Autobiography (28 page)

A last sun warms, as if it had always been awaiting its chance. The album became the first start-to-finish emotional journey, each track as warm as the last, noise and poetry turned loose in one of those visionary sessions that your future returns will constantly search for. Faulty emotional development can ripple like the sea, and only by the creation of art can your inner isolation seem insanely worthwhile.
Vauxhall and I
is an arm held out, ushering others to join, even though its singer has feelings impossible to satisfy. When the escapist spirit hits tape in a moment of failure, it weakens; but when the last heave is full of honor, it vitalizes, and here is the tightrope that I can never escape. The choked words become silly when there is neither point nor purpose, but
Vauxhall and I
restored everything beyond price, and I had just cause to be happy. Some shyly, some boldly, but all reviews for
Vauxhall and I
glowed with restored fortunes as the
NME
continued to do its utmost to pump life into their
Morrissey-is-racist
pantomime.
Although detractors would forever gleefully remind the world how the
NME
racist allegations damaged my position, they overlook the fact that, in the heat of it all,
Vauxhall and I
swooped in at number 1, indicating surely that very few had swallowed the
NME
’s fatuous farrago.

Although
The more you ignore m
e, the closer I get
reached number 8 in the UK, the follow-up,
Hold on to your friends
, was dismissed with a wave of the hand, struggling to touch number 42. I had hatched an interesting video made up of segments of the film
The Blue Lamp
featuring Dirk Bogarde, Patric Doonan and Peggy Evans. It is Doonan, not Bogarde, who flags down my interest. Born in Derby, he didn’t rise higher than fourth on the bill, and he took his life at the age of 33 – gassed by an unlit stove in his basement flat at 4 Margaretta Terrace in Chelsea. In 1994, Dirk Bogarde was now living just off Cadogan Square after many years in France. He had, it seemed, returned home to die. We briefly correspond, and initially he is willing to approve the video for
Hold on to your f
riends
, but having given him a copy of V
auxhall and I
he recoils and withdraws his approval. Unaccustomed to backing down, I make my way to his Chelsea flat, but before I can reach the doorway I am met by his spindle-shanked figure groping along a Chelsea side street. Drenched in self-exile and secrets, his eyes are wide with elderly shock. It is a moment of panic, and I turn away as he struggles by, letting it all go. A few months later he is dead.

In any event, EMI refuse to use the video for fear that Dirk will arise from the grave and lash out with his walking stick. No radio station will play
Hold o
n to your friends.
‘I’m sorry, but you look cross-eyed on the cover,’
says James Todd, who is touting for management (but before I have time to say
‘Thank you, but no,’
he is dead, as the cast of casualties in Morrisseyland piles up like bodies in Lady Worthington’s library).

Driving alone down Kilburn High Road I slip the cassette on and boom
Hold on to your friends
at loudly coarse volume. I pull over to the side of the road, stop the car, and break down into a torrent of tears.

At the British Flag pub (somewhere around Battersea) I sit with Chrissie Hynde and Jake and pass a dull Monday nursing a Tennent’s Extra. Chrissie could make people laugh at the funeral of triplets. She has the ability to throw a rip-roaring punch line without altering one single facial muscle. Her deadpan feed lines are effortless, and the rich intellect eats up everyone around her. Even a nod from Chrissie can challenge the attention, and she is by far the funniest person I have ever met, whereas I can’t attempt humor without a host of giveaway facial tics and squirms. This is not to suggest that Chrissie
has
a sense of humor, because she doesn’t appear to. Pestered by a disheveled drunk at the bar, Chrissie swings around:
‘Look. You don’t know me. I don’t know you. Let’s leave it at that.’
And sure enough he leaves it at that.

In another bar, a screech-owl female frump begins a beer-sodden tire-slashing attack on Chrissie with,
‘
You used to mean SO MUCH to me,’
to which Chrissie breaks in with,
‘Yes. But I don’t now – so fuck off.’

Such responses are difficult to follow. This night at the British Flag finds the pub empty apart from the dying bar staff and an elderly gentleman standing at the bar – his little loyal terrier standing by his master’s feet.
‘Do you know what dogs love?’
Chrissie asks Jake and I, ‘
they LOVE this,’
and she calls the shaky terrier over to her, and then lifts it up onto her lap where she quickly sinks her teeth into its neck. The little dog clicks into a freeze-spasm like a kitten in its mother’s mouth. The dog’s owner and the dying bar staff watch stricken with horror.
Life with Chrissie.
I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

‘Dirk Bogarde was here once,’
says my neighbor Alan Bennett,
‘but he didn’t say anything.’

‘How interesting to have a visitor who doesn’t actually say anything,’
I chirp, thinking I’m Jack Kerouac to Alan’s William Burroughs.

Alan lives on Gloucester Crescent, directly to the back of my house on Regent’s Park Terrace. The post box is across from the wide front window where Alan seems always to be sitting like a tawny owl – busy with his busyness, looking out yet not looking out, writing something down yet not. Alan will usually knock at Regent’s Park Terrace at around 7
PM
, when, I think, he finds himself at odds with himself. He will sit in the kitchen and say very little, and no conversation will be forced upon him.

Jake and I fiddle about with our own tinkering pursuits.

‘Now, now. What’s going on? Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’
says Alan.

‘Umm
...
what?’
Jake looks at him, puzzled.

‘You haven’t spoken a word to one another since I arrived,’
detects Alan.

Alan isn’t entirely fumbling in the dark, as I had already made plans to lower myself into my new flat on Fitzwilliam Place in Dublin. My Irish social security card and my tax-exemption documents drop through the letter box and the new life wipes out the old as 1995 kick-starts.

I dart about Dublin in the Saab, which I park nightly in a lock-up on Lad Lane, and I feel certain I will forget London and Los Angeles for eternity. Dublin life is a steady focus on pub culture and simple pleasures. The streets are safe and it is difficult not to make friends. Instantly I find my own stray cat, who is white somewhere beneath the blackness of dirt. He patiently awaits me every morning, but disowns me once he is fed. There will be less suffering in his eyes as the weeks pass, yet his business down Dublin’s back alleys is of more concern to him than the variety of cat-basket enticements that I lay out for him should he want to edge in permanently. But he doesn’t. I never fail to supply daily sustenance, and he equally doesn’t fail to be at his appointed spot, full of simple devotion. The inevitable morning draws me to the large Georgian windows from which I see his pathetic, half-flattened body in the middle of a deserted street. I race outside and I lift his body up into two large bath towels, the body now lifeless, yet softly in my arms for the first time. His short life now over, as death always wins.

I rely heavily on the iron-column kindness of Martin McCann, who is the lead singer of the band Sack, and his friendship always makes the day better. Martin seems to know everyone in Dublin, and he can always find something to do. He introduces me to the Thrills and the Pony Club, and I invite both to open for me at the Royal Albert Hall in London. From this, the Thrills will secure a deal with Virgin, whereas the Pony Club will mysteriously remain in Kimmage, lost in space. Ten years on, I drive slowly through Los Angeles and the Pony Club are played on mid-day radio, as their magnificent song called
Single
makes my mind halt, a gamut of sad moods imposed upon me, all dragged away by lifetimes gone.

In March 1995 we all gather at Hook End Manor in Oxfordshire to record
Southpaw Grammar
, and the news comes through that Ronnie Kray has died.

‘Oooh, good!’
shouts producer Steve Lilywhite as I freeze with confusion,
‘the world doesn’t need people like that.’
The abiding distinction of the Kray Brothers, for me, had nothing to do with their circle of violence, because that is nothing new or unusual: the wheels of the world spin entirely on violence – military science, whaling, nuclear weapons, armed combat, the abattoir, holy war, jailing key members of the Earth Liberation or the Earth First emergency groups, terrorist police using Taser stun-guns, the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, the punishment block, the bailiffs, the predawn rampage, riot police assaulting innocent civilians with plastic bullets and pepper-sprays – all in the name of controlled force. Violence is the ruling word in most persuasive human action. The history of the judicial system is the history of torture, from the ducking stool to hanging, to the death of Bobby Sands. Brute force and cruelty are entirely the point of the halls of justice, and fear is forever the key. The Krays were criticized because they knew how to use their fists – as if this were a terribly unusual thing. However, since they were also working class and far too formidable, this was the spur for the contorted well-bred to bring them down. The Krays had been too strong, and more importantly, their empire promised no financial gain for the government. Something had to be done because no one can be seen to thrive unappointed outside of the law. Imprisoned, the Krays were unfairly locked away for the rest of their lives, and they died quietly.

I was surprised to receive a handwritten letter from Charles Richardson in 1995 from his home in Kent. The Richardson brothers had power in south London similar to the Krays’ power in east London, and their gory glory days ran parallel. In his letter, Charles explained that a feature film was to be made of his life, and he asked if I would consider playing him on screen. I was astonished at the invitation, but I hadn’t the nerve to entertain it since I couldn’t act naturally at all – not even whilst sleeping. From Charlie Richardson to Julie Christie to Alan Bennett to Richard Davalos to Anthony Newley, I stood back from it all and wondered how all of these people had come into my life, and what a strange jigsaw they all made. How could I have ever imagined Anthony Newley as a weekly correspondent?

We had started the
Southpaw Grammar
album in the south of France, but the deserted farmhouse atmosphere seemed all wrong, and we returned to England where everything clicked with a killing. The band is now in impressive strike: Spencer’s drumming winning out magnificently and Alain delivering a showstopping slam of inventive guitar and crowning backing vocals. Boz remained the star in the firmament, orchestrating and pointing the way, although I heavily felt the strain of the emotional clash between Boz and Alain. My deal with
EMI
had run its course, and it felt like the right time to move on – or sideways, or away.
EMI
would send a new offer, but it had neither heart nor promise, and you can usually tell a record label’s intent by their financial investment. I had watched with blank astonishment at how
EMI
had actively and generously promoted younger bands who seemed likely to appeal to a Morrissey audience, whilst my compilation
World of Morrissey
had full-page ads in all the major music magazines with a printed release date that was in fact a week later than the actual release date. I bang my head against a thousand walls. It seemed to me that
EMI
were itching to possess an artist that was its own discovery (and not, like me, inherited from another label), yet who is similar in artistic temperament to me – but who is preferably
not
me. They succeed in this very well in the immediate years to come. Disheartened also by Reprise, I reject their contractual extension, but alas they already had
Southpaw Grammar.
Knowing that I have already left the label, Reprise kick
Southpaw Grammar
down the slipway to obscurity, and it enters the chart at a very unlikely number 66. On a flight to Chicago I bump into a Reprise executive who doesn’t surprise me in the least by revealing: ‘
You know the label deliberately crippled
Southpaw Grammar
, don’t you? Because you wouldn’t re-sign?’

At the record company meeting|on their hands a dead star|and oh the plans they weave
...

I thought at that moment of Howie Klein’s ‘
You know, every time you tour the States the Smiths catalogue jumps?’
and I feel a grinding gut-sensation
.

In Europe, I hastily sign a one-album deal with
BMG
/
RCA
, bemusing the label at the conference table by overseeing the deal with no legal intervention. My smartness backfires on me, though, because I would never earn any royalties from
Southpaw Grammar
, which enters the UK chart at number 4, and the £200,000 placed upfront by the label disappears into recording and producer fees. Tuesday August 8th 1995 is the launch of
Southpaw Grammar
at Terry Venables’ club Scribes West on Kensington High Street. I prepare to leave but then quickly turn back. I just can’t face it – there is too much clattering about inside my head. I stay home and I put the kettle on, talking aloud to myself and pondering on how even Billie Holiday had sex.
‘Oh that’s so Morrissey – he doesn’t even turn up for his own album launch,’
says someone with scurvy and rickets. Suddenly I am unremunerated, having relied on
EMI
royalties, which had ceased in 1992, never again to be. But still, we were young and we could die tomorrow.