Oh Morrissey. What have you done. I always suspected that you were just too enamoured of Oscar Wilde for your own and everybody else's good. Don't get me wrong, Oscar was incalculably great, but that doesn't mean any devotee, even the most obsessive one, has to wed themselves to the narrative so rigidly. That's unwise. And self indulgent. Sure Morrissey has always been unwise and self indulgent but it's possible to take obsession and love of poetry and literature too far in a direction that's not always healthy. Still Ill? I know. I know.
. Wilde had an incredibly tragic and appalling end and it strikes me as foolish to conclude that just because you love him you need to try to be him. Not to mention the grubby and repeated racism that has come along in its wake in recent years. Racism is beneath any great artist. I still think Morrissey is that though. Despite all that's happened. Just listen to the records. Those are his true legacy. Despite the tripe of his utterances these days. Listen to the songs that made his name. Particularly The Smiths.Those songs still speak as loudly and clearly now as the day they were first heard.
Here was Morrissey in 1984. On Top of the Pops fronting his band in a hearing aid, NHS specs and a sensible jacket and floral blouse and swaying like Mata Hari on tranquillisers on a busy night in The Rovers Return. One of the truly greatest and weirdest, (albeit mimed), performances I've ever witnessed. The other Smiths TOTP performances were all up there. It was one of those cases where you had to be there to truly understand and embrace it all I'm afraid. Seen from forty years on on, archive footage it inevitably loses context.Though not magic.
That turned out to be one of the most memorable evenings of my teenage years. My parents and sister were not around for some reason that evening. I was sitting downstairs in the living room, watching the TV alone, just as Morrissey would probably have wanted it. Shortly after TOTP finished Emma Kate Pailthorpe, the quite gorgeous girl from next door knocked on our front door. She was teenage beauty personified. Slightly plump. But all the better for her plumpness. She had incredible character to complement her beauty. I sometimes imagine courting and marrying her. Even now.
She was incredibly distressed when I answered the door. In tears. Her ghastly piebald cat had leapt upon, teased mercilessly and eventually smothered a small bird in their garden. It had breathed its last and lay forlorn and quite dead in Emma Kate's outstretched palms. I did my best to calm her and accompanied her to her back garden. We found a matchbox and buried the poor thing. Then we went inside.
Emma Kate baked some cookies. A friend of hers came round and the three of us watched Some Like it Hot together. There was no actual romantic ritual enacted like the kind you read about in comic books, hear in songs and watch in movies. It was better than that. It didn't matter that there was not so much as a peck on the lips. Never mind a full on impassioned teenage snog. It doesn't matter. The evening was far better and more memorable without it. It was the stuff that memories are made of. They don't come any better.
Back to Mozza and his band. He soundtracked teenage memories as they were being made and that evening they soundtracked mine. This was the guiding principle and mission statement of The Smiths. They knew exactly what they were doing as they were doing it. Bands don't come any better either.
Listen to the song. Watch the performance. The defiance and determination to make both an immediate and enduring statement is clear. Ennui and self pity worn as emblems. Badges of pride. Such grace in awkwardness and conviction in sartorial style. They're flying flags but unlike U2s ones with genuine resonance and immense lasting value . As long as there are teenagers they'll be relevant. I'm glad to have experienced it all when I was precisely that. A teenager.
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