs. I’ve also spoken at length with Morrissey about the Ellmann biography of Wilde [Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann] and in it Ellmann describes Wilde as the star of the modern age.

I do think Morrissey has embraced so many of those beliefs regarding Wilde, particularly in the Eighties with The Smiths. During that whole Thatcherite climate of ‘Back to Basics’ and the Tories’ attempt to revive Victorian values, I think that he felt he was, to a degree, emulating Wilde. He was using pop-music as a form of dissent against the establishment. I think that’s a huge part of The Smiths’ music and obviously Wilde was destroyed by his behaviour and his opposition to the establishment. Morrissey, to a lesser extent, felt high court judges and the like were against him in the Nineties. And it is strange that mid 1990’s, Morrissey is in court and then goes into exile and mid 1890’s, Wilde was in court and then went to prison.

Do you think that these brushes with the establishment and controversies, such as Madstock in 1992 and the Mike Joyce court case, affected him creatively?

I think it did take a lot out of him. Less in terms of his commitment to his art and more in terms of how the media and people outside of his own fanbase perceived him. I think that did take its toll and it’s a remarkable comeback to have remained intact in the industry of popular music.

What did you make of his recent and ongoing wrangles with the NME over his alleged comments on immigration and the accusations that he harboured right-wing opinions?

The vegetarianism, the animal rights, the pro-outcast, female championing aspects of his music, the way he’s presented so many sexually unconventional characters as icons; you would have to say that he is, by and large, radical and to the left. The only views that he seems to have got into trouble with seem to be his views on immigration, but I think it’s more about nationalism and patriotism. Really what he’s saying is that he’s being protective of the British identity, or the English identity, whatever that is, and that he fears outside influences. It’s not a matter of race or gender; it’s outside influences in general – everything from McDonalds to Eastern European drug dealers. Those influences, as he sees it, are negative in terms of British society. I don’t agree with him as I say in the book. But he’s entitled to his opinions and I really don’t think people should accuse him of being a hypocrite because he’s the son of an Irish immigrant, or certainly not of being a racist.

The only good that has come out of that whole NME furore has been Morrissey supporting the Love Music Hate Racism campaign and also his more unequivocal statements about his beliefs, that he has taken this clear stand against racism. I think before that he was so annoyed that people were accusing him of it that he didn’t seem to say much in the papers and seemed to hide away and I don’t think that did him any favours in the short term really. I’m glad he’s emerged from it and I hope the case with the NME is resolved clearly and I don’t want any side to lose really as I’m in a difficult position having worked for the NME for so long. Although some of its criticisms of Morrissey over the years haven’t been great, I still think it’s a good organ and a good read. Most of the time.

Morrissey and the NME, it’s been very much a love / hate relationship, although veering rather more towards hate at the moment.

Part of me thinks he wants to desperately be loved by the NME, but he’s not going to jump through any hoops for the paper. Even when I was there, there was tremendous hostility towards him. There was a real divide within the NME between the soul-boy crowd who were interested in the rise of Black-American music and the indie-kids. In lots of ways, the soul boys were right. The forms of music like rap and hip-hop and house that were coming through at the same time as The Smiths, they’ve been hugely successful and influential and continue to be. Whereas rock goes through its ups and downs and I think that if NME had just stuck to rock music as many of us thought it should’ve done at that time, it probably would’ve died out by now. It’s an ongoing debate.

Another ongoing debate is whether or not Morrissey has reached the same creative heights as a solo performer as he did with The Smiths. What’s your opinion?

I know lots of people say that he’s never reached the same sort of lofty heights as The Smiths artistically, but I don’t necessarily agree with that. I think there have been fantastic moments along the way of his solo career, particularly Vauxhall And I and there are certainly great moments on both Ringleader Of The Tormentors and You Are the Quarry.

In terms of the people who he surrounds himself with, be it bandmates or management, there seems to be continual upheaval. Has this impeded his development to any degree?

I think the great thing about his solo career is that he’s had some pretty good management along the way. Also, the continuity of working with Boz Boorer, I think that relationship has lasted four times as long as his relationship with Johnny Marr and that it has been vital to his ongoing success. The tragedy of The Smiths was they weren’t managed, that he wouldn’t relinquish enough control to allow them to be managed. If you look at their contemporaries – bands of a particular status like U2 and REM – those bands survived because they had good management. The Smiths had a host of managers and I think in the end they broke up because they couldn’t both look after the business and be the artist. I think the whole process of having to do everything just dragged them down. As a person, I think he has got a lot more comfortable in his own skin. I admire the way he has grown and stayed true to his art. His commitment to his art is admirable and again that’s a trait that Wilde had. Wilde believed that the meaning of life was art and I think Morrissey echoes that really.

THE MYSTIQUE OF MORRISSEY - READ PART 2 OF THIS INTERVIEW

Meetings With Morrissey by Len Brown is published by Omnibus Press, £19.95

**Morrissey image Copyright Len Brown

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