Meetings with Morrissey

by Len Brown

Overview

Morrissey is one of the most provocative, individual and controversial performers in popular music. From the formation of his Manchester band The Smiths in 1982, through to the imminent release of his 2008 solo album Years Of Refusal, his career has spanned 50 UK Top 40 singles and 20 UK Top 10 albums.

Including previously unpublished encounters, Meetings with Morrissey gets behind the public image to tell Morrissey’s story in his own words and explore in fine detail the extraordinary subject matter of his songs. The book offers in-depth insight into the diverse artists Morrissey has celebrated, via lyrics or Smiths’ covers, including Patti Smith, Pat Phoenix, Billy Fury, Marc Bolan, James Dean and The New York Dolls. Above all, it focuses on Morrissey’s lifelong commitment to promoting the genius of Oscar Wilde.

Len Brown, a former NME writer and television producer, has interviewed Morrissey more times than any journalist. He first saw The Smiths back in 1983 and became the first writer to interview the artist about the death of his band and the birth of his solo career in 1988.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780857122407
Publisher:	Omnibus Press
Publication date:	04/07/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	324
File size:	7 MB

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Preface: "For This Is The Cadogan Hotel" 7

Part 1 The Smiths

1 The Past Is Another Country 23

2 The World Changes 32

3 Used To Be A Sweet Boy 49

4 The New Morrissey Express 69

5 Sex And The Single Male 88

6 I Know It's Over 105

Part 2 Morrissey

7 Nineteen Eighty Hate 127

8 Madchester, So Much To Answer For 154

9 Napoleon Solo - The Political Animal 170

10 Into Exile 190

11 Return Of The Mozzfather 212

12 Wilde Man In His Head 230

Morrissey's People 247

Sing Your Life: An Essential Smiths/Morrissey Compilation 294

Further Reading 303

Acknowledgements 305

Index 307

Editorial Reviews

Brown lifts the lid on one of the most individual performers we have today - from Morrissey's sexuality to what still drives him. Often biographies don't tell us anything new - this is an exception. Fans will love this insight into Morrissey.

The Sun newspaper

As a man whose meeting with Morrissey, both formal and informal, stretch back to being the first to interview the solo Moz in 1988, and on into 2003 and his pre-You Are The Quarry resurgence, Brown has more credentials than most to hurl a book about Steven Patrick out into the market. A self-confessed Smiths diehard, he also avoids turning this into some fawning Mozfather love-in.
It's not quite bursting with unprinted interviews. Most of the text re-tells the story, with Brown's own personal experiences (of Morrissey and other events in his life) adding colour, turning these memoirs-cum- biography into a hugely enjoyable read. What we get is a portrait of a man who, to reference Oscar Wilde as Brown does, has turned his life into a work of art.

Brown takes Moz's declaration that "everything's linked, everybody takes from the artists they love" as a manifesto, tracing Morrissey's story through his literature, British film/TV and female pop influences. Ultimately (and sometimes wearily overbearingly so), it leads right back to Wilde, Morrissey's biggest love. The final chapter, tying up all the influences and parallels between the artists' lives, might get a bit much, mind. Without being brainsizzlingly new, Brown's turned out a very fair, even-handed account that happily gets you running back to those records to play detective yourself.

Record Collector

There is much to enjoy here; the interview material is sparkling and Brown's extrapolations on the figures who populate Morrissey's imagination, from the obvious (Oscar Wilde, James Dean) to the more obscure (TV's pioneering camp hairdresser Raymond 'Teasy-Weasy' Bessone) show an impressive grasp of Mozza arcana...one of the better books on the man who has claimed onstage to be Stinky Turner, Stan Ogden and 'Bruce Springroll'.

Mojo

Renowned broadcaster and scribe Len Brown might just have written the most compelling tome in the near library of Moz biographies. His Meetings With Morrissey draws on a lifetime's worth of encounters to try and lift the veil on the enigma. Fresh insights are provided, with the body of work and sources of inspiration outlined with forensic detail. Perhaps the greatest triumph here though is the sense that Brown has teased out more of the real Morrissey - whoever he is - than any other chronicler to date.

AU Magazine