Autobiography (42 page)

‘I luff you,’
says a girl with a rosebud mouth, and away she sludges.

For December 10th we have taken over Battersea Power Station in London. It is a beloved monument clinging to life and surrounded by bits of forgotten land that no one seems to know what to do with.
There are bent lamp-posts on cobbled streets where this happy breed surely lived out their lowly lives. It’s all about to fall, yet doesn’t quite. The Power Station is the pride of south London and fills the heart with love, yet nobody knows more about it than that. All 6,000 tickets have sold, and the night is full of trenches tension and the call to arms. Again, the cheer that greets me as I walk onstage is so loud that my hearing distorts and I momentarily lose balance. The roar is male, the crowd a manful facet, and every lyric is chanted loudly as if by sloshed Tibetan monks. The audience mosh – which is very funny to watch from the apparent safety of the stage. It is a helter-skelter free-for-all of dangerous dives (where to?) and blindsided charges.
Bodies vault an impossibly high barrier and lunge at the edge of the stage – howling as they land into the holy mess of the front row. Some heads are squashed. Some aren’t. The security struggles in the mix, but all I see is one great caress. Were Smiths concerts ever as wild?
Sometimes.
Must it all be intellectualized?
Yes.

I will later be down on my knees beside a little white table. The audience understand even if the critics refuse to, and much rather this way than the other way around. As I am driven away from Battersea Power Station the main road is a long chain of Moz-posse walking home, happy (it seems) with emotional involvement. It could be a football crowd if not for the mass of t-shirts bearing the Morrissey mug. As I watch and study, I am mirrored by a handsome legion of the tough and the flash, and with this vision all of my efforts succeed.

It was all for this. It stares me in the face. I need not be told because I can see it for myself. This magnificent stream of humanity represents the power of accomplishment, and fifteen minutes later I am dropped at the hotel. Alone in my room, I am bewildered, yet more purified than mournful.

Soon, the pretty town of Eugene, Oregon, as the Morrissey trucks roll in like Andy Warhol’s
Pork
, out to whip the insane and forever mark the young. Lusty lives queue to get into the McDonald Theater on this August evening of brilliant light, with just a flicker of subtle oppression pansying around us. Stepping off the bus and heading in through the stage door – watch, and be careful, for they can tell everything about you from your eyes. Like many a Bible-belter before me I was sent here to Eugene – but not to raise the Good Book, but to finally get under the skin with the power of song. It is the song of the unresolved heart, and is so disconnected with sorrow that the sorrow turns in on itself and becomes triumph. Save the last dance for me.
Backstage, I drum my fingers through the lyrics, like a stage actor memorizing
Macbeth.
I am simply waiting my turn.

This old theater smells of new paint, and my dressing room has that quaint American touch of an old stove and leaden pipes. Who on earth sat constipated on this antiquated lavatory in 1923 or 1931, making up their mind as they sat? And then rose to join the world in emotional decline once again. The grand theaters of American Music Hall are now simply famous graveyards for that generation of trophy dancers and trombone jugglers, with Sophie Tucker and Julian Eltinge solidly under the sod, their place taken by such as I. This drops me into the dubious bracket of entertainer, and I will readily agree with anyone who argues against this observation. Yet no politician receives the love that greets me in Oregon, no court judge could ever possibly know what it is like, and no gee-whiz journalist should dare to understand it. Nowhere are there more natural smiles than those of a welcoming audience. In response, my heart sings and breaks.

Drawing into Fresno on September 10th, darker evenings close in. Outside the Rainbow Ballroom, Fresno is Hollywood and Vine condensed into a single image of gangs, gangs, gangs everywhere. Gangs watching other gangs, smartly prepared in fastidious attire – bare arms of black and red tattoos on hard-bitten storytellers; big boys with small girls. The homies walk and talk it, their chicks click and clink with accessories, and no language heard but Spanish slang. The streets flood with Morrissey. I do not know what to do with all of this happiness.
Viva Hate
emblems; art-hound T’s, tank tops and bags graffitied in Morrissey-code. Most of all, every arm, every neck, every hand mobbered with a Morrissey tattoo. Fresno! Fresno! Fresno! Here is the light! And never go out! Shaven-headed buddies and lazy dykes, and all around that taste of
fantastic danger. Peeping from side streets, the police hide –
watching this crowd to see if they can possibly make any money from it by way of tickets and taggings – every arrest a potential notch and a sexual thrill for the cop crotch. Could I disembark at Fresno and join the good-looking stud-muffins? No. I am as cut off from the crowd as I was in 1973, stressed in Stretford.

Inside the Rainbow Ballroom the walls drip with sweat and
hi! hey! yo! sup? how’s by you?
Fresno is Morrissey Central and the good buddies are out in their mainman force, each posse and tribe bonded by their busting fresh flyboy look. Yet chuchala-muchala is all, as amigo and little brother hamma squeeze together. Why do you come here? I face my race. I wonder how they found me. All Mexican mellow, yet ready to put the chill on. Here in Fresno I find it – with wall-to-wall Chicanos and Chicanas as my syndicate. I walk onstage and the roar that greets me nearly kills me – would Italian godfathers find better respect? For once I have my family. The songs halt at times as fights break out in the room, and smoke rises amongst the rings. Hairpins scream and suddenly it’s a risky business, but the more the red flag waves the more the steam box sweats. Snazzy and spiffy boys point to me, sticky hands squeeze any part of me, and my bluff is called. Dare I take one on? The fire-eater within me leaps out, and I belong nowhere except over the line. Sex is advertised yet withheld – go on, make my day. It is gritty prison-cell sex, and I am shaking with courage. Outside, much later, no one is going home. Fresno streets are blocked by the spunky and the nervy Moz-posse, turned out in black and white or expertly battered denim. There are no Caucasian faces – which is a remarkable answer to those dap snappy London music editors, each boxed up in Bow, who would have me hanged as racist for daring to sing about racism.

The new Morrissey audience is not white – not here, at least – and they are the frenzied flipside of the Smiths’ pale woolgatherers. These new V-men will go to the wall, or the mat, heavy sluggers with fat lips. Do you get the audience that you deserve? I sincerely hope so. Did you see the slugfest out front? Did you see the scrappers in the foyer? Yes, and love them I do, with noble heart. They were alight, too, at El Paso, where we had played on September 2nd and 3rd. Every runaway and throwaway crammed inside as if waiting for a call to war. El Paso’s heavy artillery of players and beefed-up drifters amongst the Juarez boychicks and the butch bitch diesel dykes. The rug-munchers rule, and I’d lay down my life for the lost boys of El Paso – the sad shootists and pack-a-rods.

Meanwhile, back in England, they still write
Heaven Knows He’s Miserable Now
and call me an ex-Smith (for who would know me otherwise?).
My new Latino hearts are lost on the know-alls, those self-appointed fusspots and the pernickety chickenshits. I smile at the thought of a Smiths reunion, for I’ve got everything now.

At Santa Barbara Bowl on Tuesday 5th I am told that Peter Noone is watching from side-stage. Peter is from Manchester and attended Stretford Road School near my iron pile slammer, St Wilfrid’s. Peter, of course, sang for Herman’s Hermits, and I had covered their
East w
est
, which had probably piqued his curiosity. On a television show a few weeks later, he proudly name-checks me and I blush for a fortnight.

‘You must call your next album
Steven
,’
says Manchester luvvie Tony Wilson, and I stare back at him – wondering if he had ever actually had a good idea in his life.

Wilson repeatedly turns up at Morrissey concerts and then automatically lambasts me in print or on radio almost as if he enjoys his hatreds more than he enjoys his joys.
‘Let’s face it,’
he says on Australian radio,
‘Morrissey really IS a horrible person.’
Weeks later I am behind the wheel of my sky-blue Jag in Los Angeles, stalled at traffic lights. I spot whom I think to be Jerry Springer walking across the street in front of me (Miller Drive, should you care), but of course it is Urmston’s answer to nothing, and Wilson bows his head towards me and offers a smile – as three-faced as ever he was.

Stephen Street appears on British television:
‘
...
which is why Morrissey is big in America’
– and then he catches himself floundering with a compliment –
‘well, in certain pockets of America.’

God forbid that Stephen would grant me the full map, especially if certain pockets might exist that are resistant! Oh, Stephen, waddle yourself to Morrissey nights in Fresno or El Paso or Chicago and you’d quake yourself spitless. People will not let you move on if it means that your progress shoves them further into the past.

As the tour bus hums and clips its way through the Bakersfield night, I remembered how Alain would apply hair-gel in preparation for bed. I had never come across such an over-developed sense of vanity – funny though it was.

‘Why do people always say Rome wasn’t built in a day?’
Alain once asked me.

‘It’s just a silly expression because, in fact, Rome WAS actually built in just one day,’
I lied, straight-faced and honest-toned.

‘Reeeeeally?’
Alain gasped – the child alive in his eyes.

‘Yes,’
I confirm, and I wobbled down to my end of the bus.

Hush, now.

Merck has arranged for
Ringleader of the T
ormentors
to be recorded in Rome, the city of vaults. An ancient church in a Parioli square just north of the city center will be our squat for several months. Outside, in Piazza Euclide the stylish youth of Rome stand about stylishly doing nothing – their scooters parked irresponsibly as the hunting teens tear into alcohol and pastries, and freedom is 80 per cent of what life is. No doleful sights here, no slum mums defined by their murky children. The young people of Rome know precisely what delights await them because of their choking beauty, and this because of their global position of sun and wind combined to shade their skin a smooth and healthy hew. It is that tone, and the pink lips and slender frames and the heritage of natural style that is the Italian soul. It is all a question of beat, and the kids of Rome do not look elsewhere because what they feel is acted out, and never do they watch television since they are too busy living out their own storylines. And this they are free to do since street crime in Rome is rare, and police presence is never a threat. It is the only city I have ever traveled to where the police appear to want to help, and where they have a certain confidence in their public charges. In Rome, people appear not to hate the police at all, whereas in Los Angeles you must prepare yourself for trouble from any emerging police car. In Rome, people will even smile at police officers as they walk past, whereas attempt to smile at an
LAPD
officer and you would be pinned to the ground in the city where everyone is guilty until proven guilty.

It is a glorious relief to be away from all of that now, here in Rome, where the harshest sound is laughter, and from which American authority could learn so much – if ever it would allow itself to be taught anything. Italians are blunt, but this is because they are relaxed, whereas in Los Angeles a sickbed politeness permeates all conversation – rendering it not conversation at all. The very proximity of people happily walking so close to one another in Rome is in itself a revelation to most Americans, who live their lives at yardage distance from one another lest a slight brush instigate court action. Yet America demands worldwide respect for being the country that got it right – on all matters, even though fear remains the central key in everything that it does.

The reclusive cardinal of Italian music is Ennio Morricone. Although historical and royal, he has agreed to conduct his orchestra on the track
Dear God, please help me.
This is unusual, since the maestro of maestros has refused U2 and David Bowie, but somehow says yes to porky me. The grandeur engulfs us, and my heart is pushed to the point of collapse as I watch Ennio in studio action. I find myself wishing for tears that don’t come. Oddly, I introduce Ennio to Tony Visconti, to whom Ennio gives one very quick up-and-down disdainful look, says nothing, and turns away. Tony is not troubled by this, whereas I would slit my own throat at the shock of such a rebuff.

Rome has been my city for several years, with all of its soft sorrows of browns and reds. I live for almost one year at the Hotel de Russie, guided by the olive-dark face of Gelato, whom I had met at Dublin Airport. Gelato is classically Italian in appearance, peeled off the Pasolini screen with studied sloppiness, the Florentine face knowing very well what people see in him to like. He runs a wine shop and teaches youth soccer, and he is younger than me – as all people now are. His motorbike takes us around Rome – too fast, of course, too precarious, of course – and the battered graffiti walls are a red mass of haunting melancholy. After Los Angeles, the chattering enthusiasm of Rome is simply incredible; millions of teens at ease in dreams in the eternal nocturnal city.
Temples and tombs rub against Prada, columns and arches look down on Gucci, and everywhere there are shadowy marks of
the dead because every single step of the way is a grave.

Gelato had gone too far for me to spit him out, and the obligatory appointments are made to see Appian Way houses that are up for sale. I am told that this is the first, or the oldest, road in the world. I am fully prepared to believe anything. Kneeling beggars remain in the city squares, while out here above the catacombs the fields are rife with cats, but the houses are mildewed in comparison to those of Los Angeles, and I am flooded with too much choice.

Alain’s writing for
Ringleader of the T
ormentors
had elegantly surpassed itself, with what would become
Life is a pigsty
,
I will see you in far-off p
laces
and
The father who must be killed
defined for all time as the very best. Recording traffic noises for the song
The youngest was the m
ost loved
we walk around late-night Piazza Euclide. A hardy shout comes from an open-top mini (which we later use on
At last I am born
), whilst Alain’s impromptu
bop-a-bop-bom
loops itself into the opening confusion of the track. Tony Visconti shatters my gooey dreamland when he tells me,
‘Mikey is actually a very average musician, you know.’
This is not true, and I won’t be unsettled during such a picture-perfect session. Some debates are better left unvoiced.

I wake in the middle of the night and I have no idea where I am. Jesse is my main companion, of late-night walks and cellars full of wine, whereas my friendship with Alain had reached its natural term long ago. My nightly walks with Jesse would begin at the tip of Villa Borghese where Via Ulisse Aldrovandi lines up its glossy array of roadside prostitutes – mostly male, hard-bitten heroes fastidiously attired as sons of Eros. Their eyes are darts of desire, standing in the trees beyond, with legs wide apart. Every single night they are there, like a soccer team awaiting the club bus, and we are struck by how none of them are identifiably emasculated; they are just manly sons of mothers in search of others.

The blaze of the May sun falls on curtained doorways and shuttered houses, and all of my questions paralyze action. Could I possibly, possibly just take it all as it is? The timeless chirp of distant children always seems to be somewhere, and on my daily walks I reflect on how my loneliness had cost enough. The sunniest pair of eyes are never mine. Only the grand completion of a recorded song allows my heart to laugh, and
Ringleader of the T
ormentors
crowns a satisfying collection of songs, filling a final need in a lengthy search for perfection. But once you have said
Life is a pigsty
,
where to go from there? Was it all the end of me?

One afternoon at the studio Tony shows me a film of a singer called Kristeen Young playing somewhere in New York. Everything about this singer is new. The solid fixity of her presentation is as striking as having a safe drop on your head from a tenth-floor window. She belongs to no other time or fad. Even her makeup is a mystery. The voice sails and then anchors at perfect pitch – ready to swallow up children and out-pace migrating herds. She is Maria Callas if not for the keyboard that she plays like a set of drums, talent as much a demand as a gift, and eyes lost in stark sadness. She does not plan to waste her life making tea for in-laws. A midwinter heart, her Julys are darker than her Decembers – carried away like a thing lost in the early stages of pregnancy. I am quite possibly in
...
quite possibly in
...
what’s that compulsive, addictive, obsessive hairball mess thing called?
...
um, yes,
love.
There, I’ve said it. Eternally caught in life’s screen door, Kristeen will discard the dress and wear the hanger. Her voice soars to unimaginable heights – straining blood out of stray cats as it rises. This Pola Negri gives such a swirling chase of emotion to each song that I feel I am witnessing the mutual understanding of struggle. Be this, or die – cannon fodder for art, tears with accuracy. Whenever she speaks, I do not want to miss a single word. Weren’t we made to be this way? Kristeen and I become great friends, and my life would have been emptier for not knowing her.

Mikey Farrell is an outstanding addition on keyboards – an infallible guide of new sounds and dry wit, of mid-western hardiness and team squad yardage. Interestingly, a vast knowledge of show tunes and an ability to play almost anything ten seconds after first hearing it. His opening words to me were,
‘I’m a poor man’s Roger Manning,’
in his shaggy-hangdog look that would soon sharpen itself into stylish
Pepe le Moko
aspect.

‘My wife saw you at the Roxy when the Smiths first played in LA,’
he went on.

‘Oh, that must’ve been an interesting night since we’d never played the Roxy.’
God forbid I just leave things as they are. From Cleveland, Mikey is of Irish grandparents and is stubbornly competitive, which I enjoy since it usually works to my favor. Proof of something is the sun-drenched day when we all play football at Hyde Park in London, and once I’ve scored the first goal I close down the match since
‘it seems obvious where this is going.’
Mikey fumes since his chance to wrestle me into unconsciousness is thwarted.

ME
:
Do you know what you haven’t got?

MIKEY
:
A personality?

ME
:
Well, besides that. You don’t actually have piano fingers.

It is a noisy gathering at Pizza Express on Parkway in Camden.

MIKEY
: The Queen is Dead
had a big influence on me in high school.

ME
:
A bad one, I trust?

MIKEY
:
Of course.

I smell a new world of music with Mikey, but I also realize that he’s the type who would jump ship should the royal wave come from Barbara Strident. If I was anything at all, I was sewage disposal. The mouth speaks first, and then thirty seconds later the brain catches up with whatever it is I’ve just said.

Whilst recording in Rome I meet Elton John, who is shockingly down-to-earth and gives me high praise for
You Are the Quarry
. He tells me how he loved the New York Dolls and Jobriath, but how he considered Bowie to be
‘a vampire’
. A pleasant evening passes under a Rome sun which – even into late evening – seems not to go away.

2006 sweetens with the news that
Ringleader of the Tormentors
has entered the UK chart at number 1, which is my third number 1 in three different decades (and
still
Alain Whyte says nothing)
. Jed Weitzman and I dance around a Hamburg hotel room like childish imps once Jennifer Ivory had delivered the news. Jennifer, of course, remains of Griselda composure whereas I beg forgiveness for my insane happiness. Jennifer held the Sanctuary branding iron and had cut her industry teeth quite quickly once her native Lost Angeles had been abandoned for the drainpipes and black cabs of London’s asphalt and the whateveritwas of Belsize Park. It was Jennifer’s idea to issue
I have forgiven Jesus
as a single during the Christmas period, and although I laughed at the bleak absurdity of such a move, it proved to be a great success.
‘But you can’t expect radio to play it,’
Jennifer finger-wagged,
‘even cutting-edge radio finds you too cutting-edge for their playlist.’
Although the record had reached number 10, there would be no
Top of the Pops
invitation, even though records that had yet to be released were included in the show as I lay languishing and neglected at 10, like a discarded lodging-house towel.
What is everybody so afraid of? From
Ringleader of the Tormentors
, the lead single
You have killed m
e
had already bounced in at number 3, and these victories have so much meaning in the face of the now standard zero airplay and the usual knife-wielding reviews. Buying a Morrissey disc remains a political gesture, but the strain shows on the follow-up single
The youngest was the most loved
, which has a mid-week position of number 1, yet finally lodges in at number 14. A third single
In the f
uture when all’s well
rattles in at 17, and fourth single
I just want to see the boy h
appy
clips in at 16, but still, radio DJs in England will not play these songs, and the consternation is quite incredible, as if you just haven’t earned it yet, baby.

But the final sting of 2007 is an interview with the ever-lurking
NME
. In fact, the interview is very pleasant, as the writer is very sensitive and courteous. The day after the interview he contacts my manager with sincere thanks, and he respectfully asks for tickets for the upcoming New York shows. The latest
NME
editor then offers me a special
NME
Award with the industry whisper that he is determined to get Morrissey and Marr in the same room together at an
NME
function. I politely decline the award because the glitzy grandiloquence of the prize system tends to present itself as the ultimate reason why artists do whatever it is they do, and once you’ve seen a thousand lightweight mediocrities flouncing offstage clutching their Brit Awards, you see the silliness of it all. I refuse the
NME
award, and then suddenly the editor elects to write the interview piece himself, booting his journalist sideways.

The piece emerges as the most offensively malodorous attack, reviving the
NME
’s groundless racist accusation, but the editor gives the story teeth by switching the wording of my replies, and by inventing questions that were never asked. It is catastrophically controversial.