Reader Meet Author (Pt.2)

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. In this second part of our interview, Len tells AU about the mystique of Morrissey.

Did you find it difficult to get beyond the mystique of Morrissey and show the person behind the pop icon?

I’m still tackling him as ‘the artist’. It’s very difficult to get beyond that, he’s brilliantly evasive and elusive He’ll tease you along so far but, at the end of the day, he still manages to remain intact, a Garbo like figure above and beyond the legions of less interesting pop stars.

Regarding Morrissey’s continued relevance, one of the things that elevates him above the “legions of less interesting pop stars” is the manner in which he has extended the vocabulary of contemporary music. It’s something you comment upon in the book.

He’s an extraordinary character and I admire the way he tackles difficult subjects in songs. That’s been a big part of my affection for him and again that goes back to Wilde. Wilde always argued that for art to revive and renew itself you continually had to extend the subject matter of the art-form. As we know, most pop music is about nothing. At its best it’s about cars and girls, or love and money, but no one else in pop music has tackled such diverse subject matter in their songs as Morrissey has – everything from suicide to child murder, gang lords to corrupt policeman. Also, unconventional sexuality.

The sexuality side of it is fascinating and he writes about a lot of different things in terms of sexuality, whether he’s talking about himself or he’s writing in character. That’s an interesting game. He is able to convey emotions that other artists can’t even dream of. He’s got that unsettling quality as well, he irritates a lot of people but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s a spikiness about him, an edge. Even approaching 50, he’s not resting his laurels and doing end of the pier, down memory lane, Smiths’ nostalgia shows. He’s continually writing original material and coming up with new ideas. He’s a unique character.

You mentioned the possibility of Morrissey writing an autobiography. It’s been mooted for a number of years. Do you think that if it does appear it will be somewhat elusive in nature like Dylan’s Chronicles or do you think it will be straightforward and revealing portrait?

I can’t really see how he can do an autobiography. Maybe that’s why it hasn’t appeared yet. For example, does he come up with a way of telling his story, perhaps write it like some sort of conversation like Wilde’s The Decay Of Lying? Does he do it through a fictitious character? I can’t see how he can really drop his guard at this stage. For the people who love him and the people who hate him, he is that artist. For better or worse, I think it’s a real character and if that is the real Morrissey and he is a depressive, sort of celibate character, then that’s fascinating anyway.

Short of a book revealing him as a different character, I can’t really see how it would work. It would be fascinating though, as Chronicles was, up to a point. Still, it didn’t really tell us anything vastly different about Dylan. The mystique remained intact there, although you did learn a bit more about his creative process. I’m not sure whether Morrissey would do that sort of book though. Maybe he would try and settle old scores in it, which would be interesting too.

The book is also very much about your own life and the great importance that the music of The Smiths has held for you.

I can’t really overstate how important The Smiths were, particularly after my brother’s suicide. I hadn’t really been going out much and I was dragged along to this event in September 1983 at The Venue. That night was the first time they played ‘This Charming Man’. I really couldn’t believe it. Morrissey was astonishing looking at that point. Very thin, the hair was very high, almost like Split Enz, the New Zealand band. You sort of kept looking around the stage to see who was playing what because I felt that it couldn’t just be Johnny Marr, all those effects couldn’t be coming from him.

This was in the midst of new romanticism and everything was coming from keyboards, so I thought, there must be something going on, there must be some backing track, or something else must be happening, it can’t be just these four kids. So that was really important. That kick-started me going out again after a difficult year and I started following The Smiths from that point and they certainly carried me through.

How does the experience of interviewing Morrissey compare with your experiences with other music personalities?

I’ve met lots of other major artists and generally they’re not that interested in other people and that’s just the way it is. Perhaps because of my interest in Wilde, myself and Morrissey have always got on and I’ve kept in contact with him for a long time. He’s always very interested. After my mother’s death he was concerned about that and I think it says a lot about him. People at that level of multi-millionaire status, living in LA, Rome, Dublin, wherever, they don’t really need to keep in touch with people who’ve written about them off and on over the years and actually he tends to distance himself from journalists. So, if I’m an exception, then I think I’m pretty lucky and hopefully in the book I’ve done him some justice and explained that he’s a really good guy.

You certainly seek to address a number of the popular misconceptions about him. You counter the ‘Pope of Mope’ stereotyping by highlighting the wit and humour in much of what he does.

He writes really funny songs, also the things he comes out with and the comic timing of his voice. The only problem with writing a book is that you don’t get that voice, you don’t get that comic timing, you don’t get the giggles. Even when he says something really depressing there’s actually a bit of a desperate laugh with him. I love that about him. He can laugh at anything, however serious, and be very funny about it. That’s something he shares with Alan Bennett, they both have an ability to reflect the downside of life but in an uplifting way. That’s why I’m always baffled why people don’t get the humour of The Smiths, or the humour of Morrissey’s lyrics, because I think he can be really, really funny. Even his song titles are great.

However, death and depression are very real features of his music and indeed life. In the book you mention that in the late Nineties he was very low, that suicide was at least a fleeting thought.

The person who first sort of revealed that was Kirsty McColl. Whether there’s any truth in it or not, I don’t know. There were obviously very dark times for him and sadly Kirsty’s not around now to verify it but it’s been talked about over the years. I think the late Nineties must’ve been really hard for him and I don’t think he did want to leave England. He’d sort of suffered over Maladjusted and Southpaw Grammar and he lost the court case with Mike Joyce and that rumbled on almost until 2000. Plus he’d gone into exile and he didn’t have a record deal and I don’t think he considered a future in music. Those seven years between Maladjusted and You Are The Quarry must’ve been fairly tough.

It was great actually seeing him when he came back in 2002 and did those shows in the Royal Albert Hall. I can remember going along to that and thinking, ‘What the hell is he going to do, what’s this going to be like?’ So it was great to see him in such great form. I think they were hard times and although he does laugh about depression and he tries to make light of the difficulties of life, I think there are times when he has struggled with it. You can’t really talk about him or write about the things that he does without having been close to dark times and again that’s why his achievements are so great and long may it continue.

Do you worry what Morrissey might think of the book?

I am apprehensive. But, as always, I’ve played it straight with him. I sent him updates, kept his management informed and sent a copy of the book to him. I just hope the book explains, in a better way than previous biographies, who Morrissey is, what motivates him and puts into context his role as an artist in the late Twentieth and early Twenty-First centuries.

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

**Morrissey image Copyright Len Brown

Read Part One

Issue #52 - Very Bro-some

Featuring Panama Kings, ASIWYFA, an investigation into DIY touring, details of what over 25 of the finest NI bands are up to in 2009 and much more.