Morrissey
Known usually by his family name alone, is an English singer and songwriter, and was the frontman for The Smiths.
I know I've reached the stage where other artists would bleach their hair or buy a fancy costume, but, inexcusably, I can only be me, which is a full-time occupation and causes terrible backaches.
Now I know how Joan of Arc felt,
As the flames rose to her Roman nose
And her Walkman started to melt...
I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The "dazzling royals" have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press. It is lethal to witness. As London is suddenly promoted as a super-wealth brand, the England outside London shivers beneath cutbacks, tight circumstances and economic disasters. Meanwhile the British media present 24-hour coverage of the "dazzling royals", laughing as they lavishly spend, as if such coverage is certain to make British society feel fully whole. In 2012, the British public is evidently assumed to be undersized pigmies, scarcely able to formulate thought.
Music that is in the charts today is quite dreadful. I find it a great honour that I have never been considered for awards, such as NME etc. It is a personal victory. All awards shows should be banned!
But sometimes I'd feel more fulfilled making Christmas cards with the mentally ill.
I want to live and I want to love.
I want to catch something that I might be ashamed of.
I say a lot of things I don’t mean.
Hello you little charmers... We're The Smiths...
The reports of my death have been greatly understated.
As Anthony said to Cleopatra as he opened a crate of ale:
"Oh, I say, some girls are bigger than others,
Some girls' mothers are bigger than other girls' mothers.
I think the main thing is that I very rarely recognise the actual interview in print. To me, it's like being painted by an artist. And then you see the picture, and they've painted someone else.
GQ: “Were you in love with Johnny Marr?”
M: “Sexually? Absolutely not. There was a love and it was mutual and equal but it wasn’t physical or sexual. There are lots of people post-Smiths who would like to make some dramatic homosexual story. There never was one. It’s often said that Johnny rescued me but he was also bobbing about in his own lifeboat.”
PM: What annoys you most about yourself?
M: Practically everything. I miss not being able to stand up straight. I tend to slide into rooms and sit on the chair behind the door.
In my life
Why do I smile
At people who I'd much rather kick in the eye ?
M: If you cannot impress people simply by being part of the great fat human race, then you really do have to develop other skills. And if you don't impress people by the way you look, then you really do have to develop other skills. And if you are now going to ask is everything I did just a way to gain some form of attention, well that's not entirely true. It is in a small way, but that's in the very nature of being alive.
PM: Wanting to be loved?
M: To be seen, above all else. I wanted to be noticed, and the way I lived and do live has a desperate neurosis about it because of that. All humans need a degree of attention. Some people get it at the right time, when they are 13 or 14, people get loved at the right stages. If this doesn't happen, if the love isn't there, you can quite easily just fade away. ... In a sense I always felt that being troubled as a teenager was par for the course. I wasn't sure that I was dramatically unique. I knew other people who were at the time desperate and suicidal. They despised life and detested all other living people. In a way that made me feel a little bit secure. Because I thought, well, maybe I'm not so intense after all. Of course, I was. I despised practically everything about human life, which does limit one's weekend activities
M: I don't have relationships at all. It's out of the question.
NK: Why?
M: Partly because I was always attracted to men or women who were never attracted to me. And I was never attracted to women or men who were attracted to me. So that's the problem. I've never met the right person.
When you're young, you're afraid of being alone. Solitude is a burden and you try to escape from it. You always wonder when it's going to come to an end. Sometimes you can't get rid of it. At the age of 38, you use it in a different way. You've learned how to live with it, and you don't try to get rid of it by all means anymore. After all you may call this resignation, but I don't think it's harmful. You're not just standing there, in pain, asking yourself 'Why am I alone? Why don't I go out?' etc. You don't ask yourself these questions anymore. You adapt yourself. Living alone does not mean living in nothingness.
Jools Holland: "Knock Knock!"
Morrissey: "I'm not in!"
Jools: "Oh, come on."
Morrissey: "I refuse to open the door."
Age shouldn't affect you. It's just like the size of your shoes - they don't determine how you live your life! You're either marvellous or you're boring, regardless of your age.
I could never really make the connection between Christian and Catholic. I always imagined that Christ would look down upon the Catholic church and totally disassociate himself from it. I went to severe schools, working class schools, where they would almost chop your fingers off for your own good, and if you missed church on Sunday and went to school on a Monday and they quizzed you on it, you'd be sent to the gallows. It was like 'Brush you teeth NOW or you will DIE IN HELL and you will ROT and all these SNAKES will EAT you'. And I remember all these religious figures, statues, which used to petrify every living child. All these snakes trodden underfoot and blood everywhere. I thought it was so morbid. I mean the very idea of just going to church anyway is really quite absurd. I always felt that it was really like the police, certainly in this country at any rate, just there to keep the working classes humble and in their place. Because of course nobody else but the working class pays any attention to it. I really feel quite sick when I see the Pope giving long, overblown, inflated lectures on nuclear weapons and then having tea with Margaret Thatcher. To me it's total hypocrisy. And when I hear the Pope completely condemning working class women for having abortions and condemning nobody else... to me the whole thing is entirely class ridden, it's just really to keep the working classes in perpetual fear and feeling total guilt.
When The Smiths began it was very important that I wouldn't be that horrible, stupid, sloppy Steven. He would have to be locked in a box and put on top of the wardrobe. l needed to feel differently and rather than adopt some glamorous pop star name, I eradicated Steven which seemed to make perfect sense. Suddenly I was a totally different person. Now when I meet pre-Smith people who call me Steven, I sit there and wonder who they're talking about. I always despised the name Steven, though being spelt with a 'v' rather than a 'ph' made life slightly more tolerable. But it was very important that Steven be drowned nonetheless.