Tag Archive: morrissey


BACKTRACKING # 26 : THE SMITHS’ HAND IN GLOVE

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July 22, 2011

Part of an irregular series of bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl. (Search ‘Backtracking’ to collect the set!)

THE SMITHS – Hand In Glove b/w Handsome Devil (Live)  (Rough Trade, 1985)

Hand in Glove

"The sun shines out of our behinds"

“There’s more the life than books, you know, but not much more”. As soon as I heard Morrissey sing this line from Handsome Devil, I knew that The Smiths were the band for me.

When you start describing the words to the band’s songs you quickly run out of superlatives. Most have at least half a dozen quotable lines and delivered in droll Mancunian tones with Johnny Marr’s inspired guitar backing there was no-one to touch them.  Imitators have come and gone since but nothing can compare to the original template.

Hand In Glove was their first single and I bought it a few days after buying This Charming Man. Every other single of their I got on 12″ on the week of release.

The cover shot and some lyrics (especially to Handsome Devil) have a fairly obvious homoerotic slant (“A boy in the bush is worth two in the hand”) but there is deliberate ambiguity too – “Let me get my hands on your mammary glands”.

No one was writing songs like this with the combination of foppish poetry and Northern plain talking. With Hand In Glove, The Smith arrived fully formed and pop music never sounded so vital.

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BACKTRACKING #19 : THE SUNDAYS

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June 8, 2011

Part of an irregular series of bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl. (Search ‘Backtracking’ to collect the set!)

THE SUNDAYS – Can’t Be Sure b/w I Kicked A Boy (Rough Trade, 1989)

“Give me a job and a perfect behind” is not a line you can’t imagine Morrissey writing but everything about this perfect pop single makes me think of The Smiths- “Did you know desire’s a terrible thing” most certainly IS something you can Steven Patrick might have written.

I remember playing it to death when it came out and I was obviously not alone as it topped John Peel’s Festive Fifty for that year. There’s a breezy optimism and homeliness about Harriet Walter’s voice that is very beguiling.

Despite this, the black & white photo of apples and pears on the cover also suggests being stuck in a still life and yearning for a life elsewhere.

It’s the final verse that takes it from English miserabilism to something more hopeful and positive: “It’s my life and though I can’t be sure what I want anymore it will come to me later” is something that could only be written by a young person with the luxury of putting off difficult choices till the moment is right.

The B-side is equally fine – a kind of gentile feminism (“I kicked a boy ……..I could have been wrong – but I don’t think I was”).

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WHAT DYLAN MEANS TO ME

Filed under: Music, Poetry, Politics — Leave a comment
May 24, 2011


Bob Dylan is 70 today and thankfully,despite all the mountains of literature and analysis, he still remains an enigmatic and fascinating figure.

The fact that he keeps the media circus at arm’s length means that he has cleverly remained aloof from all the usual trappings associated with the cult of celebrity.

He seems to understand, perhaps instinctively, that, most of the time, the more you know about your heroes, the less interesting they become. In your imagination you can create a compelling  persona that could easily be destroyed by dull facts. One of the point of .Todd Haynes’ movie ‘I’m Not There’ is that everyone has their own idea of who the ‘real Bob Dylan’ is.

Dylan was not the voice of my generation. I put Joe Strummer and Steven Morrissey on this pedestal. They were the ones singing about the issues I could relate too – a loathing for the Thatcher regime and Royals, an understanding of the tiresome weight of boredom, small-minded prejudice and suburbia.

It was not so surprising that I didn’t immediately identify with Dylan’s protest songs. Martin Luther King was shot in 1968 on my 10th birthday and this was the same year that American involvement in the Vietnam War reached its peak. It is possible to protest against the US invasion or civil rights abuses retrospectively but it’s not the same thing.

I was aware of Dylan’s iconic status, of course. My older brother had his first albums and grew his hair into an untidy afro in time to go to the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. But the more I heard people say he was a true poet and visionary genius the more I was inclined to ignore him.

It’s a bit like Shakespeare for teenagers.  I had to study Othello for what were then called ‘O level’ English literature exam. Teachers seemed oblivious to the fact that we spotty adolescents were not interested in the insidious scheming of Iago or the jealous torment of The Moor; we were more preoccupied by the question of  if/when we were ever going to get laid. Continue reading →

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LIFE ACCORDING TO MORRISSEY

Filed under: Books, Music — 1 Comment
April 23, 2011

“If you’ve got five seconds the spare, I’ll tell you the story of my life”  – The Smiths ( Half A Person).

It turns out we’re going to need more than five seconds to learn about the life of Morrissey.

Reports abound that the bard of Manchester is at the trimming stage of his autobiography which is due to be published some time in 2012.

He says that the draft version is currently of  epic door stop proportions, a whacking 600 pages which , even with some radical Carver-esque editing,  means that when complete it will amount to much more than a slim volume of glib anecdotes.

The consensus these days is that Morrissey has become a boring old fart whose rent-a-mouth comments for the press have become more than a little tiresome. In this respect, the media shows its usual hypocrisy in inviting quotes about  royalists, conservatives, carnivores or foreigners then feigning outrage (‘big mouth strikes again’) when he obliges with some ‘controversial’  sound bite. It may seem that when Morrissey opens his mouth to the press he puts his foot in it but he knows exactly what he is doing

Dishing the dirt on these critics who have (unsuccessfully) plotted his downfall will doubtless take up a fair amount of space in these memoirs, as he declared in his song ‘The more you ignore me the closer I get : “I bear more grudges than lonely high court judges”.

But apart from snipes and rants what else should we expect? Continue reading →

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MORRISSEY ILL

Filed under: Italy, Music — Leave a comment
October 25, 2009

Saddened to hear that Morrissey collapsed onstage after completing just one song – This Charming Man – at  Oasis Leisure Centre in Swindon, Wiltshire.

He was initially said to be in a stable condition and subsequently discharged after one night in hospital.

The incident is an indication that he has underlying health problems. The fact that  he has pulled out of so many concerts of late means you have to worry that these are pretty serious.

Not surprisingly,  there have always been denials that he has any major  problems – earlier this year in Rimini the promoters came up with a spurious excuse about the stage not being big enough! Hopefully now we’ll get to know the true nature of his physical condition.

Get well soon Mozza!!!

report of Morrissey’s collapse

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