Like countless musicians, managers and record labels before them, the makers of the new movie England Is Mine have discovered that nothing is easy where Morrissey is involved. The unauthorised biopic follows ambitious young Steven Patrick Morrissey up to the point, in 1982, when he met guitarist Johnny Marr and formed the Smiths, the most fiercely beloved British band of their generation. The title comes from one of Morrissey’s many indelible lyrics: “England is mine and it owes me a living.”
On 23 May, however, Morrissey published a dog-whistling Facebook post about the terrorist attack in Manchester which criticised Sadiq Khan, immigration and political correctness: “In modern Britain everyone seems petrified to officially say what we all say in private.” Many fans were dismayed, not for the first time. Now a film that purports to show the birth of a star risks looking like the story of the apprenticeship of a resentful crank.
Thirty years after the Smiths broke up, the 58-year-old’s reputation is in dire shape, and not for musical reasons. His albums are still well received and he remains a passionate live performer with enough diehard fans to fill stadiums. No, the problem is what he says. It is hard to think of another living artist who has squandered so much goodwill.
Ten years ago Morrissey was quoted in the NME as complaining about immigration: “Although I don’t have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears.” He sued the magazine for defamation (“I abhor racism and oppression or cruelty of any kind”) and donated £28,000 to Love Music Hate Racism, but the case was settled and the quotes were never retracted. In 2010 he called the Chinese “a subspecies” due to their mistreatment of animals. In 2013 he said he nearly voted for Ukip and liked Nigel Farage “a great deal”. He has described Brexit to an Australian website as “magnificent”.
Such comments have exhausted the patience of many longtime devotees with progressive political views. After the Facebook post, Martin Rossiter, former frontman of the Morrissey-indebted band Gene, wrote an article for the online Quietus magazine called Why Morrissey Is Dead To Me. On the Etsy website you can buy a tote bag bearing the words: “Shut up, Morrissey!” “Now I find that he’s a sledgehammer provocateur who seems to have much in common with ‘paid to write spite’ columnists,” says the comedian, broadcaster and disillusioned fan Robin Ince. “I was drawn to him because he was writing about humanity when I was young and trying to work out how to be a human. Now his view of humanity makes him a hard listen. The disappointment is my own fault. We elevate when we are young and then ignore the warning signs for years.” Only someone whose music changed lives could inspire such profound disappointment.
That meeting with Marr began one of the most remarkable songwriting partnerships in British music. Over the next five years the Smiths recorded 71 original songs, almost all good to great. Their classic 1986 album The Queen Is Dead will be reissued in October.
“Where to begin?”, says Simon Goddard, a writer for Q magazine and author of two books on Morrissey and the Smiths. “The funniest interviews in the history of music journalism, the most beautiful record sleeves in the history of design and, not least, some of the greatest pop songs in the history of history. He did for us in the 1980s what Bowie did for Morrissey’s generation in the 1970s. He was the skinny, beautiful freak on the TV screen who blew our minds with a message of courageous individualism and liberation.”
Working-class, northern, sexually ambiguous, bookish yet flamboyant, provocative yet charming, Morrissey was a thrilling new kind of pop star. His lyrics revealed a cutting wit and countless grievances, but also compassion and romance. He took revenge on the world’s bullies and dullards on the listener’s behalf. What’s more, his record sleeves gave fans a mythology while his interviews established a world view: anti-Tory, anti-monarchy, pro-animal rights.
Many people, Marr included, became vegetarian or vegan after hearing the song Meat Is Murder. “I was 13 when my friend gave me The Queen Is Dead, which remains one of the greatest albums ever made,” says Ian Dunt, editor of politics.co.uk. “It’s profoundly beautiful and it sums up the alienation and isolation you have as a teenager. There’s a peculiarly male self-pity. It seems to speak to private doubts.”
Some of Morrissey’s solo work was similarly powerful, but his reputation wobbled in 1992 when his use of the Union flag during a concert drew attention to contentious lyrics in songs like The National Front Disco and Bengali in Platforms. Morrissey insisted the songs had been misinterpreted (“One can plainly hear that here is no hate at all”), but for Dunt, discussing Bengali in Platforms with his Indian girlfriend some years later, it was the last straw. “As I said the line, ‘Life is hard enough when you belong here,’ I felt so ashamed and embarrassed,” he says. “There’s a point where you have to say: fuck this.”
The critic Anita Sethi grew up in Morrissey’s old neighbourhood and discovered his work in the 1990s. “The yearning for home and sense of alienation struck a chord,” she says, “but paradoxically, as a child of immigrants in his hometown, I felt alienated by his racist comments. Music gave me a sense of belonging and escape, so that felt like a double rejection. I still love the work, but I object to his persona.”
Morrissey mounted a successful comeback in 2004 with his album You Are the Quarry and a triumphant Meltdown festival, but his history of severed alliances continued. Since the Smiths ended, he has burned through 14 record deals and it would take a brave soul to give him another one. Only his loyal musical director Boz Boorer has stuck by him. His literary output, meanwhile, has been divisive. Critic Andrew Harrison bemoaned the “charmless sniping” and “adolescent silliness” that sabotaged the 2013 Autobiography, while novelist John Niven dismissed Morrissey’s reviled 2015 debut novel List of the Lost as a “sorry, gurgling mess”.
As for a Smiths reunion, it’s almost impossible to imagine Marr interrupting his prolific freewheeling career for something so fraught with potential conflict. In his recent memoir, Marr revealed that he had reconnected with Morrissey in 2008, but “our communication ended, and things went back to how they were and how I expect they always will be”. It is fair to say that Morrissey is peevish, prickly, narcissistic, unmanageable and self-pitying, but he was all those things, to some degree, in the 1980s. It isn’t true that he used to be leftwing and is now rightwing. He remains a fervent supporter of animal rights and republicanism. And while he has described Nigel Farage as a “liberal educator”, he has also praised Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders.
“Morrissey is pro-working class, anti-elite and anti-institution,” says Goddard. “That includes all political parties, parliament itself, all public schools, Oxbridge, the Catholic church, the monarchy, the EU, the BBC, the broadsheet press and the music press. Because his comments are not consistent with any one political agenda it confuses people, especially on the left. If anything, he’s a professional refusenik. Like the old Groucho Marx song: Whatever it is, I’m against it!”
Morrissey’s image problem is far from fatal. His core fan base remains substantial. Another great album isn’t out of the question if he could find the right collaborators and somebody willing to release it.
The problem is that people who truly loved Morrissey did so because they felt that he understood them and shared their values, so their disappointment is unusually intense. When they fall out of love, they fall hard and there is no route back to that pure fandom. “The stuff I loved about him feels like it faded away a long time ago,” says Dunt. “The Smiths line I liked most was: ‘It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate/It takes guts to be gentle and kind.’ Well, when was the last time you heard Morrissey say something gentle and kind?”
Goddard, though not uncritical, believes that Morrissey’s artistic legacy will ultimately prevail. “When he’s gone the headline won’t be: ‘Singer who praised Farage in a 2012 Loaded interview dies.’ It will be: ‘Farewell, Pop Genius Pope of Mope!’ All his crazy internet ramblings and the media teacup storms will be forgotten.” Too late, perhaps, for England Is Mine.
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